Laigle’s Forum

The commandment is:  “Thou shalt not steal.”

Most people believe that this commandment represents sound morality, even if they are not Christians.  Nonetheless, it seems that this moral precept is forgotten once we start talking politics.  And no wonder:  Americans have been making up ‘right and wrong’ for themselves for quite a while.   Obviously it was only a matter of time before it seeped into our national mindset.

A good example of this in action is the current attempt by the Democrats to extend the payroll tax cut, ‘paying for it’ by having the ‘rich’ pay their ‘fair share.’

That we are talking about theft becomes clearer when one considers exactly what the ‘payroll tax’ is.  We are talking about the portion of one’s income that goes directly into Social Security.  Your contributions, in turn, ensure that when you retire, you will be able to draw a steady check.

Now, the liberals tend to target the rich to fund a variety of their favorite programs, and many of those times there ostensibly is some ‘public’ benefit of them.  For example, we might put public infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, in this category.  Usually, though, the program favors smaller, special interest, populations.  The appearance of a socialistic transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor becomes more profound the more targeted the program.

But the funding of the payroll tax cut by the rich really takes the cake.  It is one of those few instances of a government service where the individual directly benefiting from the service is also the one funding it.  Heck, it might be the only example of such a thing.

To have the rich pay for the payroll tax cut is to ask them to directly fund the retirements of the rest of the population, in a direct and transparent manner.  The ‘99%’ are demanding that the ‘1%’ pay for a service that only the ‘99%’ will benefit from, without themselves contributing a dime.  There is no ‘public’ benefit; the ‘special interest’ group just turns out to be exceptionally large.

This is stealing.

Stealing is wrong.

Therefore, this is wrong.

The real kick in the pants here is that while the ‘poor’ and ‘middle class’ are getting behind the highway robbery of their ‘richer’ countrymen, they are actually robbing their future selves.  Since the amount of your contribution is correlated with how much you receive in your retirement account, by continuing to not pay the payroll tax, you are decreasing the amount you will ultimately receive. Read the rest of this entry »

The following was posted by Laigle’s Staff writer Anthony Horvath at his blog:

I understand that Cain’s 9-9-9 plan is just phase one in a more powerful overhaul, but I am leery about any plan that cannot be attained within a single term of the presidency.  Moreover, we cannot count on the legislators to get behind it, or sustain it once it gets going.

So that’s a pickle, right?  There pretty much isn’t a plan out there that can be rolled out within a single term with the assurance that the legislative branch will implement it as proposed (and not load it with 2,000 pages of caveats).

So what to do?

And consider a different plan that actually tackles these issues head on and effectively ensures that the plan comes to fruition.

The plan is simply this:  deny the Federal government the right to collect individual and corporate taxes, period.  Instead, the Federal government would collect funds from the states.  The states in turn would be in charge of collecting the taxes that would then be sent along to the Federal government.  How the states collect that revenue would be entirely up to each individual state.  Each state would be assigned an ‘amount due’ based on some kind of objective and reasonable criteria, like for example, on a per capita basis and a calculation of that state’s particular burden on the Federal budget.

Read the whole proposal

Don Hank

Answer: only if you let them

I received an email from a friend, incl several warnings about the Occupy [somewhere] movement, written by well-known conservative authors and exhorting conservatives to shun the Occupy Wall St. [or wherever] movement because it is linked to Obama groups and pals like ACORN and Van Jones and is a false flag movement.

Now I agree that we must be careful whom we stand with, because we may be suggesting to people that we agree with the Left – unless we are perfectly clear where we stand!

Consider this: The Left has been pretending to stand with good people ever since day one, while in fact standing with Satan. Stealth is their middle name.

I believe it may be time to turn the tables on them.

Yesterday, I got an email from a TX friend with an attachment showing a pamphlet on the “Occupy Houston” movement.

His point seemed to be that their literature was not well written and that it wasn’t clear what their goals were, so maybe they are bad guys to be avoided.

Ya know what? To me, that is a perfect opportunity for us to go to work. Because they can’t control the sidewalks and there’s no way they can control me.

If I lived in that part of the country and had a few extra hours, I’d make up a large poster reading “BRING BACK THE FREE MARKET” or “NO MORE SOCIALISM, MR. PRESIDENT,” or “SOLYNDRA, THE FRUITS OF ‘STIMULUS’ ” or the like, and I would unabashedly bring it along to the rally and hold it high. Look, if this is a false flag movement and they are just pretending to be on our side, then who would dare to stop me?

This morning I was listening to NHK News from Japan, and they had an international segment featuring the Occupy Wall St. movement in the US.

Unsurprisingly, the people they interviewed said nothing remotely suggesting they were socialist sympathizers, quite the opposite.

I almost fell off my chair when one lady said:

“When Barrack Obama was elected, we assumed that because he was a black man, he would do all he could to help the poor and underprivileged. He has done none of that.”

Yes, yes, I understand Van Jones and ACORN may have ties to the movement.

So what?

When I was in Lancaster, I attended a Tea Party rally and there were some people there who obviously were trying to infiltrate. I suspect they were from ACORN.

Here is what I don’t get: The LEFT infiltrates us all the time and we can see it happening and take it for granted.

Yet if a conservative wants to do the same back to them, all of a sudden, that “taints” us. Funny thing. The Left isn’t “taintable,” but conservatives are? Are we really that weak minded that getting too close to a lefty will rub off on us?

Well, look, if being around a bunch of lefties taints you — that is, influences you — then you are not well enough grounded in your conservatism and your Christian faith to leave your home.

As for me, I say with Paul: I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto Him against that day.

I mean that with regard to both my Christian faith and my political views. They are intertwined. Jesus’ view on socialism is clearly enunciated in John 6: http://laiglesforum.com/the-religious-left-in-bible-times-part-1/57.htm.

But if you are so timid in your faith and politics, and afraid of being misled by some half-baked Marxists who don’t know even a tenth of what the average conservative knows about history and economics, here is what you need to do:

Don’t ever have anything to do with a leftist. He’ll rub off on you.

Don’t go to town hall meetings and express your views. These meetings are full of lefties. It might rub off.

And don’t take part in surveys, online or off. The other respondents may be leftists. Ooooh, creepy!

Don’t write letters to the editor. The publication in which they are published is probably left of center and you might be thought of as a lefty. What would your conservative friends think of you?

Don’t go to the polls to vote. The polls are full of lefties and might persuade you to pull the wrong lever.

On the other hand, if you know what you believe and why, then go right ahead and attend any meeting or rally you darned well please and let people know how you think. Go ahead and listen to their misguided statements but be prepared to counter them – without fear, without anger, with love. You are dealing with the lost – with the weak, the ignorant. They’re in a much more precarious position than you will ever be. You can be their lighthouse. Why would you want to miss that opporunity? So, assuming you are educated on the issues (don’t try until you are), don’t be afraid to speak your mind and don’t be afraid to hold a poster advertising your view of why America is in a mess. These misguided lefties are the very ones you need to minister to, lovingly, compassionately and in God-given faith and wisdom. The chances are, many, maybe even most, will agree with you by the time you have told them what you think and why.

Consider that one of the main reasons they are in the dark is that conservatives have left them there.

We are the ones who have failed America. It’s time to grow a spine and do our job.

Martha Stewart went to jail for it, but the Fed practices insider trading with impunity

Enough!

by Don Hank

The article below on the global economic crisis explains why our financial system no longer operates on free market principles, and in short, this explains why we are failing. What’s worse, our system is illegal because it tolerates and encourages insider trading, which is defined as follows:

Insider trading occurs when a trade has been influenced by the privileged possession of corporate information that has not yet been made public.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/03/100803.asp#ixzz1QnAQuzqA

To put this in its proper perspective, Martha Stewart was investigated for insider trading for selling stock when she learned from a friend that stock in his company would lose value because the FDA was going to reject the drug his company was trying to sell. Although the ultimate charge that put her in jail was lying to the FBI, insider trading was the original thrust and was considered illegal. Yet, the government is directly involved with just such insider trading on a vastly wider scale, involving inside info possessed by the Fed in its unsavory relationship with the US government, and is enriched daily by this info in an obvious and illegal conflict of interests.

If Martha Stewart deserved jail, then what does the Fed deserve?

Here is the article:

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/768/421/Financial_Meltdown_on_Wall_Street—Excerpt_from_Introduction_to_The_Global_Economic_Crisis._The_Great_Depression_of_the_XXI_Century.html

Quote:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and its powerful Wall Street stakeholders – which are Wall Street’s largest private banks – have inside information on the conduct of U.S. monetary policy. They are therefore in a position to predict outcomes and hedge their bets in highly leveraged operations on the futures and derivatives markets. They are in an obvious conflict of interest because their prior knowledge of particular decisions by the Federal Reserve Board enables them, as private banking institutions, to make multibillion dollar profits.

People have learned to ask politicians crucial questions about their politics. Yet politicians are almost never asked the key questions that decide our and our children’s economic future.

As our nation sinks further and further into the financial abyss, we must make some urgent changes to the demands we make on our public officials.

Will your candidate vote for congressional hearings of the Fed and of the major bankers who committed mortgage fraud, bundling and selling mortgages knowing they were worthless?

Will he or she demand a reduction in our sovereign debt?

It is time to demand accountability. No backbone, no vote.

Bobbies learn spoiled kids are holy terrors 

by Don Hank

The UK newspaper Daily Mail reported today on a riot by anarchists in the UK, which broke out as part of an anti-cuts demonstration. They number in the thousands, have done a lot of damage and have also scared the beejeebers out of the police, who have become accustomed to fear over years of facing Muslim demonstrations against Western values (which make Muslims uncomfortable and never seem to quite go away no matter how many Europeans they terrorize in an effort to gently convert them–or else).

While many Americans still believe that the main source of economic benefits is a combination of work, ingenuity and risk taking, along with simple notions of supply and demand (commonly known as free market principles—once believed extinct until live specimens were recently found in China), Europeans have been taught since about the end of WW II that the government is where all money, jobs and benefits come from. Some of them also reportedly believe government is where babies come from and where people go when they die.

They pray thusly: Our Government, who art in heaven, give us this day our dole of bread, lest we blast your stuff to kingdom come. For mine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen and to the barricades.

Sadly, the anarchists featured in the Daily Mail story are protesting something that practically no longer exists: capitalism.

Today’s Western economy is based on a system that can charitably be called corporatism, or, if you are mean, fascism, which has replaced the free market system so gradually that most have not noticed and don’t even know it is there.

We can all agree that the present system is impoverishing us and eliminating the middle class, while enriching the oligarchs.

However, since it is a hybrid between corrupt Big Government (essentially socialism) and corrupt business interests, conservatives (on both sides of the pond) hate it but only see the Big Government side of it, which is corrupt — while socialists / anarchists (on both sides of the pond) hate it but only see the capitalist side of it, which is corrupt.

It’s like the 4 blind men and the elephant. There aren’t enough people yet who see the system for the many-tentacled hybrid that it is, and herein lies the tragic inability to solve the problem. Indeed, if you don’t understand what you are up against, then it is hard to fight effectively. A friend of mine has likened problem solving of this sort to buttoning a shirt: If you start wrong at the top, you wind up wrong at the bottom.

Many, including the above-referenced anarchists, believe all of their problems can be solved by a government willing to cooperate with their hedonistic whims. That’s because not nearly enough understand that the EU is a dictatorship that looks out only for its own interests (as elegantly explained by Sonya Porter) and has been controlling the corrupt government side of the economy (by teaching young people fairly tales about climate change and social justice), while most of the capitalists have joined forces with this same government and together they have a jolly good time robbing all of us poor blokes down at the bottom of the food chain.

If young people can be made to understand this, then, once they outgrow their Pampers, they can help us rebuild the West, now that we have all managed to muck it up.

So what do you say? Let’s teach them.

That should work a lot better than sending teams of frightened bobbies after them.