Below is the so-called "Contract From America" that Tea Party members are urged to sign (with responses by me to follow):
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http://www.thecontract.org/the-contract-from-america/The Contract from AmericaWe, the undersigned, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items, work to bring each agenda item to a vote during the first year, and pledge to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.
Individual LibertyOur moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.
Limited GovernmentThe purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.
Economic FreedomThe most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.
1. Protect the ConstitutionRequire each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)
2. Reject Cap & TradeStop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. (72.20%)
3. Demand a Balanced BudgetBegin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69%)
4. Enact Fundamental Tax ReformAdopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution. (64.90%)
5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in WashingtonCreate a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning. (63.37%)
6. End Runaway Government SpendingImpose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)
7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health CareDefund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries. (56.39%)
8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy PolicyAuthorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. (55.51%)
9. Stop the PorkPlace a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)
10. Stop the Tax HikesPermanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011. (53.38%)
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And now for my response:
Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government.
Agreed -- although, as I’m about to reveal, the above assertion is simply the first of the two times during the day when even a broken clock is right.
It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression
Does that mean you’re willing to openly denounce the imposition of such restrictions at both the
2004 and
2008 National Republican Party conventions? Or do you only decry such restrictions when imposed by Democrats?
and free from excessive control over our economic choices.
“Excessive” as defined by
who? The very
banker-owned government that --
regardless of whether corporate-whore Democrats or corporate-whore Republicans are in charge -- has consistently imposed such “control” via prohibitively high
licensing barriers, overextended
patent protection, and, in the case of alternative medicine, virtual (if not outright)
criminalization?
The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties
What specifically are those liberties?
The liberty to decide for yourself what
mind-altering substance you put into your own body, or the mere “liberty” to sheepishly let control-freak Republicans make that decision
for you?
The liberty to inform the public why the banker-owned U.S. government’s
official story on 9/11 is a
lie and a fraud, or the mere “liberty” to mindlessly cheerlead the slaughter and torture of “
brown people” on the
altar of that official story?
The liberty to inform the public why
George W. Bush and
Dick Cheney are both war criminals who belong behind bars, or the mere “liberty” to wrap everything they did in the American flag?
Or are these precisely the sort of politically incorrect questions your beloved “Patriot” Act was meant to discourage
true patriots from ever asking in the first place?
by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders.
Even if that “threat” happens to be a
Republican presidential administration that wraps every Nazi-style police state measure it imposes in the American flag? Or is it only when Democrats are in control that you concern yourself with such a threat?
When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.
Republicans were in charge of the federal government as well as numerous state governments between 2000 and 2006. During that time, can you name so much as a single licensing barrier that Republicans attempted to lower or eliminate; a single overextended patent they attempted to revoke; or a single
victimless crime law they attempted to repeal? If not, then why should any rational person regard this as anything other than the usual canned campaign rhetoric that political con artists from the Republican Party parrot every election season just to get votes?
The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market.
Do you include in this definition of “free market” the ridiculously fraudulent and utterly parasitic process whereby private banks extract countless billions in
usurious interest from the economy each year in exchange for the
nothing out of which they create the so-called “
money” they loan? Do you include the
anti-free market process whereby bought-off politicians grant development subsidies and tax abatements to
slave goods-selling
Wal-Mart while simultaneously denying such privileges to smaller competitors? If the honest answer to either question is "yes," then why should anyone regard your feel-good platitudes about the “free market” as anything other than a right-wing version of Obama's feel-good platitudes about “hope and change”?
The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty.
Yet bestowing privileges (i.e. unearned advantages) to select corporations -- as
both major parties have done countless times over the years -- has had the effect of imposing artificial
limits on our economic “choices.” Thus, in the absence of specific calls for
repealing said privileges (i.e., prohibitively high licensing barriers, overextended patent protection, corporate welfare, etc.), why should anyone regard this as anything more than recycled campaign rhetoric that Republicans used to gain control of Congress in 1994 and the White House in 2000, only to expand big government
across the board once safely in office?
Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.
Same old empty rhetoric we get from establishment Republicans every single election season.
Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)
The Tenth Amendment already does this, yet that didn’t prevent the Republican-controlled Congress and White House from implementing Constitution-shredding
police state expansion measures, did it?
Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. (72.20%)
Although a bit too sanitized for my taste, this is obviously the
second time during the day when even a broken clock is right.
Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69%)
Whether you realize it or not, that is exactly what the
financial terrorists waging literal
WAR on our economy
want us to do, since this would justify the very
IMF-style austerity measures that Obama is attempting to impose under the usual pretext of reducing the deficit. There are two reasons it would force crippling austerity:
1. If the national debt were completely paid off, the money supply that was pyramided (via fractional reserve lending) on top of government debt would completely collapse, and the economy along with it!
2. Even if we froze federal spending tomorrow, the interest on the national debt would keep
right on compounding. This would merely drive that much more of a wedge between (a) the overall indebtedness of the economy (principal-plus-interest) and (b) the amount of money there is in circulation to pay it off. Thus, to drive such a wedge would be to make
interest payments the primary purpose of federal tax collection.
http://www.wealthmoney.org/articles/has-the-balanced-budget-been-misunderstood/I’m sure the aforementioned terrorists are quaking in their boots at the thought of
that.

Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution. (64.90%)
Translation:
shift the tax burden even more off the rich and onto the backs of the lower and middle classes. Then we’ll be “free” to fight over what few crumbs of wealth and income remain after the
top 1% have finished
appropriating the vast majority of it to themselves.
Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning. (63.37%)
Still more empty generalities that, true to Republican Party tradition, avoid calling for the outright repeal of any specific program or the abolishment of any particular agency. And even when the Republican Party does pledge to eliminate something specific, it has already proven that it will immediately break that promise once safely in office.
Case in point?
The Department of “Education” (DoE).
The 1996 National Republican Platform called for abolishing the DoE outright, yet once the Republicans had secured control of the White House as well as both houses of Congress, not only did they do nothing to eliminate the DoE, they continued to increase its funding. And that, of course, is because the “big wealthy business interests” (as George Carlin
put it) who
own the Republican Party
want the DoE to continue its documented and increasingly obvious agenda of “
deliberate dumbing down.”
Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)
And when this cap on spending forces spending cuts to be made, do you honestly expect us to believe that a Republican-controlled government will reduce spending on either imperialist wars of aggression overseas or police state expansionism here at home -- even though the Republicans did everything they could to
increase those two expenditures when they were in charge? Didn’t think so.
Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries. (56.39%)
Does this mean you support (a)
relegalizing alternative medicine --
including medical marijuana -- (b) revoking overextended drug patents -- particularly those granted for “
me-too” drugs and for drugs developed primarily at
taxpayer expense -- and (c) reforming
medical licensing laws so that only those health care providers who accept government subsidies are required to be state certified? Didn’t think so.
Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. (55.51%)
If you’re for increasing “competition,” does this mean you support
using antitrust action to break up the oil cartel? Didn’t think so.
Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)
See my previous remarks on the balanced budget amendment.
Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011. (53.38%)
With regard to “capital gains,” will you at least acknowledge that these are, in many if not most cases, primarily
land gains -- i.e. increases in the publicly-created value of land -- and that economists throughout history (beginning with
Adam Smith) have maintained that a
tax on land values is unlike any other tax in the sense that it does not in any way penalize or discourage productivity? Didn’t think so.
With regard to the so-called “death” tax (read:
estate tax), will you at least acknowledge that this tax doesn’t even
apply to the bottom 99% of income earners, and that you are hence revealing (however unwittingly) an obvious class bias in continually bemoaning this tax while making no mention of the payroll tax -- even though the latter falls harder on most Americans than even the individual income tax? Didn’t think so.
Unsurprisingly absent from the above "contract" are
civil liberties,
foreign policy, and
monetary reform.
With regard to civil liberties, is this inexcusable omission on your part a veiled way of saying you
support the
“Patriot” Act, the
Homeland “Security” Act, the
Military Commissions Act, and
Presidential Directive 51? Is
that your idea of “protecting” the Constitution? If so, don’t be surprised if it isn’t just liberal Democrats who
laugh at you!
With regard to foreign policy, is this equally inexcusable omission a veiled way of saying you
support wasting nearly a trillion dollars in taxpayer money each year waging
imperialist,
terroristic,
hornets’ nest-stirring wars of aggression -- all because you’re either too cowardly or too self-righteous to admit that the banker-owned U.S. government in which you've invested so much blind faith over the years
lied to you about who orchestrated the
9/11 terrorist attacks and why? In light of the Republican Party’s disgraceful track record on this issue, the question practically answers itself.
And with regard to monetary reform, is
this omission a veiled way of saying that (notwithstanding your obligatory lip service to the need for “auditing” conveniently unnamed “agencies”) you
(a) generally
support the
debt-based, privately-controlled money system that has inflicted so much damage on our economy -- and which now has us on the verge of the greatest depression in U.S. history -- and
(b) are hence
opposed to replacing this system with the sort of
debt-free money system advocated by such monetary reformers as Ellen Brown, Richard C. Cook, Byron Dale, Stephen Zarlenga, and the makers of both
The Money Masters documentary and the recently-released sequel,
The Secret of Oz?
If so, then -- whether you realize it or not, and whether you want to admit it or not -- you are actually helping to
spread and
intensify the very economic disease you laughingly presume to cure with this thoroughly discredited ideological snake-oil of yours.