One point that probably deserves further mention about last week\u2019s Dead Kennedy Funeral Parade was the behavior of the press, which wept and moaned and gnashed its collective teeth with nary a soul saying \u201cEnough, already,\u201d as though the corpse of a Pharaoh was headed for its final hoedown with the sun god. I\u2019m surprised they didn\u2019t decide to embalm the guy so people could troop past and touch the yellowed cadaver like they\u2019ve been doing with Vlad \u201cThe Impaler\u201d Lenin for the past 70 years.<\/p>\n
It was all further evidence that statism has become something close to a national religion, the subtext being that great things can be accomplished only through the giant wealth transfer schemes now underway in Washington. Oh, woe is us! Who will loot our paychecks now?!<\/p>\n
Did anyone notice an equivalent outpouring of grief and tribute when free-market economist Rose Friedman died in California on Aug. 18? When we lost Murray Rothard or Friedrich Hayek or Ludwig von Mises? \u201cWho?\u201d the puzzled TV viewers ask.<\/p>\n
A typically anonymous cyber-poster, apparently confusing me with someone who has authority over the people who send out obituary notices on the AP wires or who decide which ones will run in the Review-Journal, asks why \u201cmy own newspaper\u201d ran no substantial obituary on the recent death of Dr. Robert Spinrad, who while at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center during the 1970s and \u201980s helped commercialize such technologies as personal computers, laser printers, and ethernet LANs.<\/p>\n
Beats me, but thanks for helping make my point. Practically every month dies some entrepreneur or industrialist whose hard work improved our lives far more than Ted Kennedy ever did, giving us better, safer, more convenient, less expensive cell phones, car engines, satellite TVs, microwave ovens, refrigerated delivery of year-round produce — you name it.<\/p>\n
Do we see wall-to-wall 24-hour TV coverage of the funeral parades of these giants of American capitalism, weeping throngs encouraged to wait in line to touch the holy corpse as it lies in state, endless paeans to their goodness? Of course not. Our well coiffed media dismiss such characters as mere \u201ccorporate greedheads,\u201d who get no credit for their achievements because they were motivated by \u201cmere profit\u201d … while Ted Kennedy apparently went about his work in a saffron robe, sitting out on the sidewalk with a begging bowl each evening in hopes someone would toss him a few scraps for supper.<\/p>\n
\u201cEducation reform\u201d? Not that the mandatory government youth internment and propaganda camps (\u201cpublic schools\u201d) weren\u2019t already counterproductive, but the \u201cNo Child Left Behind\u201d law that Teddy helped pass should really be called \u201cNo Motivated Student Shall Excel.\u201d Miring inmates and staff alike in an impenetrable mire of testing and \u201cteaching to the test,\u201d this \u201cbi-partisan\u201d abomination finishes the job of converting the schools from an enterprise where the most gifted and talented were encouraged to move ahead quickly, into a stultifying mire where the gifted go insane with boredom (till they learn relief is as close as a reefer in the girls\u2019 room) while the entire enterprise focuses on elevating the marginal performance of the most reluctant and under-motivated internees in the room, many of whom — you can\u2019t make this stuff up — are literally brain-damaged.<\/p>\n
This is the proudest triumph of Ted Kennedy, the Harvard cheat?<\/p>\n
\u201cProtecting the rights of the little guy\u201d? Ted Kennedy never met an unconstitutional victim disarmament law that he didn\u2019t race to embrace like a campaign worker on Rohypnol. Maybe he hoped if we could just get rid of all the guns, no one would ever again assassinate a president, the way John Kennedy had Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother ousted and assassinated (the very next day, and were Jack and Bobby ever surprised!) in early November of 1963. (That IS the presidential assassination you were thinking of, right?)<\/p>\n
Teddy even played a major role in ushering onto the Supreme Court the woefully underqualified \u201caffirmative action baby\u201d Sonia Sotomayor, who favors the kind of racial quotas that allowed her to advance ahead of better qualified jurists, and who further insists there is \u201cno individual right to keep and bear arms.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s a problem with the \u201cOh, he\u2019s only terrified of firearms because of his family tragedies\u201d rationale. In Washington, D.C., where private citizens can\u2019t carry any kind of firearms and there\u2019s supposedly a \u201cno exceptions\u201d rule that anyone carting a machine gun into the Capitol goes to jail, what happened when one of Ted Kennedy\u2019s mercenary bodyguards, Chuck Stein (not a government agent) was arrested in January of 1986 for carrying two Uzi submachine guns and a pistol, plus a modest 146 rounds of ammo, into the Capitol building, asking \u201cWhere can I check this stuff?\u201d<\/p>\n
The senator explained it was all a misunderstanding, and was able to get Stein released without charges and rearmed in time to accompany the senator on his scheduled overseas jaunt — despite the fact that for Stein even to possess the machine pistols in his own home in the District of Columbia was a crime.<\/p>\n
With the Kennedys, the milling throngs were expected to cheer as they doled out sharply curtailed \u201crights\u201d and handouts to the little guy — while it was unlimited special privileges for the Kennedys and their pals, all the way.<\/p>\n
Leadership? Imagine for a moment Ted Kennedy had really stopped to contemplate what kind of future he was leaving our children, and had then decided to use his wealth, his power, his prestige to undertake one truly great act of leadership.<\/p>\n
I know it\u2019s far-fetched. I know it \u201ccould never have happened\u201d — helping make my point about just how lacking we are in real leadership in Washington, in an era when a man as morally weak as Ted Kennedy can be lionized as the \u201cconscience of the Senate.\u201d<\/p>\n
But imagine for a moment that Edward Kennedy had stepped before the TV cameras a year ago and stunned the nation with a simple, eloquent speech:<\/p>\n
\u201cGood evening. Some of us come to the end of our roads unexpectedly. Others of us receive a final blessing; we\u2019re told we have a few months to put our affairs in order.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve led a rich life. I\u2019ve also made plenty of mistakes in my 76 years; I\u2019m deeply sorry for them. But I got to thinking, is there one last thing I should still do, to help the country that has done so much for me and my family? I think there is.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a legislator. That\u2019s what I know how to do. So I\u2019ve been working with a few members of the lower house, from both sides of the aisle. Tomorrow they\u2019ll introduce on my behalf a bill we call the Economic Freedom and Prosperity Restoration Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy family has remained wealthy and powerful for most of a century, not because I\u2019m any great shakes as an investor, but because our wealth is protected in an immortal, tax-proof family trust. Most Americans can\u2019t set up such trusts today; the IRS changed the rules years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve also remained wealthy because I pay very little income tax. Families with old money can arrange things that way, while the most productive of our fellow Americans today — the kind of who actually invent and design and manufacture things — have no such advantages; they\u2019re taxed to the hilt.<\/p>\n
Make no mistake, the graduated personal income tax is evil — it\u2019s unfair, it\u2019s unequal, it loots from the most hard-working, productive Americans precisely that wealth they would otherwise invest in the private sector, creating good-paying new jobs. Instead, that money gets seized by the government, by me, and then I and my compatriots redistribute far too much of it to people who may be needy, but who do far less to advance our economy and our society. That\u2019s gone way out of balance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to change all that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Economic Freedom and Prosperity Restoration Act is in thee parts.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst, it changes tax law to allow any American family to set up an immortal, tax-free trust, just like the ones the Kennedy family and the Rockefeller family enjoy.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecond, it repeals the federal personal income tax. Gets rid of it completely. From 30 days after this bill is signed, no American employer will withhold any more income tax; no American will file another 1040 form; everyone gets to keep their own money, just as the Kennedy family always has.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe income tax currently provides about 30 percent of federal income. My colleagues will ask \u2018How are you going to pay for that?\u2019 What a terrible way of looking at things. All Americans have family members who have already paid the final price for freedom, just as my brothers did. That bill has already been paid. Americans are free as a birthright. They don\u2019t have to \u2018pay for\u2019 their economic freedom.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s true enough we\u2019ll have to reduce federal spending, by a large amount and permanently, to make this work. So the third part of the Economic Freedom and Prosperity Restoration Act calls for reducing next year\u2019s federal budget two two-thirds of the size of this year\u2019s. No gimmicks, no accounting tricks, no moving more things \u2018off budget.\u2019 A one-third cut, which will still leave us with a much larger federal government than when John Kennedy took office, than when Richard Nixon took office, than when Ronald Reagan took office.<\/p>\n
\u201cTime to close the Departments of Labor, or Agriculture, of Energy and Education and Health and Human Services, for starters. None existed a century ago; none are authorized in the Constitution.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re also going to have to turn to our actuarially bankrupt Ponzi schemes, Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. No more minor tinkering. For all Americans younger than 50, we need to end Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security immediately. Send them a modest check in partial compensation for what they\u2019ve paid in to date, urge them to invest it — since there\u2019ll be no benefits when they retire — and set them free. Their paychecks will jump by at least 30 percent. The economic stimulus should be huge.<\/p>\n
Meantime, for those currently retired, and those aged 50 and older today, the programs will continue as they are. No current retiree\u2019s benefits will be cut. Benefits for those retiring in subsequent years will have to be reduced, in keeping with the amounts still flowing in.
\nThat means that by 2050, our great socialist experiments of Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security will be at an end. Americans will once again be a free people, un-numbered, with no obligation to tell the government where they work or how much money they make.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose kinds of schemes paralyzed and crippled the Soviet Union. We don\u2019t need them here.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you very much; God bless a free and prosperous America.\u201d<\/p>\n
An \u201cimpossible\u201d speech? Any of 99 remaining senators or a handful of House members with similar high profiles could give it tomorrow.<\/p>\n
They won\u2019t, because they\u2019d be trading away a career\u2019s worth of wealth, power and prestige, in a battle of uncertain outcome, for the good of the country. That would take leadership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One point that probably deserves further mention about last week\u2019s Dead Kennedy Funeral Parade was the behavior of the press, which wept and moaned and gnashed its collective teeth with nary a soul saying \u201cEnough, already,\u201d as though the corpse of a Pharaoh was headed for its final hoedown with the sun god. I\u2019m surprised […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-brother","category-heroes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-4P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":301,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}