Presidential Proclamation of Fasting

Each thanksgiving in America is celebrated with friends and family, feasts of good food, family communion, thankfulness for our gifts both merited or unmerited, care for those less fortunate than us, and an appreciation for our God and our great country.  Thanksgiving is a holiday that many people look forward to and celebrate, but whatever happened to the counterpoint to thanksgiving, a day of humility, penitence, prayer, and fasting?  While we do have a National Day of Prayer, within that day there is no call for penitence, forgiveness, or fasting, but just a general call for prayer and meditation.

Our Continental Congress from 1775 - 1782 (with the exception of 1777) declared a national day of humility, fasting, and prayer.  John Adams as President declared in 1798 and 1799 the same sentiments.  President James Madison in 1814 also proclaimed a national day of humility, fasting, and prayer.  Finally, President Lincoln in 1861, 1863, and by title only in 1864, declared a national day of humility, fasting, and prayer.  It has been nearly 150 years, and since then not a single President under any conditions, war or peace, good times or bad, has declared a day of humility, fasting, and prayer.  A country and a people that no longer believes it has a need to humble itself, to fast, and to show appreciation to our Creator is a country of arrogance and mistaken pride. 

To show how far we have fallen from grace, a call now for America to humble itself, and to fast, would be subjected to the most virulent calls for a separation of church and state, the inappropriateness of such a measure even being considered, health concerns that thousands of people would die (fasting can include water, juice, necessary medicine, or even small meals before sunrise or after sundown), and the general acknowledgment that America dips its flag, nor bows its head to any power, here or Above.

A country or a people that will not humble itself is a country and a people that are lost.  Christ has many passages on humility throughout the New Testament, for instance, Matthew 23:12: "And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted." Nobody, nor any country remains on top forever.  Life has its seasons, its cycles, and its stages.  A people that are unable to humble themselves, to sacrifice themselves, not even for one day, is a people that have judge themselves to be above it all. 

To think that one is always justified, and those that come from a different place, a different country, a different attitude, are not justified, is a dangerous ideology and a dangerous god to listen to.  Humility, prayer, and fasting, are a true chance and an opportunity to submit ourselves to our Creator, in gratitude for His benevolent grace, His tender mercies, and His wonderful wisdom. 

There is no higher calling than to serve our fellow man by helping the helpless, aiding the hurting, and by loving the unlovable.   Man does not live by bread alone that is why we must occasionally fast to remind ourselves of that vital fact.

Your National ID#

The government wants to track your whereabouts in everything you do and in everywhere you go.  A database or a population that is traceable is easier for the government to manage, to predict their predilections, to infiltrate, and to control.  The government is always outnumbered by the people, and those few that are the most powerful in any country are far outnumbered by the people, yet minorities of a minute percentage of people in conjunction with para-military and intelligent elements are able to keep the population pacified or constrained within certain acceptable boundaries for very long periods of time.  

The government wants you to be like lemmings.  Measures are passed in which your rights are protected only for your rights to be eroded over time.  Take, for instance, our standard social security cards which when initially issued in 1935, contained no separate identity numbers at all, but that was changed by the next year and even though this number was specifically set up to keep track of social security earnings and benefits that too would change.  While in 1946, cards were first issued with the specific warning that stated: "FOR SOCIAL SECURITY PURPOSES -- NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION"-- a warning so clear and specific that it should bring us a feeling of relief, that warning was removed by 1972.  This removal was a clear indication by the government that your Social Security# was no longer just for Social Security.  In fact, common usage of your Social Security# today whether you give out your entire number or just the last four digits includes but isn't limited to the following:

            Assigned at birth (1994)

            Landlords

            Banks

            Cable companies

            Employer

            Cell phone

            Utilities

            Credit cards

            Libraries

            Universities

            Medical & Dental

            Hospitals

            Credit Bureaus

            Taxation

If you don't give out your Social Security# to any of the above entities, you can expect that your application will either be denied, delayed, or processed very slowly, even though your Social Security# has never by law been assigned to you as your National ID#.   Your Social Security# is, though, for all intents and purposes exactly that.  But with computers and algorithms having never been more accessible and more powerful than they are today; the necessity of using anybody's Social Security# for identification purposes isn't valid.  All the same information that these organizations require to validate you could just as easily be obtained by your full name, birth date, and birthplace, with possibly a few other quick questions on previous addresses or miscellaneous information within a multiple choice format.  (I've already seen this exact format used online previously without having to provide my Social Security#.) 

The government sells you the illusion that it protects your Social Security#, your medical records, your tax records, your phone records, and so on and so forth from one agency from another, but if each of these agencies is using the same ID#, it doesn’t take any stretch of the imagination to picture the government stitching this all together again for its own purposes.  If you believe that the government is your great benevolent friend, than no worries, but information is power, and information that you thought was private or proprietary is even more powerful.  When the government has enough information to compromise you or a family member or someone of significance to you, they then have the ability to manipulate you, to coerce you, to find you, and when the government's back is up against the wall, they will not hesitate a moment into using you, to protect the ruling class and the power brokers. Your National ID# is like a permanent tattoo on your body, you are born with it, you will die with it, and you can never escape from it.

Minimum Wage

There was a time when I made just over the minimum wage, was I embarrassed by this fact?  Not at all, at that point this was my first time being fully employed and quite frankly I was delighted just to have a job, any job. Did I deserve my wages?  Yes, I believe that I was productive for the wages paid and I maintained my job, learned responsibility, and advanced.  Did I wish I was paid even more?  Duh, who wouldn't want more!    But the most important thing about my first job was it allowed me eventually to get more pay, more opportunities, mainly because my skill set, my networking, and my experience improved.  Without someone taking a chance on me, giving me that opportunity, my history may have been far different, and instead of being a success, perhaps my results would have been pathetic or worst.

When it comes to discussing the fairness of the minimum wage, the first test should be, are there a multitude of minimum wage jobs in which nobody will take the job, and it just stands vacant month after month after month.  The answer to that appears to be no and the reason why I can say this is that if this was true, the employer would have no choice but to raise wages in order to attract employment.  Another reason why we know this isn't true is the fact that the unemployment rate for youth ages 16-19 is around 25%  and for young adults 20-24 it is around 15%, as compared to the nationwide average of about 7.2%.  How is it possible that the segment of the population that makes the lowest wage on average has the highest unemployment rate?  On the surface, this doesn't make any sense, since your labor cost is an important component of your company's expenses.  It only makes sense if one recognizes that an artificial minimum wage above what the free market would settle on, allow employers to cherry pick their employees and therefore they often opt for someone more experienced, more reliable, and steadier.  Therefore, despite the good intentions of a minimum wage, the people that the minimum wage purports to help, those that are struggling to make a living wage, to get a job, any job, are left with no wages, no job, and effectively become wards of the state.  That is the irony of good intentions.

I do believe that a man should receive an honest day's wage for an honest day's work, but is it necessary for the government to impose a minimum wage upon private enterprise?  In the modern world, I doubt it and I suspect that if the government followed a more carrots-and-stick approach that they might find themselves more successful in providing more employment and better wages for the public at large.  Corporations are not stupid and are enterprises that as going concerns will typically last long beyond our human lifetimes.  Do you actually think for a minute that corporations will allow themselves to be legislated out of existence?  It won't happen, and therefore taking an antagonistic attitude towards corporations is both short-sighted and ill-served especially in a country created with the spirit of self-reliance.

The government can play a role in increasing wages, but this role should perhaps be done by engaging businesses in comprehensive discussions in order to formulate common goals that benefit both parties.  Additionally, tax consequences make a huge difference in the decisions that corporations make, so it is high time to think outside the box and formulate some new plans such as the deductibility and depreciation of capital investment vis-a-vis labor.  If government truly wants to see more jobs available above the current minimum wage and/or to see labor utilized more, provide those specific incentives to do so to businesses and it will happen.

Mass Media

The United States offers the illusion of choice every day in regards to our entertainment, reading, television, and other media, but in fact, these media "choices" are controlled by a large oligopoly.  These huge conglomerates control, process, and provide the media that we consume and utilize on any given day.  The big six by revenue are listed below:

Walt Disney   

            Media, consumer products, parks, resorts, hotels, cruise lines, ABC (media) ESPN (sports), Marvel (comic media)

News Corp

            Newspapers/multi-media, (UK, Australia, USA). Dow Jones (includes WSJ), HarperCollins (books)

            21st Century Fox

                        Spun off from News Corp  TV/movies

Time Warner  

            HBO/Cinemax, Time (print media), IPC Media (print media), Groupo (media), Turner Network (multi-media), Warner Brothers (multi-media)

CBS

            TV, print media, radio

VIACOM  

            Paramount (movies), MTV/Nickelodeon

Comcast

                Cable, NBC Universal (TV/multi-media)      

While there is something to be said about the synergy and consolidation in media as providing better pricing overall to the consumer, with both higher quality and superior service, the flip side is that diversity is minimized, controversial or innovative viewpoints are stifled, and the lust for power and money has been magnified.

While this is the age of the internet in which any viewpoint, any opinion, any idea can be solicited to the public, if you are not on the right wavelength, connected to the right people, or have made nice to the power brokers, your views will be marginalized with little or no hope of ever achieving a foothold into the American psyche. 

America still does offer freedom of the press, but if nobody actually reads or listens to what you have published or said, you are the sound of one hand clapping.  It isn't so much that mass media deliberately wants to censor your voice, it has a lot more to do with the fact that if you are not with the program, that mass media can't market successfully what you say, can't make money off of what you proclaim, or such, they will simply ignore you and ignoring you is their perfect response. 

Mass media always wants to give you a choice but it's always the choice of "heads I win, tails you lose."  The choices that you are really offered are essentially going from one conglomerate to another, as long as you're doing business with one of the big boys, the oligopoly are happy.  Sure they compete with each other but they understand that not everyone wants the same thing, at the same time, and that people will gravitate from one media to another, depending on their age, income, social background, and whatnot.  All they really want from you is your attention, your money, and some sort of loyalty. 

The mass media understands that America is the world leader in media in all of its many forms, and if mass media can't get its own population to adhere to certain standards and behaviors, how would it be possible to influence others beyond our own borders.  Mass media has little interest in a strong nuclear family which demonstrates clear, independent and moral right thinking.  While that is okay in a few exceptional cases, mass media wants to be your family, your daddy, your mommy, your sister, your brother, and your special friend.  They will tell you what to do, what to think, and how best to please them, and all you have to do in returnis simply absorb their message day by day.

World's Richest Country

There was a time when the United States really was the world's richest country by GDP, by median income, and by any other recognizable metric but that total dominance ended by 1973 in which countries such as Sweden and Switzerland surpassed us for the first time in their per capita GDP.  The United States is the third most populous nation in the world but its population trails far behind India and China in which both of those countries have only one billion residents each as contrasted to our three hundred and thirteen millions.  Population is a key component to a countries' overall GDP in which the United States GDP is double that of their next closest country which is China. However, a Forbes article of 10/7/13 predicts that China's GDP will catch up to the United States by 2020.  This won't be the first time that China was the world's largest economy as they had the biggest GDP till around the turn of the 20th century when the baton was handed over to the United States which has not relinquished it since.

In the 21st century we can see that the United States has continued to slip down the charts, for instance, in 2000, the United States was ranked by Credit Suisse as the #1 in average wealth per adult, but by 2010, the USA had slipped to #7 with an average of $236K which was behind countries such as Switzerland, Australia, and France.  For 2012, Credit Suisse stated that the United States median wealth per adult was at $38.8K which was ranked 27th in the world, surprisingly behind such countries as Germany, Sweden, Japan, and the United Kingdom. 

Which leads us to the next problem for the United States which is that out of 50 countries, only Russia had a larger disparity between average wealth and median wealth in which the ratio for Russia was 12.6 times its median wealth, whereas in the United States it stands at 6.7 times, in contrast to Australia and the United Kingdom in which they are at 1.8 times and 2.2 times median wealth respectively.  (Remember that the median is defined by having half of the numbers above the median and half of the numbers below the median, therefore the closer an average salary is to the median, the more equitable the number; the higher the disparity the more inequitable, because an average takes all of the numbers together and divides them by the quantity of numbers taken.) 

This disparity between average and median wealth is part of the reason why the United States is perceived as wealthier than it really is.  America is very wealthy for the special elite, in which the United States is first in billionaires, and first in millionaires, and their conspicuous consumption is felt worldwide.  But America also has an impoverished underclass in which a report issued in 2011 by the Organization for Economic and Cooperation Development stated that our poverty rate was more than twice that of countries such as Denmark and Hungry, and our poverty level was higher than countries such as Germany and Italy.

Marcus Aurelius said that "poverty is the mother of crime."  We can see that in our prisons which are full, this despite a country that is widely acknowledged and perceived as being the richest nation that the world has ever known.  America is a country divided by rich and poor, with a middle class being squeezed out of existence by taxes domestically and labor outsourced internationally.  America is great and is impoverished, unfair, corrupt, and heading for the shoals.

Welfare state

The welfare state  as currently constructed should not exist in this country, not now, not ever, as it is by definition diametrically opposed to what this country was founded on, which is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  This country provides you life, because there is no compulsory draft, and therefore your life is your own.  America provides you liberty to live where you want to, travel unmolested, think and do what you desire, and consequently you are free.  Your pursuit of happiness is left in your own hands so that you can pursue your dreams, your goals, your plans, and to blaze your own path.  The welfare state opposes all of that.  The welfare state demands one very important thing which is anathema to the principles of America, which is for you to be subservient to the government, so that they can take care of you.  That isn't America and that isn't what this country was founded on,

The welfare state means that the more that you reward a particular action the more that you will get in response that particular action.  Further, when you provide for people's welfare and treat them as wards of the state, the more wards you will discover.  Additionally, when every little problem or setback is dealt with as if this is an ongoing disability, the more disabilities you will find.  Finally, if the rivers of welfare prosperity and sustainability appear unending, welfare largess will never end.

To make matters worse, the government doesn't have the moral courage to tax the gainfully employed and income-producing peoples directly  to assure that the welfare state is self-supporting, instead it taxes through its massive yearly deficits generations yet unborn.  That is hypocrisy at its worse, as those that have yet to enjoy the fruits of their labor, are stuck with the bill which simply states: "payment due" and gives no value in return.

It's always easier to spend other people's money.  When a congressman pats himself on the back for spending money on this or that welfare program, he hasn't spent his own money, he has spent yours; yet he gets the plaudits, he gets the buildings named after him, he gets the roads that sing his name, and the editorials that praise his generosity.  That's wrong in every aspect, it's nothing more than a con game, in which the government pretends that it can create wealth, whereas the truth of the matter is the government is very good at coercing wealth and ill-using labor and resources; because our government essentially produces nothing, it re-allocates and re-distributes resources to favored groups while taking a large slice of the pie for itself for its troubles.

America owes its citizens, a chance, a level playing field, opportunity, and anything that we can do to encourage these things is a net benefit to society at large.  We don't owe anyone a free ride, entitlements, or promises that we ourselves cannot keep without taking from others.   The welfare state has not worked to date and needs to be reformed, so that properly understood and reformulated, charity and welfare should be a helping hand and not an indiscriminate handout.

Utility Pricing Plans

If you're like me, when you moved into your home and signed up for trash, gas, electricity, water, and sewage you pretty much figured that you got to pay what you got to pay and you really didn't worry yourself or were concerned about it any further.  That's a mistake.  While it doesn't appear that in my community that you have a choice in regards to selecting a different vendor for water & sewage, you definitely do have choices for trash, natural gas, and electricity and a good consumer makes good reasoned choices.  I initially didn't do that and to compound my error further I signed up for paperless billing.  While paperless billing may be better for the environment, if you don't ever take a look at your bill, but blithely pay it, you will probably miss the opportunity to audit your bill and consequently you won't make any changes to your utility vendors or your pricing options.

Of course, it isn't entirely your fault, for instance, on my natural gas provider, I was by default signed up for their introductory rate which was approximately .349/therm but that literally lasted just a couple months before being automatically switched over to their variable plan at approximately 1.029/therm, which is the default plan and the preferential choice that this vendor wants you to make.  The reason that I know it's their preference is when you log onto your account and wish to select or remain on their variable plan, this can be done online with no human interaction, whereas, when I attempted to switch over to the fix rate for 12 months at approximately .629/therm, the website insisted that I call an operator or else the change would not go through.  The phone call was quite eye opening because rather than simply signing me up for the fix plan, she attempted to bully me into staying with the current plan by warning me that the fixed rate plan has a termination charge of $150 and that the variable plan is well, variable.  Although I consider their termination fee to be an outrage, I also am not moving anytime soon, additionally I believe that if it comes down to a termination that this something that can be negotiated or pro-rated, especially since I have a track record with the company.  In any event the comparison was pretty straight forward:

            Variable 1.029/therm (this does vary and it can go up as well as down but I've never seen it lower than .879/therm and that was during the summertime!) with a $6.95 monthly service fee

            Fixed .629/therm with a $5.95 monthly service fee and a possible early termination charge

That decision was pretty straightforward as I went with the fixed plan and have probably saved myself $80 - $200 per year.  The savings will vary depending on how much natural gas you use and how cold the weather gets in your area.

In regards to trash, I was initially with Waste Management, which is the biggest waste company in America, and although I was satisfied with their service, I became annoyed over their raising my price a couple of times and I figured that the competition was probably also going to be satisfactory. I mean it's trash pickup, right?  I've now switched twice since leaving Waste Management, and I estimate my current yearly savings to be at approximately $90/year.

Benjamin Franklin said it long ago, "a penny saved is a penny earned", and that was back in the day when a penny was worth something.  Utilities are a part of life; you have to have trash, gas, electricity, and water & sewage, so you may as well try to save yourself a few dollars while doing so.

The New King George

A great portion of our Declaration of Independence was the facts submitted to demonstrate the tyranny of King George and our Great Britain suppressors against us as a people and the colonies as a whole.  Unfortunately, as time has moved on, the independence that we once had and so richly cherished, has been compromised by the very government that is in theory, of the people, by the people, and for the people.  The people have become subservient to the government, and especially subservient to our National Government.

For instance, "He has erected a multitude of New Offices…" such as:          

            Director of the White House Office of Cybersecurity

            Director of the White House Office of Health Reform and Counselor to the President

            Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy

            Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change

The above agencies were just some of the appointments made by the current Presidential administration without Senate confirmation.

"He has obstructed the Administration of Justice."  For instance, after both bodies of Congress pass a bill, it is submitted to the President for either his signature or his veto.  However, recent administrations have added their own Executive interpretation to this straightforward signature option, by adding a signing statement to their signature, signifying how the President believes this particular law should be construed which essentially interprets the law as if the Executive branch was the judicial branch and thereby modifies law and consequently supersedes the congressional legislative bodies.

"He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power." The Executive branch has consistently waged war without congressional declaration, by declaring that since the President is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, that he is in effect, able to call forth military forces at his prerogative, to fight enemies both foreign and domestic and without the need or aid of congressional approval.  This effectively makes the President, and therefore the military, independent of and hence superior to Civil Power.

"For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury," in which more than 90% of criminal trials, are settled with essentially coerced or extorted plea bargains, a Faustian bargain at best, and basically a perversion of justice for the convenience and service of the state. 

Our new King George has been in existence for quite a while, each President in his own time adding his particular imprint to the list of grievances impressed against the people.  The Presidency has devolved into an effective dictatorship, in which all laws are obeyed at his convenience, and the ones that the President feels the right to supersede, amend, or to ignore he does so with seemingly unlimited immunity.  The President is no fool, he makes sure to attempt to placate his political party, to provide the general public its bread and circuses, and he treats the military with all due deference and consideration.   The President wants the public to be fat, dumb-downed, morally suspect, and subservient.   The President smiles while he kills us softly.  We are his bleating sheep to be fed and then shorn again and again,

Self-sufficiency

Many people believe that America was founded and succeeded with a lot of grit, hard toil with diligent labor, and a benevolent helping hand from our Great Provider.  While this is ultimately true for the most part, it didn't start out that way as the Pilgrims upon creating the Plymouth Colony in 1620, were seeking to create a socialist utopia in which all shared equally in a communal society in which the population joined together in growing crops, hunting, washing, feeding, child rearing, and creating shelter.  While on the surface this seems to be a formula for equality and justice, in practicality, the Pilgrims were barely able to sustain themselves, and so in 1623, as chronicled by William Bradford, the land was divided up into parcels and each family was given dominion over its own area and its progeny.  Bradford wrote: "This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious… The women now wente willingly into the feild, and tooke their litle-ons with them."

The primary reason the Pilgrims went from starvation to a successful and striving community is that they now had incentives to take responsibility for their own welfare, for their own success, and the impact of their success or lack of, would be immediately noticed in their bellies, in their family, and on their property.  On the surface, it seems fair, that all of God's nature should be shared equally but when you find that your hard work is being shared with peoples that have done nothing to contribute to it, and have no interest in doing their part, despite their capacity to do so, your work ethic, your desire to push yourself through dangerous conditions, bad weather, or poor health, is severely diminished. 

On the other hand, give a man an incentive, gave a man 'skin in the game', and you will see the mark of that man.  Yes, not everyone is capable of doing certain work because of their health, their mind, their abilities, or their age, but each person is capable of doing something of worth.  For instance, on a farm, children are quite capable of milking cows, collecting eggs, and tending the vegetable patch, while older adults can cook, give wisdom, and sew.   Teamwork consists of various members working together for a common goal or purpose.  When you are responsible for your own success, when you know that it is you that must answer the call, you will do so, tired or not, strong or not, hungry or not.  You will do so because you know the consequences for repeated failure and this is something that you will make all efforts to avoid.

America has fallen far away from its ideal of self-sufficiency.  Certainly, if you tell virtually anyone, even those that have to date worked hard, have high intelligence, or are diligent, that you don’t need to do a thing, you don't need to study, you don't need to push or test yourself, that 'daddy' or 'mommy' or 'big government brother' will take care of anything and everything for you, this will change you for the worst.  This will put you on a path of complacency and laziness, and when you find that the silver spoon has been taken or wrested away from your mouth, you won't have a clue what to do except perhaps to have a temper tantrum and hope that the world will continue to cater to you.

Rights

President Obama and his minions would have you believe that each of us has rights which are not inalienable, that is to say are not God-given but Government-given.  Because these "rights" are government provided, it also means four very important things:

1.      The government can arbitrarily give as well as arbitrarily take away your rights

2.      The government has the right to tell you what to do and how to behave and the government can change its mind about these rights at any time

3.      Your inalienable rights are superseded by government rights

4.      Government is your god, and there is no god but government

The falsehood and fallacy of the above can be demonstrated easily, our Declaration of Independence in which we the people declared our freedom from King George, was created to overthrow a tyrannical government and to assert that when our inalienable rights were oppressed and taken from us that the governed had the fundamental right to rebel against this said authority.  In short, the purpose of legitimate government is to protect our inalienable rights, not to subvert them.

When the President declares in regards to health care that "…it should be a right for every American," he is wrong.  When the President declares in regards to wages that "… in the wealthiest nation on earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour," he is wrong.  When the President declares in regards to housing that "Congress should give every American the chance to refinance at today’s low rates," he is wrong again. 

President Obama is wrong about health care because your liberty and your life will no longer be sovereign to yourself, but instead will become sovereign to the government.  Your freedom of choice will be compromised; medical costs and premiums will rise because of an unnecessarily bloated bureaucracy and mandated inefficiencies, restrictions will be implemented, demands will change based on corrupted incentives, poor health lifestyle choices will be perversely rewarded and subsidized by those who make good choices, and medical personnel will bow to the government and not to the Hippocratic oath. 

President Obama is wrong about the minimum wage because he suffers from the vision of "good intentions" but fails to recognize that businesses operate with a profit incentive.  When minimum wage salaries are increased as mandated by law, those that do not produce in labor the value of that wage will be terminated, therefore the very people that Obama purports to help are the people that are fired or will no longer be hired.  Instead, the bar to become employed will be raised higher and only those that merit the minimum wage as mandated will be employed; in addition, private business management will take steps to reduce minimum wage numbers in aggregate by replacing workers with machinery and taking tax advantage of capital investments in lieu of raised labor costs.

Finally, President Obama is wrong about housing.  The housing fiasco occurred for several reasons, not least of them, the congressional charted corporation (Freddie Mac) and the chartered government-sponsored corporation (Fannie Mae) in which as reported by the Atlantic: "Of the 19.2 million subprime and low quality loans that were on the books of government agencies in 2008, 12 million (about 62%) were held or guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie."  In which the taxpaying public is stuck with losses from subprime mortgages which are estimated at $250 billion.  The chance to refinance is not a congressional responsibility, but the responsibility of the borrowers' income, credit rating, and the price of the housing in question.

Lastly, it would be wise to remember that rights from governments, come and go, inalienable rights that come from our Creator do not.  Also, "a government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have."   

Prisoners living well

According to povertyusa.org "more than 46 million Americans are living in poverty", yet somehow we have the means to provide prisoners shelter, food, and medical care--free of charge to the imprisoned person.  Boingboing.net reports that Victor Conte a former musician with the Tower of Power served four months at the Taft Correctional Institution, a privately-run minimum security federal prison in which he stated the following: "The first morning, when I woke up it was a kind of university-campus like setting…" and "I looked over I saw the rec center. And I walked over to that and looked in and there were six pool tables, six foosball tables, six ping-pong tables." "There's no fences around the place, about every 200 feet they have a sign on a stake that says 'Out of Bounds.'"

Further, as reported by the ACLU, "Prison officials are obligated under the Eighth Amendment to provide prisoners with adequate medical care," and that "Restrictions on prisoners’ access to publications cannot be arbitrary; they must be “reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.”"  While there isn't any doubt that prison conditions will vary widely from city to city, state to state, and jurisdiction to jurisdiction, the above serves to demonstrate that prisoners have Constitutional rights and further that prisoners have organizations that help to support them in receiving access to those rights.

But the right to something implies also an obligation to that right.  Prisoners in America are given free room and board, but what do they contribute in return for this largess which comes from the taxpayers in America?  Prisoners cannot be legally compelled to work or to do anything of merit while incarcerated, and while America has an obligation to be humane towards those that are imprisoned, a fair prison system would provide the means for prisoners to "pay their keep" while incarcerated, subject to a governing review for extenuating circumstances such as mental health, physical health, and disabilities.  Additionally, the original intent for prisons was for those imprisoned to pay penance for their crimes, both spiritually and physically.  Today, that sentiment for the most part seems to have been thrown out the window and prisons appear instead to be nothing more than a way to take certain peoples off of the street and away from the general population; meaning that monies spent on prisoners is mainly money spent in order to have the convenience and safety of not having to deal with them on the outside.

Still none of that answers the question as to why or how people that are incarcerated do not have to carry their own weight while in prison.  That being the case, you can make a very strong argument that all victimless crimes in which as part of your punishment you have been incarcerated, that these prisoners should be immediately released.  (Some examples of victimless crimes are drug usage, prostitution, and gambling, in which the overriding principle is if there are no unwilling participants there are no victims to protect or that have been violated.  Instead, you are imprisoning people for 'the crime' of treating their body and/or their mind as their own.) 

According to libertariannews.org their September 29, 2011 article stated: "Roughly 34% of all prisoners in the U.S. are incarcerated for victimless crimes."  There isn't any good reason why we as taxpayers should pay to keep these people in prison, since they have harmed nobody but themselves.  Taking this first major step in prison reform by releasing those presently incarcerated for victimless crimes will then allow us to better concentrate our reforms on the other criminal inmates to come up with meaningful solutions that are fair to the public, the prisoners, and especially to our good citizens whose only 'crime' is being impoverished.

Closing your eyes for concentration and a little more

It just seems natural for me to close my eyes when I'm in the process of lifting weights while exercising, or if I'm having difficulty I close my eyes to help unscrew that annoying jar top, or if I'm thinking about a problem in which I'm puzzled, but it also intuitively seems strange.  We count on our eyes for so much, to take in visual information, to know where we are going, to see what is around us, so that to give up vision, even temporarily, in order to accomplish something doesn't seem initially to make much sense, yet closing your eyes seems to be necessary in order to get certain things done, as if you need that extra effort, that extra concentration, to help push you across that finish line and get that problem resolved.

The main reason for closing our eyes to improve our concentration has got to do with the fact that vision brings us a multitude of information, in which while working on the particular problem at hand, we don't need our eyes open continually in order to complete that task.  For instance, the weight is heavy enough already, we have a good grip, and we just want to lift it up; we don't need nor do we desire seeing other objects in our peripheral vision, not until we've actually lifted the weight and are now bringing it back down.  With our eyes open, we appear weaker, and therefore we close them intuitively, feeling that we're better able to perform and to concentrate on the task at hand. It's the exact same weight with our eyes open or with our eyes closed, but the task is accomplished easier with our eyes closed.

That leads us to a general premise, that just because you have your eyes closed while listening to a lecture, you aren't necessarily tuning the lecture out, you may in fact be tuning the lecture in to absorb it better.  Yes, you may miss out on some pertinent visual cues, but more importantly you are probably not being distracted by visional items that are taking your attention away from the lecture.  Closing your eyes allows you to get engrossed in the task at hand, to reduce the multi-tasking that your brain is processing and to stay focused on the real point.

Taking this premise further, one would think that people born blind, are more capable at processing and understanding speech and Scientific America confirms this by stating: "Blind people can easily comprehend speech that is sped up far beyond the maximum rate that sighted people can understand." Further they state: "Vision is such an important sense for humans that a huge portion of the brain is devoted to visual processing—far more gray matter than is dedicated to any other sense. In blind people all this brain power would go to waste, but somehow an unsighted person's brain rewires itself to connect auditory regions of the brain to the visual cortex."

The above study is absolutely fascinating and demonstrates that something as important as vision, which we use every day has its flip side.  Great yogis' understand this and that is why their eyes are typically closed in joyful meditation in order to envision the radiance, the divine eye of God, and our Bible propounds this further in John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  The Word can only be one thing, the Divine Consciousness spoken into each one of us.

Bombing

First off, I will admit that I'm in general agreement with General Patton who believed that the object of war was to let "…the other poor dumb bastard die for his country," and I'm sympathetic in principle to the Rumsfeld Doctrine in which the thought is that a combination of superior high-technology information used strategically with advanced weapons systems and overwhelming air power, would best allow us to accomplish our military objectives without putting in harm's way an abundance of our ground troops and thereby would keep our fatalities and war injuries to a minimum while accomplishing the goal(s) at hand.

Having said this, one of the major problems with being so technically adept and so technically advanced, is that it becomes easier to not see the enemy as fellow human beings because the physical distance between us is so great in modern warfare.  Additionally, soldiers are indoctrinated to not see the enemy as anything other than targets, combatants, they, them, and of course there are plenty of racist terms to dehumanize the enemy combatants further.  Further, soldiers are instructed that they are the good guys and that they and they alone are fighting for right, justice, and the American way.  In the world of war, there isn't any room for nuance, it's often broken down into the basics of a kill or be killed scenario and soldiers on the ground directly experience the complete ramifications of deadly force and its effects and aftereffects while doing battle.

However, up high in the air the view of the enemy is far different and the higher you are the more surreal the ground, buildings, countryside, people (if you can even see them) appear.   (I've been to the top of skyscrapers and when you look down at the people and automobiles below, they don't seem real, even though you know that they are.)   The height that you are at, changes your perceptions, and things that you might not normally consider, are far easier to consider, and unless you or your country is held accountable for its actions, you will make decisions that appear valid on the surface but are far from it in reality.

Bombing is a shortcut.  Instead of boots on the ground, infantry, artillery, and other important armaments, why not make a surgical strike to decapitate or to effectively destroy your enemy's military-industrial complex.  The first problem is that it usually can't be meaningfully done without significant collateral damage, that is to say, without killing innocent civilians, destroying private property and taking out institutions that are necessary for the normal intercourse of human affairs.  Killing civilians should be a last recourse, especially by a country as military adept as we are, and that prides itself as being known as the land of the free.  It shouldn't be a crime to be born in a country that in some sort of way or manner is at 'war' with the United States, and you as a resident of that enemy country shouldn't have to pay with your limbs, your livelihood, your blood, your sanity, or your life.  America is better than that and should be held accountable for that.

Technology keeps getting better and better and sophisticated drones that put no American in danger makes it even easier for a military technician to push buttons, move military pieces, and to drop bombs on designated targets against certain countries, wreaking havoc and destroying lives.  Our greatest general and two-term President who knew war far better and more intimately than virtually anyone else alive today said in 1953: "Every gun that is made, every warship

launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." President Eisenhower

The forty hour work week

In the present day, the forty hour work week is the norm in the United States but it hasn't always been that way.  At the beginning, life in America was life in the wilderness in which you, your family, and your society worked as many hours as were required in order to provide food, shelter, and to survive.  Back then, this was primarily an agrarian society, a farming society, in which the overriding concern was subsistence and an attempt to create a stable life on the land that you worked and developed.  Over time, however, America became industrialized and it became quite common for people to work for someone else other than family because the efficiency of farms had reduced the needs for labor and the price of land was unaffordable for most, therefore people gravitated towards jobs that would pay them a wage. 

While those jobs entailed working long hours and often under arduous conditions, the average standard of living for Americans increased steadily during the industrial age to wit that people ate better, were clothed better, lived longer, and were able to afford more goods in which thanks to industrialization, competition, and market forces; goods were priced competitively and often cheaper than in previous time periods. The hours that the average American worked in the 1830s was estimated by the Week Report to be 69.1 hours per week, and by 1900 scholars estimated that it had dropped to just under 60 hours per week.   

Near the start of the 20th century, Henry Ford, of the Ford Motor Company, in 1914, more than doubled the pay of his assembly line workers from $2.34/day to $5/day (this pay encompassed a base pay, a bonus, and character requirements), and decrease the hours worked per day from nine hours to eight hours. Far from being altruistic, the pay increase on Ford's part was a necessary move and brilliant way to slow down his costly turnover rate in personnel, Ford's gamble was that a more than fair salary would encourage a more stable workforce and therefore ultimately provide his company with additional profits and growth, in which he got both as well as the public benefiting from the price of the Model-T dropping after the aforementioned pay raise!

Henry Ford than followed this up in 1926 with the forty hour work week.  It was Ford's belief that in return for a reduced work week his employees productivity would actually increase and Ford said: "just as the eight hour day opened our way to prosperity, so the five day week will open our way to a still greater prosperity."  While Ford Motor was not the first company to go to a five-day work week, they were the largest company heretofore to do so and became an industry and trend leader by accomplishing this important change.  Under FDR, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 passed, which established minimum wage standards, overtime pay, and the forty hour work week which is still the standard that we adhere to today.

Is it time for our labor laws or our visions of prosperity to be revisited?  Henry Ford said: "we try to pay a man what he is worth and we are not inclined to keep a man who is not worth more than the minimum wage." Ford also said: "business is the exchange of goods. Goods are bought only as they meet needs. Needs are filled only as they are felt. They make themselves felt largely in leisure hours."   

Forty hour work week?  Eight hour work day?  For change to come, it's going to have to come from a huge market leader thinking outside the box and being bold.

Supreme Court 5-4

One of my favorite quotes and I don't know who to attribute it to and I'm also paraphrasing it goes something like this: "If the law is so straightforward, why is it that five Supreme Court Justices have to teach the other four Supreme Court Justices the law every year."  Not only is that true, what is also true, is that Supreme Court Justices will overturn cases with similar circumstances at different times, or simply make new law which is not in keeping with previous precedents.  This makes it rather problematic for us to blindly follow the law.

For instance of the former, in which the basic legal principle is "stare decisis" which roughly translates into "the decision remains", we will take the case of Plessy v. Ferguson of 1896 in which the Supreme Court overwhelmingly ruled (7-1) that the Louisiana state provision that mandatedracial segregation in public facilities was in fact, constitutional.  This was overturnedby an unanimous Supreme Court in 1954 in Brown v. the Board of Education in which it was declared that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" because they violated the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause.  Yet, the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 and Justice Brown writing for the majority in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision specifically stated that " The object of the amendment [14th] was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but, in the nature of things, it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color…"   While, the Justice Brown majority decision of 1896 reeks of absolute hypocrisy, that was the law of the land until 1954 and those that tried to violate the "separate but equal" clause that Justice Brown affirmed, paid the price with jail time, beatings, discrimination, and a lesser status in their own country.

For an example of the Supreme Court making new law, we need not look further than the infamous Miranda v. Arizona of 1966.  It is upon this case, the 'Miranda warning,' was created.  Chief Justice Warren wrote: "In order fully to apprise a person interrogated of the extent of his rights under this system, then, it is necessary to warn him not only that he has the right to consult with an attorney, but also that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him... Once warnings have been given, the subsequent procedure is clear. If the individual indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease."  This later was summarized and became known as the Miranda warning which is familiar to anyone that has watched a Law & Order television program or has been arrested in the real world.  In the dissent of this 5-4 majority decision, Justice Harlan wrote: "To incorporate this notion into the Constitution requires a strained reading of history and precedent and a disregard of the very pragmatic concerns that alone may on occasion justify such strains."   The upshot being that prior to this Court's decision of 1966, the police were free to receive and act upon non-coerced confessions but after this decision, the police were mandated to provide appropriate warnings of both counsel and silence or that evidence was subject to being dismissed.

The law is not always right, even the Supreme Court gets it wrong from time-to-time, that's why every year five Supreme Court Justices have to teach the other four Supreme Court Justices the law.

Student loan Crisis

There are three basic categories of student loans that are outstanding:

1.      Students that have graduated

2.      Students that are in school and will probably graduate

3.      Students that are out-of-school, have not graduated and probably will never graduate

I just want to concentrate on #3, the students that have outstanding college loans and have not and will not graduate, although all three situations are in crisis, the latter one is especially troublesome.

First off, there is a misimpression that all students or nearly all students in high school should go on to get a higher education in order to best secure themselves a good paying job and future relevancy.  That policy is pure rubbish and does a great disserve to those students and to society at large.   Admission to college should primarily be based on students that are qualified to go to college and the most straightforward way to determine that is via standardized test scores, and grade point averages.  If a student has not excelled in either area, he is not qualified to go to college and should not be admitted until such time that he has demonstrated that his aptitude and proficiency has increased by improving his score to an acceptable level on a standardized test.  This policy is for the benefit or both the student and the college itself.

Unfortunately, that isn't the case for college admissions in America in which the qualifications to gain admittance to many schools are quite soft.  For instance, U.S. News & Report found that thirty-nine colleges accepted students at an acceptance rate of 99% or above for the Fall 2012 applications, out of the colleges that they surveyed. You might ask, what's wrong with a high percentage of students being accepted, after all, doesn't everyone deserve the opportunity of a higher education and the benefits thereof.  I disagree with that spurious thinking but for sake of argument let's say that I agree.  The problem then becomes two-fold when this happens:

1.      They fail to graduate

2.      They have massive student loans to repay

I have a good friend whose son has a student debt of $43,000 and in all probability will never get a graduate degree.  Fortunately, he is working, but since he is no longer in school, and six months have passed since he last was in school, he must make mandatory payments against his student loan, this despite having never graduated and in all probability never benefiting from attending college.  Nobody in their right mind would have loaned him $43,000, but somehow he was able to incur this debt.  How?

Part of his student debt comes from federally backed subsidized Stafford loans, part from unsubsidized Stafford loans, and finally part from federally backed Perkins loans.  The key word here is federal.  Essentially that means that you and I, the taxpayers are responsible for any defaults produced from these student loans and with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimating a total of 1.2 trillion dollars in student loan debt as of 2013 we have ourselves a serious crisis. 

Specifically, the question then becomes as to how long anybody with high student debts and no graduation degree will go before simply calling it a day and not paying their loan, or short-paying their loan, or negotiating forgiveness of their loan, or filing a class-action lawsuit, or all of the above and then some. 

$43,000 is a lot of money and if you feel victimized, as you probably justifiably should, the payback of all that money will simply never occur.

Plastics

There is that great seminal line in "the Graduate" which was released in 1967 as follows:

            Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word…..

            Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

            Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?

            Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?

Everybody remembers that line: plastics.  But that line wouldn't be remembered and it wouldn't be true if plastics hadn't been such a profound and fundamental change in not only America but also all over the world.  Instead of paper bags when we get our groceries, it's often plastic bags.  Instead of glass bottles for our soda, it's plastic.   Instead of glass containers for food items, it's often plastic.  Our detergent containers they are in plastic.  Game consoles are plastic as is the packaging itself.  Plastic surrounds us and is often a major component of the products that we use, consume, and integrate with.  For better or worse, plastic is an integral part of our everyday life.

Plastic is favored because of its awesome versatility as well as its cost and despite justified criticism over its non-biodegradability and ubiquitous polluting problems it’s the right product at the right time and it's definitely here to stay into the foreseeable future because there isn't anything available to easily replace it with.  Therefore the better part of valor and realism is learning to deal appropriately and responsibly with plastics as compared to trying to legislate it out of existence with an ill-timed attempt to replace it with products that often will have the same issues of environmental damage and inconvenience but simply of a different flavor, along with the requisite increase in cost to the consumer at large for the switchover to products that are less versatile and cost more to produce in time and energy.

According to theguardian.com, Japan in 2010, recycled: "77% of plastic waste" which compares quite favorably to the United States paltry rate of just 20%.  The type of steps that America needs to take are similar to what has been accomplished in Japan in which the waste-processing plants work in conjunction with the manufacturers of the plastic material to best come up with solutions that are economic, recyclable, and practical.  Taking a longer term perspective and getting all parties to sit down at the same table is often more conducive to solutions that will be of a much greater net benefit for the public at large.  Consumers are only too willing to do their part to recycle plastic if properly educated and encouraged to do so.

As The Graduate put it nearly fifty years ago, plastics not only had a great future back then but they have a great future going forward.  We take plastics for granted in such common household items such as hoses, household plumbing pipes, cups, cell phones, toys, syringes, computers, and many others.  Plastics have help make our modern world a better place to live in and therefore the successful and prudent recycling of plastic at a much higher rate than currently heretofore produced, is a mandatory step for our continued enjoyment and our stewardship of our planet.

Home affordability

The most important material possession that you will ever own in your life is your home.   Your home is your castle, your sanctuary, and your own private domain.   How important home ownership is to you, depends upon the person, but I consider the ownership of your own property to be a fundamental desire and a universal right.

The Census Bureau reported a home ownership rate of 65.4 percent for the 1st quarter of 2012, but I would like to compare that percentage to the home ownership rate of Eisenhower's first administration which was about 55 percent.  That seems like a very nice percentage increase over the ensuing sixty years but that increase is very deceptive because the nuclear family has changed significantly over these last sixty years in the sense of duties and structure.

According to bls.gov the:  "share of married-couple families with children where both parents worked was 59.0 percent in 2012."  In 1953, that percentage would have been around 12.0 percent.  That is an increase of nearly 500 percent in sixty years.  Therefore it seems safe to assume that it takes in aggregate more overall labor to afford a home in 2012 than it did in 1953.   That isn't progress by any stretch of the imagination. 

However, we aren't exactly comparing apples to apples, since homes today are not the same as homes in the 1950s in the sense of size and often attributes.  In the 1950s the average home size in America was approximately 1000 sq ft, whereas the median size of a new home in 2010 was 2,169 sq ft.  What is puzzling is that during this time of increasing home sizes, the average size of an American family has declined from 3.59 per household in 1955 to just 2.63 in 2009.

Additionally, according to mybudget360.com the median income for 1950 was $3,319 with the median home price of $7,354 and the median car price of $1,510.  In 2009 those numbers were respectively: $52,029 for income, $197,000 for housing, and for your car $23,050.  So that we find in 1950 the median home price to the median income was a ratio of 221 percent, whereas in 2009 that ratio now sits at 379 percent which is a substantial increase.

With middle class budgets being stretch to the limit and with dual-incomes already achieved, what can be done to alleviate this overburdening of the American dream?  It would seem that the wisest thing to do is to create more housing which is smaller, denser, designed more practically for today's world, and also more cost efficient in regards to materials, in order to make that housing more affordable for our citizens. 

Buying a home is an important step in establishing yourself as a resident with roots within your community.  This financial decision has important and critical lifetime ramifications and therefore the decision should be carefully considered, discussed, and contemplated before the signing of the documents.  Housing is illiquid, and doesn't always appreciate, nor does it always keep up with inflation.  It is however a place to live, to make memories, and to enjoy.

E-cigarettes

My first real experience with e-cigarettes was going to a restaurant in which I saw a man 'light' up his e-cigarette and he began puffing on it as if he was in some sort of ecstasy.  He 'smoked' one and then he began vaping another.  I sort of sat in amazement watching him because we were in a non-smoking restaurant but nobody bothered him in any way.  Right then and there, I thought, with America in a totalitarian non-smoking attitude against cigarettes which seemingly prohibits smoking anywhere, anytime, at anyplace attitude policed by the Nanny state, that e-cigarettes are going to be absolutely HUGE.

As reported by CNBC, a top tobacco analyst projects sales of $1.7 Billion in the United States this year for e-cigarettes which an absolutely phenomenal growth rate considering that e-cigarettes weren't first introduced to the United States until 2007.  Additionally, cigarette ads have been banned in the USA since 1970, but e-cigarettes are not subject to that ban, so radio and television advertising has been allowed and utilized for e-cigarettes.  Also, e-cigarette sales are not subject to the "Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement" because they are not tobacco products, and neither are they therefore taxed as tobacco products.

The only real false step the e-cigarette industry has made is allowing their product to be labeled as a cigarette as that connotation brings some positives in the sense of name recognition, but that is largely outweighed by thehuge negatives such as cancer, dirtiness, disease, toxicity, and the like which cannot at this time be directly applicable to e-cigarettes.  E-cigarettes are a mixture of water, glycogen, chemicals, and often nicotine; and do not have tobacco, tar, or emit carbon monoxide in its mixture.

While the FDA is in the process of regulating the e-cigarette industry, one should expect some give and take, adjustments to their rulings, and length litigation to also take place.  The tobacco industry showed its moxie by coming to terms with their class-action lawsuits by settling their differences with anational legislated agreement which set the ground rules for their continuing business practices and in consequence the tobacco industry committed to paying a minimum of $206 billion over twenty-five years as part of their settlement.  With big tobacco on the cusp of a product with massive potential in both sales and in profits, and with each of the big tobacco players having already purchased an e-cigarette manufacturer and/or in the process of coming out with their own e-cigarette, one should expect a spirited debate between these companies and the FDA.

For better or for worst, e-cigarettes are staged to be a big player in the vice area of human desires.  While critics may rail against e-cigarettes, the Royal College of Physicians stated:

"Electronic cigarettes and other nicotine-containing devices offer massive potential to improve public health, by providing smokers with a much safer alternative to tobacco."  The choice of engaging with cigarettes or e-cigarettes, or foregoing them altogether is up to the individual.  The fact that a new product has come out that reasonably appears to be both cheaper and safer, while providing the smoker with something that gives him satisfaction is the type of choice adults should be able to make without government prohibition.

Death Tax

I just love calling the Estate Tax, the Death Tax, it just sounds so much more dramatic and somewhat sinister.  Benjamin Franklin said it best:  "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."  The thing is for some of us death and taxes are in fact, synonymous, and since we know that we can't take our material wealth into the spiritual realm with us, and subsequently that taxes are a form of wealth redistribution and an agent used to help run government entities a tax upon our death seems on the surface to be quite fair.

As a reference point, in 2001, the Estate Tax exclusion was $675,000 with a tax rate of 55% above that amount.  After the passage of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, the Estate Tax exclusion was not only indexed to inflation but for 2013 the amount excluded was $5.25 million with a tax rate of 40% above that amount.  This is an increase of 777% since 2001 which is incredible, especially considering the massive deficits the federal government has been running over these same years.  To put it in further perspective, according to the WSJ Blog as reported by Robert Frank, in 2011, there are: "1,078,000 households worth $5 million or more." So the estate tax will not be affecting in aggregate very many households at all and certainly those that are subject to the tax can definitely afford to pay it and it would take a tremendous amount of imagination and outright distortion to state that somehow this Death Tax which doesn't even come into play until after $5.25 million has been excluded to imply that this tax is thereby "unaffordable" or "unfair" or "unmerited".

The biggest argument against Death Taxes is that since you have already been taxed on the money as you earned it any additional taxation is unfair.  While you could call it double-taxation when the monies that you have earned through a payroll-deducting salary are then taxed again upon death, there are other assets that are not taxed at all, until they are sold.  For instance, real estate and equities, if unsold, are untaxed, yet these are assets that can appreciate significantly over time so the only opportunity to tax them is upon your death when you are no longer the living owner of these assets.

Additionally, when it comes to taxation of your assets upon your demise, I would just say that during your life on earth, you were allowed to spend your money pretty much as you pleased, to get whatever value out of it, to utilize it any way that you desired, to appreciate it for what it got you, to increase it because often money makes more money, and perhaps you also showed great stewardship with it.  You've had your day with your money, but when the bell rings and your time here on earth is at its end, you should gratefully relinquish a portion of those monies to the country that you have called home. 

Ultimately, the Death Tax should be looked upon as if hitting the reset button on the computer of life.  Politicians, CEOs, Presidents, will come and they will go to be replaced by a new generation of leaders, so shall money be like the tides of an ocean.  Further, Frederick Lundberg warned us of the dangers of concentrated wealth in his seminal book, The Rich and the Superrich as follows: "So, concentrated asset-wealth not only brings in large personal incomes, but confers on the owners and their deputies a disproportionately large voice in economic, political and cultural affairs. Thus the owners may make or frustrate public policy, at home and abroad."

Therefore the Death Tax is an important and fair tax to ensure us that this doesn't become a country of the few and the privileged but a country that embraces life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all those who yearn to breathe free on our shores.