Tea Party Issues

The Equalizer Amendment attacks the problem of excessive taxation by killing off the unconstitutional activities of the federal government (see “What is Unconstitutional?”) and drastically reducing the government’s size (see “Oversized Government”). In addition, the second paragraph of the amendment requires each government department to account for income and expenses and to pay federal, state, and local taxes just as a private corporation must. As a result, government heads will become more sensitized to taxes and their complications and may be more inclined to simplify and reduce these taxes. The fact that the federal government will now have to pay property taxes on federally managed land within the various states will result in a significant return of tax money to the states.

There is a chance that certain fraudulent aspects of the implementation of the federal income tax may be prosecuted as a result of the first clause of the Equalizer Amendment. This clause reads, “No federal law or regulation shall apply to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to all officers and employees of the United States government other than members of the military.” The clause makes it possible for citizens to sue the federal government in local, state, and federal courts just as easily as the federal government can sue private entities. Challenges to fraudulent or unconstitutional actions of the federal government will be commonplace. The federal income tax will probably have to be replaced with something more sensible.

Finally, the deficit spending that tends to drive taxation up year-to-year will be discouraged by the last paragraph of the Equalizer Amendment, which shortens the terms of all elected federal officials each time they incur a deficit. Consistent deficit spending will cause the terms of office to be reduced by as much as half, and the electorate will be allowed to kick the bums out much sooner than otherwise.

Aside from reducing the size of the federal government (see “Oversized Government”), the Equalizer Amendment has two other powerful features for reducing or reversing the national debt. One is the provision in the last paragraph that shortens the terms of all elected federal officers (including all members of Congress, the President, and the Vice President) each time that rack up a deficit year. Repeated offenses result in a reduction of their terms in office by fifty percent. This gives voters the opportunity to kick the bums out much more quickly. Were the Equalizer Amendment in effect starting in 2009, we would be re-electing a President, a Vice President, and two-thirds of the senators as well as all of the representatives in 2010.

The other feature is the first clause of the amendment, which states, “No federal law or regulation shall apply to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to all officers and employees of the United States government other than members of the military.” This provision allows citizens to sue in local, state, or federal courts any government official guilty of fraud. In particular, any candidate for elective federal office who makes a campaign promise and fails to keep it while in office is committing fraud and can be fined or imprisoned just as can the CEO of a private-sector company found guilty of fraud. The candidates must either keep their promises or make no promises (in which case they may not be elected.) Any federal officeholders who tout a bill deceptively, claiming that it will be deficit-neutral, for example, when the claim is not supported by the facts, can be sued and found guilty of false advertising, just as a private-sector company can be prosecuted under federal or state truth-in-advertising statutes.

Most successful politicians today (2010) are con artists. They have to be con artists if they are to compete effectively with the other con artists. Part of their art is playing one group of people against another. Frequently, a politician will play two sides against each other simultaneously: quite a trick as long as the video cameras aren’t rolling. It is also in the nature of a politician to take credit for whatever looks good and to point the finger of blame for whatever looks bad. It should not be surprising, then, that politicians fan the flames of class warfare and constantly spotlight racial categories and differences. It should also not come as a surprise that the federal government has managed to co-opt charity and claim credit for it in the name of welfare. The politicians have devised a scheme under which they rob the taxpayer, give the money out widely and somewhat indiscriminately as welfare, and then claim credit for being charitable.

How aggravating can this be to the taxpayer who pays the bill but becomes the object of jealousy and hatred on the part of the welfare dependents who are constantly being told by con artists that the rich are to blame for their poverty?

This situation was made possible by the wholesale violation of the Constitution. Nothing ratified in the Constitution (see “What Is Unconstitutional?”) allows the federal government to co-opt charity or to provide “welfare” as it is known today.

The Equalizer Amendment remedies this problem by allowing citizens to sue the federal government and individual officers or judges (including the justices of the Supreme Court) for violations of their oaths of office. The oaths include a promise to defend the Constitution. Their promotion unconstitutional acts or allowing unconstitutional acts to take effect constitutes fraud. The first clause of the Equalizer Amendment allows citizens to sue the government in local, state, and federal courts just as easily as the government can sue private entities. A successful suit for fraud would result in fines and/or jail time for the guilty government officials, just as a fraud conviction of a private company can result in fines and jail time for the CEO. With this provision the Equalizer Amendment can enable people to quickly dismantle as unconstitutional the welfare system that so unjustly credits the thief and the con artist for our charity. When welfare is once again in the hands of the citizens, charity will go where charity is due, credit will go where credit is due, and political elitists will have less success in playing one side against another.

Unlike the private-sector enterprises, the government has very little restraining it from raising its salaries, benefits, and pensions. It shows. The compensation packages for federal government employees are significantly higher than for private-sector employees doing similar work. Unionized government workers make roughly twice as much as private-sector workers doing similar work. But, why should the government worry? It’s just tax money, and it will only go up. The Equalizer Amendment has a sensible cure for this problem.

First, we note that the most accurate barometer of the appropriateness of compensation levels is the voluntary termination rate. If a quarter of your people are voluntarily quitting each year, you are not paying them enough. You may have other problems, as well, but higher pay could induce most people to stay on. If, on the other hand, you have a thousand people working for you, and none of them are leaving voluntarily, you are giving out more-than-competitive compensation. You could pay somewhat less and still have satisfied employees with lower-than-average turnover.

The third paragraph of the Equalizer Amendment requires that no increases in average compensation be given to federal employees following a year in which the voluntary termination rate is less than the average for the private sector. If pay is too high, then there will be no raises for the government employees over a period of years until inflation brings private sector compensation up to a comparable level. When raises again become allowable, the amounts of the raises will be limited to what the electorate is willing to put up with before voting the top bosses out of office.

The Equalizer Amendment is the fairest and most effective instrument for equalizing federal compensation vis-a-vis private compensation.

No question: most of what the federal government is doing these days is unconstitutional (see “What is Unconstitutional?”). Federal judges, many of whom are elitists picked by elitist presidents, have been allowing the Constitution to be stretched way beyond what was ratified. They have, in other words, been violating their oaths of office in which they promise to defend the Constitution. The first clause of the Equalizer Amendment allows citizens to bring suit against individual judges, including the justices of the Supreme Court, for fraud. The first clause reads, “No federal law or regulation shall apply to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to all officers and employees of the United States government other than members of the military.” Just as the federal government can bring suit against private corporations and their CEOs, citizens will be able to bring suit against the federal government and its officers and to do so in local, state, or federal courts. Judges guilty of violating their oaths will be fined or jailed for fraud, just as the CEO of a company guilty of fraud would be. This feature will overcome the problem of judges giving a pass to unconstitutional legislation.

The same clause allows citizens to challenge unconstitutional acts directly by suing the federal government in local, state, or federal courts, frequently obtaining injunctions against the acts until the higher courts make their decisions. If the Equalizer Amendment were in effect now, Obamacare would have been stopped already in many states. As it is now, the case will take months or years winding its way through federal courts.

The last sentence in the Equalizer Amendment’s first paragraph states, “Any existing law approved by Congress or regulation approved by the Executive that does not comply with all of the foregoing criteria is null and void and shall not be enforced.” Since Obamacare does not comply with the requirement that laws applying to citizens must apply equally to all officers and employees of the United States government other than members of the military, Obamacare can be safely ignored as unconstitutional as soon as the Equalizer Amendment is ratified. The same applies to myriad other unconstitutional acts, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, for example.

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery."

-- Winston Churchill

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