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We have already discussed how the TARP bailout funds are inconsistent with the Founders’ intent, up next is a series of discussions as to whether or not the TARP funds are consistent with the Constitution. 

Under the cover of night, Citigroup has now joined some of the trillions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer owned equity assets. As if to cap off the warning as to how riddled with corruption, graft and cronyism this whole bailout fiasco has become, we now learn that Citigroup’s director is none other than former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin.

Can libertarianism survive this insanity? I don’t fault Citigroup, AIG, JP Morgan Chase.. any of them. I fault Washington.

Socialism exceeds the allowable mandate of the Constitution. In this republic, Federal Government has only 24 lawfully delegated constitutional powers. Only one of those powers seems expressly applicable here- to regulate commerce among the states. So, carried forward, does the package we are being presented fall under the auspices of proper Federal Authority?

The bailout was sold to us under duress. We were told, verbatim, that this bailout package was of such imminent need that the entire economy would collapse should it not be passed. Lo and behold now after the fact, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has “announced” that he is no longer buying troubled assets from banks and financial institutions, rather he is, “directly investing” in the financial system.

My friends, we have been hoodwinked. We have be sold a false bill of sale.

For the interstate commerce clause to be applied Treasury Secretary Paulson would have to provide evidence that buying troubled assets from banks could help stabilize interstate commerce. And certainly, that case could be made. However, that is no longer the application of the TARP program. Paulson’s job, following a proper constitutional framework, is to show how government equity ownership in financial institutions themselves falls under guise of “regulating commerce among the states”.

Such a case cannot be made. Equity ownership, outside of what is needed to preserve and produce the proper functions of Government, is a right reserved to the people. Forcing banks, such as Well Fargo whom did not want to accept the TARP funds, to surrender equity ownership to the government under duress does not seem to meet constitutional muster.

Just how big of a constitutional crises is this? Bloomberg notes:

The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.

BTW- here is a list of entities whose equity, whose freedom, was purchased with the price of socialism.

And to think, now ABC, NBC and CBS are lining up for bailouts too. Yeah that’s just great, government ownership of the news media!

Next up- can Treasury Secretary Paulson make an argument for equity ownership in private enterprise on basis of the General Welfare clause?

Related Newsmax- Dick Morris: Bush Hands Over Reins Of U.S. Economy To E.U.

Google: Dow Jones Industrial Average

Way to go Obama voter. Way to freaking go.

Related: LedeAgenda.com: Obama’s Market Panic

How much more are we in store for?

From Tulsa World:

“I have learned a long time ago. When they come up and say this has to be done and has to be done immediately, there is no other way of doing it, you have to sit back and take a deep breath and nine times out of 10 they are not telling the truth,” he said.

“And this is one of those nine times.”

Related: WSJ: Paulson will keep “reserves”

Ok, so Barack Obama is now our President-Elect. That very thought cringes me to the core. And yes, he is America’s president, or will be as soon as the Constitutional electors meet. I didn’t vote for him, but he does assume the mantle of the American President. The constitutional process was followed.

But, I still wonder how many will be willing to put up with the Senator’s tax hikes?

Considering how much his definition of the ultra-wealthy keeps changing, I can’t help but think that pretty soon all small business owners will be within Senator Barack Obama’s “spread the wealth” philosophy.

For example, take your average small business, the economic engine of America. Let’s assign the business owner a modest $50k salary. Add in three employees to help him run shop, at a modest $25,000 a year salary, and you are already at $125,000 in payroll alone. Then we would need to talk overhead expenses, inventory, insurance and taxes. In short, this small business would easily run well past even the higher of Obama’s numerous tax thresholds of $250,000 a year.

So, how many small businesses, seeing massive tax hikes coming their way, won’t take preventative steps to meet the bottom line?

Consider this: the unemployment rate in this country is spiking.

I can’t help but think that the combined crippling effect of the economic downturn combined with Obama’s tax plans will mean more businesses will need to trim costs to stay afloat. Suddenly one or two of those workers in our example, for instance, are cut to part-time hours. Or maybe the costs in the shop are raised, inventory reduced, or business re-investment curtailed.

There is another drastic proposal as well. Business owners could suddenly go John Galt and decide that cooperating with insane taxes and regulations are no longer worth the incentive to produce.

In our example the business owner, seeing his taxes double and wage requirements drastically increase by mandate of the government, closes his shop and moves on to a new industry where he does not have to hire any help. Three people are automatically out of work to start. Then the manufacturers of the goods he sells in his store would take note. While his shop alone isn’t enough to notice, if enough small business owners participate in a economic protest the result could be a big chill on the economy. Add in the business owner’s accountant, insurance agent, janitorial service- you get the idea- no industry would be spared.

I believe that the economy is floundering because people have lost the incentive to produce. If failure is rewarded with bailouts and profit labeled as greed, the quickest way to prop up the bottom line is to run and inefficient business model. This, of course, requires taking even more from those running successful operations to give those who don’t operate with a sound business plan in mind.

This, ultimately, is why socialism leads to marxism. Eventually the producers will be forced to produce for the betterment of “society”. How short it is from “too big to fail” to “must not fail”. We should all be very concerned, the free market’s very survival is in our hands.

Tomorrow a bell will toll. Will it be Liberty’s bell? Or, America, will it Toll For Thee?

We have so much as stake in this election. I simply cannot believe how long it has taken to get the MSM to report on the true nature of the junior Senator from Illinois.

Over the weekend revelations came out about how Barack Hussein Obama wants to “bankrupt” the coal industry.

Let’s be quite clear, Obama wants massive tax increases on energy, massive regulations that will drive up the cost for consumers.

From the WSJ:

“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can,” Obama said. “It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

And later on USNews.com:

“I think it is important to send some price signals to change behavior. It’s not going to be painless. Power plants are going to have to adjust how they generate power. They will pass on those costs to consumers…. A lot of us who can afford it are going to pay more for a unit of electricity; over time the electricity bill goes back down as technology catches back up.”

We are not done yet. From MarketWatch.com:

Obama: “I think it is appropriate for us to impose a windfall profits tax on our oil companies.”

And from CNN.com:

Obama’s promises about supporting clean-coal technology will be put to the test. His vow to keep coal part of the fuel mix is at odds with government forecasts that mandatory cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions would likely lead to the shuttering of scores of coal-fired power plants and reduce demand for coal.

And let us not forget Obama saying he wished, “gas prices would have risen a bit slower” when gasoline was $4+ a gallon this summer. 

This is a defining election for our times. We can choose a path of liberty, prosperity and energy or we can choose a path of regulation, government handouts and shuttering of the economy.

At the end of the day I feel I have done everything I could with LedeAgenda.com to warn my readers of the true nature and policy positions of Senator Barack Obama. That 51% of this country is considering voting for him makes me question the direction my country is going and my patriotism. I clearly do not have the same concepts of America that some of my fellow Americans out there do.

It makes me feel sick inside. I do not want to be friends with these kind of people. I do not want to associate with people who share Obama’s vision for America. I certainly do not want my daughter educated by them. How can anyone out there think that Barack’s policy positions are ok? Seriously half the country thinks like this socialist-fascist? Really? I’m stunned.

However I do know this: should Barack Obama get elected, I will look forward to treating him with the same level of respect that liberals have treated President Bush the last eight years. Not My President. Don’t Blame Me, I voted McCain! And I guess, at the end of the day, dissent is the most patriotic form of expression.

Unbeknownest to me John McCain is a big fan of Robert Jordan from Ernest Hemingway’s, “For Whom The Bell Tolls”, the inspiration for today’s post.

From NYTimes.com:

John McCain has long spoken of his affection for, and identification with, Robert Jordan, the protagonist of Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” After I interviewed McCain this past summer — a conversation in which we discussed Jordan at some length — I reread the conclusion of the novel. The lingering image of the final scene is not one of death but of Jordan, the college professor who has come to Spain to fight the fascists, wounded yet still alive, taking aim at the enemy, his heart still beating against the forest floor. Hemingway does not kill Jordan but leaves him there, engaged to the end in the battles of his time.

McCain sees himself in the same way: as a warrior who never gives in, and never gives up, no matter how hopeless the cause. “Oh, I reread it all the time,” McCain told me. “Robert Jordan is what I always thought a man ought to be.” Jordan’s essential creed is encapsulated in a sentence that gave McCain the title of one of the books he has written with his aide Mark Salter: “The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.” It’s not hard to see how the line would resonate with a romantic fatalist like McCain.

At least one newspaper is willing to call it as it is.

From the NYPost:

Overall, his plan includes some of the most lethal tax increases imaginable, including a jump in the capital-gains rate. He’d expand government spending massively, with everything from new public-works projects to increases in foreign aid to a surge in Afghanistan - plus hand out a token $500 welfare check that he calls a tax cut to everyone else.

This is clearly the wrong way to go in the wake of an economic meltdown - yet Obama, for all his talk of how willing he is to compromise, of how he’d bring people together, is sticking to his tax guns.

I know at least one top Wall Street executive, an Obama supporter from the start of his campaign, who has recently urged Obama to rethink his tax plan - and that was before last week’s record losses on the Dow.

But if Obama is rethinking, he’s not saying. As his running mate, Joe Biden tells us that it’s patriotic to pay higher taxes, Obama remains committed to squeezing businesses even if the recession grows.

The closest evidence I could find of compromise from Obama on taxes came in a June interview with CNBC, when he said: “Some of those [tax hikes] you could possibly defer. But I think the basic principle of restoring fairness to our economy and encouraging bottom-up economic growth is important.”

See Also: IBD: A Impending Socialist Tsunami?

Let me be perfectly clear: America cannot afford Barack Hussien Obama. America cannot afford Socialism.

The real danger of any depression in a national economy is losing our ability to be self-sufficiant. There is a real danger in a country where your economy is being nationalised and people are being forced to turn to the King for food, shelter (mortgage bailouts) and protection.

From KTVB.com:

High state unemployment numbers and a difficult economy have forced over 43,000 Idaho families to turn to food stamps and food pantries this year.

The number of Idahoans calling the Department of Health and Welfare to see if they qualify for assistance is increasing exponentially.

From June of 2007 to June of 2008 the number of people asking for assistance in Idaho went up nearly 20 percent.

Even if this is a temporary situation, as it more than likely is, one has to look at trends. Things are souring, unemployment in the valley rising and people falling behind. What will the tax implications be of so many people being forced onto the welfare rolls? What cost to liberty will there be? What will it mean when the government, not the poeple themselves, is the one responsible to get things moving again?

Are we free men or not? Serfdom is socialism, only this time it appears our High King will be his Lordship Barack Obama. We should be very concerned about what the future holds.

John Galt if your out there, I mearly await my invitation into Galt’s Gultch.

From the CATO Institute:

To legitimately invoke the commerce power, Congress must show not only that a federal program is necessary but also that it is proper- that is, the program does not violate other foundational principles, such as federalism, separation of powers, and limited government. Congress has not made that showing.

Indeed, the bailout quite clearly violates the Constitution’s separation-of-powers principle- in particular, what has become known as the nondelegation doctrine, which states that Congress may not delegate its legislative power to any other entity, including Cabinet departments of the executive branch. Article 1 of the Constitution states, “All legislative Powers … shall be vested in Congress.” A plain reading of the text shows that lawmaking is for the legislative branch, which does not include the Treasury Department. Yet when Congress authorized the bailout package, it gave Secretary Henry Paulson unprecedented power to act as a super-legislature.

It seems so impending, so imminent, so oppressive that we accept the tenants of socialism in this election. Our economy is in shambles, our personal finances are a mess, our nation’s roads, bridges and infrastructure crumbling. The war in Iraq fueling flames of absolutism, and the anxious eyes keep close tabs on the price of oil.

It is as if, it seems, Barack Obama truly is our savior.

The audacity of John McCain, how dare he reject socialism’s siren call! How dare he deny hope and change! Hope and change!

In case you haven’t heard this morning: The Atlantic Ocean has endorsed Barack Obama. No word yet from the Pacific Ocean.

Never in my life did I imagine that we would face such a vote, a referendum on socialism in this country. This election is no longer about fixing our markets, keeping our homes or increasing domestic oil production. This election is about the very heart and soul of America. This election has eclipsed the ordinary and the mundane.

When Barack Hussein Obama came right out and said, “I want to spread the wealth around”, this election ceased being about the issues of today. It ceased being about President Bush, the war in Iraq or Republican politics. It has now become an election of establishing a new order of American political rule and rejecting our Founding principals.

This election is bigger than the Presidential race. Glenn Beck warned us the other day that the French Prime Minister met with President Bush and quote, “laid it all out. He said there could be not rejection of world currency after this financial crises is over”. Things are moving so quick, situations that previously would have taken years of planning and discussion are now being accelerated and acted upon immediately.

Of course, this does not bode well for conservatives who now have less than two weeks to make their case that capitalism should rule and within the free markets lies the solution to our economic woes.

Constitutionalists, at times, seem to act like everybody knows the same basic assumptions of the proper role of government that they do. I am afraid that I longer trust the general public to matters of our heritage or our basic, fundamental principals. I am afraid that the American public will not understand the arguments against world economic and political integration. I think that most people see it, unfortunately, as simply the next thing that must happen.

This has caught me, and most people, off guard. Could you have imagined a year ago that gas prices would have risen as much as they have and that our financial system would be strained so much? It is as if the very course of history is pressing us to surrender to a system greater than our own or hunker down and solve our own problems.

Where are the Patriots of today? Where is our Ronald Reagan? Our Thomas Jefferson? Where is our Ayn Rand? Can we, dare we, reject the inevitable? Hope and Change? What about Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit Of Happiness? Oh, the choices before us.

Dare we man up and say, “Hell No!!”? We shall see come Nov. 4th, we will not be unable to undo this one.

Our nation is at a crossroads, morally, economically and socially. We have forgotten that government cannot be all things to all people. Instead we seem to have taken on the mantra that everyone “deserves” some sort of government welfare or benefit in their life. Government is, after all, a “partner to the taxpayer”. This, despite the fact that shortly this country will be in debt to the tune of one trillion dollars. 

$1,000,000,000,000 in debt.

Thats $8,620 per household.

The war, the economic stimulus package, the prescription drug benefits, the mortgage rescue bill. These things do not come without cost. And yet Washington continues to spend, to pile on and to needlessly waste our precious, precious tax money. Government acts as if it will collect the same amount from taxes irregardless of the fact that we are in economic turmoil that mirrors the Great Depression.

Like most people, I don’t want the government to provide the answers. I don’t want taxpayer money being used to benefit an individual at the expense of the majority. I don’t want someone else’s tax money handed to me.

Why is it that we, as taxpayers, accept government growth? How did it come to be that government would be allowed to en mass itself without clear explanations as to why, or how? Take for example state budgets. In Idaho, even in the absence of new governmental programs or regulatory requirements, our state agencies submit annual budget requests for 3-4% more than their prior years budget. No new programs or benefits are derived from said money, it is just caulked up to, “increased costs” or “inflation”.

But within the example of our state budgets is also our solution.

Take for example the State of Hawaii. Facing a daunting $900 million dollar budget shortfall, Republican Gov. Lingle ordered cancellation of a rapidly growing government sponsored health care plan called, “Keiki Care”. The programs intent was to provide free medical care to families who did not have current health insurance coverage for their children. The problem with Keiki Care, according Dept. Of Human Services administrator was that, “People who were already able to afford health care began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free”.

In Arizona transportation projects are getting scaled back drastically in an attempt to find some fiscal sanity in these tough economic times. The Arizona Republic reports:

The Valley’s freeway and mass-transit projects are short $4.5 billion as tax revenues plummet, construction costs soar and government bonding capacity stalls, the transportation director for the region’s planning agency told stunned mayors Wednesday.

And than back to my home state of Idaho where Gov. Otter recently ordered all state agencies to trim their budgets to meet a $15.8 million budget deficit. Forbes.com notes:

Those most affected by the cuts are the state colleges and universities, which lose $2.8 million, and the Department of Health and Welfare, down $5.4 million. Public schools will lose $14.2 million, but that will be made up from an education reserve fund.

Vacant positions won’t be filled, but few state workers will lose their jobs, officials said.

In other words our state leaders, many of whom deal with much stricter budget rules that the Federal Government, have begun the process of shrinking government.  Trimming the state budgets unilaterally, reducing governmental expenditures, reducing the size and scope of state projects and canceling duplicitous and wasteful government spending is what is needed just to keep our budgets in line with what we are already being taxed.

The time seems right to ask ourself: isn’t it time for the Federal Government to do the same?

Related: NYTimes.com: Deficit rises and consensus is to let it grow

Ok, is anyone else out there getting a little worried? I am.

There is a sense of visceral anger on the part of many leftists out there. I am deeply concerned that my constitutional rights under the administration of Barack Hussein Obama will come under intense assault. Barack has called for his followers to “get in the face” of people who oppose him. He has threatened lawsuits against political opponents who have spread  ”false information” about him.  He has called stopping global warming the most “actionable” thing that government needs to undertake. Barack’s campaign has called paying taxes as “patriotic” and questioning shady entanglements in his past “unwelcome”.

There is no sense of participatory democracy in the underpinning of the Obama campaign. He is capitalizing on his personality status to enforce dogma to his point of view. If elected, Barack will inherit a House and Senate ripe to bully-push his agenda through. If you think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi runs a partisan ship now, just wait until she takes The Messiah’s marching orders.

I am frustrated. I feel like I am being backed into a corner to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket just to keep Barack out of the White House. This, despite the fact that McCain views conservatism/constitutionalism with ambivalence.

So what do I do? Granted Idaho is a safe Republican state, I could vote third party, or more likely, withhold my vote, and McCain still should win easily. But do I really want to take that chance? What if it ends up being like 2000 where McCain wins the electoral college but fails to take the popular vote? Do I really want to participate in starting a McCain presidency out the same way President Bush did?

Of course, voting for Obama is right out. I just don’t know if I can consciously let my vote go to McCain. He just does not represent me on too many issues, whether it’s amnesty, prescription drug benefits, government bailouts, free political speech; McCain is just not a conservative, and that really, really bothers me.

I jest, right now I tell my friends that I am writing in Ron Paul for President. It would be the best thing to do according to my principals. But history would not make him the choice of my party, the question before me now is do I follow along? I am afraid I must.

Let me be clear- a vote for McCain is a vote against Barack Obama. At least by voting for McCain we get Sarah Palin somewhere in his administration. As a plus, he can’t fire or dismiss her as acting Vice-President. The only way to stop Barack’s bootstepping liberal fascism is to keep the electoral college, and if we can, the popular vote on our side. I don’t like this predicament, but it is a choice that history will have us make. A Barack presidency is simply too threatening to ignore.

I hate this choice, but it is the right one. I just hope it doesn’t destroy the Republican party in the process.

From Investors Business Daily:

The Crash: “Why has the market dropped so much?” everyone asks. What is it about the specter of our first socialist president and the end of capitalism as we know it that they don’t understand?

The freeze-up of the financial system — and government’s seeming inability to thaw it out — are a main concern, no doubt. But more people are also starting to look across the valley, as they say, at what’s in store once this crisis passes.

And right now it looks like the U.S., which built the mightiest, most prosperous economy the world has ever known, is about to turn its back on the free-enterprise system that made it all possible.

It isn’t only that the most anti-capitalist politician ever nominated by a major party is favored to take the White House. It’s that he’ll also have a filibuster-proof Congress led by politicians who are almost as liberal.

Throw in a media establishment dedicated to the implementation of a liberal agenda, and the smothering of dissent wherever it arises, and it’s no wonder panic has set in.

What is that agenda? It starts with a tax system right out of Marx: A massive redistribution of income — from each according to his ability, to each according to his need — all in the name of “neighborliness,” “patriotism,” “fairness” and “justice.”

It continues with a call for a new world order that turns its back on free trade, has no problem with government controlling the means of production, imposes global taxes to support continents where our interests are negligible, signs on to climate treaties that will sap billions more in U.S. productivity and wealth, and institutes an authoritarian health care system that will strip Americans’ freedoms and run up costs.

All the while, it ensures that nothing — absolutely nothing — will be done to secure a sufficient, terror-proof supply of our economic lifeblood — oil — a resource we’ll need much more of in the years ahead.

The businesses that create jobs and generate wealth are already discounting the future based on what they know about Obama’s plans to raise income, capital gains, dividend and payroll taxes, and his various other economy-crippling policies. Which helps explain why world stock markets have been so topsy-turvy.

But don’t take our word for it. One hundred economists, five Nobel winners among them, have signed a letter noting just that:

“The prospect of such tax-rate increases in 2010 is already a drag on the economy,” they wrote, noting that the potential of higher taxes in the next year or two is reducing hiring and investment.

It was “misguided tax hikes and protectionism, enacted when the U.S. economy was weak in the early 1930s,” the economists remind us, that “greatly increased the severity of the Great Depression.”

We can’t afford to repeat these grave errors.

Yet much of the electorate is determined to vote for the candidate most likely to make them. If he wins, what we consider to be a crisis in today’s economy will be a routine affair in tomorrow’s.

Make sure you got your 72 Hour kits ready folks. The mass consolidation of global financial and political systems is near.

From Bloomberg:

Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) — Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said political leaders are discussing the idea of closing the world’s financial markets while they “rewrite the rules of international finance.”

“The idea of suspending the markets for the time it takes to rewrite the rules is being discussed,” Berlusconi said today after a Cabinet meeting in Naples, Italy. A solution to the financial crisis “can’t just be for one country, or even just for Europe, but global.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much 8.1 percent in early trading and pared most of those losses after Berlusconi’s remarks. The Dow was down 0.5 percent to 8540.52 at 10:10 in New York.

Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers are meeting in Washington today, and will stay in town for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings this weekend. European Union leaders may gather in Paris on Oct. 12, three days before a scheduled summit in Brussels, Berlusconi said today, while Group of Eight leaders may hold a meeting on the crisis “in coming days,” he said.

Berlusconi didn’t give any details about what kind of rules leaders were looking to change, except to say that leaders are “talking about a new Bretton Woods.”

The Bretton Woods Agreements were adopted to rebuild the international economic system after World War II in a hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The aim of the agreements was to establish a monetary management system, initially by pegging currencies to gold. The IMF was set up later to help manage the international financial system.