— by Odysseus
For a number of years now, we here at The Cassandra Times have pointed out the many problems and cover-ups done by the power elites to undermine the United States of America as the noble creation of Enlightenment-era ideals and concepts. Many — if not the majority — of Americans long for a return of the country to its previous days when they felt a greater degree of freedom of thought, action, speech, and opportunity. This longing to feel once again like the citizens of a great country instead of a despotic king’s lowly subjects is the cause of the popularity of presidential candidates like Republican Donald Trump and even Democratic Bernie Sanders. Although these two candidates may not have, as part of their platforms, a specific formula or may not even desire to increase individual liberty, the American people have learned over the past 35 years that “business as usual” means giving the populace “the business” while their liberties suffer correspondingly.
The very common knowledge that the elites and the existing power establishment loath and despise both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is more than sufficient reason for many disaffected voters to thumb their noses at the elites and to cast their protest votes. Some hope which is invested in these candidates is better than no hope. Even though the people may not be able to express or eloquently articulate their feelings, the last 35 years of America’s governance give them more than a niggling knowledge that they have suffered an enormous loss of liberty.
The only way to restore the American people’s lost liberty lies in the recipe created by the founders of this nation, whose primary goal was to somehow create, for the first time ever in human history, a nation-state whose primary purpose was to secure and to promote human liberty. Naysayers who want to decry that the founders were uninterested in human liberty because of the existence slavery should sit down and shut up because we here at The Cassandra Times will not be diverted withs their specious distraction. Their argument is intellectually and historically dishonest, which is indicative that they have no interest in an honest analysis considering the context of the times and political realities of the 18th century.
The primary purpose of the founding of the United States and to form a government was to place individual liberty as its primary objective. The founders sought to safeguard it from every historical danger that new nations have always faced. They sought to it protect from demagogues and mob-ocracy rule by limiting the powers of the central government and by restricting the right to vote to citizens with property they could potentially lose if they made the wrong choices. In current parlance, voters were required to have “skin in the game”.
American politicians have spent the past 200 years now, systematically pulling out all of the founders’ safety features. Instead, they empowered the federal government in Washington, D.C. and themselves while simultaneously dis-empowering both citizens and the various state governments. We now stand at a point where the unitary government inside the District of Columbia is a monolithic capital capable of ruling the citizens and country rather than simply providing government. Since absolute power corrupts absolutely, it is inevitable that members of this distant governing class appointed themselves as arrogant superiors and established a dictatorial oligarchy, which is intent on micro-managing our lives, our discourse, and our economy.
America is about to become the largest banana republic the world has seen since Rome. We here at The Cassandra Times view this precipitous decline as inevitable and irreversible, given human nature and recorded history. However, we feel compelled to lay out a plan to reverse course, should anyone be curious as to what such a course would look like. All proposals made here are possible without passing any new Amendments to the Constitution.
Problem 1: Disconnect Between Voting and Costs
Every power structure is dependent upon the use of and the flow of resources. These resources have been monetized by every civilization in history to increase the speed of the economy to efficient rates of transaction. Washington D.C.’s capacity to exercise dominion over the rest of the country rests, first and foremost, on its ability to control, direct, and take in capital. The direct connection between money and power must be made manifest to the voting public rather than concealed by layers of obfuscation and complexity.
Solution 1: Move the Tax Day
It is no accident that the April 15 “Tax Day” is as far from “Election Day” on the first Tuesday of November as the politicians can fit into the calendar. To re-establish responsibility, Tax Day must be moved to the last week of October so that the costs of government are still fresh in voters’ minds when they cast their ballots. In addition, all “income tax witholding” should be outlawed. Taxes should be paid by employees by the same methods as are currently paid by business owners, organizations, and entrepreneurs. Every working person should be paid a full wage and should be fully responsible for writing quarterly checks to cover all applicable income taxes, social security witholdings, Medicare, and any individual state income taxes. Outlawing deceptive governmental “hide the salami” techniques are bound to result in more responsible voter choices at the ballot box if the vote is held within two weeks of the annual check writing.
Problem 2: Inside-the-Beltway Mentality
The oligarchy’s sense of “community” and “superiority” stem from its members’ isolation from the rest of America. Inside Washington D.C., they only spend time around other elected officials and bureaucrats, their spouses and children, thus, forming a ruling class. Their children go to the same elite private schools, they marry each other, attend each other’s cocktail parties, belong to the yacht/country clubs, and shop (or send their hired help to shop) in the same stores. They never have to live with the consequences of their policies nor even talk to anyone who does. They need to start “living among the people”.
Solution 2: Banished to the Hinterlands
Washington D.C.’s bureaucracies must be dispersed. During the days of horse and buggy travel, the federal government and its various offices had to be in close proximity to each other for business to get done. Such proximity is no longer necessary in the information age. The various government mandarins should be forced to live and work out in the provinces. Other than the offices of elected officials, the various offices that make up the federal government’s bureaucracy should be shut down, dispersed, and the buildings should be shuttered until they can be sold to private sector buyers. For example, the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigations can be moved to Denver, Colorado. The National Security Administration can move to San Antonio, Texas. Health and Human Services can be moved to Cleveland, Ohio. The Department of the Interior can be moved to Provo, Utah. Every single bureaucracy, save the Pentagon, should be wholly moved to a decent-sized city in a state distant from the District of Columbia, each city and state different from where other agencies and departments are located. The effect of this reorganization of the federal government is to prevent the current mandarins from retaining their oligarchy and powers. They would be forced to live and connect with people who did not work in government, which will help them become more sensitive and mindful of the results and real world consequences of their policy decisions. The federal government needs nothing to be located in the District of Columbia except the elected officials, themselves, their skeleton staffs, and their secret service bodyguards.
Problem 3: Overabundance of Laws and Regulations
The rules and regulations promulgated by the federal government grow exponentially. While 21st century America may more populous, it is not so complex that it requires the astronomical number of laws and regulations which carry the weight of law and mandated punishments for disobedience. A big part of America’s palpable loss of liberty and sense of freedom comes from this minefield of rules and regulations through which the American people must tread in fear every day of their lives. This thicket of oppression grows more dense with every passing week. It has to stop and begin to be unwound. At present, regulatory agencies can create administrative rules and regulations that can result in the imprisonment of violators and harsh civil penalties even though the rules or regulations were never penned or reviewed or signed into law by any elected official. As we at The Cassandra Times have pointed out before, the existing government is not a republic of limited powers, but rule by diktat. It must stop.
Solution 3: Sunset Laws
All federal laws or regulations must have a mandatory five-year sunset clause after which they expire automatically. Each new rule or regulation passed, adopted or enacted by any federal agency/department/agency/bureau must first be signed into effect by the United States House of Representatives members of the committee that authorizes the budget for that governmental body and duly signed by the President, who is the head of all administrative government functions. No rule or regulation may be enforced or may subject the citizenry to prosecution without all such signatures. It is far past time that elected officials be held fully accountable for all actions taken in their name. If this means that they must spend a certain number of hours every day doing nothing but signing laws and regulations, then so be it. They had best get a comfortable pen to sign them with.
Problem 4: A Government Badge With a Machine Gun
In the end, tyranny is all about pure, raw power, which Communist China’s Chairman Mao Tse Tung noted flowed from the barrel of a gun. Over the past 35 years, we have seen an explosion in the number of departments, agencies, and bureaus that have been given “law enforcement” designations. This is an important distinction because it empowers these various agencies, which were set up as regulatory or promotional in nature, to suddenly have their own firearms, machine guns, badges, and spy equipment. They then request heftier budgets to set up and field their own SWAT teams and strike forces, which they, in turn, urgently feel the need to find something dramatic to do to justify their budgets. The tragic end result is exactly what you would expect to happen if you suddenly gave boots, badges, battering rams, armored vehicles, combat gear, and machine guns to the Humane Society or the March of Dimes. Bad things. The litany of accidents, abuses, tragedies, misappropriations, and abuses of authority and power by individuals within the myriad of agencies now so empowered are simply too numerous to count. No more babies and children should be shot or burned to death by heavily-armed regulatory agency personnel who conduct dynamic entries into apartment buildings. No more ex-wives and girlfriends/boyfriends should be electronically stalked by over-empowered bureaucrats.
Solution 4: We Don’t Need So Many Stinking Badges
All agencies given law enforcement officer (LEO) powers in the past 35 years must have these powers repealed. A full review of all agencies or departments or bureaus with LEO status should be done with overriding consideration to repeal those powers. All LEO work to be done by the federal government should be done only by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Marshall’s Service or the United States Secret Service. No other federal government body should be wielding guns and badges or have its own SWAT team inside the United States. Other agencies should be required to refer matters to one of the above three agencies if arrest or criminal investigation is required. Any law enforcement equipment or ammunition currently in the possession of other agencies should be either transferred to the FBI/Marshall’s Service/Secret Service or sold at public auction.
Problem 5: Unholy Mix of Politicians and Hollywood Celebrities
The nepotistic orgy between the ruling class of Washington D.C. and their brothel in Hollywood turns Americans’ stomachs. The opulence of the lavish parties and relations between the glitterati of Los Angeles, and the cognoscenti of Washington D.C. looks far too much like the Illuminati to the vox populi. The grotesque shenanigans of movie stars “testifying” (read: acting) before Congress on matters that interest them, but in which they have no actual expertise, has to stop. It makes us here at The Cassandra Times wonder if any members of the ruling elite has ever actually attended a history class, and, if so, absorbed anything from the French Revolution. Have they ever even heard the term Verseilles? Do they know just how much fury they engender with their Marie Antoinnette-like antics? As they shut down industry after industry and consign workers to unemployment and poverty in pursuit of their philosophical and Utopian fantasies, they will not be able to dismiss the unemployed, impoverished mob with a waive of the perfumed lace handkerchief they pull from their buttoned sleeve. Lace does not stop torches and pitchforks.
Solution 5: Put Down the Martini and Pull Up Your Pants
We at The Cassandra Times are not sure what legislation should be undertaken to stop the unseemly cavorting and consorting between the Hollywood glitterati and our so-called “public servants”, but it needs to stop. Now.
Problem 6: Centralization of Government Power
The core problem is attitude coupled with power. The federal government in Washington, D.C. should be required to re-read the 10th Amendment and to take it to heart. The federal government should not be about powerful interest groups imposing their will, desires, and self-interested policies on the less powerful. It should be the opposite. The federal government should not act not so much to change things as to leave things and people alone to find their own paths. The government in Washington, D.C. was not charged in the founding documents with the job of creating a Utopia in America, and it should not try to expand its narrow job description. If any “social experiments” are to go on, they should be solely the province of state governments, which are both geographically and electorally more responsible to their constituents and would-be victims. Our current government in Washington, D.C. acts increasingly like a colonial power with similar deleterious results. If some individual states pass laws or implement Utopian policies to “improve their societies”, at least their citizens have the option of voting with their feet and moving to states whose policies are more to their liking. An autocratic national government’s imposition of universal federal rules prevents the opportunity to observe what the public likes and does not like. Such a heavy-handed federal government deprives itself of the opportunity to observe the success or failure of certain states’ policies relative to other states and the resultant incoming and outgoing movement of people by which to judge the effectiveness of such policies. Only self important autocrats deem their own views to be so superior to any alternatives that they simply impose them on the people they profess to serve.
Solution 6: 10th Amendment Review
A full review of the various activities/policies/projects of the federal government should be made through the lens of the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Any activities or projects or agencies not directly connected to national defense against foreign powers should be reviewed whether or not they could possibly be performed by the states. The focus here should not be on efficiency or ease, but whether it can possibly be done at the state level. If it can be done, the duplicate federal department should be closed and its funds should be block granted to states, provided sufficient belief exists that the activities or projects should be continued.
Problem 7: Runaway Spending
There have been ample studies of bureaucracy and the pitfalls of public administration. We all know about the famous “Peter Principle” (“managers rise to the level of their incompetence”), Parkinson’s Law (“work expands so as to fill th time available for its completion”), and a hundred years worth of jokes about the efficiency of the Post Office. The fact is that the federal government never cuts its own budgets, they only grow, either fast or slow. Every department, agency or bureau, from the most essential to the least consequential, always wails and moans about not having enough money do do its job and demands more money every year. Then , in the unlikely event that any monies are not spent, they are hurriedly wasted at the end of the year on almost anything so as to be able to eternally repeat their refrain about not having enough money to do their ever-expanding list of self-appointed jobs. Bureaucracies are inherently wasteful, inefficient, and self-serving with a strong predisposition toward fiscal gluttony and obesity. To curtail the sclerosis and diabetes that have set in our federal government, the entire government apparatus should be put on a diet.
Solution 7: The Penny Plan
One penny from every dollar spent by the federal government should be automatically cut from its budget. Done away with completely. There should be an across the board 1% cut from every department, agency, bureau, program, subsidy or other expenditure, including welfare, pensions, and all entitlements of any kind. One percent is a feasible goal and we should try it, just to see what will happen. We expect there would be a lot of wailing, anger, gnashing of teeth, and dire predictions of doom, not to mention a good many layoffs of excess personnel. However, anybody still receiving 99% of what they received before, should still be mostly happy and will take it. All money saved should be immediately put to use within the same fiscal year toward paying down the national debt by buying back debt instruments much in the same way that a publicly-traded, private corporation buys back its own stock. The buy back should not immediately be at face value, but, rather, negotiated with the holders. The holders should be given the choice of getting money back now or holding the debt instruments to term, but the choice will give the doubters a way out and ensure renewed commitment from our continuing debt holders. Buybacks could occur every year with the 1%. The combination of greater enforced efficiency by government departments and the reduction in interest obligations will begin the process of restoring fiscal sanity to what has become a pig’s trough for opportunists of all stripes when the pig farmer is able to stick somebody else with the bill.
Problem 8: Endless Debt
The ruling class of Washington, D.C. follow in the footsteps of every entitled ruling class in human history. They always bust the monetary system by taking on reckless debt to enrich themselves, their families, their friends, and their underlings, and they love to indulge their every whimsy from the public purse. The public needs to snap the purse shut even if it takes a few fingers with it.
Solution 8: Moratorium on Debt
There have been many years of talk about a “Balanced Budge Amendment”, but any serious student of economics or history knows that neither governments nor advanced businesses can operate without credit. The government must have the same fiscal flexibility that individuals and business entities have to address crises large and small. However, this flexibility has been abused by our government as it has always been abused by governments throughout time. Congress must have its credit cards cut up and fiscal discipline must be imposed. The budget should be balanced in real time during the span of a few years rather than the usual setting of aspirational goals and heavy costs that will fall on someone else’s shoulders. What our government has done is no different than a parent who obtains credit cards in their children’s names and social security numbers, and then runs them up to the credit limit. Ordinary people go to prison for crimes of this nature, but, paradoxically, Congress does the same and its members get re-elected. Until the “Penny Plan” discussed above has a chance to start to seriously pay down the national debt, the United States House of Representatives must declare a balanced budget moratorium and America must learn to live modestly within our means for a few years.
We here at The Cassandra Times know well that such things as balanced budgets and moving agency headquarters to other states require presidential signatures and congressional votes that are not likely to be cast due to the entrenched interests of America’s ruling class. The above exercise was not one of realistic feasibility, rather one of possibility. We know our recommendations will fall on deaf ears and that the United States is doomed to become yet another Latin American banana republic in our lifetimes. However, it was well worth noting here that the restoration of our Republic is not a matter of impossibility, but a lack of leadership and will by a ruling class that is far more concerned with feathering its own nest than the good of the people.