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The New American Revolution
Part 3 of 3Sunday, March 23, 2008
By Jon Christian Ryter
The Ron Paul Prescription for Prosperity encompasses the following: Phase one: tax reform. Reduce the tax burden on the American people by eliminating taxes that punish investment and savings. This includes job-killing corporate taxes. Eliminate taxes on dividends and savings. The basis of capitalism is saving. Americans who have learned how to put a nest egg away should not be penalized for doing so. First on a litany of programs is House Joint Resolution 23 that will reward saving over consumption. Also needed is making the Bush-43 tax cuts permanent. Even more, cutting taxes on working senior citizens is imperative. Elderly people who are forced to work to survive should be allowed to keep all of the money they earn. We should eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits. Congress needs to enact HR 191 and HR 192. These bills will amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the inclusion in gross income of Social Security benefits and they will repeal the 1993 increases in taxes on Social Security benefits enacted by the co-presidency of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
To reform our tax system, it is important to accelerate depreciation on corporate investment and enact HR 4995 to amend the tax code to reduce corporate marginal income tax rates. Job growth comes from the private sector. It takes money to create jobs. When government takes those funds in taxes job growth does not happen. On the other end of the income spectrum, government needs to eliminate taxes on tips and gratuities because taxing those at the low end of the income spectrum penalizes single parents and working students, the bulk of whose under $15K incomes is derived from tips by enacting HR 3664 to amend the Internal Revenue code to provide that tips and gratuities are not subject to income or employment taxes. Further, the Ron Paul Prescription for Prosperity calls for passage of the Mortgage Cancellation Relief Act. The bankruptcy laws enacted in 1986 penalized taxpayers who lose their homes to foreclosure by charging them a portion of the forgiven debt. The Mortgage Cancellation Relief Act would exclude those penalties. Dr. Paul believes that subprime market homeowners who bought toxic mortgages and lost their homes should not be punished a second time with a large IRS tax bill. One of key cornerstones of the Prescription for Prosperity is the Liberty Amendment, a constitutional amendment to abolish the personal income tax, estate and gift taxes.
Phase Two: spending reform. Freeze non-defense, non-entitlement spending at their current levels. Pork-laden bills should never clear Congress. Since the federal courts have ruled that the President cannot exercise the line item veto enacted and signed into law by former President Bill Clinton, pork bills have to be stopped in Congress. The United States can no longer afford to subsidize our trading partners in Europe, Asia—and in the western hemisphere because what this nation is doing is funding the unfair competition that is eroding our job base at home. Further, in a world we can reach within hours, it makes little sense to deploy half of this nation's military to permanent bases around the world. The war in Korea ended in 1953, yet 55 years later, our troops are still there. When Bill Clinton sent US troops to Bosnia in 1993 he assured the American people they would be home by Christmas. That war ended in 1995. Thirteen years later, American troops are still there. World War II ended in 1945, yet American troops are still deployed in the former battle zones in both Europe and Asia—65 years after the last cannons were fired. Add to that the costs of the military bases which are funded entirely by the taxpayers of the United States and we have to ask ourselves why the United States is footing the bill for former military allies who have become economic adversaries eager for the economic downfall of the United States?
Phase Three: monetary policy reform. Expand transparency and accountability at the Federal Reserve. Force the Fed to televise Federal Open Market Committee meetings just as the business of Congress is now televised, and force the Fed's Board of Governors to continue to make available, to the public, a weekly report on the measure of the M3 monetary aggregate and its components. The Prescription for Prosperity calls for Congress to return value to our monetary system, end the fiat system by legalizing gold and silver as a competing currency to paper money. (While it is not a facet of the Prescription for Prosperity, written into law must be a clause which stipulates that fiat debt incurred by nations not on the gold standard will always be repaid with balance of trade credits and not dollars—or bullion. Countries which are not on the gold standard have no right to expect their balance of trade payments to be rendered in gold, or that loans or grants from the United States be paid to them in gold or silver. Historically, the drains on the gold and silver reserves in the United States were perpetuated by bankers and industrialists in Europe who invested fiat capital in the United States and withdrew gold. In the end, the gold and silver that had been in the nations vaults ended up in the banks of the wealthy elite who stole the gold and gave us debt scrip in place of it.)
Phase Four: regulatory reform. In 2002, in the aftermath of a myriad of corporate scandals that brought down such industry giants as Enron, Tyco, MCI-Worldcom and Peregrine Systems and cost individual investors and pension plans hundreds of billions of dollars Congress passed the Public Company Accounting and Reform Investor Protection Act of 2002, more commonly known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, or as its known on the Hill, Sarbox or SOX.
The law created an oversight board, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to oversee, regulate, inspect and discipline accounting firms who audit the finances of public companies (but the law does not apply to privately owned corporations). While the bureaucrats argue that the cost-benefit of implementing is cost-effective, the companies whose products we all purchase know that the average annual cost of implement SOX is around $1.4 trillion which is passed directly onto the consumer. The business giants on Wall Street argue that Sarbanes-Oxley contributed substantially in the displacement of business from the NYSE to the London Stock Exchange and to other alternate investment markets around the world. Ron Paul's Prescription for Prosperity calls for a repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 to reduce the burden its placed not on public-traded companies in the United States but small privately-held companies as well.
Further, the Prescription for Prosperity calls for laws to make it easier for community banks, savings banks and credit unions to compete so they can better serve their communities and to help people within those communities get access to credit without being hamstrung by Fed regulations that determine who is creditworthy and who is not.
Taking back Congress
The 10-term Congressman's 4-Point revitalization plan is the equivalent to Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution. Under Gingrich's 10-Point Plan ten very specific pieces of legislation were enacted after which the tenured GOP majority in 1994 simply blended into the congressional background and became indistinguishable from the House Democrats. The Republican Revolution newbies—including former 22nd Congressional District Congressman Ron Paul ]1978-1982] who was reelected in the 14th Congressional District in 1996—fought the system and actually accomplished some good. They forced Bill Clinton to keep his campaign promise to end generational welfare by enacting it and forcing him to sign it. And, they slowed down the globalist movement to erase our borders during the Clinton years. The Republican Revolution freshmen pledged to term limit themselves to three terms and all but a few did. The voters removed the others. Sadly, all that was left by 2006 were institutionalized Congressman who had been feasting in the gilded feeding troughs of the special interest group too long. Like the generational welfare recipients at the bottom of the societal ladder, it was now the only life they knew. Accepting gratuities from the powerful money barons was as natural as assuring the voters that they still represented them.
Institutionalized members of Congress in both Houses know their real constituents are not those who drive to the voting precinct in the rain or snow to cast their vote for Congressmen and/or Senators who have pledged to support their hopes and dreams of a better life in a sovereign America. In their campaign speeches, these Congressmen and Senators pledged to be the people's advocate in fulfilling those aspirations. Instead, they become the private advocates of those who filled their campaign war chests.
When Ron Paul gave up his quest for the White House and asked his grassroots supporters to continue to support him in the voting booth, most of them, fed by the emails of other grassroots Ron Paul stalwarts, believed there might still be a chance to prevail at the convention in Minneapolis where a floor fight might convince enough McCain delegates to switch, and nominate a candidate more to the liking of conservative America. Dr. Paul was not at all coy about what he was trying to do, but it took his supporters more than a few days to embrace the idea. "We're not holding out an illusion that Ron is going to win the nomination," his National Field Director Debbie Hopper said, "It's about calling the Republican Party back to its roots." Missouri Ron Paul field leaders confirmed that when they said they were not being driven by a quest to resurrect Ron Paul's bid for the White House. The thrust of their efforts is to force the Republican hierarchy to embrace Ron Paul's Prescription for Prosperity.
Ron Paul's Prescription for Prosperity caught fire with diehard supporters who have discovered a vision of hope in the notion that there is life after death. That hope has converted the Ron Paul Revolution into a new nationwide conservative revolution that could propel Dr. Paul into the role of Speaker of the House if this movement can become the groundswell it could, and should, be. America needs an honest man leading the US Congress. America needs a 21st century version of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Ron Paul fits the bill. If the Ron Paul activists can mobilize the "sit at home" conservatives through the spring and summer and impact the primaries in what States have not yet voted on their Congressional or Senatorial races, it will be possible to dump entrenched incumbents and bring fresh faces to Washington in November—a new Republican Revolution, the Ron Paul Revolution, that can take back Congress and bring sanity back to the process of governance in the nation's capital
Click here for part -----> 1. 2. 3.
Jon Christian Ryter is the pseudonym of a former newspaper reporter with the Parkersburg, WV Sentinel. He authored a syndicated newspaper column, Answers From The Bible, from the mid-1970s until 1985. Answers From The Bible was read weekly in many suburban markets in the United States.
Today, Jon is an advertising executive with the Washington Times. His website, www.jonchristianryter.com has helped him establish a network of mid-to senior-level Washington insiders who now provide him with a steady stream of material for use both in his books and in the investigative reports that are found on his website.
E-Mail: BAFFauthor@aol.com
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