What if We Could Rewrite the Constitution To Fix the Republic

By Rich Kozlovich

Culture is a universally accepted set of foundational beliefs and perceptions that lead to the formation of a society, presumably, and hopefully, a stable society.  We now have an issue with what’s universally accepted. So, what if we could rewrite the Constitution? There’s a lot of talk about an Article V Convention to fix all the issues confounding America today.

Well, that’s interesting because we no longer have a universally accepted cultural foundation as the left has undermined all the traditional values that created the nation by infiltrating the nation's institutions, including religion, education, unions, entertainment, the media, big corporations, and the departments of the federal government working surreptitiously behind the scenes to destroy the American identity, the American culture, the American economy, and the Constitution.    While many were aware of this for decades, we're now discovering just how bad the corruption has been with all these DOGE exposures, and how bad the federal judiciary has been contaminated.  

Also, we don’t really know what would happen if an Article V convention was convened. While I’ve read conflicting opinions, I’m convinced once the states decide the Constitution needs serious adjustment via an Article V Convention, that Convention can pretty much go wherever and do whatever it darn well pleases. Just because it may start out with just wanting a balanced budget, there’s nothing preventing them from going way beyond that.

There is absolutely no outline, rules, or restrictions in the Constitution for what an Article V Convention may do, but it was the clear intent of the Founding Fathers that neither the Congress, the President of the United States, nor the courts can interfere, in any way by simply not saying they could interfere, or make rules up to control the Convention.  Since the Constitution failed to outline any restrictions, there are no restrictions.

But what would everyone want in a new Constitution?  It’s hard to say, but make no mistake, without conservatives taking strong stands, willing to be rocks in the current and bravely facing the slings and arrows from the left, the left would go full Marxist, and the Pravda media would beat their drums 24/7 in support of the worst possible outcome, and many so-called conservatives would fold like the invertebrates they are.   But here’s what I think should be done.

For years I’ve been saying we need a 28th Amendment to fix the biggest mistake the Founding Fathers made. Lifetime appointments to the federal judiciary, and while giving the Congress the right to determine the jurisdiction of the courts, they failed to define boundaries for the courts.

Of course, at that time, the only federal court was the Supreme Court of the U.S., but that’s changed dramatically over the years. Now there are 94 district courts, 13 circuit courts, and one Supreme Court, and each and every one of them is shot full of not very bright, incompetent political hacks, including SCOTUS, the only Constitutionally mandated federal court.

All the rest are creations of Congress, and any one of them can be eliminated by Congress, which Congress did in the 19th century. Believe it or not, once again, the Constitution gives Congress the authority to determine the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary, not federal jurists, nor SCOTUS.   My position has been since Congress refuses to put the federal judiciary in its place, it’s my view has been there needs to be a 28th Amendment creating term and age limits for the federal judiciary, and done so in this manner:

There are three levels of the federal judiciary: The District level, the Appeals level, and the Supreme Court. Each level should have a ten-year limit, with a review after five years requiring a majority approval by the Senate. At each level, each nominee would have to go through the same process, even if nominated to a higher court, before they finish their term in a lower court. If their term runs out and they’re not nominated to a higher court, they may be nominated at some point in the future. No jurist can return to a lower court if their term runs its course at a higher level, and no jurist can ever be appointed to a court if their nomination to any court has ever been rejected by the Senate.

No jurist may serve after the age of seventy. Make 9 Justices a Constitutionally fixed number to avoid the kind of court packing FDR attempted to do, and Joe Biden and the Democrats are attempting to do now.

But as time has gone by, I realized that wasn’t nearly enough to fix the nation.   Do not be deluded, the nation is in the midst of a third revolution, and the courts are part of that insurrection.  

You know those commercials that spout, “But wait. There’s more!” Well, I decided what’s needed is “a lot more” in an all “New and Improved” 28th Amendment. An all-new and improved omnibus Amendment addressing a host of Constitutional issues in order to fix the nation. I’ve added seventeen sections to this amendment.

My new and improved 28th Amendment:

1. I would not only fix the judiciary with term and age limits, and fix the number of SCOTUS members at nine, and given some of the rulings now coming from the judiciary from some who were foreign born, require all federal judges to be natural born citizens.  It should also include term limits for all federally elected officials. Three two-year terms for the House of Representatives. 
2. Repeal the 17th Amendment, and give Senators one six-year term.   The Founding Fathers created the House to represent the people, which is why all tax bills must originate in the House.   The Senate was to represent the states. Senators were appointed by the states to be de facto ambassadors to the central government in order to prevent what we’re seeing right now, a federal government that's out of control.
3. All federally elected officials may be recalled by their states. The House members by public vote by whatever margin the states may choose, and Senators by agreement between their state legislatures and their governors.
4. Repeal the 16th Amendment. End income tax.
5. Eliminate the Federal Reserve and return the nation’s financial responsibilities to the Legislative and Executive branches, in order to make them accountable.
6. Repeal the 26th Amendment that gave 18-year-olds the right to vote in federal elections, and raise the voting age to 30. The right to vote should be earned, and that can only be done with time. By age 30, people’s brains start to work properly.
7. Create sunset mandates that cover all laws, regulations, taxes, and government agencies. And these sunset clauses should include all departments of the federal government except State, Treasury, Justice, Interior, and Defense.
8. Congress shall define in the clearest possible terms the five permanent departments must recognize the Constitution is the law governing government, and state all regulations are in fact de facto laws that must be approved by Congress, or face charges of treason, or sedition,
9. Every budget the House of Representatives and the Senate send to the President must be balanced, and the Congress must present a yearly budget to the President, by a specified date. If they fail to do so, they will cease being paid until it’s approved.
10. Retire the national debt, with a hard debt limit. A debt limit that can only be overturned by approval of three-fifths of each of the houses of Congress and the President of the United States.
11. These five departments should be eliminated entirely:  the Department of Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Energy, and Labor. All others can be folded into the five permanent departments, or preferably become agencies, bureaus, etc, all with five year sunset reviews.
12. Make all federally elected officials, and their staffs, employees of their state's government ending their federal employee status. The states shall determine the size of their staff, and fund employment benefits for all.  All federal retirement funds for these personnel shall be sent to the states for appropriate distribution and definition. Security and office space shall be provided by the Federal government.
13. Strengthen the First Amendment, and specifically end New York Times v. Sullivan where the Supreme Court gave the media the right to lie without consequence.
    
14. Strengthen the Second Amendment preventing local or state authorities from passing gun laws without the approval of Congress and the President of the United States.
15. Washington D.C. is a city that shall be totally governed by the federal government and cannot have representatives in Congress, as was originally intended by the founding fathers.
16. No state may change the Electoral College system requiring all their electoral votes to go to the popular vote winner.
17. Strengthen immigration restrictions, stating immigration into America is not a right, it's a privilege, and end birthright citizenship.  Only children born of legal immigrants who become citizens can have citizenship via birth, and that right will automatically be bestowed when legal immigrants become citizens.

And that’s the way I see it. What say you?

Critically Thinking about America's 2025 Priorities

A Wish List that covers a lot of ground...

John Droz jr. Jan 02, 2025 @ Critically Thinking About Select Societal Issues

There are many “lists” this time of year. This commentary by Stephen Moore (and originally published in the Daily Caller), is excellent.

One improvement I’d make is to include fixing the K-12 school curricula — especially in Science — in #6. The importance of School Choice pales in comparison to the significance of 55± million of our children being indoctrinated by Left ideology, and being taught the opposite of Critical Thinking (conformity). Regretfully almost no one (other than the Left) is paying serious attention to K-12 content.

Another observation is that nothing was said about improving the policies of our healthcare agencies — e.g., the FDA and CDC. Arguably their unscientific policies likely caused the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans (e.g., see here and here). As concerning as our healthcare costs are (see #5), the federal healthcare policies are significantly more important.

“Here is my wish list for the incoming Trump administration to make America healthy and prosperous and great again in 2025.

1. Slash Job-Killing Regulations

The regulatory state is a $2 trillion tax on the American economy. We all want worker safety, a clean environment and consumer protections, but in too many cases the costs of regulations far outweigh the societal benefits. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to slash 10 rules for every new rule. Just do it, Mr. President.

2. Make The Trump Tax Cuts Permanent

As JFK, Ronald Reagan and others have proven throughout history, lower tax rates lead to more growth, more investment and more jobs. The Trump tax cuts meant that a typical family of four earning $75,000 a year saw their tax bill fall by half — a benefit valued at more than $2,000. And the corporate tax rate fell from 35% — the highest in the world — to 21%, bringing jobs and capital to America. Trump has promised to make all these tax cuts permanent. Why? Because they worked almost exactly as we anticipated they would.

3. Replace Welfare With Work

Growth will require more able-bodied Americans getting off welfare and into jobs. Welfare — which includes cash assistance, public housing, food stamps, disability payments, unemployment benefits and Medicaid — needs to be a hand up, not a handout.

4. Use America’s Abundant Natural Resources

America has well more than $50 trillion of natural resources that are accessible with existing drilling and mining technologies. This is a vast storehouse of wealth that far surpasses what any other nation is endowed with. We can use the royalty payments and leases to reduce our national debt while creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.

5. Cut Medical Costs by Demanding Health Care Price Transparency

One of many ways to bring health care costs down to consumers (and taxpayers, who pay half the costs) is to require hospitals, pharmacies, doctors and health clinics to list prices for what they are charging. The Committee to Unleash Prosperity estimates that $1 trillion to $2 trillion could be reduced from health care costs, with no reduction in the quality of care, by allowing consumers to shop around on the internet for the best price — just as we do when we buy groceries, a home or a car. This will foster free market competition and lower prices.

6. Allow School Choice for All Families

Test scores in America have been plummeting. Kids are graduating from high school — if at all — without even being able to read the diploma. America no longer ranks in the top 10 in many academic achievement ratings. A child can get a better education at half the cost in the Catholic school system and in many charters. Trump has endorsed universal school choice for all children regardless of income or ethnicity or race. This is the civil rights issue of our time.

7. Implement A Pro-America Immigration Policy

Trump’s committed to securing our border, but we also need legal immigrants through a merit-based immigration system. This visa system would select immigrants based on their skills, talents, investment capital, English language ability and education level. These characteristics all presage success in America.

8. Revive America’s Great Cities

Our once-great cities in America — from New York to Chicago to Detroit to San Francisco to Seattle — have come to look like war zones. Crime has run rampant. Businesses and people and capital are fleeing and leaving the poorest Americans — mostly minorities — stranded with tragically limited opportunities other than working at Walmart or McDonald’s for minimum wage. Since 2020, our major cities have lost nearly 1 million residents. And tens of thousands of businesses.

Trump wants to revitalize our cities and abandoned rural areas through deregulation, reduction in tax rates, changes in zoning policies and infrastructure investments.

9. Pull the U.S. Out Of The Paris Climate Change Treaty And Other Anti-America Agreements

We must end American participation in globalist treaties that hurt America most. This includes the Paris Climate Accords — a treaty with which most other nations have failed to comply, yet which places huge burdens on American companies and workers. Trump also has pledged to end global taxation — such as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s global minimum tax. Do we even need a United Nations?

10. Finally, Drain The Swamp

There is a reason why three of the five wealthiest counties in America are in or around Washington, D.C. Washington is getting rich at the expense of the rest of us. Fewer than 10% of overpaid federal workers (of which there are more than 2 million) are working full time in the office even though COVID-19 ended three years ago. These are swamp employees that often get paid $150,000 or more a year. Fire them if they don’t show up. And relocate federal agencies in other cities.

These are admittedly bold aspirations for an economic transformation toward freedom and free enterprise. But the one person who can get it done is Trump.”

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.” The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Here is other information from this scientist that you might find interesting:

I am now offering incentives for you to sign up new subscribers!

I also consider reader submissions on Critical Thinking on my topics of interest.

Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2024 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time - but why would you?

Leave a comment

Share

Thanks for reading Critically Thinking About Select Societal Issues! Please pass a link to this article on to other associates who might benefit. They can subscribe for FREE to receive new posts (typically about once a week).

Here's What I Believe, What I Don't Believe, and The Fix

By Rich Kozlovich 

Editor's Note: I originally ran this on May 19, 2022, with a couple of comments worth viewing. For some reason it's been hit a lot in the last 48 hours, and as I re-read it I thought, given what's going on, this needed to be republished with some updates. Enjoy! RK 

The insanity I've seen displayed over the last sixty years years has been mind boggling. I wish I could have said things have improved.  While we have great technology and advancement, plenty of food, at least until now, good medical care, until now, and longer lives, we have to consider what's happening to the American culture.  Conclusion?  It hasn't improved.  I wish was completely wrong.  I'm not!  

Here are the things I believe. 

 

I believe the left hates Trump even when he does things they like, just like they hated Nixon, who promulgated more far left policies that impact our culture and economy than most 20th century presidents, including the EPA, OSHA and more, much more.  And they hated him.  Why?  Because he was an anti-communist, and that's what tells the tale about who the left really is.

 

The mental gymnastics leftists and RINO's must go though to criticize Trump, and conservatives, has been remarkable.  The media's irrational rantings have been so outrageous you can't help but laugh.  The lies, misdirection, logical fallacies Democrats spew out about conservatives is so obviously false I wonder how their mind became so twisted.  Whether they believe what they're saying it or not. 

 

I can honestly say I didn't like Trump yesterday, I don't like him today nor will I like him tomorrow, as a person.  When I say that to my conservative friends they respond:  Who does?  But we all agree, he's a leader!  And as President of the United States, I believe he may possibly be one of the greatest Presidents this nation has ever had, even with a split Presidency.

 

I believe the RINO's and Neo-Cons hate Trump because he wants to dismantle a system that's made they and their friends powerful and wealthy.  In that regard, the left and the RINO/Neo-Cons, are in harmony and explains why they've been so cozy hoping to even now destroy Trump in order to keep him from running for President again.  

This has exposed the RINO/Neo-Cons, like Liz Chaney and others, for who and what they are.   That will help define who and what the Republican party is and will be.  They're the reason the Republican party has been consistently called, and acted like, the Stupid Party.  

 

Here's what defines a Republican as a RINO. 

1. They are totally out of touch with their base.  A base that subscribe to traditional American Judaic/Christian values.
2. They're actually more in harmony with the Democrat left.  
3. They have no sense of loyalty or justice and are totally self-serving.
   
4. They take actions that are clearly detrimental to the nation for political or financial gain. 

There's a lot of talk about draining the swamp and fixing the Deep State, but that would take a lot more than rolling back a few liberal left wing initiatives.  It requires an entire restructuring of the liberal/leftist/progressive vision and central power governing structure, and the initiatives they've insidiously imposed on the nation through regulations, spending and taxes. That can't be done without restructuring government by eliminating whole departments of the federal government. 

To fix it you must shrink it, and that must be done on a massive scale, and that includes eliminating the Departments of Labor, Energy, Education, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development and Transportation.  Combine Home Land Security and Veterans Departments with the Department of Defense.  Combine Agriculture and Interior.   Remember, the Post Office once was a Department, and now it's not, and it should be joined by those I've listed here, and that includes the frighteningly large number of agencies that work for those departments.   

 

Let's take the Department of Agriculture which is a massive and expensive self serving boondoggle.  A vast bureaucracy with a budget of some $130 billion.  That's larger than the farmer's net income.  It redistributes funds according to formulas created decades ago and is a massive hog trough of federal funding.

• $20 billion in various crop “supports” to the nation’s wealthiest farmers
• $5 billion in ethanol subsidies 
• Grants that amount to welfare to the wealthy, and food stamps to the poor.  

While the department does good things that need to be retained we have to recognize their real mission!  Mostly to provide cash to political constituents.  It needs purged. As it is now:

• Too many "Americans" think government is the answer and not the problem. 
• Too many Americans don't think they're Americans.
• Too many Americans hate America.
• Too many Americans are remarkably ignorant of American history.
• Too many Americans fail to realize how unique American style republican democracy is in all of world history.
• Too many Americans graduate from school semi-illiterate, and amazingly ignorant.
  
• Too many Americans graduate from college filled with false information and assumptions about how the world works, or should work, and are arrogant in their ignorance.
• Too many Americans no longer are people of faith, and as a result have no moral foundation other than the latest philosophical flavor of the day, and that's a foundation of shifting sand.
  

Is it any wonder society is being washed back and forth like waves crashing against the rocks to its destruction?  

Here's what I don't believe:

• I don’t believe Social Security will there for my children and it may not be there for me for much longer. Social Security was supposed to stop being self-funding by 2020 and bankrupt by 2030, and it will go bankrupt with the federal government owing the Social Security fund trillions of dollars they borrowed with non-redeemable bonds.  (Here's the  Summary of the 2021 Annual Reports, Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees)
  
• I don't believe our children and grandchildren will have a better life than we did.
• I don’t believe Medicare and Medicaid can survive the decade.
• I don’t believe crony capitalism will be less but more – especially since this pattern goes back to the Whiskey Act of 1791.
• I don’t believe those who left California because they made a mess of it won’t attempt to make a mess of the states they moved to. Currently residents of Democrat run states are fleeing in droves to Republican run states, but they're probably going to take the ideas that destroyed the states they're leaving and vote for them in the states they're moving to. 
  
• I don't believe spending billions will end poverty.  Colorado is a perfect example.
  
• I don't believe spending billions will fix homelessness.  California spent billions to fix homelessness and it only dropped one percent.  Even if those billions amounted to only "two billion that would come to 1.3 million to get one person off the street".
• I don't believe you can convince liberals their leftist philosophy has been the most irrational, misanthropic and morally defective belief system in all of world history.  In spite of the most recent and ongoing human disaster leftists imposed on Venezuela.  Millennials all want us to still "Feel the Bern."
• I don’t believe the national debt can be paid unless the government sells its assets - which amounts to 150 trillion dollars – and they won’t.
  
• I don't believe diversity and multiculturalism, is anything more than a leftist scheme to undermine and destroy the American identity, the American culture, the American economy and overturn the U.S. Constitution.   Diversity without accomplishment is incompetence without consequence. 
  
• I don't believe the world's economy is stable.  The unending amount of debt the world's nations has accumulated, and continues to accumulate, is going to cause a worldwide economic depression.
• I don't believe the EU can survive to 2025, but certainly by 2030. 
  
• I don't believe Europeans can tolerate the Muslim invasion much longer without civil war breaking out all over Europe if Europe wishes to be European.
  
• I don't believe the Middle East or anywhere in the world that's dominated by Islam is fixable.
• I don't believe Russia or China can withstand an international economic down turn, let alone a collapse.
• I don't believe a nation that abandoned the moral foundations that made them great can survive. 
• I don't believe large corporations are concerned about anything except the next quarterly report, and in no way will they support anything considered conservative, in their views, their actions or their philosophy, even if it impacts their profit margins. 
• I don't believe any of the problems listed above can be fixed until public education is fixed.
• I don't believe public education can be fixed until the federal government is forced out of it.  
• I don't believe public education can be fixed unless the states follow Governor Ron DeSantis' lead and pass legislation to teach the truth about communism and all the other leftist clabber.  
• I don’t believe academia can be purged of its far left Frankfurt School aficionados unless we stop funding these universities with taxpayer dollars and student loans. They can't be fixed until they have to become self supporting "for profit" institutions.
• I don't believe there is such a thing as man made climate change.
• I don't believe green activists aren't anything but dishonest, irrational, misanthropic and morally defective misfits.
  
• I don't believe spending can be brought under control without repealing the 16th Amendment. 
• I don't believe you can reduce corruption in government without repealing the 17th Amendment. 
• I don't believe the federal government can be fixed without passing a 28th Amendment creating term and age limits for Congress, and the federal judiciary, nor do I believe the judiciary will remember it's proper role until age and term limits are imposed.
• I don't believe government can be fixed without passage of a 29th Amendment creating sundown laws for all federal  departments, agencies, bureaus and any official agency of the federal government, and all federal laws and regulations, with the goal of reducing the size and scope of the federal government.

So what is it that I really believe?  I believe leftism is like rust.  It never sleeps.

Government: Bloated but Fixable

November 4, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

To augment my four-part series on the economics of government spending, here’s a video from Prager University explaining how big government doesn’t work.

The video, narrated by Professor Joshua6 Rauh of Stanford, highlights three major types of spending and finds that bigger government has produced bad results.

Education: Per-pupil spending has increased enormously but there have been no improvements in student performance. Indeed, the video shows that huge spending increases in places such as California and Chicago have led to declining test scores. Not that any of this should be a surprise. Just a couple of days ago, I wrote about how Florida is getting great results while spending less.

Medicaid: Taxpayers finance an enormously expensive Medicaid program ($800 billion and counting), yet research shows that all that money does not produce better health outcomes. Though it does produce record levels of waste and fraud, so I guess that counts for something.

Welfare: There are dozens of redistribution program, the net effect of which is to discourage work and mobility. As Thomas Sowell wisely observed, “We have all heard the old saying that giving a man a fish feeds him only for a day, while teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime. Redistributionists give him a fish and leave him dependent on the government for more fish in the future.”

The video is a grim assessment of how big government has weakened America. But it actually understates the problem. As I wrote earlier this year, the burden of spending is going to significantly increase over the next couple of decades because of demographic change and poorly designed entitlement programs.

In other words, America has a major fiscal problem!

The video concludes by observing that America would be better off if more people understood Reagan’s wisdom about government being the problem rather than the solution.

I obviously agree. And I also agree with the message that the economy would perform better with much smaller government, like we had before FDR’s failed New Deal.

Fortunately, we know how to fix the problems. The video highlighted three major types of government spending, so let’s show the best way of addressing these problems.

Education: The simple answer is school choice. Good for students and good for taxpayers (though bad for teacher unions).

Medicaid: Block grant the program and let states learn from each other on the best way of providing health care to the indigent.

Welfare: Building on the success of Bill Clinton’s welfare reform, get Washington out of the business of redistribution.

Fixing these three problems would be a big step toward more growth and more freedom. As we also know how to fix Social Security, Medicare, agriculture, housing, and transportation.

So a much smaller government (which would be consistent with the vision of America’s Founders) is conceivable. But I fear we’ll have to wait another four years before we can even begin to think about it.

Saving America by Accepting the Most Acceptable Imperfection

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”– Alexis DeTocqueville

By Rich Kozlovich 

On March 18th Paul Engel published what I think is an excellent article explaining what's needed to be done to fix the mess the federal government has turned America into, Uncle Sam has become all too powerful thanks to the 16th Amendment.  He starts with a well done history of taxes in America saying:

The income tax didn’t start with the 16th amendment; it started in 1862 to fund the Civil War. Since it was a consistent revenue stream, the income tax was sold to the people with a warning that it was necessary, the promise that it would be limited by a person’s income, and was scheduled to expire in 1870. However, that did not make it constitutional. Most likely due to the urgencies of the war, though, this tax was never challenged in court...

He goes on to explain the founding fathers view of federal tax collection saying:

Yes, Congress can collect taxes. Duties, imposts, and excises are simply different types of taxes that Congress can collect. Notice, however, that there are only three things Congress can collect taxes for:

1. To pay the debts of the United States.
2. For the common defense of the United States.
3. And for the general Welfare of the United States.

Three things, that's it!  All else was supposed to fall under the domain of the states, aka, the 10th Amendment.  He has a lot more to say that's worth reading, so I suggest reading the entire article.

I've said so often, as long as you feed the beast it will continue to grow, that's the 16th Amendment, and the 17th Amendment made the 10th Amendment meaningless.  That made the Commerce Clause the bludgeon used to impose government mandates and directives on everything that goes on in America.  That and all the environmental laws passed by Ricard Nixon.

1913 was a seminal year in American history passing the 16rh, and 17th Amendments and creating the FED. Teddy Roosevelt, who like Wilson, believed the Constitution was an impediment to human progress, along with his progressive pals, (Romney and his ilk are their philosophical progeny) had a lot to do with bringing all that into being, with the clear intent of undermining the Constitution. 

I list who I think are the worst six Presidents of the 20th and 21st centuries in this order, and why:

1. ) Teddy Roosevelt, as he gave credibility to the progressive movement, which gave,
2. ) Woodrow Wilson the foundation to create a fascist government, and WWI gave him the excuse.
3. ) Franklyn Roosevelt as he turned Wilson’s fascist regime into the New Deal and created the massive Deep State we deal with now. 
4. ) Richard Nixon as he took all that and made federal agencies all powerful by creating a ton of environmental laws, including that nightmare Endangered Species Act, and created the EPA and OSHA.  
5. ) Jimmy Carter because of his stupid geopolitical meddling we now have a worldwide Muslim jihadist movement that's the greatest threat to western civilization since the fall of the Roman empire to Islam.  And his even dumber meddling in economics that caused the mass economic downturn in 2008 due to his 1977 Community Investment Act.   
   
6. ) Followed by the almost 12 year Obama/Biden administration, as I view all that Biden is doing is at the direction of Obama and his myrmidons.  As bad as the others have been, they didn't want to destroy America, Obama/Biden does.
   

You will notice I didn't list Clinton, and the reason why is compared to them, he wasn't that bad.  Compared to Reagan, not so good, but he wasn't much worse than all the other presidents, and a legitimate argument can be made he was better than either Bush.

There were only three conservative Presidents in the 20th century, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Ronald Reagan, and Coolidge was the best of them all.   Philosophically I find Calvin Coolidge and Donald Trump have much in common, albeit their character and personalities are night and day.  But they knew what had to be done and were unafraid to do it.  However, I don't see anyone with the guts, or the ability, to create a movement for a Constitutional change to repeal the 16th and 17th Amendments. 

So, where does that leave us?  Accepting the most acceptable imperfection!

My grandfather was one of the world's great economists.  He said if you spend more than you make, you'll go broke.  What did he do for a living? He was a coal miner and a farmer.  Economics isn't all that difficult, unless you're an economist, a politician, or a government bureaucrat.

Having said that, meaningful changes can be made, and those changes start with this one foundational concept.  Stop borrowing, and stop spending, and do it now! Not spread out over time, as that can, and will, be curtailed by some future Congress, and do it massively!!!!! 

 Where to start? 

 

Start with eliminating the number of federal employees, massively, all of whom are making more than those in the private sector, and doing far less.  Eliminate 80% of the 438 agencies and sub-agencies of the federal government, and do that by "massively" cutting their funding in the budget, including the Departments of Labor, Energy, Education, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development and Transportation.  Combine Home Land Security and Veterans Departments with the Department of Defense.  Combine Agriculture and Interior.   

 

Remember, the Post Office once was a Department, and now it's not, and it should be joined by those I've listed here, and that includes the frighteningly large number of agencies that work for those departments.  I can assure you, based on my experience in life, we won't miss the massive levels of corruption, incompetence, and dereliction of duty that's become an absolute stench in the offices of the federal government, and it's an expensive stench.

Can the Republic be fixed?  Mike Vanderboegh once stated:

“This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can’t be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won’t be done. The Founders’ Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.”

“But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.”

One of my favorite sayings is: 

 

"We all want perfection, but the best we can hope for is the most acceptable imperfection."  

 

The most acceptable imperfection is the democratic, small government, conservative, capitalist, Judaic/Christian, God given rights, Constitutional Republic of the United States.  You know, like the one the Founding Fathers created. 

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

A Victory Over Big Government

February 29, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Today I’m going to share some good news. A needless government bureaucracy was officially abolished last year.

• Sadly, it was not the Department of Education
• Sadly, it was not the Department of Transportation
• Sadly, it was not the Department of Agriculture
• Sadly, it was not the Department of Energy
• Sadly, it was not the Department of Housing and Urban Development

No, Washington politicians did not get rid of a significant bureaucracy.

But a journey of a million miles begins with the twitch of a first step. So I’m happy to annouce that our Lords and Masters were finally convinced to get rid of…(drum roll, please)…the Federal Tea Board.

Eric Boehm wrote about this (underwhelming) victory in Reason. But if you don’t have a subscription, here’s an excerpt from the official notice from the Federal Register last September.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA or the Agency) is announcing the termination of the Board of Tea Experts by the Federal Tea Tasters Repeal Act of 1996. This document removes the Board of Tea Experts from the Agency’s list of standing advisory committees. FDA is also updating the statutory citation to the Federal Advisory Committee Act to reflect recodification. This technical change aligns with the desire of Congress to incorporate various provisions that were enacted separately over a period of years.

I’ll add one final detail to this story, something that will illustrate the breakneck speed of bureaucratic action.

Here are some excerpts from a 2017 article published by Smithsonian, and pay close attention to the final sentence.

For 99 years, the United States government employed a group of people to check the quality of incoming tea by tasting it. …The Board of Tea Experts, as they were called, was created as part of the Tea Importation Act of 1897. …thus the Board of Tea Experts, a group of men with finely-tuned tongues on the lookout for bad teas. “Tea tasters, working in FDA offices around the country, examined every lot of imported tea, using standard teas selected by the Board for comparison,” the FDA writes. …At the time the office was closed, it employed a head tea taster, chemist Robert H. Dick, an assistant tea taster, Faith Lim, both based in Brooklyn, and two further tasters at the ports in Boston and San Francisco. Its total annual cost: $253,500, or about $400,000 in today’s money. …It wasn’t until 1996 that the government passed the Federal Tea Tasters Repeal Act.

Amazing. A low is enacted in 1996 and we have to wait until 2023 for the Federal Register to put the final nail in the coffin.

Almost makes Amtrak and the Postal Service seem fast by comparison.

P.S. Thanks to the Federal Reserve’s bad monetary policy, $253,500 in 1996 is akin to about $500,000 today.

Why the CIA No Longer Works—and How to Fix It

October 2023 | Volume 52, Issue 10

By Charles S. Faddis Author, Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA

The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 3, 2023, during a conference on “U.S. Intelligence: History and Controversies.”

We need the CIA, but we also need to recognize the uncomfortable reality that the CIA is not performing at the level we require. It is not keeping us safe. It must be repaired, and it must be repaired quickly. The CIA was created after World War II with one overriding primary mission—to prevent a reoccurrence of what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. We were never going to allow an enemy to surprise us on that scale again. We were never going to find ourselves blind regarding a threat of that magnitude and immediacy. We would be forewarned and forearmed.................There are two reasons: bureaucratization and politicization.

BUREAUCRATIZATION

Forget for a moment all the gadgets and technology. The core business of the CIA is recruiting spies inside target organizations, handling them securely, and producing intelligence for policymakers in Washington, D.C...............At its heart espionage is a very old business. Its essence has remained unchanged for thousands of years. And it is not a science—it is an art. There is a reason intelligence officers talk about tradecraft. Espionage requires innate skills. Not everyone can do it...............

POLITICIZATION

On September 11, 2012, two American compounds in the Libyan city of Benghazi were attacked by a well known Islamic militia with a history of attacking Western targets. One of the compounds, occupied by the Department of State, was overrun. The American ambassador to Libya, who was visiting from Tripoli at the time, was killed..............Throughout the attacks on the compounds, a continuous stream of reporting was sent to Washington from the field. All that reporting told the same story: a large-scale assault had been launched on two American-occupied compounds by a heavily armed Islamic terrorist group.

Nevertheless, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others in the Obama administration began to peddle the narrative that a peaceful demonstration in Benghazi had simply gotten out of hand—that this was not an act of terrorism. The backlash against this transparent lie was immediate. The Obama administration came under scathing criticism...............Enter Mike Morell, acting director of the CIA, who stepped forward to take the blame for the erroneous claims of a peaceful demonstration. Analysts at the CIA, Morell said, had written an assessment to this effect, and he had passed it on to the White House. Obama and company were blameless. The CIA had given them bad intelligence. This was absurd on its face. ...................

SOLUTIONS

If the CIA is critical to our survival—and I believe it is—we need to appoint someone to run it who knows the terrain. The new director will have to understand what is meant in describing espionage as an art..............The new director must, from the very beginning, make crystal clear that there is no more business as usual, that the organization is returning to its roots and getting back to basics, that there will be zero tolerance for any involvement in domestic politics—and that individuals who involve themselves in politics will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  A significant number of senior officers should be removed immediately. Some of those officers are complicit in the actions I detailed above.......................To Read More...

 

What would it take to Eliminate the Deep State?

Wallace Garneau | Dec 1, 2022 | Constitution, Elections, Media, Politics, 

Welcome to Biden’s America, where Americans suddenly find they either cannot afford to heat their homes anymore or must cut back on other spending to do so. CNN is reporting that millions of Americans are planning to go without heat this winter as they cannot afford both heat and food.

The government, in the meantime, is planning to audit the American middle class with an IRS that is three times as big as it was a year ago, to raise an additional one trillion dollars in taxes – at the cost of roughly a trillion dollars in legal fees the middle class will now pay every year to protect itself from a newly aggressive IRS.

We will pay two trillion more a year to give one trillion to the IRS, and one trillion to members of the American Bar Association, which also just happens to be the biggest lobbying group in the country. You might say that the American Bar Association has been bribing the American government with the American people’s money in order to get the government to give more of the American people’s money to the American Bar Association. Though many Americans can no longer afford to eat, we will have almost as many IRS agents as Russia has troops in Ukraine, ensuring that every dime of tax money the IRS wants to collect gets paid............To Read More....

It is URGENT That We Lawfully PRUNE FEDERAL POWER NOW

by Patricia Anthone | Aug 18, 2022 | Constitution, Politics

How did America come to be “governed” by an entrenched ruling class, and what can we do about it?  It’s human nature to see to “first things, first”; to steward our own households’ immediate needs before diverting focus outward.  In a peaceful, prosperous, and largely well-ordered society (where the average person does not face physical peril in the course of routine living), WE HAVE THIS LUXURY. In fact, we expect that having entrusted those we elect with overseeing law enforcement, basic infrastructure, foreign relations, and other civic affairs, we are free to live our lives.   

This, paradoxically, is the precise reason that the cultivation of a “ruling class” becomes inevitable; a noxious weed that becomes ever-more invasive, intrusive, and oppressive; threatening to consume the very society it was entrusted to serve. And while this is happening, be it years or decades in process, most people will be reluctant to risk anything on the “home front” in pursuit of correcting the problem. Only when sufficient numbers of people suffer a “nearly nothing to lose” position at the hands of such oppression is consequential revolt likely.

Tytler’s Cycle has often been used to show this path.

............To Read More....

 

Here's What I Believe, What I Don't Believe, and The Fix

By Rich Kozlovich

The insanity I've seen displayed over the last sixty years years has been mind boggling. I wish I could have said things have improved.  While we have great technology and advancement, plenty of food, at least until now, good medical care, until now, and longer lives, we have to consider what's happening to the American culture.  Conclusion?  It hasn't improved.  I wish was completely wrong.  I'm not!  

 

Here are the things I believe. 

 

I believe the left hates Trump even when he does things they like, just like they hated Nixon, who promulgated more far left policies that impact our culture and economy than most 20th century presidents, including the EPA, OSHA and more, much more.  And they hated him.  Why?  Because he was an anti-communist, and that's what tells the tale about who the left really is.

 

The mental gymnastics leftists and RINO's must go though to criticize Trump, and conservatives, has been remarkable.  The media's irrational rantings have been so outrageous you can't help but laugh.  The lies, misdirection, logical fallacies Democrats spew out about conservatives is so obviously false I wonder how their mind became so twisted.  Whether they believe what they're saying it or not. 

 

I can honestly say I didn't like Trump yesterday, I don't like him today nor will I like him tomorrow, as a person.  When I say that to my conservative friends they respond:  Who does?  But we all agree, he's a leader!  And as President of the United States, I believe he may possibly be one of the greatest Presidents this nation has ever had, even with a split Presidency.

 

I believe the RINO's and Neo-Cons hate Trump because he wants to dismantle a system that's made they and their friends powerful and wealthy.  In that regard, the left and the RINO/Neo-Cons, are in harmony and explains why they've been so cozy hoping to even now destroy Trump in order to keep him from running for President again.  

This has exposed the RINO/Neo-Cons, like Liz Chaney and others, for who and what they are.   That will help define who and what the Republican party is and will be.  They're the reason the Republican party has been consistently called, and acted like, the Stupid Party.  

 

Here's what defines a Republican as a RINO. 

1. They are totally out of touch with their base.  A base that subscribe to traditional American Judaic/Christian values.
2. They're actually more in harmony with the Democrat left.  
3. They have no sense of loyalty or justice and are totally self-serving.
   
4. They take actions that are clearly detrimental to the nation for political or financial gain. 

There's a lot of talk about draining the swamp and fixing the Deep State, but that would take a lot more than rolling back a few liberal left wing initiatives.  It requires an entire restructuring of the liberal/leftist/progressive vision and central power governing structure, and the initiatives they've insidiously imposed on the nation through regulations, spending and taxes. That can't be done without restructuring government by eliminating whole departments of the federal government. 

To fix it you must shrink it, and that must be done on a massive scale, and that includes eliminating the Departments of Labor, Energy, Education, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development and Transportation.  Combine Home Land Security and Veterans Departments with the Department of Defense.  Combine Agriculture and Interior.   Remember, the Post Office once was a Department, and now it's not, and it should be joined by those I've listed here, and that includes the frighteningly large number of agencies that work for those departments.   

 

Let's take the Department of Agriculture which is a massive and expensive self serving boondoggle.  A vast bureaucracy with a budget of some $130 billion.  That's larger than the farmer's net income.  It redistributes funds according to formulas created decades ago and is a massive hog trough of federal funding.

• $20 billion in various crop “supports” to the nation’s wealthiest farmers
• $5 billion in ethanol subsidies 
• Grants that amount to welfare to the wealthy, and food stamps to the poor.  

While the department does good things that need to be retained we have to recognize their real mission!  Mostly to provide cash to political constituents.  It needs purged. As it is now:

• Too many "Americans" think government is the answer and not the problem. 
• Too many Americans don't think they're Americans.
• Too many Americans hate America.
• Too many Americans are remarkably ignorant of American history.
• Too many Americans fail to realize how unique American style republican democracy is in all of world history.
• Too many Americans graduate from school semi-illiterate, and amazingly ignorant.
  
• Too many Americans graduate from college filled with false information and assumptions about how the world works, or should work, and are arrogant in their ignorance.
• Too many Americans no longer are people of faith, and as a result have no moral foundation other than the latest philosophical flavor of the day, and that's a foundation of shifting sand.
  

Is it any wonder society is being washed back and forth like waves crashing against the rocks to its destruction?  

Here's what I don't believe:

• I don’t believe Social Security will there for my children and it may not be there for me for much longer. Social Security was supposed to stop being self-funding by 2020 and bankrupt by 2030, and it will go bankrupt with the federal government owing the Social Security fund trillions of dollars they borrowed with non-redeemable bonds.  (Here's the  Summary of the 2021 Annual Reports, Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees)
  
• I don't believe our children and grandchildren will have a better life than we did.
• I don’t believe Medicare and Medicaid can survive the decade.
• I don’t believe crony capitalism will be less but more – especially since this pattern goes back to the Whiskey Act of 1791.
• I don’t believe those who left California because they made a mess of it won’t attempt to make a mess of the states they moved to. Currently residents of Democrat run states are fleeing in droves to Republican run states, but they're probably going to take the ideas that destroyed the states they're leaving and vote for them in the states they're moving to. 
  
• I don't believe spending billions will end poverty.
• I don't believe spending billions will fix homelessness.  California spent billions to fix homelessness and it only dropped one percent.  Even if those billions amounted to only "two billion that would come to 1.3 million to get one person off the street".
• I don't believe you can convince liberals their leftist philosophy has been the most irrational, misanthropic and morally defective belief system in all of world history.  In spite of the most recent and ongoing human disaster leftists imposed on Venezuela.  Millennials all want us to still "Feel the Bern."
• I don’t believe the national debt can be paid unless the government sells its assets - which amounts to 150 trillion dollars – and they won’t.
  
• I don't believe diversity and multiculturalism, is anything more than a leftist scheme to undermine and destroy the American identity, the American culture, the American economy and overturn the U.S. Constitution.   Diversity without accomplishment is incompetence without consequence. 
  
• I don't believe the world's economy is stable.  The unending amount of debt the world's nations has accumulated, and continues to accumulate, is going to cause a worldwide economic depression.
• I don't believe the EU can survive to 2025, but certainly by 2030. 
  
• I don't believe Europeans can tolerate the Muslim invasion much longer without civil war breaking out all over Europe if Europe wishes to be European.
  
• I don't believe the Middle East or anywhere in the world that's dominated by Islam is fixable.
• I don't believe Russia or China can withstand an international economic down turn, let alone a collapse.
• I don't believe a nation that abandoned the moral foundations that made them great can survive. 
• I don't believe large corporations are concerned about anything except the next quarterly report, and in no way will they support anything considered conservative, in their views, their actions or their philosophy, even if it impacts their profit margins. 
• I don't believe any of the problems listed above can be fixed until public education is fixed.
• I don't believe public education can be fixed until the federal government is forced out of it.  
• I don't believe public education can be fixed unless the states follow Governor Ron DeSantis' lead and pass legislation to teach the truth about communism and all the other leftist clabber.  
• I don’t believe academia can be purged of its far left Frankfurt School aficionados unless we stop funding these universities with taxpayer dollars and student loans. They can't be fixed until they have to become self supporting "for profit" institutions.
• I don't believe there is such a thing as man made climate change.
• I don't believe green activists aren't anything but dishonest, irrational, misanthropic and morally defective misfits.
  
• I don't believe spending can be brought under control without repealing the 16th Amendment. 
• I don't believe you can reduce corruption in government without repealing the 17th Amendment. 
• I don't believe the federal government can be fixed without passing a 28th Amendment creating term and age limits for Congress, and the federal judiciary, nor do I believe the judiciary will remember it's proper role until age and term limits are imposed.
• I don't believe government can be fixed without passage of a 29th Amendment creating sundown laws for all federal  departments, agencies, bureaus and any official agency of the federal government, and all federal laws and regulations, with the goal of reducing the size and scope of the federal government.

So what is it that I really believe?  I believe leftism is like rust.  It never sleeps.

 

How to Restore Republic After It's Fallen into Corruption

By Rich Kozlovich

This quote by Mike Vanderboegh appeared on The Last Refuge saying: 

“This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can’t be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won’t be done. The Founders’ Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.”

“But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.” 

All that sounds great but what's it mean?  John Boehner once said, a leader without followers is a man taking a walk by himself.  Well, that's true, and then again, maybe it's not.  What I've found over the years is most leaders aren't really leaders.  They're managers who have been chosen to organize the direction everyone wants to go. 

What if everyone is going in the wrong direction, which we're seeing the consequence of that now?  Then the one going in the right direction all by himself is the actual leader, society merely has yet to come to grips with that.  But at some point, society reaches the apex of reality, and the tide changes.  Guess who's in the lead?  Unfortunately the managers often remain fouling the water with their appeasing ways.  We've seen a lot of that also, and it's continuing.

A leader can be a great manager, but can a manager be a great leader?  Yes, but in my experience, not often.  However, if a great leader isn't a good manager, he can hire a great manager.  A manager who fails at leadership can't hire a great leader.

These so-called leaders, who aren't, were chosen because they've been go along to get along all of their lives, and being a rock in the current totally alien to them.  Whereas real leaders are prepared to be the rock in the current.  Prepared to be unliked in order to accomplish their mission.  Prepared to stand up and say, you're all wrong, and I'm going to tell you why. 

Rhetoric can be high sounding but rhetoric needs a plan, because without a plan there's no substance.   So, let me outline a plan, and it's one I've touted in the past, a plan that must deal with the self perpetuating foundational flaws in the system.

First, eliminate the 16th, 17th, 26th and 27th Amendments.  Pass an amendment that puts age and term limits on Congress and the federal judiciary.  Other than the Departments of State, Treasure, Justice and Defense, place a sunshine clause on all Departments, agencies and bureaus, and eliminate the FED.  Place a sunshine clause on all taxes and regulations.   Let Congress deal with each of these as they occur and be on record for their actions.  And absolutely end public employee unions, especially the teacher's unions. 

Finally, all that corruption must be dealt with for what they are.  Crimes.   Investigations must be conducted, indictments must be served, trials must be held and criminals must go to prison.  If all that criminal corruption we've witnessed over these many years isn't dealt with, there can be no restoration. 

That's foundational.  That's The Basics.  

What We Need is a Fix. Let's Start with Clarity

Definition leads to clarity. Clarity leads to understanding. Understanding leads to good decision making.

By Rich Kozlovich 

It stuns me the idiotic things people think and say, and I absolutely include "journalists", academics and politicians who should know the facts, and yet, they spew out nonsense. Then there are the celebrities, many of whom have been amazingly successful, became famously rich and spout insane leftist nonsense, and the media quotes their stupidity with huge numbers of seemingly sane people listen to them as if they really have some to say that's worth listening to.

Let's try and get this.....just once.....please.

Most of these people were parking cars, pumping gas and waiting on tables before they became "stars". They didn't become stars for the immense knowledge of history, economics or geopolitics. They became stars because they look better than most, perform in some fashion better than most, and who are really good at memorizing lines they didn't write, saying those lines as directed by someone other than themselves, all the while portraying people who don't exist. Why would we think that makes them smarter than the rest of us? Especially since if America was the socialist society they're promoting, they wouldn't be either rich or allowed to shoot off their mouths about anything, let alone anything against the government.

However, I've concluded to be a leftist requires massive mental capacity. Why? Because to justify their hypocrisy, irrational views and twisted logic requires unparalleled and remarkable mental gymnastics. They must have twist their minds into such amazingly irrational shapes in order to ignore something that should be obvious to the most casual observer, and it's an overwhelming and patently obvious fact: Their stupidity is astonishing.  Do you doubt that?  Watch The View....just once!

Fortunately, they're so obviously nuts ordinary people, with ordinary mental capacity, can see through it all. But that's no deterrent to the left. Why? Because they lie,and they know they lie. We know they lie. They know we know they lie!And the brilliant conclusion these mental giants on the left come to? Since everyone knows it all a lie, it isn't really a lie, ergo, why stop lying?

Now that's The Produnova in mental gymnastics and equally dangerous in the long run. 

The only thing that should be politically correct is truth, and the right to defend that truth.  That starts with education.  We need the public to demand the end of all federal federal involvement in public education returning the power back to the local citizenry who fund it all.  Allowing vouchers for all state public education. End state and federal funding, of any kind including student loans, for "higher" education along with the right of recall for all elected officials, state, local and federal.

My fix for the nation is to pass a 28th Amendment. Originally I wrote for this to be an amendment for term limits for the federal judiciary, but I don't think that's enough. I'm calling it the Fix America Amendment. It would repeal the 16th Amendment (income tax), the17th Amendment (how Senators are chosen), eliminate the FED, create term limits for the federal judiciary and all members of Congress, including a right of recall by the citizens of their states. add sunset parameters for all agencies, departments, bureaus and all laws and regulations.

It would end all members of Congress status as federal employees, making them employees of their respective states putting them on their state's payroll with their state choosing their pay scale, level of staff, and choice of offices, etc. All members of Congress from each state would be in the same building as the rest of the members of their state's representatives, and the offices would be contiguous to each other, both House and Senate.

And each state should amend their Constitutions with this kind of fix in mind, especially giving all state legislatures the right to determine the jurisdiction of their state's judiciary, as Congress has over the federal judiciary.  That would be a good start, but certainly not the end of the fix.

Twelve Points of Light

By Rich Kozlovich

As most of my readers know, I think leftism is a vile multi-headed Hydra. Whether its socialism appearing in the form of communism, fascism, or feminism, environmentalism, or many other ism’s taken on by the left, all forms of leftism act like a metastasizing cancer.

Just as cancer insidiously spreads killing healthy cells until the body dies, leftism spreads through mendacious deception into our institutions contaminating all it touches, until it destroys the health and stability of humanity. We need to define things properly to have clarity, and clearly if society is to rid itself of this cancer we are in desperate need of solutions.

I believe those solutions begin by dismantling government as we know it. I believe the start of the solution is twelve fold.

1. Pass a 28th Amendment creating age and term limits for the federal judiciary and the Congress.
2. Repeal the 16th Amendment
3. Repeal the 17th Amendment
4. Eliminate the Department of Education and end all federal involvement in public education, returning control to local officials.
5. End all grants to universities and student loans for higher education and tax their endowments in the same manner as they would do for any capital gains.
6. Sell the land mass of the United States owned by the federal government, which is almost 25%, that's not filling any specific or real federal government need.
7. Along with the federal government's other under used or unused assets, it amounts to up to 150 trillion dollars, they must use that to pay off the national debt, refund the money stolen from Social Security.
8. Eliminate the EPA, Bureau of Land Management, Federal Fish and Wildlife Service, and put boundaries on the Corp of Army Engineers.
9. Repeal or seriously amend the Endangered Species Act.
10. Pass a bill that sunsets every tax, every federal law and every federal agency. If it turns out these taxes, laws and agencies actually are beneficial to the American public, Congress can go on record and vote to maintain them until their next "sunset" time comes up again.
11. Privatize Social Security.
12. Eliminate public service unions.

We need to do a lot more, but that would be a good "start".

How to Fix Government:

By Rich Kozlovich

1. Repeal the 16th Amendment and replace the income tax with a national sales tax.
2. Repeal the 17th Amendment.
3. Pass a 28th Amendment to create term and age limits for the federal judiciary and term limits for Congress.
4. Reorganize the Federal Government by eliminating the following Cabinet Departments:

• Commerce
• Labor
• Energy
• Education
• Health and Human Services
• Housing and Urban Development
• Homeland Security and Veterans Administration under the Department of Defense.
• Make Agriculture and Transportation Departments agencies under the Department of the Interior.
• Eliminate the EPA, Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management, reduce the power and responsibilities of the Army Corp of Engineers.

3.The federal government has assets to the tune of 150 trillion dollars.  Make the federal government sell off all the land and property they own that's not being used for a specific purpose as presented in the Constitution and take that money to pay off the national debt and refund the trillions stolen by the government from Social Security .
4. Save America's Jews from corrupt false Jews and the Democrat Party.
5. Save America's blacks from their corrupt leaders and the Democrat Party.
6. Crush the environmental movement.
7. Sunset law on all bills, taxes, regulations, government departments, agencies, bureaus.
8. Stop funding higher education and eliminate student loan programs.
9. Overturn Roe vs. Wade.  Congress has the power and authority to determine the juristiction of all federal courts.    The Congress may order the federal judicary to not ajudicate a case, and it has in the past.  The Congress also has the power to overturn any decision made by any federal court, including the Supreme Court. 
10. Reinstitute the McCarran Walters Act, 1952, Prohibits the Immigration of Islamists.
11. Make all Members of Congress employees of the State they represent. The State they represent will then determine their pay, benefits, staff size and budget.
12.  Eliminate the FED.

Fixing the Federal Government

By Rich Kozlovich

(Editor's Note:  I originally published this on 11/20/2016, but time has shown this needs to said again.  So, with updates I'm republishing this today.  RK)

There are so many things wrong with government it's almost impossible to know where to start. I don't envy those in the new administration who've been tasked with that job.  The backlash from the leftists in all these environmental movement, government officials, left wing activist groups, along with their hand maidens in the media has been far worse than anything thrown against Reagan.

To start with we need clarity.  It must be realized any successful modern industrial society needs energy - lots of it - cheap energy - if that society wishes to remain modern and successful.  Although I absolutely share all the concerns regarding energy and it’s production as foundational to a strong economy and sound society, I’m mostly concerned with pesticide issues, which is foundational to the green movement.  Everything started there.

If you really want to get the ball rolling - overturn the ban on DDT. That issue is foundational to the environmental movement. That’s where they got their credibility and more money and power than they ever dreamt of. Even if no one uses it, if the ban on DDT is overturned, and shown to have been a fraudulent action, then everything they’ve said is legitimately called into question.  Their success in banning DDT led to all the other actions by the green movement.

EPA has been involved in all these corrupt sue and settle deals with the activists and the courts have been party to giving them powers the Congress never intended. Investigate and prosecute any government employee that was a party to such an action under RICO. Even if the statute of limitations has run out on such investigations - there is no statute of limitations on firing people for corruption. Prosecute people like graduate student Steven Arnold involving the fraudulent endocrine disruption study out of Tulane University.   And he may have been the fall guy for bigger fish. 

However, it’s impossible to fix them because currently the EPA is so thoroughly infiltrated with environmental activists they will merely wait out any efforts to stop their corrupt practises until the administration changes and then start all over again. Congress is, on any given day, a weak sister in this battle to stop this illegal dismantling of American's Constitutional rights by government agencies under the auspices of "environmental protection".

When it comes to environmental concerns and the federal government, I’m really of the opinion for any "clean up" to be effective requires a broad broom, encompassing the EPA, Fish and Wildlife Service, Army Corp of Engineers, and the Bureau of Land Management.  We could start with adopting Jay Lehr’s five year plan to dismantle the EPA.  Jay is one of the founders of EPA and the Science Director of the Heartland Institute. 

I would like to know where in the Constitution it gives the EPA, or any government agency, more power than all the state governments and the courts of those states combined? They’ve got to be thoroughly dismantled, or at the very least de-funded to the point they are toothless. No more grant money to corrupt "scientists" promoting fallacious environmental claims such as global warming and in my industry - IPM in structural pest control.

The Institute for Energy Research released a new study that inventories these "vastly underutilized" federal assets:

Federal real property totals over 900,000 assets with a combined area of over 3 billion square feet and more than 41 million acres of land. Additionally, the federal government owns over 600 million acres of lands and minerals onshore, and owns or manages a total of approximately 755 million acres of onshore subsurface mineral estate. Offshore, the federal government owns some 1.76 billion acres of lands and mineral estate, extending out 200 nautical miles from our shores. The federal government’s total mineral estate holdings are therefore about 2.515 billion acres of lands. Thus, the federal government’s mineral estate land holdings surpass the total surface land area of the nation of Canada.

In fiscal year 2009, federal agencies reported 45,190 underutilized buildings, an increase of 1,830 underutilized buildings from the previous fiscal year. In fiscal year 2009, these underutilized buildings accounted for $1.66 billion in annual operating costs, according to the General Accounting Office (GAO). The majority of federally owned and leased space is held by the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Postal Service, and the General Services Administration (GSA). For example, the federal government’s landlord, the GSA, owns or leases 9,600 assets with more than 362 million square feet of workspace. According to the GSA, in a 2009 report, almost 40 percent of its assets were under performing. In October 2010, a congressional study evaluated the savings that could occur based on better administration of the government’s above ground assets that totaled over several hundred billion dollars.

 How much is all this worth?

IER estimated the worth of the government’s oil and gas technically recoverable resources to the economy to be $128 trillion, about 8 times our national debt. Further, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that state and national coffers could generate almost $150 billion over a 10 year period from royalties, rents, and bonuses if these resources were immediately opened to oil and gas leasing. The CBO study estimates are considered to be conservative when compared to historical data and estimates by other analysts and do not consider the earnings from taxes paid by these industries. IER estimated the government’s coal resources in the lower 48 states to be worth $22.5 trillion for a total worth to the economy of fossil fuels on federal lands of $150.5 trillion, over 9 times our national debt. Most of the coal resources in Alaska are deemed to be federally owned and are estimated to be 60 percent higher than those in the entire lower 48 states but are not included in these estimates.

Think about that!  Selling off all federal lands and all underutilized properties would actually pay off the national debt and re-fund Social Security.  What a massive fix!

Up until - I think it was 1911 - the goal of the federal government was to get federal lands into the hands of America’s citizens as fast as possible, that’s why everything East of the Mississippi River is largely privately owned and huge tracts of land West of the Mississippi is largely in the hands of the federal government.  Sell that land and there's no need for such a large agencies, including the Fish and Wildlife Service with their own armies.

It was around that time progressives under Teddy Roosevelt began infesting government passing the 16th and 17th amendments and creating the FED, in 1913. All foundational to the efforts by progressives (socialists) wanting to dismantle the Constitution, which both Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson believed was outdated, unnecessary and an impediment to human progress - and should be replaced with "scientifically sound" administrative practises - as in Socialism,

After FDR became President he created vast government agencies under the New Deal, only it wasn't a New Deal at all - it as a re-institution of the fascist policies Woodrow Wilson imposed on the nation during WWI, which remained in effect for approximately two years after the war ended.  That didn't change until Harding became President in 1921. 

Those agencies created by FDR were run by many of the people who worked for Wilson, and were heavily infiltrated by Stalinist agents, communists, socialists and fellow travelers.  Although the Soviet Union and Stalin are gone, those people are still there.  They may have different bodies and different faces, but they're there with the same mentality, the same spirit and the same treasonous mentality.  They've got to be dismantled.

That can be initiated by reviewing all environment laws, starting with the National Environment Policy Act of 1969, but especially the Endangered Species Act. 

Review - defund - dismantle - return power to the states.  It's my opinion that can only be done if must repeal the 16th and 17th Amendments and add a 28th amendment to put age and term limits and restrictions on the federal judiciary, and the Congress. 

That's the only solution.