“Government Isn’t Just Corrupt, It’s Insane!”
AND “AS SMART AS A FOX?”

by Ron Ewart, ©2012

Editor's Note: Re-posted with permission of The Post & Email.

(May 6, 2012) — “It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 62, February 27, 1788

Clause A: “….. build and disseminate the transportation layer of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure developed under Executive Order 12906 (59 Fed. Reg. 17671) (or a successor Executive Order), including by coordinating the development of transportation geospatial data standards, compiling intermodal geospatial data, and collecting geospatial data that is not being collected by other entities;”

Clause B: “….. ADDITIONAL AMOUNTS.—Amounts made available under subsection (a)(1)(A) shall be in addition to amounts made available to the fund under section 105 of the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006 (43 U.S.C. 1331 note; Public Law 109–432).”

Clause C: “….. Paragraph (1) of section 9503(b) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by re-designating sub-paragraphs (C), (D), and (E) as sub-paragraphs (D), (E), and (F), respectively, and by inserting after subparagraph (B) the following new sub-paragraph: ‘’(B) section 4064 (relating to gas guzzler tax),’’.”

Clause D: ‘‘….. SEC. 7345. REVOCATION OR DENIAL OF PASSPORT IN CASE OF CERTAIN TAX DELINQUENCIES.”

‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—If the Secretary receives certification by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue that any individual has a seriously delinquent tax debt in an amount in excess of $50,000, the Secretary shall transmit such certification to the Secretary of State for action with respect to denial, revocation, or limitation of a passport pursuant to section 4 of the Act entitled ‘An Act to regulate the issue and validity of passports, and for other purposes’, approved July 3, 1926 (22 U.S.C. 211a et seq.), commonly known as the ‘Passport Act of 1926’.”

These are just four passages out of this 1,676-page Bill being considered by the U. S. Congress right now, entitled:

Senate Bill 1813

AN ACT
To re-authorize Federal-aid highway and highway safety

construction programs, and for other purposes. or

“Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century” Act

NOTE: This Bill is available in PDF format on our website HERE: (just click on the “Cuckoo” image) We encourage you to take the time to read some of it, even knowing that most of you won’t.

Some of the passages and clauses in the Bill are unintelligible and they appear to be written by one or more inmates from the movie, ”One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” But what becomes very apparent after reading each page is that this is way more than just a “Highway Safety Construction Program” Bill, or “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century” Act. The name is just camouflage. As you can see by the last of the four entries from the Bill we have included above, it also includes changes to the Internal Revenue Service code that have absolutely nothing to do with Highway Safety. They just threw it into the Bill because they can get away with it. After all, no one reads these bills anyway. Right? You’ll never know it until you try to leave the country and the State Department revokes your passport because of unpaid taxes. You might even have your guns confiscated if you owe the government any money and you could even end up on the terrorist watch list.

In fact, this whole Highway Safety bill is a laundry list of left-wing causes. It includes social justice issues, radical environmental protection requirements, United Nation’s Agenda 21 policies, Metropolitan Planning Organizations, or MPO’s and “pushes” the Hell out of expensive and inefficient mass transit. It contains education grants to promote social and environmental curricula, energy conservation considerations and it even mandates that every new passenger car in America be built with a “black box” recording device, just like our commercial airline fleet. What will that cost?

There are even health care mandates, pension requirements and minority business assistance programs. Then there are the carrot and stick incentives to the states and local jurisdictions which amount to legalized blackmail. “Do it our way or you don’t get the money.” You can forget about the 10th Amendment.

Oh! And let’s not forget the money. We’re talking billions upon billions of dollars here and much of it is being spent on items that have absolutely nothing to do with Highway Safety or Construction. With $15 trillion in debt and climbing rapidly, where is the government getting the money? Borrowing it from your kids’ future, of course!

Now the real clincher is in the title of the Bill where it says: “and for other purposes“.

Here is just one example of “other purposes“:

Sec. 100112. Tax reporting for life settlement transactions.
Sec. 100113. Clarification of tax basis of life insurance contracts.
Sec. 100114. Exception to transfer for valuable consideration rules.
Sec. 100115. Phased retirement authority.
Sec. 100116. Roll-your-own cigarette machines.

Then there is the “Revenue Provisions” section of the Bill, which begs many questions on why any of this “stuff” is in a Highway Safety and Construction Bill in the first place. We’ve highlighted a few of the more questionable items below.

TITLE III—REVENUE PROVISIONS

Sec. 40301. Transfer from Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund to
Highway Trust Fund.
Sec. 40302. Portion of Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund financing
rate transferred to Highway Trust Fund.
Sec. 40303. Transfer of gas guzzler taxes to Highway Trust Fund.
Sec. 40304. Revocation or denial of passport in case of certain unpaid taxes.
Sec. 40305. 100 percent continuous levy on payments to Medicare providers
and suppliers.
Sec. 40306. Transfer of amounts attributable to certain duties on imported vehicles
into the Highway Trust Fund.
Sec. 40307. Treatment of securities of a controlled corporation exchanged for
assets in certain reorganizations.
Sec. 40308. Internal Revenue Service levies and Thrift Savings Plan Accounts.
Sec. 40309. Depreciation and amortization rules for highway and related property
subject to long-term leases.
Sec. 40310. Extension for transfers of excess pension assets to retiree health
accounts.
Sec. 40311. Transfer of excess pension assets to retiree group term life insurance
accounts.
Sec. 40312. Pension funding stabilization.
Sec. 40313. Additional transfers to Highway Trust Fund.
Sec. 40314. Transfers to Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund
and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund.

What in God’s name do these highlighted sections have to do with Highway Safety and Construction? Nothing!

Ladies and gentlemen, these politicians and the staff and lobbyists that “feed” them, are either really insane, or as smart as a fox. Legislation coming out of all legislatures, local, state and federal, are nothing more than a clandestine method to insert every little or large social or environmental agenda item they can dream up, along with clever revenue enhancement clauses (taxes) that they can load into the legislation. They purposely make the entire legislation extremely complicated and difficult to read, so that they can camouflage the buried items. It takes the jaws-of-life to uncover some of these socialist and environmental agenda and new tax provisions out of the Bill.

Obama Care and the Dodd-Frank Bank Regulation bills are loaded with “laws” that have absolutely nothing to do with what the name of the legislation implies. We learn of new ones every day.

Each new bill that comes out of the U. S. Congress today, now contains hidden laws or nuances of laws that implement a socialist or environmental agenda and establishes many new government agencies and new taxes, all of it hidden from view. These laws are so complex and so complicated that it will take a gaggle of high-paid lawyers to unravel or interpret them, if ever ….. lawyers who can argue for decades over the meaning of the word “it” and get filthy rich in the process. Politicians and the legislation they pass, are a lawyer’s gravy train. As we speak there are hundreds of lawsuits against the government by environmental, social and advocacy groups over some portion of a law the government isn’t following properly. Guess who pays when one of these groups wins in court and they always win because the government is so inept? The taxpayer pays, that’s whom! But if we remember rightly, most politicians are lawyers ….. aren’t they? Hmmm!

This is what your “insane” politicians are doing to you every day, on both sides of the political aisle. You are being enslaved and bankrupted by a thousand microscopic cuts with every new law that is passed and you don’t even know it. This doesn’t even include all of the old laws and rules that never see a Sunset, or the hundreds of Executive Orders written by the president, that have the force of law and circumvent the Congress.

Republicans and Democrats will pass this darn thing and you won’t be able to stop them, because you and they have no idea what’s in the Bill and most of you and they don’t care anyway. The Senate has already passed this Bill with Republican votes and it is being debated in the House right now. It will probably pass there too ….. with Republican votes.

John Stossel of Fox News had an hour-long documentary this weekend on “Government’s Stupid Laws.” He succinctly laid out how the government is regulating us all to death. He also had on one of the individuals who produced the Youtube video “If I Wanted America to Fail” and how their message tied into being over-regulated by government. We highly recommend you watch the Stossel documentary when it comes on again as well as the video.

Meanwhile, illegal aliens get child tax credits at $1,000 per child and it doesn’t even matter that the alleged “child” lives in the United States. This boondoggle is estimated to cost the taxpayers $4.2 billion dollars per year. But hey, it’s only money! Right? Oh, and by the way, the IRS says about this little hiccup, they are only following the law. Yeah, the IRS is probably following some law that was buried in some piece of legislation that had nothing to do with taxes or illegal aliens, much less with trying to reduce the size of government or reduce government spending.

And speaking of government spending, U. S. Senator Tom Coburn (Oklahoma) just released a report on the waste of government projects entitled a “Guide to the Most Wasteful and Low Priority Government Spending for 2011“. Senator Coburn calls his report “Wastebook 2011“. Just reading the Table of Contents is enough to make you lose your lunch. We have included a link to Senator Coburn’s “Wastebook 2011“ HERE. Look for the “Garbage Dump/U. S. Capitol Building“ picture near the bottom of the page and click on the picture.

Besides Congress writing law, after law, after law, filled with unintelligible legalese, anti-American agendas and just generally unconstitutional on their face, these laws are also laced with pork, political payoffs and party pandering. And this doesn’t even begin to consider the “rules” and “regulations” that are being promulgated by the federal bureaucracy, on a daily basis. The laws and rules never stop, local, state, or federal. The American government, at all levels, has become an insane, out-of-control spider that is spinning an airtight web of laws and rules from which none of us will ever be able to escape. This is slavery by any other name.

What a mess! Government, the economy, money, laws, regulations and politics are out of control and there isn’t a soul on the planet that has a workable solution to the problem because of party politics. Can the steep cliff to destruction not be far down the road?

Perhaps the reason for all this “insanity” is that conservatives refuse to unite around some basic principles, much less the reality of the two-party system and their continued divisions will be the conservatives’ downfall and the liberals’ victory. This is hardly a recipe for reclaiming freedom and restoring our Constitutional Republic ….. is it? Conservatives either unite with one voice, or freedom as we know it, will die a strangling, writhing death. And you can take that to the bank!

At the risk of offending some of our readers, based on the responses to our last two ”Parallax Prophecies” columns about conservatives coming together, it appears that unification is a long way off. We are still receiving responses from people who believe that Ron Paul is the answer to all of conservatives’ problems. That is myopic, if not misguided. First, Ron Paul can’t win and second, many of the policies he wants to implement would never receive congressional approval. Others have responded saying they will never vote for Mitt Romney. He’s not conservative enough, or he’s a Mormon, or ……! And even more say they will vote for a write-in candidate. Some are hoping for a Republican Convention upset in August where either Ron Paul, by some quirk of fate, somehow replaces Romney, or some charismatic candidate will come from out of nowhere and be anointed. Some say they are being guided by principle and conscience and either won’t vote, or they will vote for a third-party candidate. Each of these positions, if done on a large enough scale, will only secure an Obama second term. The margin is just too close to play these kinds of games.

While conservatives fight with each other and take their eyes off the ball, government goes on being corrupt, or insane ….. or as smart as a fox.



Ron Ewart, President

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RURAL LANDOWNERS

P. O. Box 1031, Issaquah, WA 98027

425 837-5365 or 1 800 682-7848

http://www.narlo.org



© 2012, Sharon Rondeau. All rights reserved.