Government Extortion, Spin, and the Supreme Court, or: A Miscellaneous Collection of Truths

I was filing my government extortion returns the other day, and I took special notice of the rather obstreperous query into whether I would like to contribute $3 of my tax money to the "presidential campaign fund".

For those of you who never bothered to ask before, this fund was apparently set up so that politicians wouldn't have to rely so much on large corporate donations.

Right!

In case you were wondering, my answer was NO!

The state of Michigan apparently has a similar fund, to which I also did not generously donate the same amount.

Can anyone explain why politicians think that they can get away with trying to use taxpayer money to pay for their campaigns?

Maybe it's because of what they have already gotten away with!

Don't get me wrong; I know that they've been misappropriating funds for years--make that decades. But the reason that they keep doing it is twofold:

First, because they have the power and they like using it!
Have you ever seen what happens to some people when they get into office--even local office like a township board or a planning commission? (PCs, of course, are typically appointed, not elected) All of the sudden, they think that they're so important and that they can now tell everyone else how to run every minute detail of their lives! (And then there are the people who don't even care about getting into office first--they're that way to begin with!)


Second, because they know that it gets them votes!
I don't care which of the two main parties they claim for backing, politicians, with very few exceptions, brag constantly in their campaigns about how much "aid" or "funding" or how many "benefits" they can bring back to their constituents. (Read: PORK!) And we as voters let them get away with it!

Politicians seem to have learned this lesson well: hire a spinmaster who's good enough, and you can get away with just about anything.



"Abridging the freedom of speech and of the press?" Oh nooo, we're "getting the big money out of politics!"

Completely demolishing the checks and balances set up in the Constitution? Nuh-uh! We're "respecting the separation of powers".

Infringing--scratch that--flushing down the toilet "the right of the people to keep and bear arms?" Nope...just "keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals."

And the list keeps going! By the way, on that last one, I do have to acknowledge that the left has one valid point: gun control laws do keep guns out of the hands of law-abiding criminals.
Although I wasn't aware that that particular demographic had ever been a problem, I would argue that the Constitution should probably carry a little more weight than this "compelling governmental interest."

Oh, and that wonderful catch-all phrase that the “supreme” Court loves to wax eloquent (or pseudo-eloquent) over: "compelling governmental interest"!

I can see why they love it so much. It's the perfect excuse to do whatever you want. It's been used, in one language or another, by every tyrant who has ever walked the face of the earth, and it works beautifully.
One of the most famous uses for the "compelling governmental interest" argument, if you recall, occurred around 2000 years ago in the court of Pontius Pilate! What more shining precedent could one desire?

I don't recall this argument being used by the Founding Fathers, however, when they decided that the "laws of nature and of nature's God" trumped King George's "compelling governmental interest."

It's a good thing for the “supreme” Court that God doesn't use that argument!

Well, I guess I've made my point!

I'm going to try to post regularly, although I'm hoping that most of my posts won't be quite so long!

God bless!