Why Romney Isn’t Selling In PaleoCon Libertarian Circles

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – If you wanted to do all these things and you wanted to actually participate or make these things in force of law or effective, then the path is clear.  You have two choices.  Article V is still out there and still to be used.  The other one is to dissolve the political bands which have connected you with another.  If you can’t see that the bands need to be severed because the big, giant bully in the center is never going to give back that which he has taken — he’s too powerful and it’s too much fun to spend other people’s money and not actually have to earn it — if you can’t see that, then you can’t possibly see that light at the end of the tunnel that some of the rest of us see. Check out today’s transcript for more…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  First to Sheldon Richman at Reason Magazine:

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Mitt Romney’s isn’t just out of touch; he’s also out of touch with the movement to shrink government.  In an interview clarifying his now-infamous speech to donors, captured on clandestine video, Romney said, “I think people would like to be paying taxes.”

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Mike:  By the way, we, this show, picked up on this last week and did a day or so about this.  Why are you talking about the 47 percent that don’t pay taxes and making them all fat and happy with the 53 percent that do?  You’ve got it backwards.  You should take the 47 percent and say that’s my goal for the 53 percent.  We want 100 percent of people not paying taxes.  [mocking] “Come on, Mike, that’s a principled stand.  No politician is ever going to make that.”  Want to bet?  Back to the Reason piece:

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Come again?  He also said, “The good news is if you are doing well enough financially that you can pay a tax.”  That’s good news?  [Mike: I was wondering when someone other than me was going to pick up on this.] Romney apparently had low-income people in mind.  But if he’d rather see them working than collecting government benefits, the last thing he should want is to reduce the returns to labor—which is what income taxation does.  Workers should be free to keep the full fruits of their labor.

I have an idea for the GOP presidential candidate: Test your belief that people like to pay taxes by proposing to end all penalties for nonpayment.  Abolish the IRS.  Make taxes voluntary.  Then we’ll see who would like to pay and who wouldn’t.  He says he’s for less government.  Okay, Mr. Romney, prove it.  How many people does he suppose would choose to pay for the occupation of Afghanistan, or the drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, or the war on certain drug makers, sellers, and consumers?  How many would be willing to pay for all the corporate welfare that riddles our so-called free-enterprise system?

Speaking of corporate welfare, in his speech, Romney had much to say about dependence.  “There are 47 percent who are … dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”  He figures those folks won’t be voting for him and his allegedly small-government message.  Yet the New York Times reports, “The states with the highest percentage of federal filers who do not own income taxes tend to vote Republican in presidential elections,” attributing the information to the Tax Foundation.  “Research by Dean Lacy, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, has found that states that receive more in federal spending than they pay in taxes have become increasingly Republican in presidential elections.”

So Romney has the 47 percent wrong.  But more important, he overlooks the fact that many low-income people work hard at two or three jobs and are the victims of anti-competitive corporatist policies that build barriers to advancement.  But that inconvenient fact aside, low-income people aren’t the only ones dependent on government.  Another group is even more dependent: the people of the corporate world who expect government to provide bailouts, guarantees, and contracts.

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Mike:  That is the whole ball of wax right there.  Go to your local bank and ask to look at their legal — what do you bankers call this?  You have to keep it in a file somewhere, your legal filings, your notices, something to that effect.  They’re supposed to have to display that their deposits are insured up to $400,000 by the FDIC.  They’re supposed to have to tell you that your safety deposits are insured up to x-amount of dollars, I don’t know what it is today, by the FSLIC.  They’re supposed to have to tell you that your mortgages are basically guaranteed because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are NGOs, non-government organizations, and are going to get a bailout.  They can’t go under, in other words, too big to fail as they call it.  They’re supposed to have to tell you that the fees on your bank cards are regulated.  They’re supposed to tell you that the interest rate you can pay is — all this stuff is supposed to be there, is supposed to be out in front of you.

All that comes at a cost, ladies and gentlemen.  It all costs something.  Somebody has to pay for all that. Banks do go under, and when they go under, that FDIC insurance kicks in.  Who pays for the insurance?  Most of it you do.  Somebody is going to call and say, [mocking] “Well, the banks do pay a little bit for the FDIC.”  Yeah, but what they don’t pay, the taxpayer has to pick up.  The entire edifice is just corrupt.  It’s just wrong.  For all of the hoopla over you can’t fix it from the inside, I tend to agree with the man.  I don’t agree with him because I want to agree with President Obama; I agree with him because I want to agree with Rand Paul.  Did you see, AG, Friday there was a vote on whether or not to fund foreign aid to Libya, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia?  Rand finally got his vote on foreign aid.  Did you see that?

AG:  I hadn’t seen the vote.  I saw he was successful in his filibuster.  I had not seen the update to the story.

Mike:  No, no, they voted on it.  They voted on it.  You want to know what the vote total was to withdraw funding from Libya, Pakistan and Egypt?  81-10 against.  Still think you can fix it from the inside?  [mocking] “Mike, if we just get the right Republicans and conservatives in there, we’ll fix all this.”  Oh, really?  Where’s Fantasy Island?  “Tattoo!  Tattoo! The plane!”  “De plane, boss, de plane.  I’ve got the champagne.”

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Senate overwhelmingly rejects foreign aid cuts for Egypt, Libya and Pakistan.  By a vote of 81 to 10, the Senate on Saturday defeated legislation that would have suspended foreign aid to Pakistan, Egypt and Libya in the wake of violent anti-American demonstrations in those countries.  [Mike: Gee, I wonder why they’re violent and they’re anti-American.]  All ten supporters of the bill were Republicans.  Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul had threatened to hold up all Senate business until the bill was considered.  He succeeded in forcing a vote, but couldn’t come close to passage.  “When nearly 80 percent of Americans believe foreign aid should be reduced — especially to countries that are not our allies — it is inconceivable why their views are ignored by so many in Congress,” Paul said in a statement.  “I am far from defeated on this; I will continue to fight for this issue when Congress returns, and I will continue to call attention to the billions of American dollars — borrowed from China, among other places — being sent to governments that are not willing to respect and protect our interests overseas.”

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Mike:  Rand, they don’t have to protect our interests overseas.  Don’t you get it?  The establishment doesn’t want our interests overseas protected.  That’s the point.  The talking heads and the senator have it backwards here.  They’re wrong on this.  The decepticons and those that support this stuff, in other words need embassy attacks to justify further involvement in the Middle East and in continuing our foreign aid.  John McCain said so himself on Saturday.  [mocking McCain] “You really think it’s a good time?  Screw ‘em. I say love ‘em.  Love ‘em.  You really believe it’s a good time to turn our back on the Libyan economy?   You really believe that?  Screw Rand Paul.  Screw you people sitting out there with calculators.  Screw you.”

AG:  What did you think about the news that came out yesterday that the new Egyptian president said Egypt does not need to live by America’s rules.  Do you think that effects — if the vote had taken place today after the Egyptian president says that — not that I think he’s wrong.  I think Egypt is a sovereign nation.  They can live and do as they please.

Mike:  Dude, they’re like 9,000 years old as a sovereign nation.  They’re the oldest sovereign nation.

AG:  And if they’re going to be a sovereign nation and live by their own set of rules, as long as it’s not a threat to the United States and our territories, great.  At the same time, we don’t owe them foreign aid.

Mike:  No.

AG:  It seems crazy to automatically give them foreign aid, especially when they’re saying, “Hey, we’ll do as we please.  We are independent.  Don’t worry about us.”

Mike:  Let’s call foreign aid what it is: foreign welfare.  You people think that welfare doesn’t work in the United States?  Why do you think it works in Egypt?  You think that welfare doesn’t work in Detroit, you shouldn’t be paying people not to work?  Why do you think it works in Libya?  Why would it work in the Sudan?  Why would it work in Pakistan?  81 to 10.

I did send a Tweet out about this on Saturday afternoon, basically saying if you are still of the belief that anything short of an Article V Amendment Convention or states actually bolting from the compact because they’ve just had enough of this generational theft and all the bossing that goes on, all the tyranny that is visited on the heads of the people on the states — the state governments can take it because they seem to enjoy it.  As we’ve talked about here before, the reason the state governments seem to like it and seem to enjoy it is simply because they can’t borrow money the way the feds can.  As long as they get to spend the money, politicians in the states are pretty much happy.

As long as the political bands that connect us with another, if you are of the correct opinion that your state, let’s use Louisiana as an example, is a sovereign country, sovereign entity, that it joins federations or unions at its pleasure, and remains as a member of these unions as its pleasure, if you have that correct point of view, if you really want to stop all this and really want to get about the business of self-governance and constitutional governance — which last I checked the State of Texas has a constitution, last I checked State of Louisiana has one.  It used to be a pretty good one until we added 243 amendments to it.  I digress.

If you wanted to do all these things and you wanted to actually participate or make these things in force of law or effective, then the path is clear.  You have two choices.  Article V is still out there and still to be used.  The other one is to dissolve the political bands which have connected you with another.  If you can’t see that the bands need to be severed because the big, giant bully in the center is never going to give back that which he has taken — he’s too powerful and it’s too much fun to spend other people’s money and not actually have to earn it — if you can’t see that, then you can’t possibly see that light at the end of the tunnel that some of the rest of us see.

End Mike Church Show Transcript