Political Marketing 101: Let Voter Make the Buying Decision

Great salespeople know the secret: it’s really hard to sell someone something they don’t think they want or need. The best way to “make a sale” is to create a situation where a potential  buyer (the voter) make a decision that they really want what you’re selling; in fact, they decide they absolutely have to have it.

It’s the same with political campaigns – or ought to be. Candidates on the stump tell a particular audience what they think they want to hear. Certainly there are exceptions but generally they are trying to connect on the most superficial levels.

For several years now I’ve been developing a theory and I’d like your help in proving it can work.

Imagine if a candidate didn’t make the typical speech. What if they just asked you a series of questions and using your answers asked another and another…and another? What if at the end they had shown you that you were in total agreement with them and that they actually saw how what you proposed could work – and more importantly, benefit you?

Do you think that would be more effective than listening to promises and seeing no way that the promises could be accomplished? I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to make me prove it.

Here are just a few ideas for starting the conversation. You are free to ask about any of them or any other issues that matter to you.

• Reducing the size of government
• Improving education
• Fixing social security
• Balancing the federal, state or local budget
• Eliminating the national debt

Just post a comment like:  Why should we eliminate the Federal Department of Education? I’ll respond and we’ll start a dialogue which, I believe, will have you arrive at the conclusion I hoped you’d get to.

Again, I need your help in proving my theory. Tell your friends and followers to join in as well. If I’m right you’ll be able to pass this valuable marketing lesson on to the candidates you support at every level of government.

Who knows, it might actually be a way to restore the Constitutional Republic we were given by the Founding Fathers and have done such a wonderful job of screwing up.

The New Anti-Capitalist Conservatives

Wow, who would have ever believed that Republican candidates for president would be spouting anti-capitalist populist rhetoric?

Now, I’d better clearly state that I’m not a Romney supporter. Lots of questions about his conservative principles and his belief in original intent of the Constitution. Still….

Newt Gingrich says he’s not anti-capitalist, not anti private equity funds, not anti Bain Capital. He just thinks that Mitt Romney should have to explain the decision he made at Bain Capital, how the decisions were made and who was hurt by the decisions. Hey, Newt, he only has to explain them to his Board of Directors and his investors. Who else did you have in mind? Should you get to approve what Bain Capital did? If you were president would Bain Capital have to get your approval before they closed a plant? Would you get to approve how much money Bain made on a decision and weigh it against the pain it caused a local community? Would you have the power to block it if the profit versus pain ration wasn’t to your liking? That sounds more than a little statist and certainly not the voice of a “true conservative”.

And, now you Governor Perry! What make a decision or a deal “vulture capitalism”? So far as anyone can tell you’re just using the term for populist political expediency. Capitalism by its very nature has a winner and a loser in just about every deal. If a Texas-based company invented and marketed digital cameras would you tell them to sit on the development because it was going to cost thousands of workers at Kodak their jobs? Would you prefer to still be using those heavy, clunky black telephones we grew up with? How many people are losing their jobs because we’re all toting touch-screen cell phones and wi-fi tablets around? Oh, and one more question Governor, how many people will be negatively affected when you close those two…err…three Federal departments?

How can voters believe that either of you are true conservatives when you attack the very basic tenets of the free enterprise…entrepreneurial…capitalist system? How can we trust that you’ll reform Social Security or Medicare when there’s no way on earth to do it without causing anyone any pain?

You sound awfully Obamaesque making impossible promises where we cut and balance the budget, pay off the debt, go back to adhering to the limited government envisioned by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution…and none, absolutely none of the “little” people will get hurt.

How, Speaker? How, Governor? Unless you can explain that you haven’t destroyed Mitt Romney. You’ve destroyed your own candidacies.

Multiplying the Penn State Victims to the 10th Power

Full disclosure: I’m Penn State blue! Originally class of ’61 but didn’t actually receive my diploma until I proudly walked across the stage 45 years later in December 2006 at the age of 67. I fell in love at Penn State (first wife) and was mentored by a wonderful professional journalist H. Eugene Goodwin (a screaming liberal who even then couldn’t figure out how I was so conservative at the age of 20). And, finally, to end this preface, I met Joe Paterno once when we shared a flight to San Francisco, had breakfast together and Sue Paterno reminded me that we were a year apart on the Penn State Daily Collegian.

Okay, now to the point of this post.

No one can have anything but abject contempt for anyone who would abuse a child–sexually, physically or psychologically. If these charge are true there is no punishment too harsh for the person who perpetrated them or who, if they had knowledge, did nothing to stop them. My very first reaction when the story broke was to say that Joe Paterno had done what was required of him legally…but certainly not morally. Later, he issued a statement admitting as much when he said that in hindsight he wished he had done more.

What is bothering me more…actually incensing me…is the reaction of people like Geraldo Rivera of the Fox News Channel and Rick Santorum, a Penn State alum, former senator from Pennsylvania and candidate for the Republican nomination for president.

Rivera’s first reaction was to declare that Penn State should not be allowed to play that weekend’s game with Nebraska. In fact, he thought the entire remainder of the season should be cancelled. Brilliant thinking! If there are eight or 15 or 30 children who were harmed by Sandusky lets magnify the effects by harming thousands of student athletes who were an average age of eight to eleven years old when these crimes purportedly occurred. Football players who have worked hard and, by Rivera’s thinking, should be punished because a coach who left his position while they were still in grade school has been charged with heinous acts and because their head coach may not have acted properly. Guilt by association is an equally heinous act.

Santorum has joined the chorus that the Penn State football team should be banned from a bowl game…if they can earn their way into one. Others are calling for the extreme sanction of banning Penn State from bowl games for an indeterminate number of years. Congratulations to the NCAA for, so far, refusing to bend to irrational calls like this. NCAA sanctions are and should be reserved for violations of NCAA regulations. Penn State has been guilty of none of these and has usually been held up as the epitome of the way college athletics should be conducted.

But, the damage Rivera and Santorum and many others are trying to do doesn’t end with the Penn State football team. As they so contemptuously point out, football generates over $40 million in profits for the athletic department and the university. What happens to that money?

Swimmers and gymnasts, wrestlers and field hockey players–male and female–get scholarships. Those sports can’t sustain themselves so football pays the bill for them. Hundreds and hundreds of bills.

It may not be the finest part of the American way but there is little doubt that a winning football team is good for a university. It keeps alumni involved in their school. It attracts money that builds laboratories and endows chairs that attract scholars. It allows non-athletes to receive scholarships so that they can escape poverty or pursue careers that might have been out of their reach otherwise. Would Penn State be a better place if Joe and Sue Paterno had not given millions of dollars to expand the library? Not likely.

Would it have been better if scholarship money had not been available to people like television producer Donald Bellisario (also ’61) who said, when he endowed a $1,000,000 scholarship in 2001, “Growing up in a hardscrabble western Pennsylvania coal mining town, I know first hand the sacrifices that are made to give a son or daughter a university education…and as a Marine veteran who returned to Penn State with two small children and little money, I remember all too well that struggle. It’s my hope that this scholarship will also ease the financial burden of other young men and women who have defended our country to attain their academic goals.” Not likely.

Rivera and Santorum and others would say to the current 45,000-plus students at Penn State, to the faculty and staff and to the more than 500,000 living alums that you too must pay the price for the failing of four or five or six people. Is that justice?

All of us in the Penn State family are extremely disgusted by the charges against Jerry Sandusky. We are saddened by the image being portrayed in the media of a great state university that cares more about football than the children allegedly abused. What Rivera and Santorum et al are doing is staining everyone associate with Penn State. Will students be tarred by this brush so that employees will no longer consider Penn State graduates the best source of new employees as a recent study showed? Will alumni turn their backs on their alma mater. I’ll bet not.

Is that Rivera’s view of justice? Is that what Santorum wants to bring to the country?

Here’s a message for these two and any other who are so easily condemning the many innocent along with the few guilty. A blue and white pox on all your houses.

The Missing Argument

Mitt Romney gets slammed for the Massachusetts health care program. Rick Perry brings on a firestorm of criticism for providing in-state tuition to illegal alien students in Texas. There’s something being missed here!

Somehow, when it comes to campaigning, to trying to win hearts and minds…and votes…most of the Republican presidential candidates seem to forget one extremely important constitutional concept: enumerated powers (Article 1, Section 8, Numbers 1-17) and the 10th Amendment, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Why is the representative from Wisconsin or the former senator from Pennsylvania  telling the people of Massachusetts or Texas what they may or may not do? How different is that then the leftist-statist president telling the people of all 50 states what they must or must not do?

Gary Johnson has it right. Let the people of each state determine what it wants in health care, in educational policy, how it raises the funds needed to run their own state. The citizens of those states have the right to vote for a health care plan they want. They have the right to change their minds. And, they reserve the right to vote with their feet.

Maryland decided to implement a “millionaires tax” and they now are living with the results of that action. Millionaires either left the state or found a way to avoid paying the tax. Instead of bringing in extra money they saw tax payments by millionaires actually decline. Live and learn.

New Jersey has incredibly high property taxes and raised the sales tax. I voted with my feet. Sold the house and moved to Pennsylvania. Property taxes are 40 percent lower and the sales tax is one percent lower (and doesn’t apply to clothing).

Yes, the underwater houses and the difficulty in getting a mortgage make picking up and relocating difficult. But, it certainly isn’t as difficult and leaving the country when it’s a national law or tax you’re trying to escape. Besides, where would you go? To Greece?

If the voters in California want to continue to elect people who are profligate with their money, who want to impose ridiculous regulations on every aspect of their lives that is there choice. My choice is to avoid living there and contributing to an atmosphere I don’t agree with. If New York wants to tell me what I can eat when I go into a restaurant in that city then I’ll make the choice whether I patronize the eateries there.

You’re either a Constitutional Conservative who believes in limited government and states rights or you’re just a statist of a different stripe.

Principles are principles. Forget conservative principles and you will hand the 2012 election to Obama just as we did in 2008. The choice is ours…as it ought to be.

Cycles of Stupidity…Cupidity…Duplicity

Round and round they go in Washington and absolutely nothing gets done to solve the nation’s problems. Ooops, there’s the problem. We’re still looking to Washington to solve our problems and they are incapable of doing the one thing that will instantly make things better for the American people.

They refuse to shut up shop and go home! That’s only partially a joke.

The current crisis is, of course, the soon to be upon us reaching of the government’s debt limit. Day after day (that’s a cycle, just to clarify the title) the same men meet in private to stake out the same positions (that’s a cycle) so they can adjourn and step before the cameras and point fingers at the other side for being intransigent (cycle). The administration and the Dems want to raise taxes on the wealthy as part of their “shared sacrifice” theory of government.

Where is the Republican who stands up and says: “Okay…take it all. Every penny the top one or two percent earned last year. You’ve still got a $2 Trillion deficit for the year. Where do you propose to get the rest of the money? And, oh, yes, where do you expect the capital to start new companies and grow existing companies to come from once you’ve done that? Oops, no jobs!”

Instead we hear the same tired rhetoric day after day. “This is not the time, with the economy in bad shape to raise taxes on anyone.” Hey, GOP, when almost half the population doesn’t pay a penny in Federal tax that’s a really lame argument.

The President is asked if social security checks will go out on August 3rd if the debt ceiling isn’t raised and he responds that he can’t guarantee they will, or that the veteran’s checks will go out either. If he had any guts he’d say, “We’ll pay the debt obligations, then social security and the vets…and, if there’s any money left over we’ll pay the other government obligations like salaries for the bloated bureaucracy and the stupid grants like studying how shrimp run on a treadmill.”

For 40 years or more, through the oil crises of the 1970s, the intermitent soaring gas prices (cyclical in case you didn’t notice) of the 80s, 90s and 2000s, we’re told, by both parties at various times that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign energy. Instead it goes up and we ship trillions of dollars out of the country, create countless jobs in foreign lands and, it is generally, acknowledged provide capital for our enemies. We shut down drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, block offshore drilling on both our coasts and…in a blatant act of stupidity give something like $4 billion to Brazil so they can drill off their coast and, to quote our President, “become a major customer of theirs.”

There are so many more instances of stupidy it’s like trying to count the flies on a pile of dung.

What it is really all about, of course, is cupidity–the abject desire, the lust, to acrue more and more power. On the Dems side its really the ideological concept that government is the arbiter of first resort…that they, the intellectual elite (synonym: those with the ability to con the public into putting them into office) know better than anyone else how people should live, who should get and who shall give.  Honesty demands that we also acknowledge that on the Republican side they just want to take the power from the Dems so they can decide how the money sucked out of the pockets of the taxpayers will be spent. But, rest assured, if history is any teacher, spend it they will. Remember we’ve raised the debt limit something like eight times in the last eight years. If memory serves, five or six of those years there was a Republican in the White House.

There’s enough duplicity to go around and here, in the deceitfulness of speech, of talking out of both sides of our mouths we have to add another group to the denouncing of Republicans and Democrats. We, the people, are equally guilty of saying one thing and meaning another. As a Tea Party rally attendee I’ve seen the makeup of the crowds and the signs. Forget what the lame stream media and the demogogues on the left have said. The people aren’t all rich white folk, they aren’t racist or white supremecists and they aren’t all Republican operatives just there to embarass the nation’s first black president (assuming we can now overlook that Clinton was thought to be).

But, generally they were a bit older than the average and while they claim to be concerned about the future of their children and grandchildren (I have three) they also generally seem not willing to give up anything that’s “rightfully” theirs. Well, nothing, is rightfully theirs. When I started my post-college working career my maximum contribution to social security was two percent of the first $5,000 earned. I didn’t max out until my second year of work. So, I put approximately $96 into the fund the first year and $100 the second year. Yes, my contribution certainly increased over the years as I earned more and as the rate and earning limit was raised.

But, and this is really important, when I was born my life expectency was just under 64 years. I’ve been on social security (and I’ll admit that without it I’d be hard pressed to survive which is why I still work over 32 hours a week) for over seven years. I don’t know this for certain but it is likely that I received every penny I paid into the system within the first three years. Since I have an aunt who passed away at 96, another who died recently at 94 and an uncle who will be 97 in December, there’s a good chance I’ll be taking money out of the system for another 10, 20 or 30 years. I have the right to say (stupidity) that I paid into the system and expected to be able to live nicely in my old age (cupidity) and that you don’t have any right to touch what was promised…which would, of course, make me guilty of duplicity in compounding the problem.

The point is we have to break these cycles. We have to stop doing stupid things with taxpayer monies–funding ridiculous research, paying out billions of dollars in fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid claims and generally shredding the Constitution to advance political agendas. We have to stop ourselves and our elected officials from being guilty of cupidity…this is after all a republic–if we have the courage to keep it. And, finally, we must stop being duplicitous and allowing others to deceive us with empty rhetoric.

So easy to say…so difficult to achieve.

So, you think you want to win the White House…

The GOP is poised to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It’s a recurring pattern and it looks like we may be repeating it again.

Circle the wagons! We’re surrounded by the progressive liberals! Ready. Aim. About Face. Fire! Oops.

Paul Ryan puts forth a full-blown plan for fiscal salvation, for reducing the size of government, for reducing the national debt (although far too slowly for this old man), for trying to really fix the entitlement mess raather than just tinkering at the edges. All but four Republicans in the House of Representatives support it and…

The liberal media goes nuts. The sophistry and the demagoguery explode. Ryan and the GOP are killing seniors (even though no one over the age of 55 is affected one iota, even though those under 55 will have a choice of how they want to take care of their health care). The President of the United States, the man who said he wanted to end the partisan bickering, attacks the plan and its author. (We won’t mention he did it after inviting Ryan to sit in the front row so he could be attacked up-close-and-personal. Well, maybe we will mention it.)

What happens? Most of the GOP House members who just voted for the Ryan plan dive under the nearest rock and hide. Gutless wonders! Newt Gingrich, the architect of the 1992 Contract with America, announces his candidacy for the Republican nomination on Saturday and on Sunday–one whole day later–says the Ryan plan is “radical” and “right-wing social engineering”. Dumbass!

Maybe I’ve missed it but has anyone heard proported front-runner Mitt Romney come out in support of the Ryan plan? Or, has anyone seen a plan from Romney that’s better? Well, for that matter has he come up with any plan at all? No, he’s too busy raising a billion dollars to run. Just what American needs…a man dedicated to the simple goal of getting himself elected president.

Rand Paul, the darling of the Tea Party and a man who, it must be said, does stick to his libertarian principles, pulls the bonehead statement of the year (and it’s only May) by saying he wouldn’t have ordered the Navy Seals to get bin Ladin. Is he kidding? Even if it’s true and even if, as president, he wouldn’t have ordered the intrusion into another country, couldn’t he have had enough sense to just keep his mouth shut? Yes, he’s sticking to his principles and that’s really, really great to see but he sure as hell offended a hell of a lot of Americans.

Here’s a challenge to all the wanna-be presidential candidates. Announce or get off the pot. Your politcal posturing, deciding when or if to enter the fray isn’t serving the GOP, the conservative cause or the American people. It’s about you and many, many of us are sick and tired of that.

We want it to be about us. About the future of our country, the future of our children and grandchildren. We want it to be about the principles of the Constitution, of limited government, of fiscal sanity, of free enterprise, of less regulation and sensible energy policy (hell, any energy policy).

Sarah! In or out? Michelle! In or out? Mitch! In or out? Rick (Perry or Santorum)! In or out? All of you unannounced self-aggradizing, scheming non-candidates. In or out?

Now, when we’ve got a field of candidates lay out your plans for America’s future. How will you get us back on track? Be straight with us. Be prepared to defend you positions. Ignore the jerks in the main-stream media and take your case to the American people. Explain it in terms that relate to our lives. We can’t deal in trillions…or hundreds of billions. Talk to us in terms we can understand. Explain why the current administration hasn’t been able to get the economy growing at anything resembling an even modest pace. Show us what getting government out of the way of the entrepreneur will mean. Make it clear that we don’t need new regulations and, equally clear, that if you or your company violate the laws of the country, commit fraud on the taxpayers, pollute the environment or violate any of our laws…you will be prosecuted and you will go to jail.

Do all of this without mentioning (to borrow from Harry Potter) “he who will not be named”. I don’t oppose the person. I oppose his liberal-progressive policies, his vision of the United States as just another nation among equals, his belief in social justice and income redistribution. I oppose these policies, these visions, these beliefs from any President of the United States, white, purple, brown, green or magenta. Ergo, I can’t be a racist. I can be a proud, concerned and involved American.

I call upon all conservatives, Constitutionalists, Republicans and thinking Americans to ignore the man who occupies the White House. Let this election of 2012 be about issues, about visions, about our children and their children.

I Am Waiting…

With sincere apologies to Lawrence Ferlinghetti whose 1958 poem of the same title inspired this post,
although many of the ideas here are quite likely diametrically opposed to his.

I am waiting
for all Americans to understand
that no system is perfect,
just that ours is
the least imperfect of them all.

And I am waiting
for those same people to decide
that it is long past the time
when we must honor our history
and our heritage
and live up to our potential
as a beacon of individual opportunity
for the oppressed, the poor,
and the downtrodden
around the world.

I am waiting
as my grandparents did
for the world to see an America
where the streets are paved with gold
not because that is the reality
but because that is the dream
all people have…
that they can control
their own destinies and,
with hard word and fortitude,
achieve virtually anything.

I am waiting
for the Constitution
as amended
to be restored to the meaning
and intent
that our Founders
risked “their lives, their fortunes
and their sacred honor”
to give us.

And I am waiting
for those we elect
to acknowledge
that the best government
is that which governs least and
I am perpetually waiting
for the people
to refuse to be bought
by those who don’t get that message.

I am waiting
and praying
for the day
when the only American
who has his hand held out
wants to shake mine.

I am waiting
for the demogogues,
of the left and the right,
black and white,
rich and poor,
to abandon their sophistry
and fly right.

And I am waiting
for the past to be put
where it belongs
so I’m no longer expected
to apologize for slavery
or denying women the right to vote
or causing anyone grief
over their choice
of how to pray…
or not pray
if that is an act
of their choosing.

I am waiting
for the parents of America,
the mothers and fathers
of our nation’s children,
to decide that they should control
what their children eat and learn
and how they behave.

And, oh yes,

I am anxiously awaiting
their taking their responsibilities
seriously.

And I am waiting
for them to tell the statists
and bureaucrats
what to do with the dictums
and rules
coming out of Washington.

Civilly, of course!

And I am waiting
for America to get
it’s financial house in order
so I can stop worrying
about my grandchildren’s future.

And I am waiting
not for the meek
to inherit the earth
but for them to become strong
and earn their way
and prosper
and grow shamelessly rich.

I am waiting
for Madison or Jefferson,
Adams or Hamilton
to return
in a rebirth of wonder.

And I am waiting,
waiting, waiting, waiting
for the schools to teach
the children words and phrases
like enumerated powers,
limited government,
and general welfare
and what they really mean.

I am waiting
for the churches,
synagogues and mosques
to rise up
in righteous indignation
that government has usurped
their function
as the sanctuary
of the poor,
the providers of succor
and aid
in a rebirth of faith.

And I am waiting
to be left alone
to my own devices
so I can wax rich
without guilt
or be poor
without shame

I am waiting
to gather on the steps
of the capitol
in a redress of grievances
without the media or political hacks
calling me rabble,
racist or malcontent.

Yes, I am waiting
waiting, waiting
but time is running out
for me
though I pray
not for America.

If you’ve got your own verse, please post it here!

The Single Greatest Threat

The national debt is spiraling out of control threatening the future of our children and grandchildren yet it does not qualify as the single greatest threat to the American form of government.

Nor, for that matter are stimulus plans and bailouts, carbon taxes and financial or health care “reform”. Each will have an impact, albeit major, but they can be modified and re-reformed or even repealed without permanently damaging the nation.

All these efforts to “radically transform America” are important but are really just skirmishes being fought around the core principle of our republic. It is the attack on that core principle which is the single greatest threat to our freedoms and liberties.

We are losing our most basic concept—that the United States is a nation founded on the rule of law rather than the rule of men.

It is fashionable in conservative circles to heap all the blame on the Obama administration. Truthfully, they are just the latest manifestation of the decades—perhaps century—old movement away from the fundamental Constitutional principles set down by our Founding Fathers and the Framers.

Arizona’s SB1070 was passed to protect the citizens of that “sovereign” state from an informal invasion by foreigners which was threatening their economic survival and, in some cases, their very lives.

The Federal government sued Arizona claiming, under Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 4, that it had sole Constitutional right to establish rules of naturalization; to determine who could come into the country and who could become a citizen.

It is obvious to any sentient person that along with the power granted by Paragraph 4 there is the responsibility to fulfill its Constitutional duty. That there are 10 million or 12 million or 20 million “illegal” residents of this country serves as prima facie evidence that it has failed to do so.

What if the nation of Mexico decided that its citizens—residing in southern portions of Arizona, New Mexico, California, and around El Paso, Texas, were being treated unfairly?

What if Mexico decided to send army troops into these areas to protect the Mexican nationals living there? That’s what Nazi Germany did with the Sudetenland in the run-up to World War II.

What if the Federal government which is granted exclusive power under Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 11 to declare war failed to take any steps to block this invasion of foreign forces onto American soil?

If the governors of these four “sovereign” states called up their national guard units; if individual citizens took up arms they are permitted to have under the Second Amendment; would the Federal government have the right to sue them under the supremacy clause?

In other words, can the Executive Branch—the White House and the Department of Justice—stop Americans from defending their homes, their businesses, their states from foreign invasion even when they fail to exercise their Constitutional duties?

Yet it isn’t just today’s hot-button immigration issue which demonstrates we have been losing the Rule of Law which made the United States so unique and so prosperous.

Abuse of the power of eminent domain—and here states and cities are most often at the forefront—whereby an owner’s rights are negated, their property taken and, rather than it being used for public purpose (the original intention of eminent domain), it is transferred to another private party who will use the land in such as way as to increase the taxes paid to the jurisdiction.

Our Rule of Law is under attack on so many fronts.

When the Department of Justice can adopted a policy of not prosecuting voter intimidation cases against minorities against the majority we can expect to see more and more of it.

When a jurisdiction decides that the way to right some perceived social wrong is to grant one citizen six votes while others have only one, we are in danger of losing everything that made this country unique…and great! What happened to the time-tested practice of just gerrymandering a district to assure a certain election result?

When a single elected official, by refusing to enforce the laws of his jurisdiction, can allow convicted felons—barred from voting by statute—to cast ballots and, quite possibly, altering the results of a U.S. Senate race, our liberty is in great jeopardy.

When it takes more than 2,000 pages of legislation, intentionally written so loosely and obtusely that it will take 10,000 pages of regulation to put it into practice, we are actually being governed not by elected officials but by bureaucrats over whom we have absolutely no control and no recourse.

This is the single greatest threat to our republic; the demise of the rule of law—from the edict chiseled above the entry to the Supreme Court “Equal Justice Under Law”—from which their may well be no return.

The Ten Commandments and the Constitution

Everyone – Christians and Jews and even atheists and agnostics – knows the biblical tale of Moses and the Ten Commandments. He went up unto the mountain and came down with the two tablets containing God’s immutable commandments.

Were they written in crayon? Of course not! They were chiseled in stone so that they could not be changed by the whims of man.

“Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

It doesn’t say thou shall not commit adultery unless you become unhappy with the choice you made; or, perhaps, because your co-worker is unhappy and you just want to do a good deed and try to make her life better; or, because someone is comelier, shapelier and sexier.

It says, simply, don’t do it!

“Thou shalt not covet.”

Take a look at the Second Book of Moses, known as Exodus, Chapter 20 and you’ll find this: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.”

Has anyone within the Obama administration ever read that passage? It sure doesn’t sound like God is in favor of income redistribution. I’m pretty certain that if you can’t covet someone else’s possessions you can’t take them.

Yep, there it is: “Thou shalt not steal.”

The American Constitution may not have been chiseled in stone by the hand of God but it wasn’t written in watercolor ink either. It wasn’t meant to run and become illegible because someone shed a sorrowful tear.

Whether it’s Wall Street bankers or Silicon Valley techno geeks, fast food entrepreneurs or wizards of the cinema, what they earn with their knowledge, their skills, their talent, their hard work and fortitude; what they get back for the financial and personal risks they were willing to take – it’s theirs and theirs alone and no one who didn’t work as hard or learn as much or risk anything is entitled to it.

Biblically or constitutionally – that’s stealing.

Spreading the wealth around, known in fashionable Liberal-Progressive circles as income redistribution – well, that’s certainly coveting.

Sort of makes the Obama Administration seem downright ungodly and damned unconstitutional.

Sophistry and Sassafras

The Obama administration Most politicians engage in wholesale sophistry – the subtle and tricky, seemingly plausible, but really fallacious arguments – that have only one purpose – to mislead us.

“You can keep your doctor” – assumes new government controls on every aspect of the health care industry doesn’t drive your medical care provider out of the business.

“If you make less than $250,000 you won’t see a dime in new taxes” – wants you to accept that “they” only mean income taxes. You’re not supposed to reason that increased government regulations and fees on the financial sector, health care, home mortgages, student loans and carbon emission (everyone who uses energy) will drive costs up and that those will be passed on to us, the consumers, in the form of higher prices.

“Everyone benefits if you spread the wealth” – oh, Lord, where do you begin with the true meaning of that.

Taking just one year’s worth of public pronouncements and analyzing them for the sophisms they contain would take 10 years and produce a volume with far more pages than War and Peace.

Succinctly, here – boiled down — are a couple of truths of the matter.

Either the vast majority of our political leaders, not just in Washington but in state capitols and county courthouses, are guilty of virtually perpetual sophistry or, equally possible, they are just plain stupid.

On the one hand they are seeking to mislead us with specious arguments that seem to be rational or they aren’t capable of thinking through their words and actions to see the true result of their legislation.

Haven’t got a clue which is worse!

Unfortunately, the politicians are not the only ones who deserve the blame for this state of affairs. We, the voters, must admit to culpability in the matter.

Acceptance of the sophistic arguments rewards the politicians who offer them and, as can be expected, we get more and more of it. On the other hand, when a candidate appears who tells us the unvarnished truth, who has thought out plans, programs and solutions to the problems facing our nation, state, county or town, we almost always reject them.

“Hope and change” wins over “sacrifice and do without” – not that McCain offered that up, of course. His presidency, like George W Bush’s, would just have seen the government and it’s tentacles grow at a slower, seemingly more reasonable pace.

There are people out there who seem to eschew the sophistry of the political class – most notably, for me, Paul Ryan (R-WI) who has the courage to lay out his plans in writing and seems to be really telling it like it is.

Unfortunately, while he can get elected from his congressional district in Wisconsin, that’s a far cry from being elected President of the United States. His fix for Social Security alone is going to piss off almost every voting group that exists.

Oh, and let’s not forget, those eyes of Ryan’s just aren’t telegenic. Aren’t we shallow?

There are others who show some promise – or at least seem to be speaking for fiscal conservatives and constitutionalists (like myself): Pallin (lot’s of baggage), Bachman (so far reactive rather than proactive), Kanter (oops, Jewish) and Christie (wow, worst I can say about him at the moment is that he’s overweight).

Remember the movie A Few Good Men? Well, here’s the question you have to answer if you really, really want to change the way our politicians and our government function. “Can you take the truth?”

Otherwise you we are just going to get fed more and more sophistry and sassafras (the bark of the root is used in soda pop). That’s the choice: hard truths or lies and feeding your sweet tooth.