An alarming thing has happened and the most alarming bit is that no one is alarmed. Things seem to be proceeding apace in Egypt and the intellectuals are salivating at the prospect of a new Egyptian constitution, to be drafted by around June. That doesn’t leave much time so they are soliciting advice from foreign corners and from one corner was dislodged sitting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg who used the occasion to suggest that under no circumstances should the Egyptian reformers consider the US Constitution as any sort of guide. It is, after all, laughably aged and enfeebled. Much better ore is to be had in the post-War world. Look right at 10:00 to see where she swallows the Constitution she has sworn to defend in one gulp. Most emphatically does she advise the Egyptians NOT to look at this document for guidance even as she describes the ordinary Rights of public participation and arrest that have been made real in the world, in large part, because of the attention given them in our Constitution and the spread of these, through means fair and foul, to every aspiring society.  How the Egyptian fellow did not show shock or even surprise is a bit mysterious but a larger puzzler is how this could have been on youtube for a week and only now drawing attention. Hopefully this was a clever bit of disinformation. The dimmest Cairo cabbie could not fail  to realize, Ginsburg is a Jew. Perhaps the State Department and the Justice came up with a plot of reverse-psychology. “Ruthie,” Hillary might have told her. “You go in and you tell ‘em, don’t you look at our Constitution. There is NOTHING in there for you, and they will tear into it like Bill through a Ladies’ Auxiliary!” But no, with the specifics and enthusiasm it is plain, this is Ginsburg Unplugged.

Her condemnation of our Constitution is sotto voce. She seems to only complain of its age. Glass houses, Madame Justice. Glass houses. I’m sure her objections are fleshed out in her writings from her lengthy career as head of the ACLU. What we have from this interview, however, what she has boiled down to an essential essence that might aid the new leaders of a turbulent desert nation, is a chirpy, if vapid, endorsement of the South African constitution. Certainly it exceeds our Constitution on grounds of freshness; if it were an American citizen it would just now be able to drive. But it is a prodigy, leaping past the old tatters of  parchment. The SA constitution, in contrast to our own, “was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights… ” As a Supreme Court Justice, she must indeed know her stuff.

We know what Ginsburg is on about. She mentions a couple other documents but all attempt to secure the rights in our Bill of Rights (except, always, the Second Amendment) and mostly do so in language aping the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments. So that cannot be Ginsburg’s indictment. Plainly what she desires although even she knows enough to speak only vaguely, is to have Constitutional mandates in the US promising healthcare, housing, education, food, water and “social security”, a term obviously ripped from the American fabric though not our Constitution. Who can doubt that this is also what Obama has in mind when he complains that the US Constitution is flawed and encumbering? So what lucky city is going to reap the hotel taxes and bar tabs generated by a New Constitutional Convention? Sadly there will be no such boon. Obama and his Progressives do not seek to add the South African provisions under public scrutiny. Rather they will redefine federal food aid as an Establishment of Justice, federal housing subsidies as Ensuring Domestic Tranquility. Pay-offs will Provide for the Common Defense. Tuition grants Promote the General Welfare. Government doctoring is a  Blessing of Liberty secured to Ourselves and our Posterity. These are the building blocks of A More Perfect Union. So says Obama. So says Ginsburg and Kagan; Sotomayor, Breyer and Kennedy but also Alito, Roberts, Scalia and to the least extent, Thomas. Also Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and yes, even the adamant Ron Paul. Rush Limbaugh is on board as well, as is Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, George Will, Charles Krauthammer or anyone else on the so-called Right. And quite probably YOU and everyone you know. How do we know this? Actions speak louder than words but we have BOTH and perhaps the most revealing of all are not actions but in-actions; not the words spoken or written but those unspoken. The most revealing of all are those words forbidden to speak. What is the Cow Most Sacred that to even mention her name in any but adulatory terms is to be torn out of the American ledger? You know and I know, it is that term adopted so fully and respectfully from America to South Africa. Social Security.

The professional talkers who reap bags of cash and decibels of applause for their embittered pronouncements and have no elections to lose will defend Social Security in terms both strident and dogmatic. Even the secular-saint Reagan is found to be a New Dealer at heart. All the Constitutional gyrations that are rightly denounced as subterfuge as regards Obamacare or other new iterations of wealth redistribution are swallowed whole cloth as regards Social Security. Limbaugh is as willing to explain as Hillary that, Social Security is not “socialism” in any sense and by the way, the OTHER guys are out to destroy it! The protege of Ed Meese, Levin, will calmly explain that the Commerce Clause is the foundation for Social Security and Medicare as well. This while he draws the line acerbically at the diktats of Obamacare and Romneycare that say, you will not pay us for your medicine but rather we will tell you whom to pay, how much and what you will get for it. Paul Ryan stands no further than Howard Dean from the justifying principles of these programs; he just aspires to make them actuarially sound. Ron Paul? Yes, he does denounce them in Constitutional terms but what is his solution? To continue them except with an opt-out for the young.

Both the Paul and the Ryan plans have one thing in common with ALL the other solutions out in the public realm, that is they DO NOT TOUCH current beneficiaries or those with about ten years until eligibility. This is mathematically impossible. You can’t just sever those paying in from those receiving the payments even if they stay flat (which they will not). Where do the truly mammoth amounts to make up the difference come from? Only from taxes, borrowing and printing. So just as the youthful opt-out is working in his first office job, he is neither paying into nor drawing from Social Security but somewhere, if he is not taxed into poverty, there is either an auctioneer or a high-speed press operating at high speed in his name. And in the meantime when he DOES save for his own infirmity, he has no guarantee of returns. He has no guarantee of his principle. These are the inevitable burdens you lay on a prostate America when you press your claims.

Who? Me? I’m not “pressing” any claims. I’m filing for my entitlements. And hey, didn’t I pay for ‘em?

This is the fatal rub; the deadly misconstruction and it is what separates the ten Articles in the American Bill of Rights and rights delineated under Chapter 2 of the SA constitution. The Rights in the Bill of Rights don’t require anyone to do anything for you to enjoy them. Rather the Bill of Rights is a menu of restrictions laid on the federal government and its subsidiaries. Citizens “shall not be denied due process of law…” not provided with anything except the restraint of the authorities. “…shall not be infringed.” That is plain and definitive language and as adamant as law can be. The equivalent South African codice has thirty-two sections, each with sub-sections and indexed paragraphs. Our Bill of Rights can be plainly seen in the first half though it is watered down like a cheap cocktail. It bargains away the clarity of our First Amendment for a slew of claims now dressed up as Rights. It seems the citizen is wildly empowered; he has a claim against the state for his subsistence. In South Africa this was expressly meant to atone for Apartheid. You will find the same arguments in America claiming reparations for slavery (but improperly). So there is a powerful pseudo-moral case for the claims as just compensation. Its morality is false however since government has nothing to give unless it is taken first from The People; so the claimant, if he considers himself a free, equal, sovereign citizen; one among many, holds nothing but a chit from himself which he honors with taxes (whether those levies are called “taxes” or not). This only applies while we recognize One class or sort of citizen. Once you assert that say, white people owe me. Or rich people owe me, and you write that class out of protections you reserve to yourself, we say good-bye to Equal Protection. No one has Rights but everyone will have claims, to some extent, of being ill-used. So their claims then become sacred rights while all an unconsensual debt can ever be is a license to enslave which was the problem in the first place.

Even if one still asserts a theoretical superiority for a system of common holdings based on “just” claims, it must be admitted that it does not work. Even for the Soviets there was a practical limit to printing roubles; phony money to pay any claim. If all claims, legitimate or not are honored then in short order no claims, legitimate or not, can be paid. It can’t work. It is a math based on the infinite of human wants converted to claims against human industry but painted as Civil Rights. There are only two ways out once embarked down this road; one is for large numbers of citizens to forgo their claims, just or not. Unlikely.The other is for everyone to press their claims to the maximum until the pot is drained and smashed to bits. The State based on claims will die and the claims with it. Rough freedoms will return because no one will be paid to stop them. Trade and thievery, enterprise and loot will thrive. Then by necessity genuine charity will replace the system of claims, now defunct. This happy time will persist so long as the new State is restrained, which is the function of the Constitution. One would think a Supreme Court Justice, or at least SOMEONE would know it.

In Action Comics #8, published in January of 1939, Superman decides that housing conditions are responsible for juvenile delinquency. If only kids didn’t live in slums, they wouldn’t be getting in trouble with Superman. But what to do about the existence of slums? Superman sees a newspaper article that gives him an idea (click on any image to enlarge).

Residents are warned to remove their belongings from the homes. Then the world’s strongest man springs into action.

Yes, you’ve read that right. Superman enjoys a good workout as he destroys the entire neighborhood slum. And the residents — whose homes were destroyed without their permission or even their notification — are fortunate to have had their homes destroyed.

So, you see, if people are living in poor conditions, it is good that a cyclone or Superman or any other force (war?) destroys their homes, because they end up with “splendid housing conditions” when the government rebuilds, at least in the world of early Superman. (No mention is made of where these people live while the housing project is being built.)

Superman has not only apparently never heard of the broken window fallacy, but seems to believe that by destroying the decrepit housing, he is helping to rid the town of “filthy, crime festering slums.” As if the very same people who had lived in the slum, once they are living in government “huge apartment projects,” will no longer commit crimes or be plagued by those who do. 

Ah, the good old days of crime-free government housing projects.

A fake candidate has ended his fake campaign. Or did he? Jon Huntsman is far, far from a household name like Spiro Agnew or Alger Hiss. Largely, the relief of that condition was his reason for running. Not that this should indict Huntsman particularly, it is the case with anyone whose name you have heard on the ballot at any but the most piddling level and once said level of piddle is achieved… Katy, burn the barn! Yes, the evidence is in and we find it as have all honest observers of politics since time begins. It is not merely that the trough of government draws pigs but it also turns the odd honest man or woman  who blunders to office into boar or sow respectively. Lord Acton told us not just that absolute power corrupts absolutely but that power corrupts; it corrupts proportionately as the petty tyrants of your Home Owners Association demonstrate, it corrupts opportunely as we see in the semi-secret rapes of children by authority figures in sports, academe and the cloisters. Subtle power corrupts with subtlety. Profane power corrupts profanely. Incremental power corrupts incrementally and provisional power corrupts provisionally; this last is the best state we can hope to achieve.

That is really the long-shot hope of the American Constitution. As Hayek liked to put it, you can’t count on electing the right people, what you have to do is arrange matters so the WRONG people do the RIGHT things. This is one reason “democracy” was held in such low esteem by anyone who mattered around the time of the Constitution’s drafting. And it is a sound one. The whole idea was pretty daft. What would a cobbler know of the affairs of state? asked the Czarina. What would a queen know of the affairs of cobblers? is the answer. And whether a queen or a cobbler is more important to you rests almost entirely on the state of your shoes. Metaphorically our shoes are in poor repair and wearing quickly. Let us update our casting and Joe the Cobbler is now Joe the Manager; he runs a Payless in a still-motile shopping center. Joe the Manager, epitome of the Middle Class is publicly held in high regard, his concerns foremost in all minds.  He earns in the $80s with bonuses and the wife makes $50 as a medical bill coder (part time) but supports a squad of children, therefore a platoon of teachers and the Joe’s collectively pay every cent expended by government except that borrowed or printed. This is the modern version of the bucolic serfs Katherine the Great thought so little of, even as counselors. Don’t feel too superior. Your self-described Betters; the various congregations of the smartest guys in any room hold you in the same regard today. As with the bygone potentates, the modern Peerage sees you and yours as a horde, a mob, a wave of stampeding cattle that the skillful may ride; the skillful, fortunate and ruthless may rule. Laboring under such contempt the Cobbler and Manager both suffer, harming our shoes and that reality slowly erodes the veil of fake.

It is a sturdy garment and everyone is sporting it this year. Huntsman was a fake, but he was not the fakest of candidates. With a swing in the Low Country breezes a Stephen Colbert finds himself leading the sitting Governor of Texas in South Carolina. Like any well-advised media giant, he sees an opportunity and has gone campaigning there; no matter that it’s too late for him to get on the ballot and no write ins are allowed. He is on the ground kissing hands and shaking babies. But at least Colbert is an actual fake. Yes, like Huntsman and Romney, he is a fake Republican (if they are the anti-socialists) but his fakery is sincere. The man is a professional comedian and actor like Pat Paulsen who also ran for President many times (and with a bit of success). The other fellows pretend that their pretense is unpretentious. Their oleaginous smiles and hearty handshakes are not meant in irony, however they are taken. Colbert is openly joking and it is a useful joke. The Colbert campaign, complying with Campaign Finance Laws that require him to give up control over his PAC advertising arm of yesterday, does exactly what a “real” candidate would do; he gives it over to a nominally independent fellow who can be counted on to do what he wants. Congratulations, Jon Stewart! This stuff just writes itself. Too bad Newt Gingrich is as serious as he can get, which is still pretty funny. Before Iowa he made a fake appeal to civility. We know it was fake because it came from Newt and knowing it was fake we also know the real reason behind it. It was tactical, of course. Newt didn’t have the dough to counter said ads or, more to the point, launch his own preemptive strike so he called for a phony truce. The one decent maneuver Romney has made that was NOT fake was his instant and neutron-bomb effective assault on Fort Gingrich. Except that Mitt made no such maneuver, it was HIS super-PAC that did so, only it’s not his, it is aut0nomous so really Newt was asking the wrong guy. To such absurdity our politics has devolved in large measure only to calm the vanity of John Sidney McCain, a man who has harmed this nation in a thousand ways still yet to be discovered. It was McCain-Feingold that made such gyrations mandatory. And why? To take the filthy green paper off the field of debate, or at least to expose it, or at least to measure it. Needless to say this fake solution to a phony problem has cost plenty in unspoken words and uncorrected lies but in the meantime it writes a comic sketch without end. Now that Newt has raked enough contributions to go on the hunt, his Super-PAC, which is the independent Winning Our Future, has denounced Romney as a heartless robber-baron; apparently just because the term focus-grouped poorly. As one might have guessed, this is a tough charge to make in a Republican primary. It seems to reveal Newt as a flailing desperado and there is nothing fake about that, but what can he do? The PAC is not supposed to “coordinate” with the campaign as Stewart is not to coordinate with Colbert. We make the fake assumption that the laws are being adhered to as the nasty ads go on for a couple days… hey, we already bought the air time, and shortly they mutate into smarmy hagiographies on Newt Gingrich and his bridge-troll clan. But not with any of his input, we all nod in fake agreement.

So the plague of fake is no overnight sensation. Fake is nearly all we have and nearly all we ever have. Ah, but it wasn’t always such…. so say the adherents to the TEA party, which is NOT a political party with ballot access and such things. The REAL TEA parties were events that you would attend and almost never was tea served except in hurled bags from the mocking counter-culture types having a REAL party. But the fake party claims one real hero. That would be Ronald Wilson Reagan, naturally. Reagan’s is a well-nibbled corpse. Mountebanks of all parties or NO party claim his inspiration. Huntsman did it. Obama does it. They all do it including Rick Santorum but at least he leavens his grave-robbing with some necessary truths. If you blinked you missed it and, given the reception, it may not be repeated but in Brentwood NH, coming right off his good showing in Iowa, Santorum committed, as the headline denounces “sacrilege” on Reagan’s memory but he does so by recalling simple facts about the Gipper’s tenure. Go and hear it if you do not already know. Rick spares not and it is nearly enough to make me order one of his sweatervests. It was Reagan the old (not former) New Dealer who has largely brought us to our current pass on entitlements. No, not because he slashed taxes on the rich; he slashed taxes on everyone, but when the President and his Democrats invoke Reagan as a practical, centrist compromiser compared to the rabid John Boehner, this is what they are talking about. Hear it from Rick or hear it from me. Reagan raised the payroll taxes some 40%; these taxes that are not taxes but compulsory contributions, a phony distinction. And he raised them not just to make Social Security and Medicare “solvent” (a term with no applicable meaning), he raised them higher than preceived necessary so that the surplus would be used to buy US bonds, their only legal investment, and thereby fund the government at large. And then larger still. So the nemesis of Carter proves quite tractable as regards Roosevelt. Never did Reagan declare that entitlements were a Ponzi scheme, unConstitutional or conceptually unworkable though he did say some were immoral. Sadly these were open programs of poor relief that are less immoral because they are more necessary than a retirement scheme for people who earn and a health insurance cartel for those who can pay. Reagan’s famous “There you go again” response, immitated by many lesser weevils was always a rebuff to those who said he was out to destroy the American welfare state. That was a slander, he would say, and that was the truth. Reagan saw the can in the road and he kicked just as hard as he could which is precisely what Carter had intended only his game was basketball. Reagan’s? Football. But on principle, on these revered entitlements Reagan served as a fake conservative.

If you are feeling smug because you know of these fakes and laugh at them; laugh, laugh away. The plague of fake strikes all houses, even that of the King. And who would that be? Why, don’t you know what day it is? A march through the Sweet Auburn area has put me in a mood for puncturing fakes on this, not Martin Luther King’s birthday, nor deathday, but the nearest convenient day for its observation. Down in the former ‘hood, now a “civil rights” theme park, genuine inebriates engage in phony ecstasies. Phony Reverends and phony friends to phony poor gather to wear their Kwanzaa-best and reiterate their denunciations of racism while they preach racism, they abhor scapegoating, while they scapegoat. They make a counting-house of their celebrations with distant parking at ten dollars, near at twenty-five while the REAL bigwigs park on the sidewalk under police protection or are disgorged from limousines with a driver who waits on their pleasure as class struggle drips from their mouths. And no, this is no treachery to King. The fake experts on King like Glenn Beck and Mark Levin either ignore or are ignorant that by their definitions, yes, King was a socialist on principle as his ally Nixon proved to be one in practice. He was FOR Affirmative Action. He was FOR what is called “reverse racism” as it is racism practiced behind a mask of fairness. He hoped for redistribution of wealth that would benefit HIS people over others. Today Valerie Jarrett complains of assaults on the Voting Rights Act, meaning there is to be no identification of voters, giving the audacious the right to vote under any name or several. THIS is the great triumph of the phony race-healer King, or so his heirs claim, with solid foundation.

No, that is not all. That King is dead so Long Live King Fugazi, the man so fake he has dissappeared from our Reality. That would be the Would Be King, Barack Hussein Obama, if that is his name. Phony intellectual, phony liberal, phony conservative, phony moderate, phony Christian, phony husband, phony professor but as it happens also a phony pacifist, phony realist and transparently fake adherent to the Constitution. How has he done all these things that yesterday a Candidate Obama would declare unlawful madness? In large part he does so because we have a phony Legislature, too busy day trading their “blind” trusts to even defend their own Constitutional privileges. But mostly it is because we inhabit a fake America. Even in the bleakest corner of the TEA party, that supposed band of resolute throwbacks you find that they like those breaches of the Constitution that pad their pockets or flatter their egos. Ethanol and so-called food stamps are exemplary. They pay off the grain belt which repays their increases by nominating the proper men to the Presidency of either party. Farm support is fleshed out by the poverty pimps today at Ebenezer Baptist in one case and by the volatile Greens in the other though these fake environmentalists are concerned with the green of greenbacks over all.

And that is the ultimate fake. Whenever WHOMever says “it’s not about money” you better believe, it is about money. The President nakedly swears he will “raise” a billion dollars to wage his ongoing campaign. The Republicans desire only to get their paws firmly on the Treasury, their fake excuse? We will administer these things you love, that our principles say are wrong and unworkable, so you may enjoy them ever as you have. Meaning the entitlements, it should be plain, are about money. “Jobs” are about money. Reality takes a little bite here as Obama’s promised “jobs program” for this summer trumpeting “employment opportunities” is actually offering unpaid internships to the burgeoning black unemployed class; a bitterly phony exercise. Even so-called gay marriage is about money. Anyone can stay with anyone who will have them indefinitely and under whatever blessings they desire but what we are talking about here is property and even more precisely, the benefits that now attach to heterosexual spouses. Everything is about everyone’s loot. But that’s where it gets REAL good. Because… come closer now…. the money is also fake. All of it! It’s the biggest fraud ever perpetuated on humanity. The Full Faith and Credit of the United States, that is what your money is made of! That and nothing else. So fraud begets fraud begets fraud. In the end Reality will assert herself. If we are governed lawlessly but under the presumptions of socialism, meaning From each according to their abilities and To each according to their needs we will absolutely devolve to the same point the Soviets did, where their entire society was fake; even the food. Even the shoes. As it was commonly put, we pretend to work and the state pretends to pay us. How far are we from that now?

Maybe we shouldn’t have the end of the year during the holidays. Yes, it is one of the holidays itself but maybe they are too concentrated here on the long tail of the annum. Legislative and other periods link to the end of the calendar year causing deadlines to loom just when offices are empty or emptying. Once phones rang unanswered from Thanksgiving Wednesday to January 2nd. Now they roll over to voice. Which is more cruel? There are a few folks still on the job although they eye the clock nervously and jostle their keys. They are trying to “get things done” and whatever that means it apparently means the same thing two days before Christmas as it means on any other day at the Capitol and the White House.

The tangle is deep and tight. If you know your players and their CVs, the sides seem oddly inverted. President Obama and his Democrats propose an extension of a cut in taxes that is scheduled to expire, or “sunset” come the New Year. This is to benefit the “middle class” through tax relief. The mindless, toothless Republicans running riot in the House are opposed. Only their opposition comes in the form of a yet longer extension of said tax cut. Say what? This is no simple INversion, more like a PERversion of sense and consistency that is opaque to anyone spending less effort to understand it than a crossword might require, which is nearly everyone. This inky maelstrom has been decades in the making.

To begin, the tax is no tax. Except when it is. The Federal Insurance Contribution Act’s deduction from your paycheck is not a tax. It is a compulsory insurance premium, sound familiar? By law these funds are NOT supposed to fund general government operations but whatever is not paid in bennies and overhead is to be kept in a trust; that famous Lock Box. But what is that? It turns out the Lock Box is just another ledger entry invested in secure, long-term instruments of impeccable provenance; Federal Treasury Bills which, do what? Fund general government operations. And these are not ordinary T-bills but special non-convertible bonds that can’t be bought or sold, only redeemed. On their schedule. So there is a largish dollop of The Full Faith and Credit of the United States of America on deposit but you aren’t going to be cashing it in. Whatever Social Security’s convoluted liabilities finally amount to is  tomorrow’s mystery. In the here and now the money taken out of your check under FICA is not a tax when Republicans complain that large portions of the nation pay no taxes (they mean income taxes). It is a tax when Democrats want to give “refundable tax credits”; direct cash payments not otherwise plausible. In this both parties have been on both sides. Ephemera like this is much of what occupies the time of your Legislators and it is relevant only to demonstrate how thin and threadbare the whole controversy is. But if it isn’t a tax, it is certainly a levy, the eccentricities of which we have discussed before.

Let’s go ahead and call it a tax cut. How did our players get on the wrong sides of the stage for this one? While it was incorrect and impolite to say that the $80 per month this would add to the average take-home is trivial to the taxpayer it is trivial as a tax event. This sort of tax cut or a concomitant tax hike that is transitory, tiny or otherwise co-opted was practiced first by Mike Huckabee (later Mitt Romney) to generate a functional answer when he was accused of being profligate as a Governor. “Well, I cut taxes seventeen thousand times!” The “times” are immaterial, it is the total relief that matters economically and mathematically but whatever. The precedent is well set and the media refs have already called this an Obama ball so let them take it. If Boner’s benchwarmers want to get back on the board they need a couple new plays.

It may be infuriatingly mysterious how Boner’s proposal for a 12 month extension of the FICA cut rather than 2 months STILL marks the Right out as the pillager of paychecks but the rejoinder suggests iteself; if 2% is good, why isn’t 4% better? Or 8%? Heck, we can make it a 100% tax cut while only raising it to 12.4%! Certainly there is some leverage available. This would be consistent with that old, sadly improper, stereotype about Republicans never having met a tax cut they didn’t like. Indeed that is the trap Boner has fallen into. The fulcrum that has allowed it to be turned into a figure-four neck break is that reliable Third Rail of politics, Social Security.

Reagan first made his famous rejoinder regarding Medicare but the point applies to all modern entitlements. Mr. Carter denounced Reagan for wanting to de-fund and defenestrate that particular program…. “There you go again,” was the response. Rather, Reagan would “fix” Medicare and also Social Security by making them “solvent”, how? Increased taxes, of course! Although we know they are NOT taxes; and it gets more complicated from there. The once New Dealer, Reagan, indeed seemed to have no animus towards Social Security or Medicare, certainly none based on small-government idealism or Constitutional principles. For him and all his heirs these programs actually WERE what they are not so cunningly disguised as, namely insurance. So their off-book accounting was proper and continues to this day. Social Security and Medicare related liabilities are not considered part of the national debt now over $15t and many other commitments of the government to future payments are likewise obscured in folds of deception.

This was the great aim and result of Social Security; to lay a tax disguised as something else in order to fund a government expansion in all realms and all directions. It is an invisible tax hiding in plain sight. It is chicanery and diversion of this sort that the Republicans should make it their vocation to unearth and denounce but if even Reagan would not do so (not from PR concerns but from affinity for the policies) then who will? No one we’ve seen except perhaps Ron Paul and even he stops short of exorcism as a solution. It might be easier for folks who get elected for a living to speak the simple truth that our entitlements are unjust and unConstitutional when it is more obvious that they are unworkable and unbearable. Any reduction in Social Security funding hastens this day, I am therefore in favor of the payroll tax cut extension. I am for its expansion. But everyone who traffics in greenbacks should fear, even if they do not oppose, its expiration.

Another inversion of our stereotypical positions is this pernicious “sunset clause” tripping us again. Back when the payroll tax cut was passed as part of the stimulus legislation the opposition (though meager) was from the Democrats and from the Left. This was a threat to the Social Security system, clearly. The only way it was palatable was if, like with the insane and devastating income tax cuts of the hellish Bush, the cut was temporary. VERY temporary, as in some point after the recession is clearly over. December 31st ’11 seemed about right. Now all gaze on the New Year with horror absent the extension. Why? Because without ammendment, current law would require every employer in the nation to withhold 6.2% for FICA rather than the 4.2% they have been doing, also they are on the hook for their own half of the Social Security “premium” but we always figure the draw on BOTH as dunning the employee, because it does. So what we are really looking for January 1st (which has now been moved to March 1st) is an immediate tax hike. If you pay only payroll taxes on net (as half of taxpayers do) this will amount to an instant increase in your tax burden of 50%. You are going from an 8.2% rate to 12.2%. Horror, indeed.

But this is a tiny horror compared to the Mother of All Sunsets, which will see the end of the Bush tax rates. Recall, these were to expire at the end of 2010. This would have meant, likewise, a near 50% tax hike for many payers and a 100% increase, if you want to look at it that way, for those many low earners who paid NO income taxes under the Bush rates but some 15% or so under the pre-Bush terms. In any case EVERYONE’S income taxes would go up substantially, materially and irrevocably since the sunset clause is part of current law requiring Congressional approval and a Presidential signature for any alteration. That is now a crisis scheduled for December 31st 2012.

Does that sound familiar? It is to that date that all the bigs claim they want the payroll tax sunset removed. Yes, even for Reid and Obama, the two-month timetable was only a stopgap. They also claim to want the full year but this kind of reverse-flip play is commendable when exercised by Democrats, so we commend them That doesn’t change the fact that now we are scheduled for a double-sunset; come this time next year we will be facing de jur tax increases of a truly mind-boggling size and suddenness; for the hundredaire as much as the millionaire. But surely by that time this recession will be over. Growth will be around 8%. Unemployment with a five-handle and we’ll still have 3% bonds. So, come on 2012!

If only we can get through a couple months. This is in question because, although media types guffawed at Boner’s complaint that the two-month extension is not even practically doable, that was not the Speaker’s contention. Rather he was repeating public statements from experts in the payroll industry. But what do they know? They say that five-odd working days, at the height of the vacation season, is not enough time to re-write and then test the software to keep the withholding from being withheld. A year would have been possible since they could continue on with today’s practice. The haples Eric Cantor’s counter-offer of a 3 month extension was also more pragmatic for the check-writers, since a quarter is at least a timeframe comprehendable to business actions. But no. The President has got what he asked for. And whatever the result we are all going to be back again in 64 days. Happy, merry. Joyous, prosperous.

Media automation and access sometimes still let you down. There was an excellent video on the local news which I cannot find a link for. If only I had taken the lo-tech approach when it aired and scribbled down a few notes or at least written the channel on my arm. A more practical explanation of the predicament is here but I will try to reproduce the irony and agony of the original piece that we might call The Pie-man Learns About Free Money.

There have been some economic problems in the land and on the sea lately, you may have heard. The weight has fallen with severe effect on Georgia. This is something we are ill-used to, as generally with our limited institutions, diverse production and strategic positioning, we have been lightly impacted during these events compared to the nation at large. Not this time. Georgia’s unemployment rate has been among the worst and has been more stubborn than other parts of the country except the most desperate, like California. We were hit early and soundly depleting the state’s unemployment insurance fund (which had been compromised already), suffering the same fate of ALL these “safety net” programs which is a simultaneous spike in claimants and crash in payments leading to empty coffers in short order. The solution? Borrowing, of course. In this instance the state has borrowed from the federal government as have many others. News hits on this subject go back to 2009 easily and now the accumulated deficit that Georgia owes to the Treasury is nearing $800 million. That doesn’t sound like much these days; a rounding error to a solar panel project. And as Nancy Pelosi  has famously said, nothing is more “stimulative” to the economy than unemployment checks. Which may well be true but that stimulation still comes at a cost, doesn’t it? Yes, the feds clearly want even this pittance repaid… with interest… and the time has come, much to the shock and chagrin of The Pie-man.

The Pie-man is no fat cat, at least not financially. The newsies went out on location to cover this story, gravitating, perhaps because of the smell, to the famous industrial bakery that churns out Mrs. Edwards’ Pies IN the city and largely FOR the city. It’s a magical place, like Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. Stainless machines hum along stamping out crusts, filling them with apples or whatnot and sending the product to the stores. It looks like maybe a 500 man operation, excluding management. The surprise meeting The Pie-man, who seems to be the shift manager, is that come January 1st Mrs. Edwards (who does not exist) will be paying $42 per head to the federal unemployment fund instead of $21, to begin whittling down that account. Yes, it is an annual dunning; less than $2 a month, hardly worth carping about, is it? Ordinarily perhaps so but all enterprises, excepting only liquidators, are on a knife’s edge at the moment, does anyone dispute that? Now this homegrown success story and employer of hundreds who are high-school educated at best and supporting families, must write a check for $21,ooo instead of the $10,500 they were expecting.

The Pie-man, as you can imagine, looked quite stricken He was hearing this news on camera, having been conspicuously let down by both media and government, given this bad news redounded to no one’s political benefit. Like so many of our recent surprises, this one gets worse the more closely one looks at it. First, the terms of the loan are pretty awful. Georgia is getting 3.94% on this note while large banks and institutions are getting practically 0%. Is it that the state of Georgia is a lesser risk than Wells Fargo? Sadly that may prove to be the case and if all our arrangements are made as shrewdly as this one that will certainly be so. A quick bit of calculating reveals that it will take some seventy-five thousand payments of the sort The Pie-man contemplates to pay off this debt today. If we can’t write that check, of course the interest accrues. As it stands the state has not even kept up with the interest because, naturally, there are STILL new claimants and STILL depressed contributions. This comes on top of the fact that the state unemployment premium (hey, they aren’t TAXES, after all) has gone from $69 dollars in ’09 to $213 in ’10! I have been unable to find the rate for this year or next but do you think they have gone down? Yeah, probably they have gone down since the benefits are going down. That’s how these things work, right? And here is a longer-term bit of bad news for The Pie-man; until the debt is completely paid the federal levy will increase $21 AGAIN every year. So on January 1st 2013 instead of the $21,000 check, it will be $31,500. Then $42,000. Then $52,500 in 2016, the earliest the debt could plausibly be repaid. These are pennies, I know, but still they add up, wouldn’t you say? Yes, they add up but the debt and interest also adds up. The only solution is to cut benefits and this, yes, the state is about to do.

Any one of these leechings seems minor; almost a petty thing to complain about. That is, of course, the strategy. It is Boiled Frog Syndrome. It is The March of the Inch Worm. It is Revolution by Slices and the slices are getting thicker while there is not, to  my reckoning, a slice so thin that you would want it to come off of your own precious posterior. Still those slices are shaved. Still they do not satisfy the beast. But diversion comes to the rescue of those demanding payment, at least for now. A mouthpiece for the state Dept of Labor, a certain Sam Hall, heaves a sigh of relief and hopes it is contagious as a yawn.

There is good news for employees. There will be no trickle down affect onto their paychecks.

“That’s a tax paid by employers. Employers cannot pass that along to their employees,” said Hall.

So at least the hairnet crew, when they are out on their smoke breaks don’t need to pollute the air with concerns of any sort. The pies, after all, must be baked. Of course this hiking of the cost of employment will never cause the employer to invest rather in automation. Even less likely are these added costs going to raise the wholesale price of the pies, nor the retail price since then, as anyone could warn you, there might be fewer pies sold, bringing even less lucre to The Pie-man, that lousy one-percenter whose white smock certainly conceals a double-breasted suit, waistcoat with gold watch and chain and the usual canvas bag full of money the foreman is always carrying so he can wallow in his ill-gotten green over lunch. And there is exactly NO chance, is there? that the enterprise over all will become untenable, closing its doors and turning the entire payroll over to the unemployment line? No, that is certainly impossible. If not, we would be terrified.

It is not only The Pie-man subject to this poisonous skooching. This tried, successful tactic is at play in every corner subject to humanity’s reach, at every level of government, business and law. In Alabama nearly invisible alterations to water use regulations have made sewerage rates quadruple in a few years. Finance and so-called environmental concerns collude, as they habitually do, to discourage mad profligacy like daily warm baths and flushing toilets with every use. Likewise the “standards” for light bulbs are meticulously if quietly tightened in hopes of outlawing Edison bulbs for their reckless squandering of energy. If the increased costs mean less dough pours into the pockets of pro-wrestlers and county fairs, that is all to the good; it spares our superiors the bitter feud that would result if they tried to just outlaw such vulgar distractions from more worthy pursuits like composting.

At every turn there is a nudge, a flashing light, a glowering cop or just a well-trod rut. We are not loaded down with chains or steered along with whips but guided by speed bumps both cultural and financial that accumulate one on the other, often contradictory, until we reside in a cell; ignorant that it is a cell because it is also a maze, the walls of which LOOK solid but are really just plaster and balsa. Who will test those walls, though? Not the disgruntled Port-o-let subscribers in Lower Alabama; they cry out for the feds to rescue them, appealing to the architect of their confinement for respite. The Pie-man can only pay his dues and look to make it up elsewhere, perhaps in using other limes instead of Key limes for their Key Lime Pie; or adding mechanization. Or cutting production and staff. Or closing down. The government’s solution is same as it ever was; MORE borrowing! Hey, we can get this debt service down a bit if we sell some bonds to pay it off!

But to whom will you sell your bonds, friend? And who will then buy our pies?

In days of old when knights were bold the French used to call being gay, The British Disease. Of course the yobs called it The French Complaint. With today’s accusations against the Brits from the French, it amounts to a similar near stalemate. France is pushing back on the ratings agencies warning that their Triple A is about to be cut. Mes amis, cut them, not us, you know why? Blah blah. It’s the classic diverting behavior of the addict, in this case the addiction is to printing money. And that is one I can understand quite well. I’m about ten stitches away from running off a few Benjis myself at the Kinko’s. But it doesn’t “work” for me or them in that the practice, like treating anemia with leeches, makes the underlying conditions of which the downgrades and high borrowing costs are a symptom, fatally worse.

But the ratings agencies DO have it right, at least in regards to France vs Britain. Sarkozy’s peeps point to minor advantages they have over Cameron’s crew on macro numbers like debt:GDP, total size and overall growth. The margins are not impressive although some of it was surprising. I thought Britain had more growth than France even now but nothing goes with snark like a bit of cherry picking which I’m not about to try to rubbish piecemeal.

The reason France is clearly a worse credit risk than the UK is obvious. While Britain is in the Common Market they never did adopt the Euro. They are still sound as a pound. Generally this would mean that the larger currency zone, clearly the euro, has more in headcount, reserves, assets and taxing power, which they do, and is therefor a better risk. But there has been chicanery going on for decades. Sure there has been in London as well but even if the British situation IS mathematically worse than France’s, they have more control over their affairs going forward because they are NOT stuck to the Euro. France derides the British for Greek-style, if not quite level, overall debt. But Greece’s staggering and un-repayable debt is also France’s debt, at least in part. It is Britain’s and ours to some extent as well due to Credit Default Options in everyone’s hands. Not yours? Wrongo boyo. If you have a penny on deposit anywhere in any banking system of any type you ALSO have exposure to Greek debt. But Euro users have more.

What the French spokes-hommes don’t seem tu realize though is that there are an unlimited number of downgrades to go around. This is the predictable, logical conclusion of spreading the highest ratings around without limit for years. The basics of academic grade inflation and Trophies For All invaded finance long ago. This is how Greece was able to get into its famous trouble in the first place. Oh, the problem is Greece is undercapitalized because they pay 5% on their bonds. So what we will do is get rid of the drachma, have a common currency and then the Greek bonds will sell like German bonds. Because in effect that is what they will be.

The only way this buffoonery could ever have persisted is if the Greeks had altered their four thousand year old habits and become something resembling Germany or at least France in economic terms. That’s not necessarily impossible and if the world properly valued fine olive oil and knew how to use it, Greece could indeed have the wherewithal to match hard currency borrowers. The thing is they have had some twenty years to do that, counting the preliminaries to the Euro rollout, and they didn’t do it. Actually they worsened on this score dramatically. The easily borrowed money went to pad out public payrolls and entitlements, paying off cronies in limitless number. While absconding with Germany’s credit card Greece did nothing to lighten the tax burden on their own populations which would have kicked up their growth. Again, quite the reverse.

So the enterprise to make Greece more like Germany or France has instead exported Greek spending and accounting norms to the EU core. The long-ago and nearly failed escape under John Major from the euro is the one asset Britain has over all the rest. It is proving the most valuable. Admitting that fact is the one thing the Eurocrats can never do because those countries that DID adopt the Euro did so with rigged referenda served with utopian propaganda that has now crumbled under the onslaught of reality.

The whole episode is crapulent and I remark on it at length only to demonstrate the futility engaged in at the highest levels of finance and government. If you are watching stocks, they are oscillating wildly and rising overall. Remember though that nothing is better for stocks than inflation. In any case, what are these asset prices moving on? Oh, good news from Europe. Some “deal” is announced and they go up! Bad news from Europe is always the same news which is to say that the last good news we told you was bullshit. Stocks then plummet.

Just this week the DOW spikes, on what? Italy had a great bond sale. Yeah, 6.5%. Six-point-five percent! That is GOOD news! Okay, but the NEXT DAY, hmm, well turns out the Italians are NOT going to be able to cut back the way they said… And they’re back up to 7%. :-( and down goes the DOW on this pantomime when in reality, as long as there is a Euro, Italian bonds and Greek bonds and Portuguese bonds are in effect Franco-German bonds. They are all on one raft. What matter if this corner or that of it seems a bit drier for the moment?

Where does it end? and when? Simple. Somewhere someone figures out the Greek debt will never be paid and they say No to another bailout. So the Greeks go elsewhere; No, no and NO is all they hear. But their government is racking up expenses, bills, just like a household. Now they can’t borrow at a rate that does not bankrupt them. This is the point where we are now. So they hike their taxes. Guess what? that collapses their economy so they now have HIGHER tax rates and LOWER government revenue. More businesses fail, cutting tax revenues and SPIKING people on government benefits, salaries or pensions. So they have no choice. They stop redeeming bonds. Then they can’t borrow a penny, can’t send out their paychecks, much less their welfare checks. It doesn’t matter who is on strike, no one is getting paid. Not in euros anyhow.

The Greek bonds are worthless so the CDOs, the contract insurance on them (the instruments that tripped up Corzine), have to be paid from other assets, which are what? Other sovereign bonds like, say, France’s. Now France, whatever else they have done (which was not much better than Greece) is burdened with the Greek debt. Okay, big deal! What’s a little Greece? But then there is Italy. And Portugal. And Ireland; really the majority of the Eurozone. And just the ordinary debts of Germany and France are already at an absurd level. If they are a tiny bit less absurd than Britain’s, still, the euro-junkies are closer to the fire.

I hope no one is looking for advice other than the simplest; hold your babies tight. Rather this is a notice. Basically we are screwed; or the existing fiat currencies of the world are screwed. When you hear “Good News from Europe!” if it isn’t something on the order of the whole Eurozone cutting their spending in half, it is not good enough. The finger-pointing, blame shifting and plumbing theft has been going on at least five years and is now breaking out into the open. It’s hot-potato, musical chairs, blind man’s bluff, liars’ poker and russian roulette all going on simultaneously. You can’t win if you don’t play. You can’t win if you DO play and you are not invited to play in any event. We are all just sheep for the shearing; EVERY BODY! The French are desperate to escape their own encounter with the clippers. They will not. Not this time, froggie. Nor you, fritz.

There is a nasty little radio spot airing nationally. It promotes “green” appliances and goods generally; swirly bulbs, “efficient” washers… that sort of thing although the specifics are tactically muddied. The ad pitches to a curiously young demographic. We’ve all met “Timmy”. Like Dickens’ Tiny Tim, Timmy is infectiously cute and contrived to pull at your major arteries. Timmy wants to go to the State Fair! Well, maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t know there was such a thing as a State Fair but the announcer, whose relation to Timmy is unexplored, asks him breathlessly, “Do you want to go to the State Fair?” Of course he does! Sorry, you can’t. You see, Timmy, your parents are NOT using green, energy efficient doo-dads but the old busted bulbs and machinery, causing them to spend more on utilities and draining their pockets of the gas and ticket money necessary. If only your folks had bought the new, government approved and promoted doohickeys they would have been able to take you there for candy floss and teacup rides, whatever those are. If they get on board today then you can go to next year’s fair. “But I want to go NOW!” Radio Timmy coaches Timmies across the land in whinery to cajole mums and pops into replacing their eight-for-a-dollar earth-warming heat globes with pigtail bulbs at $8 dollars or more a pop. Needless to say, this public service message was paid for by Your Federal Family which draws its budget from you.

The stated aim is to increase the energy efficiency of our homes and NO ONE is against efficiency, are they? Even if you are only concerned with your own bottom line, and the ad equates the health of your bottom line with the state of tranquility at your table, green is the way to go, right? That is what the ad does not imply but declares emphatically; dragooning your children into their chorus with promises of dunking booths and funnel cakes. Only the assertion is false. Check into the performance and price of the competing items and you find that even the manufacturers only claim that their products will pay for their price differentials over time. How much time is variable but lengthy; for the bulbs it is a few years of heavy use. For the appliances it is even more, often the “savings” are not even promised to materialize until the very end of the machine’s service life while their performance is consistently poor. So on its own terms this little bit of green frummery is not only a fraud but is one that will do the exact OPPOSITE of what is promised. If Little Timmy’s parents don’t have the wherewithal to take him to this year’s State Fair they will be in desperate straits indeed spending a thousand dollars on a washer/dryer and hoping for a savings of $200 over a decade. If Timmy is successful in mau-mauing these purchases not only will he miss the State Fair he may have to make his shoes last another season or have his peanut butter switched to generic. And the only way serious “savings” will materialize is if power, gas and water itself radically increase in cost which is unlikely to increase the family entertainment budget. Other than scads of money, what could induce a person, or in this case a public institution, to disseminate such a vicious and transparent lie aimed at children across the public airwaves at public expense? It is possible only because, presumptively, these ads run in the service of Smart.

What is Smart. Hey, what isn’t? There is smartwater, there are smart Cars which are available with smartshift transmissions. Inconistent capitalization is also smart, apparently. On that one, I Agree. But for the most part the assignment of Smart is a simple declaration that is unchallenged. Smartphones are clearly smarter than dumb phones but are the precepts that underly these “green” initiatives and programs as obvioiusly and demonstrably synonymous with Smart? Timmy may feel quite smart, smashing his parents secret hoard of incandescent bulbs; saving money and the polar bears simultaneously but he won’t be going to any State Fairs unless it is in search of work. And when he goes, his clothes will be poorly laundered.

Still, that’s Smart. Green is Smart and the peddlers of Green am Smart. Al Gore is numero one in this department. Long before he was ever saving us dummies from a scorched earth he was saving us from a watery grave. The “high-efficiency” toilet was really the first Smart Product. The great triumph? To lower the average toilet flush from 2.2 gallons to 1.8. This, they certainly do and the Gorelet, as they are now known, has destroyed all its voracious 2.2 gallon competitors. Although it did this through no sort of competition unless it was in the lobbies of Congress and over collusive chats among manufacturers, municipalities and regulators both government and private. So not only MAY you Flush Smarter, you MUST! 2.2 gallon toilets can neither be manufactured or imported. Nor can they legally be installed in new construction. At least we are more efficiently and yet more Smartly moving our bowel contents off to their final reward, yes? No. While the flushes consume less water it takes MORE flushes to do the job as anyone who has lived between the two eras remembers quite well. The ancient, primitve crappers hardly ever needed a re-flushing absent a visit from a freakishly gigantic neighbor while the Gorelet must be played like a billiard table trick shot to get the job done with one handling of the handle. Even if you are some mad, throwback savage you don’t want to waste any precious water, do you? Of course not, so we do not just double flush as a matter of course which would raise our per movement consumption to 3.6. Instead we do nature’s business, loose the flood which sounds like a Dixie cup emptied into a coffee can and closely inspect the process while listening to the tank fill. Why? So we may time the second flush expertly enough to avoid a third spending our not-so-precious time and attention at least once daily. This, friends, is Smart.

But the Smart just keeps on coming! Sweeping California and other Smart locales is the smartgrid. Central to the smartgrid is the Smart Meter; a computer basically with a powerful digital transmitter. And what does it transmit? Your power consumption down to the smallest erg. And to whom is this information transmitted? Why, to the utility so they may charge you MORE for peak consumption and less off-peak as big industrial users are treated. But Average Joes have found in California that somehow the peak charges accumulate as the off-peak discounts evaporate. This while the download from the lurking meter is detailed enough to tell whomever what appliances you are running, what lights you have on, what rooms you are inhabiting and to what temperature you are heating or cooling them. This is all to your benefit, of course, as the utilities and their quasi-governmental golfing buddies cater their communications with you according to this data sheet, helpfully explaining how you may want to do your laundry at three in the morning or think about a sweater or how lingering in an open refrigerator is uncouth. Imagine how Smart you could become especially as the Smart Meters themselves expose you to radio waves of a frequency and strength similar to residing in a tree house built at the top of a cell phone tower. This is an experiment in Smart, one of many, many more.

An even greater blessing than the Smart Gadgets is the endless rain of Smart Guys (and Gals, of course). One who has shined brightly these last few weeks is a fellow named Jon Corzine. Once Governor of New Jersey and before that a Senator, Corzine is the epitome of Smart. The Governorship came to him strictly on his merits as the only Democrat less provably corrupt than the abysmal Bob Torricelli. This was some Smart Planning. But out of public office Corzine has been just as Smart, guiding MF Financials to outrageous gains! Of course he also led them to outrageous losses, including the dissappearance of some $600 million in quarantined funds belonging to investors. Quarantined from what, you might ask? Among other communicable ailments, these funds were to be quarantined from losses MF might incurr from Greek bond defaults. Now, I know what you are thinking: if Corzine bought Greek debt, how smart could he be? But he did no such thing. Only a fool would! Instead the genius play was for MF to sell insurance AGAINST Greek losses to those dummies who DID buy the bonds! So really Governor Corzine (if we may use his highest title) already separated the precious client funds from the raucous and hazardous dealmaking he had to engage in to turn a dollar, even before they were legally “sequestered”. That neither of these practices has kept the loot from walking out the door cannot fairly be laid at this gentleman’s door. After all, he is smart as a whip. Everyone knows.

But there is one Smart Guy who outsmarts them all, just ask him. That fellow is former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, elevated whenever he is spoken of as “the smartest guy in the room” with the implication being that the room is also not so dumb. Is he smarter than Joe Biden? Many claim this is so though they have not directly contested. Like Corzine, Newt is a Renaissance Man. Not merely a public servant he is also a professor of history and he professes with every breath. He is a top-selling author, consultant, public speaker and inspiration to a hungry world. Hungry, that is, for Ideas. Newt is the quintisential Idea Man. Even his political opponents, the devious and hellish Democrats agree that Newt is just full of Ideas and is in any case, Smart. What is meant by Smart is again, a fealty to the sort of smartness above. Newt was against Global Warming back when it was Global Warming, which is not long after it was Global Cooling (and now changed to Change). The carbon exchange which would tax emissions of carbon dioxide, yes, your exhalations, was championed if not contrived by old Newt. Likewise the most abrasive elements of Obamacare, which are identical to those in Romneycare, were just fine and dandy to Newt a half-hour ago. He was a supporter of the loosening of lending restrictions and government under-writing of the risks epitomized by the Community Reinvestment Act that has done so much to bid up the prices of our homes and seen their values cruelly dashed. There is scarcely an issue you could name (excepting abortion) that Newt has not been on both sides of and it is on this that the claims of his smarts are largely based. Even when supposedly acting as a rigid ideologue, close observers find this is only a pose. With Newt, there is always a back door with a coin-box. Coin box? ATM slot. No musty old ‘principle’ or claim to ethics would ever keep him from a dollar or a moment of adulation. This is what makes him the presumptive Smartest Guy in the Room while his true intellect would restrict that claim to his visits to the outhouse, if it is a one-holer. No, the Ideas Man is the empty sack he resembles. The very phrase smacks of Prof Harold Hill, as if we treasure ideas by the bushel or books by the pound. When questions of consistency and principle come up, as when he loudly jumped on this or that bipartisan bandwagon that now offends Republican primary voters, the Smart Guy shows the common touch, explaining how it was “the dumbest thing I ever did!” Or at least was caught at. We have three such superlatives to date, how can each be the dumbest? Well, Newt’s a Smart Guy. I’m sure he knows what he is talking about. And three is nothing anyhow. If he does get the nomination, a prospect all Americans should dread, you can be sure he will accumulate many, many more dumber things; most of which will have been those things he is saying and doing now to nail the Primary that will prove awkward in the general. Now THAT is Smart.

It was slow in coming but fast in going. If you blinked, you missed it: the Christmas Tree Tax. As government grasping goes, it was pretty thin sauce. The proposal was for a 15-cent levy on every cut Christmas tree sold, collected by the Dept of Agriculture and released to an as yet non-existent Christmas Tree Promotion Board or somesuch. Let’s not ponder overlong how it is that a government scarcely able to mention “Christmas” finds no issue of church/state separation in collecting the lunch money for the National Christmas Tree Association. Also we will ignore that the White House will never pay that fifteen cents since their trees are donated which is considered a high honor, if not a fine commercial, for the grower. And of course, as the resident gunslingers explain, this is not a tax and is being delayed with far more fanfare than which it was proposed. To next Christmas? They do not say.

It was not the President’s preference for Kwanzaa over Christmas that inspired this insult. There are many of these compulsorily funded marketing boards for eggs, honey, beef, apples, lamb, dairy… there are some two dozen promotional and research boards under a 1996 agricultural law but Bill Clinton doesn’t hate Christmas, does he? A guy who eats like that? No. And neither do the ladies and gentlemen of the National Christmas Tree Association, fine folks who have never had their fingers glued together with sap nor risked a chainsaw injury. Nor do the large growers who have turned to this highest margin and lowest spoilage of agri-product. Even less do the small growers (under 500 units), who are exempt, who have a patch of dreadful land fit only for growing pine trees. No Grinches here, no Scrooges or anti-Christmas martians. And yet we have this public declaration, denounced as The Christmas Tree Tax that is the product of all these actors toiling in obscurity if not secrecy producing a thorny crown for the Administration, one they hastily threw off.

The gunslingers are technically correct. There never was a Christmas tree tax. It was a levy. What is the difference? To you there is none except that this dunning and many others that happen before you get to the retail level, does not go to fund the federal government. It is, as they say, a Checkoff. Yeah, you just check it off, you don’t actually pay it. Except that you DO pay it. And failing to pay it has all the same punitive ramifications as failing to pay any other levy, tax or assessment. But the amount is tiny, yes? The fifteen cents a trunk was arrived at by taking an average retail price from 1996 or thereabouts and drawing one percent from that; avg price $15. It is the grower who pays this so you will never “feel” it, will you? No. That is the rational for all these tiny excisions. Like the mosquito or the tape worm these marketing levies claim gleaning rights; the ability to take an infinitesimal drink without being swatted. Unlike the biological parasite, the marketing boards also promise great rewards not only to their members but to the whole industry, to the nation, and in this case, to Christmas itself!

That’s a pretty good buy for a penny, isn’t it? Oh but it isn’t a penny, it’s fifteen pennies, still. But the idea that one percent at retail is a puny burden isn’t quite informed. First off, just by the seat of our pants we know that retailers command a 50% markup. For seasonal tchochkes it is usually much higher but for ordinary items it is a bit lower so for our figuring we can value the tree, wholesale, at $7.50. But that levy comes from the grower, as you recall, so now it is not one percent but two percent to the fellow who actually grew and cut the tree down. Still, that isn’t much. If your county proposed a two percent general  sales tax, or say, just on cigarettes, that would be no big deal, would it? Let’s say we have a small grower who sells 1000 trees. This means about five acres of land with minimal inputs but land taxes, erosion maintenance, insurance… all the things a farmer is subject to, and we assume that the land is not good for any other crop. Also, a tree does not grow in a season. For the largest, highest priced trees, fifteen years is about enough. So these are long-term investments in Christmas trees, probably the longest running investment on the farmer’s balance sheet, and it must be a rolling investment. He will not have five acres but fifty, each at a different stage of growth so even a small operator is investing large piles of certainly borrowed money (guaranteed, if not loaned by the government). If he expects to sell the 1000 trunk crop at $7.50, carried away, for a total of $7,500 on about a ten year investment, averaging out big trees and smaller ones, he would have to keep his costs below $2,000 so that the remaining $5,500, after taxes, will net him a decent $3,000. It is from this princely sum that the $150 is actually subtracted, plus the costs of record keeping that can withstand an IRS audit. Is it too much to think that the numerous small growers, for whom the Christmas tree biz is a puny sideline, will simply withdraw from the business? Or if not that, he may simply cut fewer trees this year, either trying to stay under the threshold of 500 trees to avoid the whole contraption or hoping to mitigate the tax by only cutting larger, more pricey trees so the unit burden is less. The result in any case is fewer trees on the market only with the giant growers, the kind of folks who will staff the Christmas Tree Promotion Board, commanding a larger share of a more monolithic market. That could not be the intent from the beginning, could it?

No, the real enemy here is the fake tree industry. China and other overseas manufacturers are the ancient faux. For this struggle the levy is levied. If the proposal had gone through we would have seen generic ads for real Christmas trees the way we see those from the Cheese Board advocating cheese; a family would be desperate and dissappointed as some clueless dad pulled an inflatable tree from under the mattress. Grinning he would puff into it for hours only for it to pop when the first ornament was hung, then burst into flames. Cue next year and dad has wisely bought a safe, American grown pitch pine and decorated it with real candles; that is the sort of thing we are missing this Christmas. And yes, it would have been this Christmas. Even though the funds would only trickle in at first, the Board (which would be a corporation) could immediately borrow against that income stream or even sell bonds, get on the air, get in the face of the Asian tree fakirs and more importantly, establish the Board up there with the great triumphs of “got milk?” and “Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.” Oh, who would be the voice? Wilford Brimley? Certainly Wilford Brimley. The projected $2 million budget would make some nice ad buys, pay a handsome retainer for six, eight or maybe ten Board members who would meet monthly…. Maybe quarterly except during the season but foremost it would set a government hook into the belly of a renegade, seasonal, cash, quick turnaround industry that makes money, an irresistible bait. But that is the Christmas That Wasn’t, on several grounds. Let’s look at the Christmas That Might Have Been in the Land of the 28th Amendment, commonly known as The Metric System, which every schoolchild knows, states “No federal levy shall be other than ten percent.”

With the first blow, the gunslingers’ complaints, “Hey, this ain’t no ‘tax!” are burned to cinders. The term “levy” encompases all government demands except fines, and some of these are also levies. No legalese can prevent the escape of every wiggling worm in the Legislature or in the government but this simple declarative sentence comes closest. For clarity and brevity the 28th will be the gem of our Constitution. And before the Christmas tree hustlers ever asked for a penny we were in compliance with the 28th, since there was no levy at all. What would the tree magnates face under the 28th Amendment? Their strategy of taking gnat-sips from a minor artery would have been a non-starter; Unconstitutional. Fifteen cents on a twenty dollar purchase might be a trivial deletion but ten percent is another matter. Here we see some of the intricacy always present in politics; high, low and low down. The 28th seems to GIVE to the lower level statists who have been getting by on three percent for decades but what it really does is blow their cover. Incrementalism is the first friend to the encroaching state. No more salami slices disappearing from the fridge overnight. If you want anything you will have to take a big bite, leaving dental impressions. But there would be a little something in the stockings of the Christmas Tree Bundlers. Under the 28th, there would be a ten percent tariff on the hated and perpetually green (or silver or flocked) artificial trees, unless made in the USA, of course. The gains the Boardmen hope to make over fakies with their program is a few percentage points. With a ten percent tariff on the competition, where would they be? Probably better off but in any case, if they are going to represent the tree growers against a common enemy can’t they get their fifteen cents from them voluntarily? The answer is no. For years they tried. For years they failed. At first the revenues poured in, but then they trickled off and stopped. It is the same with all the other commodities with their levy-funded industry boards. What they could not accomplish through persuasion they will instead seek through coercion, co-opting the power of the Department of Agriculture (a mighty critter indeed) and damn it do what everyone knows needs doing! Under the 28th, that is what they would have to explain… not a great Christmas toast. This is the sort of predicament the 28th is meant to create.

And there are plenty of presents in the 28th for all the good little boys and girls out there. Who likes ten percent income taxes? Who likes ten percent fuel taxes? Who likes ten percent tariffs? Hmm, not so many but you know, under the 28th you have a choice of ten percent or zero percent. I like the latter but we can discuss those on a case-by-case which means the corporate board types who are trying to create their own positions, coercively but secretly, will not be all out of work. We wouldn’t do that in December. What we will not have is the tactical skooch; wrestling over a few basis points or a certain sales level that triggers terms. It is in the impenetrable meetings and influence dealing that weasels ferret out a million here or there from our national pockets. This must end. In short we will have simplicity and light where those who sell Christmas Tree Futures want complexity and fog. That’s more of a practical Christmas present but that is what you expect during difficult times. So tell everyone, “All I want for Christmas is ten percent.” No, you won’t get it but maybe next year.