The GOP -- An Enemy of the People

Here is a piece by Truth-out.com explains just another reason why this is true. The GOP continues to show how much they hate Democracy.

Legislators Who Sign the Anti-Tax "Norquist Pledge" Are Enemies of the People and the Constitution

Thursday 16 February 2012

by: William B. Daniels, Truthout | Op-Ed

A recent lawsuit mounted by former UCLA chancellor Charles Young and former Ninth Circuit Appellate Justice William A. Norris brings renewed attention to California's 30-year-old Proposition 13.

The Norris/Young suit claims that Proposition 13, requiring a two-thirds vote of both houses of the California Legislature to increase taxes, is unconstitutional. The suit argues that Proposition 13 was a revision of the California Constitution, not a mere amendment.

Revisions are changes that fundamentally alter the structure of government, whereas amendments are just additions. Proposition 13 altered the government's constitutional authority to raise public funds. To be a valid revision, Proposition 13 would have had to pass with a supermajority in both houses of the California Legislature, and with a majority vote of the people. Because Proposition 13 received only a majority vote of the people, it must be stricken.

The Norris/Young lawsuit, along with a November 2011 statement by Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) that Grover Norquist, as the "thirteenth member" of the bipartisan supercommittee on fiscal reform, was responsible for its failure, raise two questions:  Have Norquist pledge signers violated federal and state criminal laws? and, What is the connection between Proposition 13 and Norquist pledge signers in the California Legislature?

In the 112th Congress of the United States, 235 members of the House of Representatives and 41 members of the Senate have signed the pledge created by Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform. The pledge states :

I will: ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

Norquist and his organization give political support to candidates who make the pledge and work to defeat candidates who do not. To assume office and be paid a salary, members of Congress must take an oath:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

The Constitution of the United States, to which signers swear their true faith and allegiance, provides, in Article I, Section 8:

The Congress shall have the Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and General Welfare of the United States ...

The Sixteenth Amendment says:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived ... 

The preemptive and unconditional pledge to Norquist by each signer is a knowing and willful repudiation of Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution and the Sixteenth Amendment. The pledge to Norquist makes signers' oath of office to uphold the Constitution a fraud on the Congress and the American people. It is also a probable violation of federal criminal law. 

Title 18, Section 1001, of the United States Code says that whoever willfully makes any false statement or representation in any matter coming within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the government of the United States shall be fined or imprisoned for not more than five years. Section 1001 specifically applies to claims for payment of money submitted to Congress. Accordingly, by fraudulent oath of office, Norquist signers claim Congressional salaries in violation of Section 1001. 

Norquist signers in the California Legislature pledge that they will "oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes." To assume office and be paid a salary, they must swear an oath to uphold both the federal and state constitutions. But the California Constitution says, in Article 13, Section 31:

The power to tax may not be surrendered or suspended by grant or contract.

In view of their pledge to Americans for Tax Reform, signers make a false oath of office, because they have surrendered their power to tax to Norquist, in violation of Section 31. The California Government Code makes each Norquist signer's false oath of office an act of perjury, punishable by imprisonment for two, three, or five years.

Considering the party composition of the California Legislature, the close connection between the Norquist pledge signers and Proposition 13's requirement of a two-thirds majority in both houses to increase taxes becomes clear. The California Senate is composed of 40 members, 15 of whom are Republicans and signers of the Norquist pledge. The California Assembly has 80 members, 28 of whom are Republicans, 25 of whom have signed the pledge. Norquist controls 37 percent of the Senate and 31 percent of the Assembly.

With Norquist pledge signers in place, the two-thirds supermajority required to raise taxes can never be achieved. Under the requirements of Proposition 13, Norquist controls the revenue lifeblood of the California republic. He is the unelected, dictatorial member of the California Legislature. He is the reason there are annual budget crises in Sacramento. He is the cause of the crumbling infrastructure of California. He and his signers have starved public safety services and educational opportunities for Californians. 

If the Norris/Young lawsuit succeeds in removing the Proposition 13 supermajority rule, the State of California can once again exercise its constitutional authority to raise revenues for the public good, to restore infrastructure, public safety services and educational opportunities for Californians. In the meantime, the voters should remove the Norquist signers from office, because they are the enemies of constitutions and the people.

WILLIAM B. DANIELS

William B. Daniels is an attorney and mediator practicing in Monterey County, California.

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

The Demented Monster Called The RNC

The RNC has convened in order to nominate a new regressive chairperson to further lead them into the darkness. One of the choices is Ken Blackwell, of Ohio, who was key in stealing the winning Ohio Democratic votes in the 2004 Kerry/Bush election. Grover Norquist, another neo-fascist Regressive party “field marshal”, Brownshirt is a better description, was a key figure in the development of the 1995 Project For A New American Century policy neo-con-wonk document, and pushed, along with his fellow lock-steppers for the war in Iraq and dominate over the Middle East’s oil reserves, as well as spread democracy throughout the region.

Norquist and his followers supported the “drowning of government is a bathtub”, of which they did for most of working America and filled it up just enough to steal the money out of the Treasury in order to prop up their 30 year long Ponzi Scheme.

What is so interesting is that they hated government except when it benefited their interests. Their interests were to preserve their control over the highest paying jobs and prevent them from being outsourced. They wanted to preserve those jobs through professional licensure and certifications. They wanted to guarantee their protection of copyright and patent laws in order advance the profits of the corporations holding them, and in return those board members, CFOs, and CEOs would show their appreciation by contributing to the fattening of the RNCs burgeoning bank account. They wanted to squeeze working Americans through tough bankruptcy laws for individuals, but lighten them for business. They so enjoyed government when the tax laws favored tax cuts, deductions on depreciation of property and equipment, and lower tax rates for corporations and dividend returns.

Norquist and his neo-fascist pluto-c-RATS could perpetuate the 30-year Ponzi Scheme, while keeping the wages of working Americans stagnant or low. Such average wage earners could not keep up with inflation or buy the items they were producing without having to borrow from the plutocRATS, who enticed them with low teaser or fixed interest rates putting them into further debt. With that compounding debt, these corporate vampires went to work in their laboratories crafting asset value derivatives, which no one could really figure out, and designed into law legislation that prevented anyone from analyzing, scrutinizing, or questioning their legitimacy. From there, they were held in shadow banks, away from an eagle’s eye, and sold on the worldwide derivatives market to a tune of $1000 trillion. Since then, much of it has gone up in flames and all that which is assumed to be left totals around $600 trillion; and this amount will continue to unwind/deleverage further shrinking portfolios and worldwide wealth.

All of the images that the Regressive Party members were able to see using their ocular neuropathways teleporting those mental pictures into the greed hemisphere of the brain, while activating salivary glands in the process, were reassembled into cold hard cash for their candidates running against those socialistic, good-for-nothing Democrats who stood in the way of progress.

So, the Regressive, oh, I meant to say, the Republican National Committee, had chosen to moderate their recent debate for RNC chairperson the one and only Grover Norquist, their neo-fascist, trickle-downster, war-mongering, vote-stealing, and golden boy hitman for the RNC Crime Syndicate. With a name like Grover, he has to be a puppet.

Here are several of the most current facts brought to us by the plutocRATS seated deep within the Bush Crime Family and the RNC.

• 30% of all credit card debt, $1.6 trillion, is held by the lowest rated consumers.
• $8 trillion lost in home wealth over the last 8 years.
• 12.5% un/under-employed
• 14,000 jobs lost Daily since September, 2008
• Home price devaluation has reached 20%
• More than 10% of the work force works in retail and around 1 million will likely lose their jobs
• A note on China—before November, 2008, they held 652.9 tons of gold, but since then, they have increased their holding to 3400 tons preparing themselves to be the world currency, upstaging the dollar, and having more gold to back up and stabilize their currency: the yuan-renminbe.

The RNC Crime Syndicate heavily controlled by many of those plutocRAT signatories on the Project For A New American Century worked to guarantee that if the top-tier executive banksta’s risky securities/derivatives scam turned sour, or into losses, they would never have to forfeit their bonuses, earnings, and leveraged “gambling” winnings through the magic of government laws.

Their rhetorical distaste for government only has been heard when it works against their own “profit-at-any-cost” agenda. Yet, as it has been revealed that without an economically stable and strong middle class, the top-tier thieves would not be able to hold on to their guaranteed “plutocRATic-styled” and government endorsed winnings without failing consequences, which, ultimately, caused what we are not experiencing as the most devastating of all national security risks—the collapse of the U.S. economy as it ripples throughout the world.

Oh, how the Regressive National Committee, and their economic predators loved government to create NAFTA, which eliminated trade barriers for those working at the bottom of the labor ladder, but excluded the free trade of highly skilled, college and university educated top-tier executives at the more protected end of the same scale. Those highly paid, top-tier and mostly white educated workers were guarded by RNC supported government laws, yet they did not express any objections of such government intervention in the free market even though they had regularly called for the drowning of it in the nearest bathtub. How ironic. They sure live by their principles.

You all remember Reagan’s famous remark, “Hello, I am from the government and I am here to help.” He made those remarks in order to ridicule government and suggest that it should stay out of the people’s business, especially if it is to support the interests of those who desire it to act as a political and policy equalizer and supporter of the common good for all.

The RNC has been very embedded in the development of a public policy favorable to crafting laws, rules, regulations, as well as mounting political pressures through intimidation and exclusion upon the members of Congress from both parties who were not part of their 100-year plan for control. For the most of 30 years, the Regressive plutocrats controlled Congress and nurtured their desired style oligarchy. They referred to Democrats as cowards, traitors, socialists, and worse, yet, as we have just witnessed, it has been the psychopathic son of the Bush Crime Family who mounted the nation’s most aggressive socialistic government interventionist policy initiative in America’s history; and, with pride. In spite of the Bush economic policy recovery program being called socialist, it has been targeted on behalf of working people, as most socialistic programs are, but at the very richest of Americans, such as, the nation’s highest paid executives in the financial and insurance industries, as well as elsewhere. The Bush TARP—Troubled Assets Relief Program—is being targeted at the trouble assets of the “Haves, and the Have Mores!” as referred to by Bush when describing his base of supporters, and not at the “Have Lesses”, those people he has disdain for.

In other words, for the Republican Party members spewing venom at government by insisting that IT get out of THEIR way, and that lowering taxes on the wealthy, would help stimulate the economy, they have been shown to be wrong, and wrong all along. This has been done for 30 years and look where it led.

Instead of reforming the RNC, and the Republican Party to become more moderate, and choose a centrist to sit as their committee chairperson, they continue to pursue the path of a regressive political party monster-like buffoon.      (Ponzi Scheme)

Thanks for reading, Jerry