by Richard Larsen

During the 2008 campaign, President Obama declared, “It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington.” And change it, he has done! It’s been transformed into even more of a brash, thuggish, and coercive environment than it ever was before. The current IRS scandal of politically motivated discrimination against conservative non-profit groups perfectly characterizes the disturbing ends-justify-the-means “Chicago-style politics” that Obama and his comrades have brought to Washington.

As admitted by an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official last week, and confirmed this week by the Inspector General’s (IG) special report on IRS abuses, the IRS, arguably the most onerous and oppressive government agency in the country, was discriminating against conservative, religious, and pro-Israel non-profit groups seeking 503(c) designation. What would normally take 6-12 months for such a ruling was taking up to three years. In addition, the filing requirements of such groups went far beyond the requirements specified for such applications.

To make matters even worse, IRS employees were releasing the confidential filings for such groups to the George Soros-backed liberal propaganda organization ProPublica. They admitted earlier this week, “In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved — meaning they were not supposed to be made public. (We made six of those public, after redacting their financialinformation, deeming that they were newsworthy.),” according to ProPublica.

There are clearly five improprieties or crimes under one scandalous umbrella here. First, the systemic targeting of groups thought to be critical of the administration; second the demand for information that was irrelevant to the tax status filing; third, obfuscation and outright lying by IRS officials to Congress and the public about those abuses; fourth, sharing those confidential filings with an opposing political group, ProPublica; and fifth, intentional withholding of information until after the election.

And lest we think these abuses were perpetrated by just a couple of rogue employees, all requests for 503(c) status go through the Cincinnati office. The Inspector General’s Report indicated it was the entire division, referred to within the IRS as the “Advocacy Group.” The IG’s report clearly documents that Washington was aware of what the “Advocacy Group” was doing.

So what’s happening to those involved? Not much. Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, has resigned, even though he was already planning on leaving the agency. And Sarah Hall Ingram, who had been serving as commissioner of the Tax-Exempt and Government Entities Division from 2009 to 2012, the “Advocacy Group,” is now serving as director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act division. That is the unit that’s responsible for enforcing Obamacare. Now isn’t that comforting?
Although this has been going on for at least three years, if we’re to believe White House Spokesman Jay Carney, Obama only found out about it from press reports, though the IG’s report reveals that Treasury Secretary Geithner’s office knew last summer.

The President seems to know nothing about what’s happening in his administration. From the Fast and Furious gunrunning, to the IRS and the AP phone records scandals, the president knows nothing until he hears “from news reports.” Whether he knows personally about these scandalous activities of his administration or not, it seems clear that since he’s surrounded himself with compatible ideologues and sycophants, that the entire atmosphere of Washington has become an extension of his Chicago-style politics of suppressing dissent, colluding against groups opposed to his agenda, intimidating the opposition, and suppressing damaging news.

Charles Krauthammer said this week, “Obama ran as a man who would not only change Washington but change the essence of politics itself in America as a kind of Olympian historic figure. He can’t even run the bureaucracy, that’s what we’re seeing. There’s arrogance here, of course, but there is incompetence of the highest order. He poses as the bystander. ‘I learned about it in the press.’ This is an indictment of people who believe in big government, want to expand it, have it control healthcare and cannot run the minimal essence of the duties of government.”

Harry Truman famously kept a plaque on his desk that said, “The Buck Stops Here.” If Obama had a plaque on his desk along the same lines, it would likely read, “The Buck Never Gets Here.” It could also include an additional qualifier, “And if it does, I don’t know anything about it.”

On March 7, 2010, Obama famously declared, “Ultimately, the buck stops with me.” On Sept. 23, 2012, in a 60 Minutes appearance, he said, “As president, I bear responsibility for everything, to some degree.” Yet still we have Jay Carney denying the president is responsible for anything. Obama has said of the Benghazi scandal that it’s merely “a side show.” If that is the case, this entire administration is a scandal-ridden three-ring circus, and the president is the ringleader.

Even Commissioner Miller understands the idea of accountability. In his testimony on Friday before Congress, he said, “I resigned, because as the acting commissioner, whatever happens in the IRS, whether I was personally involved or not, stops at my desk. So, I should be held accountable for what happened.” It’s too bad the head of the country hasn’t come to that same realization.

Just two weeks ago at the Ohio State University commencement, President Obama said, “Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices are also doing their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.”

How ironic that we’ve seen so much of his administration unmasked by his adulating media so soon after that statement, for the first definition of tyranny is, “arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority.” And that’s precisely what we’re seeing as the Oz curtain is pulled away revealing the tyranny of the Obama administration.

Whether the president is explicitly complicit in all of these scandals or not, his politics and leadership style have created, and are conducive with, the pattern and atmosphere of corruption and abuse now in full display by the administration.

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By Richard Larsen

We have a President who is intentionally hurting the nation and the people he’s entrusted to serve. In the name of the sequester, the White House’s own plan to clinch a budget deal last year, Obama is willfully and intentionally doing as much damage as he can. This is not subjective, but is verifiable fact.

The President rejected a proposal by the Senate Republicans to give the President more flexibility to pick and choose which programs should be cut to reach the $85 billion spending reduction over seven months mandated by the so-called sequester. That would have given him the opportunity to meet the requirements of the budget deal, without affecting the people our government is supposed to be serving. Keep in mind, that these legislatively mandated reductions are not cuts in actual spending, but only reflect a 2.5% reduction in the growth of government spending.

According to the President a few weeks ago, “There’s no smart way to do that [the sequester cuts],” he said. “These cuts are wrong. They’re not smart, they’re not fair. They’re a self-inflicted wound that doesn’t have to happen.” This is a surprising admission that his own plan is, in fact, stupid!

Actually, Mr. President, there was a smart and prudent way to do it. The third annual installment of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report spelled out a reasonable way to meet the spending-growth reduction. According to Sen. Tom Coburn, “These are among the findings in the new GAO report that found 162 areas where services are duplicated or money is being wasted in the federal government. The annual cost of duplicative or wasteful programs is estimated at roughly $250 billion. That’s 250 billion dollars a year,” Coburn said. “Just in waste, in duplication, in stupidity, and lack of efficiency and effectiveness by the federal government. (It) makes you want to pull your hair out.”

By simply incorporating the GAO recommendations, cost savings amounting to three times the $85 billion reductions specified in the sequester deal could have been realized! And there would be no impact on travelers, no impact on meat inspections, no furloughed TSA agents or Department of Energy employees, and no impact on our military’s ability to protect the nation.

But Obama rejected congressionally authorized flexibility in applying the reductions, and he opted instead to make the sequester as painful as possible. The Washington Times reports of emails to department heads that the administration intended to make good on its warnings of the “painful” sequestration cuts. According to the Times, the emails directed agency heads, “not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of.”

It’s clear that Obama intends to make the cuts painful to average Americans while he and his family continue their lives of royalty, which we bankroll to the tune of $1.4 billion per year. In the seven weeks since he announced the White House tours would be cancelled, he’s had ten trips, and two all-star concerts in the White House. The only thing being cut at the White House is White House tours. Don’t hold your breath watching for the Obama’s to curtail their extravagant travel and vacation plans! And further proving that it’s all political, and that the President still does have discretion, Obamacare employees are not being furloughed, or facing reduced pay or work hours.

For air travelers it’s a different story, as they began this past week to feel the pain of the President’s decision as the Federal Aviation Administration has furloughed 1,500, or 10% of the nation’s 15,000 air traffic controllers. This has created delays of hundreds of flights.
Sen. Rand Paul said this week, “I think that it’s inexcusable to take important things like travel, air traffic controllers or meat inspectors or something that most of us agree we should have, and play a game with it,” the senator said. “The same day that [President Obama] announces that we have no self-guided tours in the White House, he sends $250 million to Egypt. We’ve got money. It’s a matter of priorities, and a good leader wouldn’t cut essential services. So I think it’s a bit of a charade and it ought to stop.”

Clearly the White House places politics ahead of the needs and interests of the American people. It would appear that either he thinks the blame should be ascribed to members of Congress who would not agree to the budget deal last year without some spending cuts, or he is intentionally curbing high profile, required services to show that we can’t cut a dime from actual spending. Most likely, it is for both of those reasons, which places his political agenda ahead of our interests.

The President rejected flexibility in applying the spending cuts, ignored the GAO report of where reductions could be made without adversely affecting services, and his agency heads are being instructed to make the cuts “as painful as possible.” This is not leadership; it’s ignominious politics, Chicago-style!

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By Richard Larsen

One of the most specious and inane arguments in politics today is that the Constitution is an arcane, anachronistic document created by imperfect men, and that it is therefore illogical to interpret it literally. They assert that the founding fathers didn’t have a “crystal ball” and couldn’t have foreseen issues like privacy in the 21st century, and so those of us who believe the Constitution to be a social contract limiting the powers of government must be “out of our minds.”

The first of those arguments is a logical fallacy. The tu quoque fallacy asserts that since the founders were imperfect, whatever they may say or do is equally imperfect or questionable. That would be tantamount to saying that because a certain physics instructor is specious, illogical, and misinformed about history and our system of governance, that he’s equally inept and tenuous in physics. Such a conclusion is obviously faulty logic, and based on a false premise.

The second argument is equally misguided. The founders didn’t need a “crystal ball” to foresee 21st century challenges. A constitution is by definition, “a body of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state is to be governed.” Consequently, the founding fathers didn’t need to be aware of “privacy” issues, or the internet, or any historically contextual development that may prove intellectually taxing to those who presuppose in their unwarranted arrogance, that they should have.

The structure established by the Constitution created legislative bodies that could adapt to changing times, by passing laws to deal with such vicissitudes, while the foundation, or fundamental principles, could endure, protecting the individual over the presumed and evolutionary expansion of the “rights” of the state. Plus, provision for changing the text of that social contract was made through the amendment process, which has been done 27 times to date.

Our Constitution established a system of governance that could stand the test of time, as long as citizens valued freedom more than tyranny. A system that, if held fast to, would assure that no one person, or oligarchical self-anointed leaders, could become totalitarians in a republic so structured. And it included guaranteed rights and privileges, for the first time in history, not granted by a monarch, ruler, magistrate, or benevolent dictator, but acknowledged to have originated from deity for all men. This is perfectly illustrated by our current president’s admission that, “I am constrained by a system that our Founders put in place,” although there’s precious little evidence of such constraint.

Is it a perfect system? Obviously not, especially in light of our contemporary crony-capitalism, that corrupts government and capitalism. The founding fathers maintained that for the republic to endure, we must have a moral people, which is the only real anachronism from our founding era, casting the most ominous clouds of doubt over the perpetuity of the republic.

When it is argued that the Constitution is a “living” document, implication is made that the precepts and principles of the Constitution are not applicable to today and provides an excuse for all types of scurrilous and specious assertions for expanded government largesse at the expense of our freedom and our money. To say that the Constitution is a “living document,” hence, not to be taken literally, is akin to asserting that the Ten Commandments are really just “Ten Suggestions.” It also affords proponents of the “living document” theory latitude to pick and choose cafeteria-style, which rights established by the Constitution are legitimate or applicable today. Some like freedom of speech for themselves but not for those they disagree with, for example. And some absolutely detest the freedom to bear arms.

Judicial precedent and daily judicial decisions are judged against the basic principles and rights specified by the Constitution and statute to provide applicability to today’s milieu. In that way alone is it a “living document.” Statute is how the fundamental principles of the Constitution are codified in a changing social structure, but the Constitution provides the baseline.

James Madison, regarded as the Father to the Constitution, said, “There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” We have witnessed this over the generations since the founding of the country, and we see that process of “silent encroachment” of government on the freedom of the people accelerated over the past few years in a way never before witnessed. We see government dictating terms of property ownership, dictating terms of access to health care, and dictating terms of energy use and private consumption, for starters.

The Constitution is not a “living” document. The Founders were specific in their language and did not mince words. They meant what they said. It was written precisely to prevent the incursion of government into our lives to the extent that we see it occurring today proving it is not an anachronism. It is a social contract to assure and guarantee fundamental freedom and liberty for all generations of Americans, and its relevance is reasserted every time a new official is sworn into office, vowing to “uphold and defend the Constitution.”

The survivability of our republic is dependent upon a knowledgeable and informed electorate, committed to liberty. We need to be intimately familiar with our founding documents, especially the Constitution, and hold those accountable who seek to subvert the freedoms of those who are intended to have ultimate power in this republic: We the People!

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By Richard Larsen

Just when we think the secular assaults against the nuclear family unit can’t get any worse, we disturbingly learn that they can. Now a host on a minor cable news network claims that we have to get over the idea that our children are ours, and accept the fact that they belong “collectively” to all of us.

Melissa Harris-Perry, a host for a weekend show on scarcely watched MSNBC, was taped in a “lean forward” (euphemism for “lean more left”) promo for the network, said that children don’t belong to their families they belong to the collective.

The host declared, “We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”

The context seems innocuous enough; continue to engage in insanity (doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results) by throwing more money toward education. The answer to our educational inadequacies and failings is always more funding, to some. Heaven forbid that we should consider using what resources we have more efficiently and effectively, and focus on teaching content that increases academic performance, instead of all the social engineering, and politically correct indoctrination that is so pervasively “taught” in our public schools.

Some don’t even think her terminology, referring to collective ownership of our kids, in the promo is controversial. The New York Times, and other media and extremist organizations have leapt to her defense. What should not be lost on us is that such entities are ideological compatriots to the host, and are firmly predisposed to the collectivist ideals of the left.

I’m sure the folks over at NAMBLA would rejoice over such a concept of collectivist ownership of our kids! And what about all those unborn children that are never given a chance to take their first breath? Should that not likewise be a grave concern to the collective?

In free societies, as America was originally founded to be, private property ownership is sacrosanct. The second line in our Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Lockean Creed, upon which that statement is based, equates private property with pursuit of happiness.

While children are not considered property, and are not “owned,” the responsibility for rearing, teaching, and nurturing them is a private one, owned by the parents who brought them into the world. For those who lack the temporal means to support those children, there are safety nets that allow for community support of such disadvantaged children. Even that, however, does not diminish or transfer the very personal and private responsibility of rearing children to the state, or to the collective.

If all of this sounds familiar, it should. Last year in the midst of the presidential campaign Team Obama posted a slide show on the campaign website, with much fanfare, about the Life of Julia. It revealed the Obama Team dream of governmental (in this context, euphemism for “the collective”) involvement at every stage of life, from birth to death, and how the government would be the nurturing parental surrogate through each stage.

Karl Marx said, “The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.” Ms. Harris-Perry mirrors this sentiment: the children are not ours, they belong to the collective, and we need to abolish the notion that they are ours. Marx also said, “Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.” The MSNBC host would make Marx proud.

Who has the right to dictate how a child is to be reared? Certainly not the “collective,” and certainly not the government. It’s a private parental, and familial matter. Or at least it should be. The more government encroaches into health care management, social-engineering dictates, and redefinition of fundamental roles in society, the less control parents have over something as fundamental as the rearing of their children.

It is not just the economic aspects of socialistic and fascistic collectivism that must be resisted and repulsed, but perhaps even more significantly, the social and cultural collectivist agenda must be rejected. We have to recognize this steady encroachment for what it is, and that it is clearly antithetical to a free America.

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By Richard Larsen

Two cases were argued before the U.S. Supreme Court last week addressing the issue of same-sex marriage. This is not an issue of rights, as proponents maintain, nor is it an issue of Biblical marriage, as opponents contend. It is, rather, based in natural law, and is an issue of seismic significance to our culture, our society, and our civilization, and cannot be cavalierly “redefined.”

Dr. Patrick Fagan, a sociologist and psychologist has said, “The family is the fundamental building block of society and predates the state and even the societies it builds…At the heart of the family is the mother and father who bring their children into existence.” This is a self-evident truth, regardless of who said it, and anthropologists, biologists, sociologists, and politicians have reiterated that very sentiment. The family is the building block of society and civilization, and the cornerstone to that foundation, or the genesis of it, is a mother and a father.

Foundations must be strong, and built to withstand the elements, corrosion, and the test of time. Otherwise, the structure built thereon will inevitably crumble. If a foundation is made with unmixed cement or just water, as same-sex marriage tries to do, the foundation is weak, and the structure (our civilization) built thereon will crumble. When we tamper with, and attempt to socially-engineer the foundational elements and institutions to civilization and our society, the results will be destructive.

Redefining marriage based on who one purportedly loves, is a spurious dilution of our societal foundation. Rarely in human history, has marriage been based on who one loves, but has always been about perpetuating the species, and forming familial units that construct the foundation to civilization. Sometimes it’s included multiple spouses of one sex or another, but always it has been based on propagational properties, whether age or fertility exceptions apply or not. Any semantic change to the definition is only that, semantic, and does not change the biological or anthropological verities etymologically embedded in the term. Such a change to accommodate same-sex “marriage” would therefore be nothing more than creating a verbal counterfeit to the real thing. Simply calling my Tahoe a Hummer is a lie, and does not change the fact that it’s still not a Hummer.

Nor is there a “right” to marry whomsoever or whatsoever we please, or profess love for. Such a right is as most other “rights” claimed by those in our society who feel somehow shortchanged, slighted, or disadvantaged. The “right” is not codified in any legal document, much less our founding documents, just like the “right” to health care, or the “right” to a good job. Heterosexual marriage, however, is codified in natural law, as attested by biological and anthropological fact. The test is simple: try building a civilization or a society from scratch with anything other than natural law, heterosexual marriage.

Marriage, historically, has always represented the legal, moral, and cultural recognition of the binding relationship of opposite sexes. Merely definitionally reducing marriage to nothing more than a state legitimized relationship between “people that love each other” is antithetical to the factual basis to our existence as a civilization. The fact is, marriage has always been about protecting society, at least in part, through the possibility of propagation, protection and the creation of family units.

The law of unintended consequences has certainly been manifest elsewhere as natural law, social mores, and societal conventions and institutions like marriage have been redefined and engineered to accommodate exceptions.

Scandinavian countries that have redefined marriage are experiencing a meltdown of traditional marriage. British demographer David Coleman and senior Dutch demographer Joop Garssen have written that “marriage is becoming a minority status” in Scandinavia. In Denmark, a slight majority of all children are still born within marriage. Yet citing the 60 percent out-of-wedlock birthrate for firstborn children, Danish demographers Wehner, Kambskard, and Abrahamson argue that marriage has ceased to be the normative setting for Danish family life and poses a significant risk to the future stability of Danish society.

There are undoubtedly exogenous contributory factors for the Scandinavian states. But the eradication of natural law and social mores in favor of a politically correct or supposedly amoral redefinition of basic social conventions indisputably are the incipient causes to the unraveling of the family unit.

Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin, recently said, “I think you can have social stability without many intact families, but it’s going to be really expensive and it’s going to look very ‘Huxley-Brave New World-ish.’ So [the intact family is] not only the optimal scenario … but it’s the cheapest. How often in life do you get the best and the cheapest in the same package?”

Pastor Rick Warren made a fundamentally true and valid observation in this regard. He said, “Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear them or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.” Many are the arguments against same-sex marriage, and none of them frankly have anything to do with discrimination or homophobia.

Doug Mainwaring, an avowed homosexual, proves Warren’s assertion. “Two men or two women together is, in truth, nothing like a man and a woman creating a life and a family together…Marriage is not an elastic term. It is immutable. It offers the very best for children and society. We should not adulterate nor mutilate its definition, thereby denying its riches to current and future generations.”

Words have meaning, and marriage, as the cornerstone to civilization, is copiously imbued with it. I have yet to hear a logical or cogent explanation as to why a binding homosexual relationship must be a marriage as opposed to a civil union or legal partnership. Rather than weakening and diluting the foundation to our society, we should be strengthening and encouraging it. After all, our future, and stability, as a society is dependent on it.

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By Richard Larsen

Usually when a new statute or ordinance is created at the state or local level, it’s in response to a problem that needs correction. Such is not the case with the “anti-discrimination” ordinances being considered by several states and municipalities across the nation. As such, they are agenda-driven ordinances which solve nothing, but by the law of unintended consequences, can open a veritable Pandora’s box of legal and social problems.

These ordinances seek “to prohibit discriminatory acts in housing, employment and public accommodations based upon sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.”

Proponents of such ordinances and statutes claim they will “guarantee the safety for everyone living in the community.” There are, in fact, many state, federal and local laws on the books that seek to ensure residents’ safety; none can guarantee it, as evidenced by the police logs which are rife with infractions against the safety of others. Much like so-called “hate crime” laws, these ordinance single out a specific classification of people, granting them extraordinary legal protection beyond that afforded all other citizens.

There is no valid statistical information cataloguing discrimination based on sexual orientation, to my knowledge. All information currently available is anecdotal, at best.

In the absence of empirically verifiable data, we must look for an alternative motive behind the proponents of such laws. We need look no further than the plethora of websites advancing the radical LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) agenda.

The agenda is well defined by their own advocates. Jeff Levi proudly proclaims, “We are no longer seeking just a right to privacy and a protection from wrong. We also have a right to see government and society affirm our lives.” That they seek public affirmation speaks volumes about how they view themselves and their lifestyle.

Gay rights activists Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen outlined a six-point plan in their book After the Ball, referred to by activists as “a gay manifesto,” which laid out the agenda for how the beliefs and attitudes of ordinary Americans could be transformed to affirm the lifestyle. As they stated, “The agenda of homosexual activists is basically to change America from what they perceive as looking down on homosexual behavior, to the affirmation of and societal acceptance of homosexual behavior.” They described how the movement should use “propagandistic advertising to depict all opponents of the gay movement as homophobic bigots who are ‘not Christian’ and the propaganda can further show them [homosexuals] as being discriminated against, hated and shunned.”

Recent polls indicate a growing level of acceptance of homosexuality as a lifestyle. These data provide empirical evidence which invalidates the movement’s premise; that they’re discriminated against by public opinion. But the problem is in the agenda of those who promote the lifestyle, and seek extraordinary protection, and redefinition and alteration of fundamental social conventions and institutions to affirm the lifestyle of 3% of the population.

Alan Sears and Craig Osten in their book The Homosexual Agenda, identified the four stages that the movement has gone through to reshape the issue. It’s now in the fourth stage of legitimization where, with the full backing of the American Psychiatric Association, Hollywood, the mainstream media, and the education establishment, and even local school districts, the issue has been taken from a treatable psychological disorder to normal, if not preferred, lifestyle in less than 40 years.

Most of the movement’s success can be linked to reshaping the argument from a moral and logical debate to one of “human rights.” As such, all who question the movement and the practice are labeled as “homophobic,” “hateful,” or “intolerant” toward those who are merely “different.” And they do so with all the acrimony, animus, and vitriol they can muster and get away with in print and the airwaves.

Society has been reprogrammed to assume they’re victims, even with all the laws on the books preventing discrimination and assuring Equal Opportunity Employment protections. With the passage of “hate crime” legislation, they now have super protection where opponents can and are literally deprived of their freedom of speech for expressing opposition to their agenda. In England and Canada, ministers have been arrested for referring to it as a moral issue. Following our current course, the same will undoubtedly occur here in the not-too distant future.

There is a sharp distinction that needs to be drawn between acceptance of those of different persuasions, and acceptance of the militant, extremist tactics of the movement advancing their cause. Conflating the two is illogical and fallacious.

And this is not a “civil rights” issue like racial discrimination, because it is completely self-defined, based on inclinations and behavior. All one has to do to qualify for protection under this ordinance is claim to be homosexual or transgendered. Civil rights issues cannot logically be based upon what one merely claims themselves to be, without creating inequality under the law.

George Orwell said, “The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.” That is precisely what we are witnessing now, as those who accept and promote normalcy, the orientation which perpetuates the species and forms the anthropological and biological foundation of our culture and civilization, are publicly excoriated for having the temerity to publicly express it.

These “anti-discrimination” laws and ordinances have no needful basis in reality, and should be rejected. We openly and compassionately accept each other regardless of orientation. What we don’t accept is the radical agenda implemented to promote it.

One final note, as well. The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) added protection for lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals as a form of sex discrimination illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And in 2012 they expanded protection for transgender status and gender identity. Interestingly, in spite of copious data on other forms of possible employment discrimination, including religious, there is no data provided for any of those classifications. There clearly is little empirical justification for this type of ordinance, other than anecdotal, but compelling evidence that it’s agenda-driven.

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By Richard Larsen

This week’s iteration of the Euro crisis surfaced in tiny Cyprus, and the EU attempted to force government confiscation of private customer bank deposits before another bailout would be authorized. Can governments really steal from private citizen’s bank accounts, and could it happen here? The answer to both is a qualified, yet disturbing “Yes.”

Due to massive public and private debt and a deep financial connection with fiscally troubled Greece, Cyprus is the sixth of the EU’s seventeen countries to receive massive monetary infusions to maintain solvency. In an unprecedented move, the EU voted to have Cyprus raid Cypriot bank deposits for up to 38% before another bailout would be authorized.

Americans should take note, not only of what’s happening in the Eurozone with Cyprus right now, but especially at how our domestic fiscal policy mirrors what’s been happening in Europe, and at how the U.S. is creating a similar future crisis.

To recapitulate the issue in simple terms, global economic growth, especially in the Eurozone, has slowed dramatically, since the financial crisis of 2008. This has revealed the problematic fiscal policies of many countries, which have continued to spend exorbitantly in spite of reduced tax revenue. When economic growth declines, so do tax receipts. That gap between spending and receipts creates significant budgetary deficits, which is unsustainable, and jeopardizes the liquidity and viability of the banking systems of the respective countries, since they hold much of their debt.
The Cypriot parliament voted late Friday on a plan to come up with the requisite 5.8 billion Euros needed for unlocking the 10 billion Euro bailout. Customer accounts with greater than 100,000 Euros are at risk of being raided by their own government. A defalcation of customer deposits would be a new low for any government that now has to pay the price for their own imprudent fiscal management.

It’s unlikely, given current laws and regulation, that U.S. bank customers would face a similar governmental theft of their deposits. But that can easily change, and some experts fear such a scenario is possible in light of some developments, especially for retirement accounts.

In November, Atlantic Monthly ran a story, “The 401(k) Is a $240 Billion Waste.” Time Magazine ran a similar story. Both referenced a Danish study, that concludes that government should abolish the tax-advantaged status and deductibility of retirement accounts, for they amount to “subsidies” granted to “the rich.” As soon as government recognizes a benefit as a subsidy, they believe they own it.

Also in November, Investor’s Business Daily reported that The American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries had launched a campaign to alert retirement planners to possible changes to individual retirement accounts.

On January 18th, Richard Cordray, the acting head of the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), was interviewed by Bloomberg. They reported, “The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is weighing whether it should take on a role in helping Americans manage the $19.4 trillion they have put into retirement savings, a move that would be the agency’s first foray into consumer investments.” The CFPB was created by the Dodd-Frank legislation with wide-ranging powers. The agency works within the Federal Reserve, a corporation privately owned by member banks, and is insulated from congressional oversight, and its budget is not subject to legislative control.

The National Seniors Council (NSC) issued this warning two years ago. “A recent hearing sponsored by the Treasury and Labor Departments marked the beginning of the Obama Administration’s effort to nationalize the nation’s pension system and to eliminate private retirement accounts including IRA’s and 401k plans.”

“This hearing was set up to explore why Americans are not saving as much for their retirement as they could,” explains National Seniors Council National Director Robert Crone, “However, it is clear that this is the first step towards a government takeover. It feels just like the beginning of the debate over health care and we all know how that ended up.”

Deputy Treasury Secretary J. Mark Iwry presided over the hearing. He is a long-time critic of 401k plans because he believes they “benefit the rich.” He also appears to be the Administration’s point man driving this effort.

“This whole issue is moving forward very quickly,” warns Crone. “Already there is a bill requiring all businesses to automatically enroll their employees in IRA plans in which part of every employee’s paycheck would be automatically deducted and deposited into this [government] account. If this passes, the government will be just one step away from being able to confiscate all these retirement accounts.”

There are many who question the NSC’s take on this, and others who outright deny it. But when those at the highest levels of government harbor an ideology distinctly more European than American, anything is possible. Once sacrosanct principles of private property ownership and individual liberty are at risk of subjugation to the prevailing ideology. Cyprus may be just the beginning, and not just for EU states.

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By Richard Larsen

As the stock market has been advancing into all-time high territory this week, many Americans are wondering how the economy can be so great while they’re struggling so hard to make ends meet. Let’s correct that perception immediately: the stock market is not the economy, and should not be conflated with it. The stock market is only one of many indicators that measure the financial health of the country. Wall Street, our metonym for the financial markets, rarely resembles Main Street, U.S.A., and this market run provides a perfect illustration of that fact.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), a composite of stock prices of 30 of the top companies in the country, has been in record territory for the past week. The Standard & Poor 500, an index comprised of a broader selection of 500 of the largest companies representing all sectors of the economy, closed Friday within five points of its closing record high. This is encouraging to investors, until we consider that factoring in inflation, the Dow is still about 1,500 points shy of its previous record in 2007. So while the markets are high, the significance is not.

There are primarily three reasons the markets have ascended to these lofty levels. The first is that after the market correction of 2008, earnings projections were dramatically lowered in the wake of the reduced economic growth prospects. The bar of expectations was lowered so far that they had no place to go but up, and for the next eight quarters of earnings reports, over 90% of publicly traded companies exceeded their reduced earnings forecasts. Positive earnings represent profits, which is the fuel for appreciating equity (stock) values.

The second reason is based on the cozy crony-capitalistic relationship between Washington and Wall Street. With tax-advantaged treatment, bailouts, grants, and interest-free loans, Washington has, for self-aggrandizing purposes, infused massive amounts of capital into select industries, sectors, and companies, that has significantly augmented their financial condition.

The third, but arguably most significant reason, is Fed monetary policy. Historically, the Federal Reserve, through their Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has had two conventional tools at their disposal to stimulate the economy, the Fed Funds Rate and the Discount Rate. The target Fed Funds Rate is the rate at which banks and other depository institutions actively trade balances held at the Federal Reserve, on an uncollateralized basis. And the Discount Rate, or window, is the rate the Federal Reserve charges member banks when borrowing money from the Feds for themselves, and not for lending to other banks.

The lower these rates are, the cheaper money is to the banking establishment, which at least theoretically, increases their lending capacity, and lowers the prime rate to borrowers. The Prime Rate, which is usually about 300 basis points (3%) above the discount rate, is the best rate for banks’ best customers, and is what most other retail interest rates are tied to.

The Fed Funds Target Rate has been at 0-.25% for the past four years, as the FOMC has attempted to “jump-start” the economy after lapsing into a deep recession in the fourth quarter of 2008. The affect has been negligible. The leading indicators of economic activity continue to show weakness.

Since near zero Fed Funds and Discount Rates have been ineffectual, and governmental policy has been counterproductive in stimulating the economy, including the much-hyped $800 billion “stimulus” spending, the Fed has had to resort to an unconventional means of economic growth. Ben Bernanke borrowed a book from the Japanese central bank to launch a process of Quantitative Easing; this is a means of infusing money into the economy by the central bank buying financial assets from commercial banks and other private institutions. Like the rates that the Fed controls, this process is designed to increase liquidity with lending institutions for new loans, using market forces to move long-term rates lower on the yield curve.

Ben Bernanke’s Fed is now in their third iteration of Quantitative Easing, referred to as QE3. The central bank is buying $45 billion in Treasury securities (bonds and notes) as well as $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) every month, with newly minted cash from the Treasury. By so doing, over $2 trillion in new cash has been injected into M1, which accounts for all of the money in circulation, including coins, currency and demand deposits, like checking and savings accounts.

Even this unconventional economic stimulus is inefficacious to Main Street, the broader economy, but Wall Street loves it, as it has been the primary mover of equity prices for the past four years. As the DJIA has been steadily recovering since 2009, actual economic growth has virtually stalled. Recently revised fourth quarter gross domestic product (GDP) figures show the economy barely grew at an annualized rate of .01% last year. This is not a healthy or expanding economy, especially when compared with China’s 7.5% GDP growth rate.

“It really feels like this is what $8 trillion gets you, between deficit spending and money printing,” said RC Peck, chief investment strategist and CEO of Fearless Wealth. “It’s been about $8 trillion over the last four years and I really don’t think we’d be at these prices [if it weren’t for that].”

Bond manager Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of DoubleLine Capital concurs. Gundlach says, “The slow-growth U.S. economy is living on cheap money as is the bull market, which is in its last stages.” He explains that the central bank is committed to “easy money,” referring to the accommodative low rate policy and quantitative easing. He calls these policies “circular financing schemes.” He believes that the equity bull market is in its seventh inning and when the game ends it will be “unpleasant.”

Those with 401(k)s are beneficiaries of the market run, as are other private investors with stock holdings. But aside from that, ascending stock prices have little impact on most Americans.

The economy has not improved in any tangible way for the millions of Americans struggling with unemployment and underemployment. A healthy jobs market is crucial to strengthening the middle class, which currently exhibits a troubling lack of long-term stability. More people have dropped out of the work force than at any other time, and median household income continues to decline.

Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard said recently, “You’re really struck by the unevenness of the recovery. The top end took a whack in the recession, but they’ve gotten back on their feet. Everyone else is still down for the count.”

The latest income figures from the Census Bureau confirm this. “Median household income after inflation fell to $50,054, a level that was 8 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the recession took hold.”

Just this week, the Federal Reserve announced a historic shift in its primary focus. Previously, the central bank held to the conviction that controlling inflation was their primary function, in order to stabilize and grow the economy. They now believe that improving the labor market and reducing unemployment is the key to economic recovery, growth, and stability, and their tone in doing so has been with increasing urgency. Those of us who work in the financial industry wonder why it took so long for them to realize it.

The real unemployment rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics U-6, report, is 14.3%. And until that rate improves, which will have to come in the form of fiscal and regulatory reform by Washington, not just by Fed easy money policies, the middle class will continue to struggle, which translates to reduced consumer spending and fewer durable goods orders, and more small businesses strapped for cash as they compete for reduced spending dollars. As it is currently, Wall Street is ascending, while Main Street declines. When this bifurcation ends, it will be cause for celebration when the markets reach new highs.

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By Richard Larsen

“One man with courage makes a majority,” penned Thomas Jefferson. When that courage is armed with principle and backed by constitutional precepts, it’s formidable. Such was the case this week when Kentucky’s Junior Senator, Rand Paul, took to the floor of the senate in a one-man filibuster, reminiscent of the 1939 “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

Unlike his counterpart in the classic Frank Capra film, however, Paul’s filibuster was over constitutional principles, and citizen rights.. The issue for him was whether the President of the United States was presumed to have power to supercede the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments to the Constitution by killing American citizens, on American soil, with unmanned aerial devices (UAV), or drones.

The setting was the confirmation of John Brennan as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Brennan refused to answer Paul’s question during the Senate sub-committee confirmation hearing regarding the use of drones to attack American citizens domestically. Senator Paul was appalled at the idea that the administration would even consider using drones domestically without a citizen ever having been charged with a crime in a court of law.

An American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU) lawyer, Nate Wessler, validated Paul’s premise in an interview this week, when he referred to the administration as, “Judge, jury, and executioner,” if they used drones domestically.

Drones have been used to kill Americans on foreign soil. In 2011 a drone strike targeted, and killed, Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Islamic cleric born and educated in the United States.

Since Brennan refused to answer the question, Paul sought clarification from Attorney General Eric Holder. In a March 4 letter to Paul, Holder superciliously said the Obama administration believes it could “hypothetically” carry out drone strikes against Americans on U.S. soil, but “has no intention of doing so.” Such a response was hardly comforting.

Holder declared, “The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront. It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States.”

That Holder would declare the issue to be “entirely hypothetical,” leads one to believe he’s not at all familiar with how the technology has been, and is being used by the administration. And that he would merely “suppose” that “it is possible,” clearly indicates not much thought had been applied to the issue, a sobering admission from the government’s top attorney.

Senator Paul said, beginning his thirteen hour filibuster, “I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court. That Americans could be killed in a cafe in San Francisco or in a restaurant in Houston or at their home in Bowling Green, Kentucky, is an abomination. It is something that should not and cannot be tolerated in our country.”

That such could be possible, and not merely hypothetical, should be self-evident. Drones are increasingly utilized domestically for research purposes, as well as for regulatory compliance enforcement by the government.

We extend citizen’s rights to expatriates, regardless of where they are globally. Yet after the administration’s 2011 targeting of al-Awlaki with a drone attack, the next logical question is whether it matters where such a target happens to be. This all seems duplicitous on the part of the administration, when our own citizens are not afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, while simultaneously extending citizen’s rights to non-American enemy combatants.

Just this week, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, the al-Qaida spokesman, fundraiser and son-in-law to Osama bin Laden, who is not an American citizen, was afforded citizen’s rights denied to al-Awlaki, as he made an appearance in court just blocks from ground zero in New York City.

Holder finally sent Paul the answer he was looking for. “No,” was Holder’s ultimate response, which finally brought the Senator’s filibuster to a close. This was not just a victory for Paul, to finally get the definitive answer he sought, but also a victory for all of us. Especially since it was a mere six weeks ago that Holder’s boss took an oath to protect and defend our Constitution, that inconvenient founding document that this administration seems to have such a difficult time upholding.

Senator Paul’s one-man crusade for the rights of American citizens, regardless of station, status, creed, color, or party affiliation, was a victory of principle over political expediency, and essentially validated Thomas Jefferson’s aphorism. One man with courage may not a majority make, but armed with truth and principle, can have the same effect.

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By Richard Larsen

Listening to our top politician in Washington this week was reminiscent of Chicken Little’s apocalyptic warning, “The sky is falling.” In daily appearances the loss of 2.5% of the federal budget has been lamented, implying catastrophic consequences. “It’s not apocalyptic,” he said, but the implication clearly made that it’s close to it. “It’s just dumb. And it’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt individual people and it’s going to hurt the economy over all,” he said.

The president elaborated, “Emergency responders like the ones who are here today — their ability to help communities respond to and recover from disasters will be degraded. Border Patrol agents will see their hours reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go. Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which means more delays at airports across the country.

Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings.”

As if to not be outdone, California Representative Maxine Waters cried, “We don’t need to be having something like sequestration that’s going to cause these jobs losses, over 170 million jobs that could be lost.” Apparently she’s unaware that our entire civilian labor force is only 144 million jobs in America! But the hyperbole seems to work, at least for the president, as he continues to blame congress for a plan that the White House concocted.

The hyperbole is, however, a far cry from reality. The sequester, which is now in effect, is actually the budget authority figure, not a budget outlay. There’s an important difference. A budget authority provides through an appropriations bill, the authority to spend a certain number of dollars. A budget outlay is an actual payment made for government obligations. The Congressional Budget Office in their January update scored the $85 billion in sequestration “cuts” as an actual $44 billion outlay. Rather than representing a “cut” of 2.2% of the federal budget, it’s a reduction of about 1.25% of a $3.6 trillion budget. And to make matters worse, it’s not really a cut, as a reduction in spending, but just a cut in the rate of growth of federal spending. The remaining $41 billion is in future budget outlays, unless congress or the president tinker with the reduction further.
We have to remember, Washington doesn’t use zero-based budgeting, they use baseline budgeting. The baseline is an inclined trend-line of spending increases each year. Washington uses the current spending levels as the “baseline” for establishing future funding requirements. They then assume that future budgets will equal the current budget times the inflation rate times the population growth rate. So rather than “cutting” spending by $44 billion, the rate of growth for future spending is reduced by $44 billion the first year. And given Washington’s creative accounting techniques, the rate of spending will likely accelerate after the first year of sequestration cuts, in spite of the agreement hammered out with the Budget Control Act of 2011 where the White House created the sequestration idea.

And all of those threats that the president made earlier about who wouldn’t get paid, and what services would not be provided, are just that: empty threats. That is unless he decides that those are the areas to be cut, rather than Moroccan pottery classes, an empty airport at Lake Murray State Park in Oklahoma, a robot squirrel funded through the National Science Foundation, or the Alabama Watermelon Queen Tour. Yes, those are actual federally funded projects. It’s clear what his priorities are, to punish those programs and people most deserving of funding in order to portray the “draconian” 1.2% cut in the growth of spending as nigh unto apocalyptic. After all, money is power, and the more the threat of deprived spending can be spun to hurt the deserving and needy, the more power one has.

The sequester will be evenly divided between military and discretionary spending. The military will be adversely affected by reduction or elimination of defense programs.

Financial markets and the financial gurus on Wall Street obviously were not unnerved by the prospect of a 1.2% cut in the growth of spending, as financial markets closed higher for the week. Weighing more heavily on the minds of market analysts is the looming threats to economic growth of such massive government debt.

The rest of the outlay reduction of $1.2 trillion triggered by the sequestration will be applied over the next ten years. But even with that reduction, the federal debt is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to be a staggering $26 trillion. Erskine Bowles, co-chair of the Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction Commission has calculated that service on the interest for that debt alone, if rates stay near record lows, will be $1 trillion by 2020!

The sequester is actually beneficial since it will slightly slow the growth of the deficit and our national debt. But even the modified baseline must drop sharply to avoid a collapse of the economy under the weight of our national debt.

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