As polls show more Americans warming up to socialism, conservatives need to take a few lessons from The Great Communicator.

AG William Barr on Aug. 9 criticized members of the Democratic Party who, during a hearing last month, remained silent on the burning of federal courts. //

Barr claimed that Democrats now believe in “tearing down the system” and pursue absolute victory as “a substitute for religion.”

“I think what’s happened is that the left-wing has really withdrawn and pulled away from the umbrella of classical liberal values that have undergirded our society since our founding,” Barr continued. “And within the family, we’ve had two ways of resolving disputes. One is discussion, the dialectic, the marketplace of ideas, trying to arrive at the truth.”

“We had an idea that there was some truth to arrive at. And then if we couldn’t reach agreement, a vote, and that’s how we operated.”

Barr added that he believes the left has now “essentially withdrawn from this model” and instead represents a “Rousseauian revolutionary party that believes in tearing down the system.”

“They’re interested in complete political victory, they’re not interested in compromise, dialect, exchange of views. It’s a secular religion, it’s a substitute for religion,” Barr added. “They view their political opponents as evil, because we stand in the way of their ‘progressive utopia’ that they’re trying to reach. That’s what gives the intensity to the partisan feeling that people feel today.”

Straight up awesome!

Government schools are a terrible idea.

In fact, they are the biggest mistake America ever made.

As longtime radio talk show host Neal Boortz rightly noted:

“If you go to a Catholic school – you get a pro-Catholic education.

“If you go to an Episcopalian school – you get a pro-Episcopalian education.

“If you go to a government school – you get a pro-government education.”

Our Declaration of Independence, the Revolution to create this country and the Constitution we thereafter wrote – are one long, unbroken push for less government.

We the People established a very limited government – responsible and subservient to We the People.

But we then relied on government schools – to teach our less government history. Oops.

It was inevitable that government would begin warping the things it teaches – to dishonestly justify government’s mass and never-ending expansion.

But these Ghanaian disputes rarely degenerate into political mud-slinging and still less, as in much of the world, into war.

It is all a bit boring, really, for us journalists.

And so, after a run through the usual journalistic questions - how is Kufuor dealing with Ivory Coast conflict, the privatisation issue, whether Ghana is under the thumb of the IMF - I braced myself to ask the question.

I put it to Mr Kufuor that while some African leaders were hotheads and demagogues, no-one could accuse him of being that.

But would it be fair, I asked tentatively, as some people suggest, to say he is a bit boring?

The president of Ghana quietly but firmly put me in my place.

"If boredom gives us peace and stability for people to go about their normal businesses and live in dignity," he said, "then I would say let's have more boredom."

Nearly every harbinger of the republic’s implosion prophesized by the founders has come to pass. Our laws and legal system have grown so vast, overcomplicated, and burdensome that no citizen without expensive legal muscle can navigate the maze or know what’s expected of him–an eventuality about which James Madison cautioned. The popular moral and religious counterweight to the government’s secular liberalism has evaporated, as John Adams worried it might. Thomas Jefferson’s concern that the legislature would devolve into a tool of majority tyranny has come to pass in spades. Rivalries among American groups have resulted in toxic sectionalism and the rejection of American unity, just as George Washington feared. The list goes on and on. //

BLM was not the first to popularize America’s brokenness. Donald Trump beat them to it in his own subtle way, but stated the problem without denigrating some or all of the American people. Trump said, “Make America Great Again.”

Think about it: what kind of country needs to be made “Great Again”?

A country in less than great shape. //

Polite think-tank conservatives want reform; but reform works on institutions that are deformed. The United States government is not deformed–it’s broken, lying in scattered pieces. Recent symptoms include: Congress has largely ceased to perform lawmaking and spends its time bickering and posturing. The Justice Department and its FBI subsidiary have suffered an infestation of political activism. The Supreme Court and federal judiciary now fill in for Congress and make laws rather than interpret them. A zombie administrative state controls the lives of Americans like a network of cartels. Don’t even get me started on the dysfunction and corruption within government-adjacent institutions like nonprofits, university systems, and mega-corporations.

Donald Trump may wind up being know as the president of Deconstruction, as President Ulysses S. Grant was know for Reconstruction after the Civil War. Trump’s peculiar genius lies not in recognizing the need for deconstruction of the government–the Joe on the street, progressive or conservative, sense that much–but rather in his tactic of allowing the government to deconstruct itself. Like a conductor who wants to stop a runaway orchestra, all the president need do is wave his hands so that the instrument sections conflict with one another, then step back and watch the arguments erupt.

The president’s deconstructive strategy is hard to bear, because it grinds against the all-too-human need for harmony and stability at any cost. Many Americans can’t stand the conflict. //

Americans now live as hostages to institutions that were supposed to serve and protect them. If something is not done to disrupt the spiral, the orchestra will be hanging audience members and one another with piano wire very soon. //

Today, only the very wealthy and the technocratic/managerial upper class in the United States experience reliable prosperity and security, a responsive government, a comprehensible legal system, a wholistic culture, and a commodious society. Everyone else is struggling to figure out how to resuscitate the American dream or just scrape by. The formerly hale and robust American middle class is scrambling to avoid melting into the lower class and vanishing. The lower class for their part are scrambling to avoid falling into third-world poverty, a modern-day multi-generational serfdom. //

Were establishment conservatives instead to drop the ‘America is just fine because it’s not North Korea yet’ act, they would find themselves inundated with popular support and attention. They could very well suck the wind out of BLM’s Marxist, racist, prevaricating sails. The hugely successful lie peddled by BLM is that black Americans are the only ones really suffering from the effects of a broken system on account of their race. A grain of truth–the broken system part–keeps this lie afloat. The solvent to this lie happens to be the full truth: 90% of ALL Americans are worried and suffering, and no party speaks for them the way BLM purports to for black Americans.

Americans were astonished two months ago after newly unsealed internal FBI notes taken by the agency’s former assistant director of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, showed top bureau officials discussing strategy ahead of their January 24, 2017 interview of General Michael Flynn. FBI officials were debating the best way they could set him up in a perjury trap.

Several days later, sources familiar with the Durham investigation told Fox News that John Durham had reviewed the Flynn documents and was disturbed that no whistleblowers came forward early on. Considering that there were more than a few officials who had to be aware of what was going on, including support staff, Mr. Durham found it remarkable that no one spoke up “at the onset.” One would think he might have learned by now that the only use members of the deep state have for whistleblowing is when it can be used as a weapon against the right. I posted on this story here.

The next day, I received an email from one of my readers who said he could easily answer Mr. Durham’s question. It’s because “No one in the FBI or the DOJ wanted to engage in a futile suicide mission that would put them and their families through years of hell, cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, and put their pensions at risk, all so that their information could be ignored.”

William Henck knows, because he lived it.

Mr. Henck’s story is the polar opposite of alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella’s, whose bogus complaint to then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson last August triggered President Trump’s impeachment. Not only did my reader not receive the kid-glove treatment Ciaramella did, he was terminated from his position as an IRS attorney after 30 years of service.

In November 2017, Mr. Henck was forced out for being a whistleblower. During his career at the IRS, he reported the bullying of World War II veterans, evidence of a cover-up in the Lois Lerner (or Tea Party) case, and the improper giveaway of literally billions of dollars to taxpayers represented by sketchy Washington lobbyists.

Mr.Henck said he reported his concerns both internally and externally, to his supervisor, to upper management, to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), to Congress, to Trump political appointees in the Treasury Department, and to the media. And none of his detailed complaints of misconduct were ever investigated. Not a single one.

In 2016, the IRS Office of Chief Counsel sent me a notice of proposed termination for allegedly disclosing taxpayer information under section 6103. Their theory was that because my name appeared in a Washington Post article, people could read that article and identify a specific taxpayer. Their theory was ridiculous, but it did not matter. My attorney advised to me to take a deal where I could work another year to get 30 years in and then retire. He reasoned that even though the case was absurd and even though my civil service rights had been shredded, I faced an amoral foe with unlimited resources, no downside risk, and a willingness to lie to get rid of me. Basically, the process would have become the punishment. By being forced out early, I lost approximately $400,000, and even more importantly, my family and I went through years of hell. My wife and I were even subjected to a retaliatory income tax exam. //

What do they say to the American taxpayers? ‘Well, sure, the IRS lies all the time, but we want you to tell the truth. And the IRS hides and destroys documents, but we want you to provide all of your documents. And the IRS habitually breaks the law, but we want you to voluntarily comply with the Internal Revenue Code.’

Maybe that could work long term if the IRS was still an efficient agency, but it’s not. It is a corrupt and dysfunctional shell of its former self and it has lost both the moral authority and the ability to enforce the Internal Revenue Code.

Powerline’s Scott Johnson reported numerous times as Mr. Henck was going through his ordeal. Johnson published a series of his personal accounts that can be accessed by clicking on “Inside the IRS.” In one piece, “Inside the IRS, part 8,” he argued:

“[t]he rule of law at the IRS died” following a lengthy illness and “[t]he immediate cause of death was IRS attorney executives giving themselves large bonuses and then illegally keeping those bonuses secret.”

https://www.powerlineblog.com/?s=inside+the+irs&x=0&y=0

In short, the Great Society, although well-intended, has produced a worse society. Which brings us to the Great Reset. Recently announced by the World Economic Forum, the Great Reset is the 21st century version of the Great Society on steroids. The Great Reset’s grand ambitions are so outlandish, they make the Great Society’s objectives seem trivial.

Before embarking on the Great Reset, perhaps we should look back at the shortcomings of the Great Society. After all, as the saying goes, if we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.

The House proxy voting rule allows it to do business with as few as 20 members present, with each controlling the votes of 10 others. //

This new House rule creates the strange situation of establishing a quorum by counting members as present who are, in fact, absent. It allows the House to do business with as few as 20 members present, with each controlling the votes of 10 others.

The only reason to attempt something so radical is the fear of failure under the traditional legislative practice that the Constitution requires and Congress has always followed.

Not that Erb was a genius or anything, but I don't think the politicians have a lot more time to put their Inner Hitlers back in the box.

The Trump administration and state and local governments are wisely suspending regulations to help fight the coronavirus. Many of these rules and regulations were not necessary in the first place, given their tendency to reduce innovation and access to care, not to mention their restriction on American liberty. Below is a list of suspended rules and regulations, starting with federal waivers, followed by state and local waivers.

If you want solutions, don't go to people who restrict. //

“That’s what a government is for, gettin’ in a man’s way.”

That quote from the short-lived sci-fi series Firefly is just one of many sayings that tickles my libertarian sensibilities. //

The government often bills itself as the fount of opportunity, yet the government gives us the most opportunities when it removes itself from the equation. This is because a government is a system that naturally curbs the imperfections of man and allows us to work with them to form a society. As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, if man were perfect, we wouldn’t need government:

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least.

Paine went on to say that though a government is necessary, the one that governs the least is the one that governs the best. This is pretty evident given the fact that America’s freedoms have made it the most abundant, wealthy, and powerful country on the globe.

Yet authoritarians believe that if a little government is good then a lot must be better. This is never the case, and we can refer to the outcomes of countries that turn their government up to 11. //

The citizen makes his own solutions so the government doesn’t have to take the time and resources to make one for him, and very likely, do a very poor job of doing it anyway. Jenkins thought he was providing solutions, but in truth, his solutions don’t elevate, they restrict. He effectively stopped a host of problem-solving citizens from providing a solution to a problem.

It’s maddening if you think about it for too long. The free market had the solution to a major problem from the very beginning but the government didn’t allow it to step up to the plate. Thus, the government exacerbated a problem it was trying to solve.

Because that’s what a government is for…getting in a man’s way.

Always trust the free market and the people to solve the problem. The government should be the last thing you look to.

Sidney Longwell, a devoted family man and entrepreneur in the finest tradition of the American Frontier, passed away last month at age 81. A fighter to the last, he died after 38 years of waiting for justice in his lawsuit against the federal government.

It is hard to comprehend the brute force of the federal government until it has been turned against you personally, as it had been against Sidney. As an attorney for people like him, I see that force being used against good men and women every day.

Federal agencies have practically limitless resources to fight court battles, in both money and manpower. They have no competition, no shareholders to placate, and no one person who can be held personally responsible for their malfeasance. They also have the cruelest weapon of all — time.

Sidney purchased a Montana oil and gas lease from the federal government in 1982, passed a decade’s worth of rigorous environmental and archaeological reviews, and was all set to develop the land when government suspended his lease in 1993. He spent 38 years fighting a David-and-Goliath battle to use the leased mineral rights — a battle I’m still fighting as an attorney for his family.

Sidney’s passing reminds me that time really is the most devastating weapon the government has in its arsenal. We can give our clients resources, expertise, and a team of people to fight on their behalf, but sometimes they can’t outlast Uncle Sam. //

A favorable court ruling in 2016 seemed to promise a resolution. But, given 21 days to come up with a schedule to act, the government dug in its heels instead, abruptly cancelling the lease. Incredibly, the government’s lawyers justified the decision by inventing a procedural defect that contradicted what agency officials had told Sidney for 30 years.

Sidney’s case is just one of many examples of federal agencies weaponizing bureaucratic delay against American citizens. Rather than denying an application or permit that can be appealed, they simply refuse to finish processing the permit, leaving people like Sidney trapped. All the agency needs to do is wait for the person to run out of money or die. //

What happened to Sidney Longwell is a grave injustice, and one that is becoming too common. Another of my clients, Monte Ray — also in his 80s — is still awaiting a decision on mineral patents he applied for in 1991. Another client: small, family-owned, Colorado oil company WillSource Enterprise, has been fighting the federal government’s delay tactics in processing their permits since 1995.

More than ever, Americans are being governed, not by laws, but by regulations. These regulations are created and enforced by countless unelected and unaccountable officials who staff government agencies. //

em •

Do these unelected men and women who oversee federal agencies have too much power?

When Judge Brett Kavanaugh was a circuit court judge, he wrote;

"The independent agencies collectively constitute, in effect, a headless fourth branch of the U.S. Government. They exercise enormous power over the economic and social life of the United States."

Because of their massive power and the absence of Presidential supervision and direction, independent agencies pose a significant threat to individual liberty and to the constitutional system of separation of powers and checks and balances."

Vito em • 3 hours ago

Too much power. Too much staff. Too much money. Not enough meaningful work.

A poisonous combination.

While I'm Here... • 5 hours ago

Government bureaucracies are full of petty, amoral people who live for their sadistic games of Calvinball.
Other countries are far more open about their bribery culture, and I think that's an element which we often forget to include, when we talk about government harassment. I think they usually end up getting paid off.

1942Larry • 44 minutes ago

Every bill Congress passes grants the bureaucrats the authority to write regulations as necessary to implement it. In other words, Congress says bureaucrats can add to the bill as necessary to make up for anything we were too careless to include. That is truly crazy and lazy.

Abolishing group gatherings is fine if such limits apply to everyone, but if they only apply to churchgoers that’s a moral and legal problem.

Whoever called in on the church services, the lone girl playing basketball, the walking couple, and our pickleball game did so not out of any concern about a spreading virus. They did so out of deep-seated resentment toward their fellow man, and out of a sadistic pleasure in wielding the ability to worsen other people’s lives.

We have an alarming number of citizens who are more than willing to use whatever sudden increase in available state power to squeeze their fellow citizens. While we don’t toil under totalitarianism, we are undoubtedly fostering the turn-in-your-neighbor culture under which such a system would thrive. //

top-down litigation bound to ensnare itself in the reeking putrescence of our court systems is inadequate to stem the tide. What is needed is a grassroots, intrinsic realignment (or a renaissance, if you will) of what it means to be a citizen and a neighbor. //

keep the focus on calling out the turn-in-your-neighbor mentality for the sad exhibition of snide control freakishness that it is. If you witness someone sneering about how she snitched, shame her for it, and do it loudly and publicly. Put snitches on defense. Isolate them. Make their behavior unacceptable.

Bosnian and Rwandan ditches are full of corpses whose betrayers were lifelong neighbors a week prior. For those who think that our society is immune to this terrible human condition, I wonder on what you base that assumption.

The Michigan Conservative Coalition organized a protest against the state’s Governor, Gretchen Whitmer. They planned to create a traffic jam around the Michigan Capitol Building in Lansing, as a symbolic gesture of disagreement with Whitmer’s “Stay Safe, Stay Home directive” which they call #OperationGridlock.

A message found on the MCC’s website read, “We are all concerned for those afflicted with COVID 19. Yes, many of the personal behaviors we have been reminded to use are good practices. Wash your hands. Cover your cough. Stay home if you are sick. That said, Michiganders are fed up!”

Protestors carried signs that said, “Heil Whitmer,” “Open Michigan,” “End Crackdown” and “Impeach Whitmer.” ///

1st Amendment: the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for redress is a God-given right and cannot be restricted by the government.

Read over the Bill of Rights again, and even give it a third glance. Memorize them. These are not rules for you to follow, these are rules for the government to follow. Rules that they have to obey and rights that they cannot take away in any circumstance. Rights are given to us by God, not government, and as such, the amendments I posted above are untouchable.

Do NOT let anyone take these away from you, even in a time of crisis like this one.

The Financial Report of the United States Government (Financial Report) provides the President, Congress, and the American people with a comprehensive view of the federal government's finances, i.e., its financial position and condition, revenues and costs, assets and liabilities, and other obligations and commitments. The Financial Report also discusses important financial issues and significant conditions that may affect future operations, including the need to achieve fiscal sustainability over the medium and long term.

A year ago, we wrote this… //

As brilliant as Orwell was, something continuously struck me as incorrect as I read 1984.

Orwell’s government – was extraordinarily competent in its totalitarian imposition of technological power.

“In Reality – no government in the history of man has ever been even remotely close to that competent.

“For Orwell’s Big Brother dystopia to become Reality – Big Government would need private sector help.

“Enter private sector Big Tech.

“Big Tech has delivered much of the technology Orwell envisioned….

“(I)t’s Big Tech doing the spying – not Big Government….

“The ONLY way Big Government can impose Big Brother – is to partner with Big Tech.”

Flash forward to now. We’re in the midst of the titanically stupid China Virus shutdown.

And every tyrant – at every level of government – is not letting the crisis go to waste. //

“Witnesses at Thursday’s Senate Commerce ‘paper hearing’ on big data and the coronavirus pandemic largely agreed on one major point: The outbreak underscores the need for a federal privacy law.”

President Trump demonstrates that Federalism, combined with the Private Sector, will win this fight. //

that promoted the concept that the major Wuhan Virus fight is going to be won by logistics. The longer this current crisis goes on, the more I am convinced of that.

Read: Opinion: Beating the Wuhan Virus Will Be More of a Logistical Fight Than a Medical One //

In another article, I mentioned that America has a lot of capacity that could be moved around to deal with surge situations. That Army Field hospital, along with the hospital ships USNS Comfort and Mercy, are just three examples.

Read: Opinion: We Have Excess Capacity, No Need to Panic

As I noted in my previous pieces, once we get the behemoths that are our military and commercial supply chains focused on something, we can kick out supplies, equipment and trained personnel like no other nation on Earth. As the President quipped during one daily briefing, “By the time we get through, ventilators will be going for five bucks apiece.” And he’s correct. Washington State’s experience is just one example. //

Along the way, I noticed something else, something pretty darned neat. I’ve always considered President Trump to be a typical Manhattan “limousine liberal.” //

During one of the afternoon briefings a few days ago, there was this exchange between a reporter and The President regarding the manufacture and distribution of masks.

Reporter…Don’t you want one National Standard?

Trump: No. If a state can get masks faster than we can, then do it. No need for a national standard at this point. The states know better.