PART III: THE 225-YEAR REVISITATION
Chapter 7
BEHIND THE 20 TENETS OF THE 28th AMENDMENT
Recommendation of "The Committee of Five" -
(Hamilton, Madison, Franklin, Sherman, and Jefferson)
How did President Harding and his Vice President and later President, Calvin Coolidge, turn the "Great Depression of 1920-21" around in one year to produce "The Roaring Twenties". The answer to that is THE ANSWER for America again in 2013
Thomas Jefferson Reports
The tendency to view times of grave difficulty through dark glasses and exacerbate the difficulty and to view times of plenty through rose-colored glasses and exaggerate the ascendancy is at the one hand to be given to the norm but on the whole too often to be missing opportunity to clearly see the vast possibilities for the good in the first case and to miss the early detection and thereby also miss the avoidance of the abruptly deflating and avenues to moderation in the second case.
Frequently it is the exact pivotal and repetitive moments that history tries to shout to its progeny to don the correct spectacles and to focus on the lessons wailing to be seen and heard. But most often there are not hearing aids for hearing nor corrective lenses for viewing or the wisdom to employ them. And therein lie the spectacular failings to heed history's warnings and we of hindsight are left to view the harsh realities of ignoring the redundant and the repetitious and we see the dire results that history mets out and right cruelly so through the ages.
Such moment in time is crashing down upon our kindred brothers and sisters in 2013 and such opportunity to seize the correct lessons that history is shouting for the correct assessment to be gleaned from the annuls of the past.
But where are written "the correct lessons of history"?
We of the reassembly have witnessed a most prevalent conspiracy unto history by those who purport to record its detail and document its messages for the 100 years of 1913, when the progressives' President Wilson was elected, and extending to the year 2013, when 100 years of progressive domination of government and academia were bringing federal government to a climaxing of power and the states and the people to a dearth of power and near death of control of their central government and to a debacle and floundering of their housing and banking and employment and mercantile economy.
We of the Committees of Detail and the Committee of Five therefore offer the following recommendations to the good people of America in the 21st Century to take back their central government and redirect it in a smaller and more subservient role. And we start with one of the darkest moments in that 100 years after your President Woodrow Wilson (and his 8 year reign of "The Progressive Era") left your President Warren G. Harding, "The Great Depression of 1920-21". How did President Harding and his Vice President and later President, Calvin Coolidge, turn that around in one year to produce "The Roaring Twenties". The answer to that is THE ANSWER for America again in 2013.
Committee Recommendation #1 - The Economic Fix (The Spending Side)(see also Recommendation #5)
We of the reassembly sadly see the irony in the word "progressive" as it has inflicted a yoke of regressivism upon America that is a tribulation and albatros unto Freedom, Liberty and Justice unto free men and women. Progressive ideology, as with its many centrally powerful governmental cousins, has proven yet again that the illusion of grand promises of prosperity accrues the prosperity to those at the top who make the grandiose proclamations. Government's first priority in the end is its own self preservation. We of the reassembly are of one common accord that a 100 year insidious dismantling of free enterprise thru a campaign of power concentration in the central government and at the expense of business and individual initialtive has as its legacy, the dragging down and smothering of a once great nation's economy and a once great nation's incentives and a once great nation's education and is a black mark and shame unto a once proud country that had as the foundational tenet of its illustrious success - limited government.
The following is attributed to President, Woodrow Wilson, with our research showing that sourcing for the validity of the first two sentences has been in question and unresolved for 65 years but with the main point of the paragraph without doubt and much of the reference to "completely controlled and dominated.." acknowledging both the concentrated power in the central government and the behind the scenes control by unseen forces in concert with a small cadre of world bankers and the Federal Reserve..
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its
system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all
our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most
completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free
opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, " -Woodrow Wilson
The following quote is from Franklin Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary of 14 years at the failure of all they did throughout the
depression era of the 1930s:
"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not
work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong... somebody else can have my job.
I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat
We have never made good on our promises.... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just
as much unemployment as when we started ...And an enormous debt to boot!" (from the diary of Henry Morganthau Jr.)
Yet the multitudes of historians beat their breasts and their tin drums at the magnificence of big government during the terms of these patriarch presidents of progressivism and they have ridiculed private businessman Warren G. Harding and his austere government and tried to recreate and undo even the existence of the story of the exceptional decade that followed. These so-called historians have lauded Keynsian spending and the glorious thought of "something for nothing" yet have completely repressed and distorted the evidences of the success produced by austerity in government.
Here are some facts about the model this reassembly has concluded is the blueprint for America in 2013 and the accompanying "28th Amendment" for an austere cut to government in size and scope. These historical facts associated with the decade of "the Roaring 20's" reflect and direct our collective and enumerated recommendations as suggested herein:
1) The economic situation in 1920 was grim. Unemployment had jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent, and GNP had just declined 17 percent.
2) Instead of “fiscal stimulus,” President Harding immediately cut the government's budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922.
3) Harding took "laissez-faire" (governmental "hands off" (of the money strings and regulation)) to new levels. Tax rates were slashed at all income groups, the national debt was reduced by one-third, and the Federal Reserve's activity, moreover, was hardly noticeable. One economic historian stated, “Despite the severity of the contraction, the Fed did not move to use its powers to turn the money supply around and fight the contraction".
4) By August of 1921, signs of recovery were becoming visible.
5) In 1922 unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent
6) By 1923 unemployment was only 2.4 percent.
According to our research, Thomas E. Woods, Jr., gave a good summary in "Warren Harding and the Forgotten Depression of 1920":
The federal government did not do what Keynesian economists ever since have urged it to do: run unbalanced budgets
and prime the pump through increased expenditures. Rather, there prevailed the old-fashioned view that government
should keep spending and taxation low and reduce the public debt..
Those were the economic themes of Warren Harding's presidency. Few presidents have been subjected to the degree
of outright ridicule that Warren Harding endured during his lifetime and continues to receive long after his death. But the
conventional wisdom about Harding is wrong to the point of absurdity: even the alleged “corruption” of his administration
was laughably minor compared to the presidential transgressions we have since come to take for granted.
Further reseach by this committee shows that Warren G. Harding laid it all out ahead of time In his1920 speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination:
We will attempt intelligent and courageous deflation, and strike at government borrowing which enlarges the evil, and
we will attack high cost of government with every energy and facility which attend Republican capacity. We promise that
relief which will attend the halting of waste and extravagance, and the renewal of the practice of public economy, not alone
because it will relieve tax burdens but because it will be an example to stimulate thrift and economy in private life.
Let us call to all the people for thrift and economy, for denial and sacrifice if need be, for a nationwide drive against
extravagance and luxury, to a recommittal to simplicity of living, to that prudent and normal plan of life which is the
health of the republic. There hasn't been a recovery from the waste and abnormalities of war since the story of mankind
was first written, except through work and saving, through industry and denial, while needless spending and heedless
extravagance have marked every decay in the history of nations.
And in conclusion we will let President Harding speak one more time because in all of our research we find no other better example from the founding to 2012 to illustrate why America must cut its federal government to a fraction of its size to guarantee prosperity for everyone of every level of success and ambition.
Here is President Harding on government austerity at his 1921 inaugural address:
We must face the grim necessity, with full knowledge that the task is to be solved, and we must proceed with a full
realization that no statute enacted by man can repeal the inexorable laws of nature. Our most dangerous tendency
is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little. We contemplate the immediate task
of putting our public household in order. We need a rigid and yet sane economy, combined with fiscal justice, and it
must be attended by individual prudence and thrift, which are so essential to this trying hour and reassuring for the future. . . .
The economic mechanism is intricate and its parts interdependent, and has suffered the shocks and jars incident to
abnormal demands, credit inflations, and price upheavals. The normal balances have been impaired, the channels of
distribution have been clogged, the relations of labor and management have been strained. We must seek the
readjustment with care and courage. . . .
All the penalties will not be light, nor evenly distributed. There is no way of making them so. There is no instant step
from disorder to order. We must face a condition of grim reality, charge off our losses and start afresh. It is the oldest
lesson of civilization. I would like government to do all it can to mitigate; then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest,
in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved. No altered system will work a miracle. Any wild experiment
will only add to the confusion. Our best assurance lies in efficient administration of our proven system.
It is worth noting in conclusion that the Dow Jones went from 105 to 381 from 1921 to 1929 under brutal government austerity and even when it crashed to 198 over the two weeks following Black Tuesday (Oct 29, 1929) it then bounced back 44% by December 31, 1929. What followed under the 4 years of Herbert Hoover and 13 years of Franklin Roosevelt was a panoply and smorgasbord of one wild experiment after another and even to the point that Roosevelt is on record as resorting to tossing coins to decide which new wild experiment to try next (according to Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary).
How successful were the historians during this same disastrous time in American history? It says a lot that while they continue to adorn the memory of Keynes and Roosevelt even unto 2012, the period they ascribe glory to under the full faith and credit card of the progressive patriarchs still shows that from 1929 to1954 it took 25 years before the stock market recovered to where it had been a quarter century earlier. It took Warren G. Harding a little less than one year to turn the stock market and the economy around and send them racing straight upward.
While Harding and the country were in recovery within a year, Roosevelt and all of the progressive historians were still in depression 80 years later.
Committee Recommendation #2 - The Economic Fix (The Revenue Side)
A Building Boom for the Ages - "Free Enterprise Towns"
(25-Year Competition between "Free Enterprise Towns" and
"Social Enterprise Towns")
No state and federal income tax, no capital gains tax, no tax on dividends and interest, no property tax, no unemployment tax, no payroll tax, no gasoline tax and no federal paperwork or IRS to deal with!! CORPORATE OR INDIVIDUAL!!!
This committee congratulates Mr. Franklin of Pennsylvania and Mr. Sherman of Connecticut for developing and engineering the details of "Free Enterprise Towns" to showcase pure free enterprise and in the process giving State Legislatures a sure path to proposal and ratification of the 28th Amendment by the states. This experiment with little down-side risk should show for all time what complete and pure "Free Enterprise" can do when divorced from central government meddling.
Just the thought of a mass influx of new businesses into their state economies, makes it easy for states to picture the benefits to them of joining the chain of events quickly unfolding across the country. The states quickly understand the stakes and it is natural for them to pick up their part in the chain of events and abet the speed of the movement at the point that first dozens and then hundreds of the non-committal, "Letters of intent to Locate" from existing companies and professionals begin coming through the mail and coming in over your 2012 electronic mails first into the offices of the Governors of every state. The ease of this first step to galvanize the top levels of each state, quickly sets the stage toward "The 28th Amendment" becoming a reality based on the demand created ahead of the actual amendment.
First the huge allure is recognized easily from the "top down" perspective as Corporate America has little trouble envisioning the magnitude of the building boom at hand. Secondly, the potential is also easy to understand from the "bottom up" as it is high profile dissemination early in the exciting discussions that there is a huge amount of labor to be required in the millions of workers needed to build these towns. And, as those millions begin to understand these immense needs for their labor, they and their family and friends become involved and energized as they picture the exciting prospect of building and growing these towns and being part of new small town atmospheres of learning and bonding with a sense of togetherness as the towns are built initially and then as they thrive and grow for 25 years . This creates tremendous pressures to go forward with the amendment from the bottom up perspective of workers and prospective workers.
The competition Mr. Franklin and Mr. Sherman have set in motion between states and the initial sister cities with these early towns to grab the best and brightest companies sets a bandwagon in motion that is hard to stop once it is underway. And the competition between FETs and SETs (Social Enterprise Towns) pitting the two main political philosophies of 21st Century America adds a catapulting dimension as both endeavor to quickly build more towns than the other to prove their worth.
So the stage is set with immense magnetic pull from top to bottom and from bottom to top to stampede the passage of the amendment and then to build the two types of towns.
This committee is of the opinion that FETs in an insulated incubator setting with virtually zero taxes for 25-years will win over SETs hands down and quickly court the favor in dramatic fashion of the full spectrum of businesses to locate in the small (FET) town settings and curry partnerships between empowered business and empowered and well-educated workers. Dynamic FETs will quickly solve the problem of so many unemployed and undocumented workers and families. So much work available to all and the allure of greatly enhanced and expedited United States residency status (green cards) and more availability and local/state help with new paths to citizenship will both create an atmosphere of good will and common purpose for good.
Not to be overlooked is the requirement that all workers who work in an FET and all guest workers (everyone) are required to pay 5% of every payroll dollar into the Social Security trust fund even though no payrolled workers in FETs get credit toward any vesting of payments in the Social Security system for these payments during the 25-year period. Everyone who works in an FET understands they are building much better retirement and health systems in partnership with the businesses they work for separate and apart from government welfare programs and that the 5% is the cost to the federal government for the tax and regulation moratoriums they enjoy.
The 5% of all payroll with no offsetting benefit accruals is a huge influx of money to bolster the Social Security trust fund over 25-years and there is great pride in the FETs among the residents that they are a big part of helping solve the insolvency that is impending there.
Employers permanently located in FETs pay no Payroll tax match on the 5% payments required of workers into Social Security nor send in any information to the Social Security Administration for Social Security or Medicare (other than the 5% that accrues to the fund with no reporting needed since it is miscellaneous revenue into the Social Security Administration). The 5% payments by all workers are the price to work in FETs and to cover some of the costs to the federal government for the defense of the country and miscellaneous other indirect benefits to the societies of the FETs (which get no subsidies or direct payments from the federal government for anything)(nor do they want any).
Committee Recommendation #3 - The Economic Fix (The Government Obstacle)
Congress to make no laws affecting the economic activity
and functioning of the American economy
It is instituted that Congress is to make no laws that affect the economic activity and functioning of the American economy. The damage we have seen as "government" tries to influence and impact prices and production and distribution and especially the damage and injustice it creates when it picks winners and losers and when it gives favoritisms and advantages and when it engages in corrupt enrichment and the ultimate damage it evokes with punitive and extremely crippling taxing as seen in the manipulations of massive taxes for 100 years - have all been at huge expense to the American people. And in response, the American people are herein, with this amendment, restricting their Congress and Executive and Judiciary in all matters of the American economy which has its own finely-tuned mechanisms which is manifestly capable of exposing and regulating corruption and maintaining general fairness within its system by fierce and fair competition.
Nothing is clearer evidence of the folly that Congress thinks it can run anything efficiently or effectively, and especially to run an entire economy -- than the wreckage of the American housing market in the first decade of the 21st Century at the hands of Congress after the federal government through its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and its dictates effectively decreed that all Americans that wanted a house should own one. By the legislating and forcing of perverse leniencies of credit, and subverting honesty in application, and by abandonment of all rational qualifications of acquiring mortgage loans, and with a hugely profligate zero interest rate by your Federal Reserve that distorted the markets and stampeded the people (and especially the most vulnerable) to buy something they couldn't afford, Congress and the Executive LAID THE GROUNDWORK FOR THE NEW GAME OF "HOT POTATO" THAT MUSHROOMED INTO THE DISASTROUS INDUSTRY OF "DERIVATIVES". The "Hot Potato" was the vast landscape of bad mortgages the Congress forced banks to accept from anybody fogging a mirror, as you say, so everyone who wanted one could have a home.
The issuers of the mortgages knew they couldn't make money once the inevitable happened when these mortgages started defaulting by the tens of thousands, so they were more than happy to sell them off to the next sucker, as you call them, in bundles of a hundred or more mortgages in these new instruments of eventual calamity (starting with the most prevalent "derivative", MBSs, i.e. Mortgage Back Securities). These were in turn and again re-bundled and the complexity and growing obscurity of the risks were then sanctioned in haste by the great credit rating agencies of the day (such as Moodys and S&P etc. who apparently didn't have time or inclination to research all of the minutia in hundreds of thousands of the original documents and buyers). The "HOT POTATO" was then re-bundled in other newly spawned industries that added layers of insurance as the next layer of scam and deception, such as Credit Default Swaps (CDSs). And that then spawned the biggest game of all, backing it all by the American taxpayer and the full faith and credit of the United States of America.
And, just like so many con games over the whole of civilization, when it all came crashing down, the hapless dupes were left holding the bag of the 21st Century's "Sub-Prime Loan Crisis" - i.e. the American people. And then the same Congress that forced the bad loans and the whole "HOT POTATO" SCAM in the first place, then gave $800 billion to the biggest players to make them whole (43% of which were foreign banks) and then these same crooks paid themselves and the other top players in the top banks and institutions involved multi-million dollar bonuses. The realizations of the ruination and the extent of the corruption of their entire Treasury system and Federal Reserve system and national government in general took awhile to unravel as the government that was a true genius and master of deceit all along was the master of "sleight of hand" in the coverup as well. But there was to be a final accounting, as is ever so in history, as the crescendo of outrage began to grow with America's citizenry.
We in the reassembly offer just this one example of the collapse of American housing as enough evidence to explain why "The 28th Amendment" is ousting their federal government from the economic decisions of a nation. The extent of the devastation from just this one example of federal government horrors when unconstrained - runs the entire gamut of the American economy starting with the ruined families and fortunes of the "foreclosed on" millions to the devastated neighborhoods to the devastated cities and states (Nevada, Arizona, Florida to name a few), to the continuing onslaught of plummeting home prices and real estate prices nationwide to the record closing of banks everywhere throughout America to the pernicious high unemployment rate that refuses to come down over multiple years despite the federal government throwing trillions of good money after bad to force a "government" solution.
The Congress in most other economic areas in which it has inserted itself has unilaterally made a shambles of the America enterprise system. And just as the ancient lessons of Antiquity teach, State-controlled (central) governments cannot and never will be able to make better decisions for the people they purport to protect than the billions and trillions of decisions that those people make for themselves when they have the freedom to choose responsibly for the best benefit of themselves and their families and their communities and locales. State-controlled (central) governments cannot regulate either in a better fashion than, not only the billions and trillions of customer decisions, but neither can they regulate a massive market better than the competition between business competitors where the glare of the pure marketplace eliminates the weak and the deceptive and the corrupt as they will always wither and die when honestly exposed to the glare of consumers thru the normal efforts of their competitors in combination with their customers.
Congress and the federal government are being restricted to just those enumerated and limited powers as previously set out in our original assembly and with only a few additional ones to match the demands of the scope of societal evolution and those are being enumerated in the national Amendment as shown. But in total concept, the power to regulate commerce is being taken away from the federal government and given to the states through a new national structure of oversight of their commerce by the "States' Commerce Association". This Association is controlled completely by the States whereby the states elect their own panels and board of directors to oversee their interstate interactions and a stricture of interpretation of the so-called "Commerce Clause" is being reduced to the federal government only resolving those commerce issues of foreign commerce, or when states' request a mediation of conflicts arising between themselves when states are at odds with each other and the "States Commerce Association" asks for help from the federal government in small defined areas of intervention.
The American people are hereby professing expressed confidence in their economic and free enterprise system and expressly relegating the federal government to minding its own basic business and staying strictly within its own simple Constitutional functions and powers and away from any meddling in markets and the free flow of commerce in America. The American people understand that this huge outflow of power from Washington DC will most probably mean a decline in real estate values for that area but considering that the rest of the country has seen a 4 year decline of 33% in their average home prices while Washington has seen an increase over the same time, we in the reassembly don't see most Americans being very sympathetic with those who have played "political monopoly" with America's economy and Americans' money to their own enrichment and power for 100 years of progressive rule.
Committee Recommendation #4 - a) Repatriation of Profits and b) Taxation Limits
a) Repatriation of Profits
American companies with overseas profits can bring those profits back into America with the payment of a 10% "Repatriation Tax" on the total profits earned overseas and not previously taxed. This is in lieu of the current 35% Corporate Income Tax that applies to most of those profits that have fled 21st Century America.
As laid out by our elder statesman and avid inventor over his lifetime, Mr. Franklin of Pennsylvania, the "10% Repatriation Tax" and "The Repatriation Stimulus Fund" were not only the driving forces to bring American businesses and corporations stampeding back to American shores, and not only the driving forces to create the largest building boom in American history, but they also created "The Great American Challenge" which partnered the rich and the poor and the successful and the unsuccessful for the purpose of working together, first to pass Tenet #1 of the 28th Amendment, but second to bring together an estimated 50,000,000 Americans not just receiving an estimated $1000 each on average upon passage of Tenet #1 of the Amendment, but learning new skills and attitudes about success and earning up to $10,000, $25,000, $50,000, and $100,000 in many cases, and developing trust and understanding and collaboration over many different income levels and classes and ethnic groups working together for better communities.
And not content to stop there, Mr. Franklin and the distinguished and revered signer of all 4 of America's founding documents and the father of "The Connecticut Compromise" that established the bi-cameral Congress - Mr. Roger Sherman of Connecticut, both designed the concept of "Free Enterprise Towns" and "Free Enterprise Zones". So between the exceptionally low repatriation tax to come home and the possibility of also coming home to these extraordinarily tax and regulation advantaged FETs and FEZs the exodus of corporate America completely turned around into "The Great American Business Boom of 2013-2038". And at Mr. Sherman's further inspiration, "Social Enterprise Towns" and "Social Enterprise Zones", were established under Tenet #1 to complete with FETs and FEZs and so those of the Progressive ideology could compete with FETs and FEZs to prove their ideology worked better than the free-enterprise/capitalistic system and in the process of these two ideological juggernauts going head to head, accelerate "The Great American Business Boom of 2013-2038" .
b) Taxation Limits
The current American tax system is replaced with a simple Income Tax as follows:
(Individual and Corporate rates the same)(all business and individual deductions of any kind eliminated).
(Taxation without representation is a foundation on which America was founded. Protection of the minority from the
majority is another of those foundational tenets. "The Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy" and no power of the Federal
Government has been more abused than the power to tax a small minority and destroy and expropriate their property and
wealth and indirectly their incentives and their aspirations. The 18% maximum individual and corporate tax rate is hereby
instituted as a protection with equal force as the original 10 Bill of Rights Amendment protections against the previously
abusive tax practices by the federal government over the last 100 years (since 1913).
a) Income tax rates (and example computed tax due as shown below each) are established as follows:
5% $0-$20,000, 10% $20,000 - $100,000, 15% $100,000-$500,000, 18% $500,000 +
$20,000= $1,000, $100,000 = $9,000, $500,000 = $69,000 $1,000,000 = $159,000
b) Tenets of Federal Individual and Corporate Tax Policy are hereby established as follows:
1) All deductions, credits, adjustments to taxable income are terminated and prohibited in the future.
2) All thresholds are to be indexed to inflation
3) Congress can change and adjust rates and thresholds after 2020 for all rates and thresholds under 18%
4) 18% is established herein as the maximum rate allowed by Constitutional Law and
5) all American workers are to pay at least a 5% rate to support their Government and no more than 18%.
6) 4% of total Individual and Corporate taxes collected by the Federal Government are designated and
earmarked for and returned to the 50 States (or any additional States to join the union) in the approximate
proportion that they were collected from those States for the purposes of replacing grants from the federal
government for all previous federal mandates grants and subsidies which are hereby being terminated.
7) New federal mandates on the States or similar impositions on States activities and expenditures are prohibited
8) Welfare payments within the tax system, such as the Earned Income Credit, are terminated and prohibited.
c) Times of declared war by the Congress and President for major conflagrations (and not small wars and actions
on a small scale) allow for a temporary sur-tax on these rates and these maximums with a majority vote
in both Houses of Congress.
Committee Recommendation #5 - IN LIEU OF A BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT - Limit Again the federal
This Committee highly recommends AGAINST A BALANCED BUDGET TENET TO THE 28TH AMENDMENT.
The reason is very simple. To pass a "Balance Budget Amendment" to the Constitution, therein is an act of "amnesty" unto every act of "usurpation" of powers by the federal level of government and gives legitimacy to all the unconstitutional laws and Executive branch edicts and orders that have been promulgated to massive extents in violation of the constitution. If a Balanced Budget Amendment is passed and this tacit approval to all the unconstitutional spending of the past is blessed and forgiven, there will be no way to undo the damage and going forward it will become precedent that unconstitutional laws and all the spending to carry them out and enforce them will become established to use your modern day phrase, "business as usual" and the constitution will be further eroded and with more haste given up to the threats of eventual dissolution.
The other problem with supposed restricting of government to operate under a "forced" set of budgeting rules is that the government will always be in charge of evaluating and effectuating those rules and it is well established that government has very little compunction in "skirting the rules" and "winking at little circumventions of the rules" at its convenience.
The correct path is to eliminate all of the things that government does that are not constitutional.
As shown in Federalist Paper #45 by Mr. Madison, we in the original assembly assumed that the small number of employees
in the central government alone, as compared to all of the much more numerous state and county and municipal employees in total overwhelming numbers alone, would be a deterrent against a runaway federal government. Now we see that the total number of employees in the employ of the 50 states and the thousands of counties and the tens of thousands of towns and cities numbers 3.8 million and the number in just the one entity of the federal government is an astronomical 2.8 million in just the one level of governance. This is preposterous and is an abomination to us and completely anathema to the smooth workings of America as evidence in the astounding unholy alliances in equally as astounding corners and crevices of the gangling tentacles of your progressive monster of governance.
The reassembly has researched one good first step to go the hard route and utilize a scalpel approach to limit their size and scope and directly attack and arrest some of the most egregious affronts to the best interests of "the People".
This committee gives that researched example herein. It is a published high level budget and "haircut" as you say, to the structure and scope of the central government. On a personal note, it is my firm belief that the work of your Mr. John Stossel is a great contribution to present day America and if I can be so bold as to interject a personal observation of fact, Mr. Stossel is a fine national example of confronting power with truth, using truth to protect history, and using the lessons therein to protect the liberty of those who frequently need reminding of those liberties many of which are being lost with many other liberties already surrendered and lost.
The pen is in fact mightier than the sword and your Mr. Stossel employs it well and has used his quilled rapier as a fine fencer to slice many of the atrocities we in the reassembly have witnessed in the staggering federal expenditures and squandering of a great nation's treasury. We heartily support and recommend the following restructuring of your federal government's bureaucracy and spending using the fine work from the Summer of 2011 by your Mr. Stossel with input and recommendations as he acknowledges from your "Heritage Foundation" and "Cato Institute". His reporting and research and recommendation are also ours as presented and we include in the formal amendment the edict to enact the following cuts:
(Chris Edwards at Cato and Stuart Butler at Heritage, are credited with extensive work and detail. Mr. Stossel credits his staff with a few more of those shown. Put together the list below completely balances the budget to surplus the first year in effect):
Defense cut by 2/3: $475 billion (Federal Budget, pg. 58)
Medicare/Medicaid*: $441 billion (Cato Institute)
Social Security Means Testing: $170 billion (Heritage Foundation)
Eliminate Dept. of Education (includes Pell Grants): $106.9 billion (Cato Institute)
Social Security*: $85.7 billion (Cato Institute)
Eliminate Dept. of Transportation: $84.8 billion (Cato Institute)
Tax Amnesty: $80 billion (Rep. Jared Polis D-Co.)
Eliminate Dept. of Labor*: $78.6 billion (Department of Labor and White House)
Eliminate HUD: $60.8 billion (Cato Institute)
Eliminate Dept. of Agriculture*: $33 billion (Cato Institute)
Cut civilian employee compensation: $30 billion (Cato Institute)
Stop maintaining vacant federal property: $25 billion (Heritage Foundation)
Eliminate Foreign Aid: $21.2 billion (Cato Institute)
Eliminate Dept. of Energy*: $20.8 billion (Cato Institute)
Eliminate NASA: $19.6 billion (Cato Institute)
Federal Drug War: $15 billion (White House)
Earmark moratorium: $16 billion (Heritage Foundation)
Eliminate Fannie/Freddie Subsidies: $14 billion (Federal Housing Finance Agency (p. 10))
Eliminate Dept. of Commerce: $13.9 billion (Department of Commerce)
Eliminate Dept. of Interior: $12 billion (White House)
Legalize Pot, Online gambling, Immigrants: $12 billion (Rep. Jared Polis D-Co.)
Privatize Army Corps of Engineers: $10.6 billion (Cato Institute)
Cut federal employee travel budget: $10 billion (Heritage Foundation)
Eliminate National Science Foundation: $7.4 billion (National Science Foundation)
End EPA’s State and Local grants: $6.5 billion (Cato Institute)
Repeal Davis-Bacon: $6 billion (Republican Study Committee)
Privatize TSA: $5.7 billion (Federal Budget)
Cut Dept. of Justice’s State and Local grants: $5 billion (Heritage Foundation)
Privatize Post Office: $4 billion (White House)
Eliminate Small Business Administration: $1.8 billion (Small Business Administration)
Lease coastal plain of ANWR: $1.5 billion (Heritage Foundation)
Eliminate Federal Flood Insurance: $1.3 billion (CBO, pg. 3)
Abolish SEC: $1.3 billion (SEC)
Eliminate Corporation for National Community Service: $1 billion (Cato Institute)
Suspend acquisition of federal office space: $1 billion (Heritage Foundation)
End subsidies for public broadcasting: $500 million (Cato Institute)
Eliminate the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp: $480 million (Heritage Foundation)
Eliminate the FCC: $439 million (FCC)
Eliminate the Endowments for Arts/Humanities: $332 million (NEA/NEH)
Total Cut: $1,882,619,000,000
Current deficit: $1,645,000,000,000
Surplus Achieved: $237,619,000,000
(Research by Maxim Lott and Charles Couger.)
They don't need to drive us deeper in debt. THEY CHOOSE TO. "the people" and their 28th Amendment choose differently!
--
*Notes
Department of Energy is eliminated except for Nuclear arms maintenance
Department of Agriculture is eliminated, except for food programs for the needy
Department of Labor is eliminated, except for 26-week unemployment benefits
Defense budget would still be $243 billion, more than twice what the next highest country (China) spends
Medicare and Medicaid savings breakdown:
Block grant Medicaid and freeze spending (226)
Repeal 2010 healthcare law (87)
Increase Medicare premiums (39.8)
Cut non-Medicare premiums (37.7)
Cut Medicare payment error rate by 50% (28.6)
Increase Medicare deductibles (12.6)
Tort Reform (10)
Social Security savings breakdown:
Price index initial benefits** 41.1
Raise the normal retirement age** 31.4
Cut Social Security disability program by 10% 13.2
http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/blog/2011/07/29/take-chainsaw-budget-2#ixzz1c6xW24W7
Committee Recommendation #6 - Congressional Term Limits, Accounting, Simplification for Viewing by
Limits on Congress are set forth in the Amendment and explain themselves very well in listed form.
The "Imperial Congress" as we have labeled it as it exists in your time is being replaced with the "Citizen Congress" that was intended with "rotation" (term limits) employed to Congress just as it is in so many states and municipalities and as similar to the Presidential two-term limit etc. The scope of the rotation (term limits) and other limits for the new "Citizen Congress" (and Supreme Court) follows.
Term Limits and other Limits for both Houses of Congress shall be:
Term Limits
a) 3 two-year House Terms or
b) 2 six-year Senate terms or
c) 3 House Terms and one Senate Term for a total of 12 years maximum .
d) Members of Congress at the time of this Ratification shall be subject to the 3 Term and 2 Term and 12 year limit
retroactively and count all years previously served to determine if any of the 3 maximums have been reached
Retirement.
a) Members of Congress elected after Ratification receive no Pension and are not covered by any Government
retirement benefits.
Social Security
a) Members of Congress elected after Ratification participate in Social Security and FICA withholding to include
their time in Congress and Congressional withholding.
Health Care
a) Members of Congress elected after Ratification, are responsible for personally obtaining and participating in the
same health Care system as the American people.
Equal under the Law
a) All Members of Congress are subject to and must abide by the laws passed by Congress and signed into law
by the President.
b) This includes all laws currently in effect at the time of Ratification
Lengths, time for public review, and reference in the Constitution for the authority of all Legislative Bills
Legislative Bills of the House and Senate shall:
a) have a maximum of 200 normal font pages,
b) not have riders typically referred to as “earmarks” or similar add-ons of any other name
c) be restricted to one, “single issue” (a second subject/issue requires a second bill)
d) be limited to two attempted amendments per bill and 10 pages per each amendment
e) be prepared timely enough for two weeks of Congressional and public review and assessment
f) since each Congressperson and Senator takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United
States of America, all Bills introduced in Congress shall stipulate the source or sources in the Constitution that
gives Congress the power and authority to make the change submitted for consideration.
Continuing Resolutions" of Congress are prohibited.
New Mandatory Spending Programs
a) Congress and the President are prohibited from authorizing any new open-ended mandatory spending
programs whereby the commitment of the United States is open-ended and based on an indeterminate and
open-ended number of recipients and/or indeterminate future rates that are subject to substantially higher
cost fluctuations outside normal inflation rates or programs that are at the mercy of future demographics or
other indeterminable factors in the future. Extended programs authorized herein are to have defined
annual limits for each year authorized and every program is to have a defined duration not to exceed 12 years. This prohibition does not include expenditures associated with major declared war by the United States.
Term Limits for United States Supreme Court Justices shall be 18 years and terms for the current sitting Justices at the
date of Ratification shall be 18 years from the date of Ratification. (This shall dictate that on average a
President will appoint two new justices in a 4-year presidential term as a rough approximation of Presidential
expectations of Appointments.)
Committee Recommendation #7 - Restoring State Legislatures' Voices in Congress -
Repeal of the 17th Amendment
Restoring the States' power in the bicameral Congress may be the most important tenet of the
This was one of the most sacred of all of the compromises in this original assembly's deliberations
and as part of the famous "Connecticut Compromise" at the skilled hands of that State's most
respected delegate and representative, Roger Sherman. My Sherman's grand solution gave the great
Congress the great balance of power between the federal government and the several States.
That it was abandoned with the passage of the 17th Amendment is patently perplexing and the most
vexing are the reasons for this undoing of the delicate balances of powers.
It appears it was at the behest of convenience as the attendance of the great chamber, the Senate,
had impact from occasionally tardy election results and occasional problems certifying some elections
by particular State Legislatures in as timely a manner as the Senate was want to require. This
tardiness on the part of some state legislatures was, among other things, a nuisance for some in the
Senate as to the Senate decorum. It also gave birth to shenanigans of timeliness for seating for
particular voting participating to the adverse affect in the eyes of the losers. The result of taking the
election of its two senators out of the purview of state legislatures and into another popular vote election
was an absolute coup for the federal collective. Popular election of both Senators and House members
accrues more power to the people and it very effectively neuters the several state legislatures' power and
influence immensely to the point of being little more than a whimper with no direct voice heard in the
deliberations in the great national debates and deliberations by state legislature representatives.
The House was designed as "the People's House" and the Senate was designed as the "States'
House" and now progressives have with the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913,
effectively silenced the Senate's great diversity much to the delight of the adversarial federal level.
It was never intended for the federal level to amass this great power with one less check to its ascent
toward ease of massive "usurpations".
Committee Recommendation #8 - Immigration Fix and ongoing streamlining between local, state and federal
levels of authority and participation
Much work is still needed to set up the new rules for State and local FET level coordinating and function
of streamlining and expediting a large level of entry into the Immigration processing system. But prior to
setting up these enabling functions locally in cooperation with federal processing the following is of first
We see that it is understood by the populace in 2011 that the federal government has lost its ability to adequately
protect the borders as it is immensely occupied with inordinate amounts of unconstitutional matters some of the worst
of which are being consummately consumed with controlling and throttling - instead of the American borders - rather it is
intent on controlling every aspect of the American economy and throttling it with impeding and immense
market distortions, disruptions and suffocating regulation and causing complete disorder and distrust and
disincentives to ten of thousands of businesses to engage in current activity and certainly not expansion.
As a result of its disinterest and ineffectual and utter disregard for the wishes of the people we recommend that
the federal government has lost it’s exclusive franchise under the Constitution as the sole promulgator of Immigration law
and sole enforcer of Immigration policy. Rather than do its job, it has instead frequently ignored those along the border
and their requests and suggestions, fomented antipathy between ethnic groups with inflammatory rhetoric, and actively
worked against the desperate cries for help along the nation’s southern border (going so far as to file suit against the
State of Arizona for trying to protect it’s citizens with a coherent policy for enforcing laws that the federal government
has failed to enforce). As a result, this 28th Amendment broadens the jurisdiction of immigration law to include each
State’s right to promulgate their own reasonable immigration laws to essentially replicate federal law. This Amendment
upholds each State’s right to enforce those laws and bring the resources to bear to secure the border and process those
who break the laws of the Nation and the laws of the States. The federal government is ordered to recognize these
State’s laws and work in concert with them and provide resources needed to secure the nation’s borders just as fervently
as those State’s who are under siege from overwhelming numbers of persons illegally in the country.
The 28th Amendment is authorizing the States and certain of the State designated FETs to do the work
that the federal government is encumbered with and that is expected to swell to major new levels as the
work is undertaken to accommodate the absorption of approximately 5 million new guest worker permits
and as many applications for the 4-year residency program (green card) and approximately 3 million
one-time applications for citizenship.
There is a price to pay for all three by the incoming applicants and this is one more revenue source
being implemented in conjunction with "The Economic Fix (Revenue Side)" as set forth earlier.
The extensive nature of these programs are being given formal structure for application and processing
at the front end but also partnerships with FET businesses and corporations for massive education and
training centers and apprenticeships and internships and long-range planning for individuals as members
of long-range community planning efforts.
The complete new atmospheres planned and anticipated to be an overwhelming success for 21st Century
America are given in the supplements to the Amendment in the FET sections and have great promise
for re-establishing trust and faith and understanding and assimilating in a small town atmosphere where
people of all strips and backgrounds work and help each other in harmony and brotherhood.
Committee Recommendation #9 - Clarifications to 1) Religion, 2) Gun ownership, 3) precious metal ownership,
4) marriage, 5) adjudication limits, 6) Oath of Office, 7) National Sovereignty,
8) Life begins at Conception, and 9) English designated as America's
Due to on-going debate and research, the definitive background and additional
information gathering can be found at http://iso28.com
Committee Recommendation #10 - Restricting the Executive ("Dissolving the Czars" and the alternate
Judicial/Legislative Universe and substitute Government it Promulgates for
Alternative Power and Control)
Due to on-going debate and research, the definitive background and additional
information gathering can be found at http://iso28.com
Committee Recommendation #11 - Education superhighway in a new age of competing technologies and
methods and competition between states, between towns, and between
schools and school districts. Kids and parents choosing the best training for
The possibilities are unlimited as to what new technologies can come together to reclaim the
greatest educational system in the world again. The African-American population is depending
on this one thing like no other to catapult their achievements and attainments up and out of
the desperate failing institutions for learning at the hands of the central government and over-
bearing union environments and layers of administration to benefit administrators and union
One boon to both education and the economy is the planned remote teaching in alternating weeks and/or
months whereby FET families can travel during peak off-seasons of so many struggling resorts that have
massive vacancies in the off-season. With synchronized remote classroom participation for students and
class work assignments uniquely planned for remote on-line time at the convenience of the student and
their families, flexibility is abundantly available. By utilizing those off-peak resort times for family
work/study/relax trips as an orchestrated routine of FET work life and school life for FET families
the resorts win and the families win and the kids get new surroundings to learn which injects learning
Due to on-going debate and research on this topic, the definitive background
and additional information gathering can be found at http://iso28.com
