Government furlough

So the US government is down to essential personnel only, today.

Note the sky has not fallen.

Note, also, that the Earth continues to spin on its axis and revolve around the sun.

The Nation has not fallen into chaos.

I've been through this in the Clinton ear and was considered 'essential personnel' back in the day.  Which meant I had to go to work for warfighter support.

Who else had to go to work?

Guards, you need guards and the security people.

The people in the boiler room and HVAC, yeah you needed them, too.

Our office manager, although without secretary, which is the first time I actually got to see anyone in management actually have to do, you know, work.  Type their own letters. Get the office mail (what there was of it). Track secure packages.  Sign off on work product.  That sort of thing.

There was someone at the mail room but that is because the loading dock had to be open, and their boss covered the mail room, as well.  The mail room staff, you know the people who package and sort stuff, they weren't there and you had to DIY packaging for any outgoing packages.

Who wasn't there?  Whole cadres of mid-level and upper-level managers, the GS-13 through GS-15 types, save for one GS-15 per Directorate.  The rest?  Gone.  Lights off.

Cafeteria workers were not there.

Nor was the EEO staff.

Or any of the Human Resources staff, except their boss.

Janitorial crew was skeleton, enough to clean the washrooms and any other messes that showed up.

Grounds people were missing.

And anyone who didn't have work product headed to the warfighter, they were not there.

Basically the building I was in was mostly empty save for the rooms dedicated to actually getting stuff made to go out the door, and people to take it out the door to couriers.

I have a suggestion for a CR.

Make it an 'essential staff only' CR and put it in for a few months until everyone can get settled down to trying to figure out what is and isn't needed any more.

The debt will get maintenance payments.

The military will be on duty.

SSA and M&M checks will get processed.

As the Interstates are actually a military requirement during the Cold War, they can get to do repair work on it... give the USACE something to do beyond pork spending.

The border will have people manning it.

USPTO will be open.

USPS too, come to that, as well as USGS, or at least those parts actually making maps and charts.

A few other select places covered by the US Constitution would be open.

It's interesting that while Ambassadors are mentioned in the Constitution, a State Dept. isn't.  Maybe we can get the military to run the rest of it?

Everything else?

Do that for long enough and it becomes the 'new normal'.

Six to eight months ought to do it, and then the GAO which will be open on skeletal staff, can start to shut down buildings and auction off equipment... and then the buildings themselves...

And if President Obama wants to do it his way or the highway on the debt ceiling, then he should be thanked for wanting to run a government on $2.5 trillion/year and not on $4 trillion a year!  Tell him that he will be admired for his fiscal astuteness that the government should only spend what it takes in and that a skeleton 'essential personnel only' government is a good start on that process.

Always give an enemy what they want in a way they will not like and will look duplicitous in refusing.

Works every time.

Passively implicit

When looking at the US Constitution I take a view of it as a structuralist, that is to say that the form of government is given as a structure that has a number of interlocking parts that are defined, limited and created to serve a purpose.  Structural analysis means that you take the words as they are presented in the context of the English language.  I laid this out in Structural analysis of Amendment II, and that rests on the work that I looked at earlier by Nicholas Rosencranz who laid out how the sentence structure of the English language creates the structure of government in the Subjects and Objects of the Constitution.  The lineage of the US Constitution starts with agreements outlined in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and King Alfred all the way through to Bill of Rights put in place with James II, which I went over in Roots of constitutional government.  For this article I'm going to be building off my article on Taxation via sales.

Taxation was part of the trigger for the US Revolution and it is understood that the Founders and Framers both had a view that taxation is a necessary evil to run the organ of society known as government.  As a necessary evil it must be limited so that it does not over stress the body which is society that requires the functioning of government to do the few and necessary things to allow for the individuals to be free.  With that said taxation takes many forms and the US Congress gets some particular types taxation in Art I, Sec 8, in part:

Section. 8.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

If Congress was getting the complete taxation power with this clause then there would be no need to put in Duties, Imposts and Excises, now, would there?  In fact it took an Amendment for Congress to get the income tax, and even that Amendment has been misused as it nowhere indicates that Congress may levy different taxes on different income levels.  The Progressive Income Tax requires not just the Income Tax part, but a specific exemption of the Privileges and Immunities clause and Amendment V and Due Process of Law which is to be applied equally to all citizens.  Be that as it may, later in Sec 8 is a clause that indicates what the scope of the Taxation power actually is:

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

Duties, Imposts and Excises are generally taxes aimed at the National level and at international trade.  Thus the regulatory or regularizing power of Congress writing law in support of Treaties or, in cases where there are no trade treaties, setting the Nation's tax policy towards importation of goods to sustain trade, thus are complementary to the Duties, Imposts and Excises previously mentioned.  That is to say there is an explicit venue given for the Taxation power that is complete for Congress for international trade modified by Treaties.  Thus even where it is a complete power it is one that has limitations via Treaty.

Next is Sec 9 where one tax power is restricted and then modified by Amendment:

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

This is the first outright restriction to the Taxation power and now limiting it.  Do note that this is a passive clause and that it does not mention Congress nor does it mention any other branch or any other government.  Thus this applies to all governments and all branches of all governments in the United States.  Remember in Sec 8 there is the language 'The Congress shall have...' is an explicit grant of power and as all of Sec 8 is a single sentence with many semi-colons, all of that is covered under that.  There is no need to repeat it per line as the separate grants are broken up for clarity's sake, for readability, and to let someone catch their breath if they had to read it as a single sentence.

In Section 9 each clause is a single, stand-alone sentence, complete in and of itself.  These sentences are not started by explicit and active restrictions upon, say, Congress, but are passive and general in nature.  The Framers were more than capable of starting a sentence 'Congress shall make no law...' but these clauses do not start with that beginning.  As the Constitution is about the organization of the United States and what the role of the States shall be, when States require separate coverage they are mentioned, as in Sec 10, and I'm coming back to Sec 9, but here is the language on Taxation in 10:

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

With 'No State shall...' we are given a definitive subject and then a set of Objects with modifiers.  It is this language that is absent in Sec 9 and without an actual Subject that is defined then the generalized Subject is being addressed to all levels of all governments.

Imposts and Duties on Imports or Exports is a linking of topics in Sec 10 and due to that linkage these powers are addressed to those objects.  That explicit language and linkage then gives proper definition to the prior Congressional power on Imposts and Duties: Imports and Exports.  If a State wants a special exemption it must go to Congress and that only for the necessary execution of inspection laws.  By making those funds go to the US Treasury this is seen as a federal power granted to Congress and is for Imports and Exports.

Now back in Sec 9 there is the final clause and one that clearly de-limits powers and it is this:

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

As with the prior prohibition this one is given a passive voice and does not state 'Congress shall make no law...' nor does it start 'No State shall...' but, instead, addresses Taxation as a whole.  This is a restriction on the Taxation power, itself.  By not having either Congress or the States as the subject, as with the previous passive and standalone clause, this clause then addresses all governments in the United States.

This is an implicit restriction on taxation of goods moved from State to State on goods exported from one State to another State.  No government may do this in the United States.

Now lets flip this around into a different arena and ask: what is the form of this restriction on an international scale?

The States of the United States are seen as Sovereign entities and actually have an escape hatch from the US Constitution embedded within it in Sec 10:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

This language also shows up later in the Constitution in Art IV:

Section. 4.

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.

In Art IV, Sec 4 the guarantee of a Republican Form of Government is to the States, which are signatories to the US Constitution after ratification by the people of that State.  The protections against having this subverted are to protect the States against Invasion and domestic Violence.  In Art I, Sec 10 there are a set of powers that a State recovers if the United States does not support this and it is the ones they agree to set aside outside of these specific causes.  When you examine that list you get the conception of the broad headings that the States recover in full upon invasion, imminent threat of Danger or having their government threatened with being overturned via non-Republican means are broad and sweeping.  These powers are what we call the Foreign Policy power and the Military power, not just the defensive Militia power which is due to all men, but the assertive and external Military power.  Also it regains all the taxation powers and the powers to build new military fortifications and equipment to guard itself.

In International Affairs a State with the full Foreign Policy, Military and Taxation power is known as an independent Nation State: a country.

Thus the States must have these powers to set aside in this agreement known as the US Constitution, as you cannot recover what you did not have to start with.  That is simple logic.

Taking the US Constitution as a TREATY DOCUMENT and examining what the form of Taxation is we then come to a conclusion of the limitation on the Taxation power that is startling due to the understanding that is underlying it.  It is the scope and form of Treaty that many who have argued on the necessity of unburdened trade have used at the International scale and has its full form seen with an organizations of States that agree to this view so as to have a coherent Nation amongst them.

What is a trade agreement that unburdens trade amongst equals and limits the power of an oversight group so that it may not burden such trade via direct taxation?

What is a trade agreement that sets up a system whereby sellers in one State that is signatory to the Treaty cannot have its goods or services taxed by a recipient State and its citizens?

What is the form of trade agreement that abolishes duties, imposts and excises save for necessary inspection and then those funds applied only to those inspections to ensure that agreed-upon legal trade is all that is going on between States?

Why this does have a modern term, doesn't it?

This is known as a FREE TRADE AGREEMENT.

Right there, in the US Constitution, powerfully stated by not being explicit, not a direct power grant, but by restricting all the governments involved, including the agreed-upon oversight body.  It is one of the most subtle and yet powerful statements on the positive value of trade between States to knit a Union together and to allow that free men when trading with other free men in States that all fall under the Treaty shall have NO TAXATION applied to that direct sale from individual to individual, State to State.

And that means no 'Value Added Tax', 'Sales Tax' or any other thing not directly related to quantity, amount or hazard of a given good.  Taxation for tonnage is also removed unless it has safety or verification inspections involved.  The federal government can tax per gallon, per carton of cigarettes, or by any other gross weight and measure so long as it involves upkeep of infrastructure due to those particular items in the way of hazard or safety.

What no government can do is tax by VALUE of the trade involved.

Thus a nickel per gallon on tax is there without regard to the actual cost per galloon.  It is there if it is a penny per gallon and it is there if it is ten thousand dollars per gallon: the quantity is what matters, not the value.  And do note that is for interstate sales, only, so that in-State sales remain the realm of the State government.

Governments will always seek new sources of revenue and tax the hell out of anything they can get their hands on and yet still be unable to balance their budgets.

A free people have an 'out' from onerous taxation: our fellow citizens in the other States under this Free Trade Agreement embedded in the US Constitution.  As a remedy to overburdening of taxes this is one of the most sublime resorts that the ordinary citizen has to escape taxes, become closer with his fellow citizens and support the Union between the States.

Because that is the realm of the Preamble of the US Constitution and note who is invoking it and what we promise to do:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Process that Preserves

I've written about the problems of the NSA surveillance of Americans in Presumed Guilty, and will switch from that to the man who actually revealed the NSA PRISM program and fled to Hong Kong: Edward Snowden.

I am not going to pre-judge his actions, but note that they are in violation of the law with presumable harm to National Security involved.  Like any other person accused of a crime he deserves his day in court and I recommend that he do come to a US Embassy and publicly relinquish himself for a public trial.  It will take time for the enormity of his actions to hit Mr. Snowden and when that happens it is my dearest wish that he does come in from the cold.

Really that is the best course of action as the one he is on now leaves him open to accusations and no closure that a trial provides.  If he truly believes he did the right thing then, while he does have much to fear from the legal system, it is a system and it has a process to it.  It is a process that preserves rights and liberty of our citizens.

As I outlined in Presumed Guilty, Amendments IV, V and VI put together the legal system to be followed with in the US and it is one of presumed innocence at the start with the onus of proof of wrongdoing falling to the accuser.  It is a process where the accuser must gather evidence, seek warrants for more information from a judge, and present that evidence in a public court so that the accused has an opportunity for a public trial by jury.  There have been numerous prior proceedings involving secrecy laws and the information within them and the procedure of reading on a judge, attorneys and jury is well understood and well known.

Truly the government need only show that the program was compromised.

I presume that Mr. Snowden's defense was that in his view the program was unconstitutional either in its basis or execution, and that his Oath required him to reveal the program to the American people as a whole.  Most of the attention is being put to Amendment IV:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

As Mr. Snowden is pointing out that the NSA collection of information on American citizens in a wholesale manner is not only not allowable without a warrant, but that the whole of the people cannot be suspected for crimes of particulars done by individuals.  Thus even if the FISA court gave a Warrant for such activities, that Warrant is in violation of the Constitution: Warrants are for cases of individuals or small groups, not the entire population of the US.  If the NSA sought such a broad Warrant then it is in violation of the Constitution by seeking such and not narrowing its scope down to particulars and individuals.  If there is a Constitutional breach at that point it can have one of three sources, it it has happened:

1 – Judicial lack of oversight and not putting a narrow scope to data collection to protect the liberty and freedom of Americans.  You are presumed innocent of a crime and when the Executive asks for data on you via a warrant you are then suspected of a crime.  The entirety of the American people cannot be suspected of a crime and it is incumbent on the Executive to narrow the procedure down to likely individuals and their associates, not the whole of the People.  By not recognizing this basic piece of logic, the Judicial branch in authorizing such a Warrant can be found in breach of the Constitution.  At that point the Warrant is rescinded and all individuals not associated with suspected terrorists are removed from the data stores in their entirety, including all back-ups.

2 – Executive branch problems can fall into the area of not interpreting the law correctly and creating an unconstitutional execution of it via programs.  In this instance a law would be Constitutional but the PRISM concept would be violating basic protections and freedoms of the People as a whole and in their individual particulars.  Any program so ill-crafted as to need all of the data on all of the people to find the very few who may be supporting terrorists is so ill-conceived that it points to a basic and systemic problem in not just the program but in those who created and authorized it.

3 – Legislative works are not always found to be Constitutional and Congress may have given a law that contravenes the basic protections of the American people as a whole and as individuals.  The entire scope of the law may be so ill-created and ill-conceived that no one doing the process of approving it in Congress realized just how wrong-headed it was.  However if Congress did craft the law properly, but was not informed of the scope of the resulting program and what it entailed, then that is a failure of the Executive branch to properly inform the Legislative branch about the implementation of the program.  If the law, itself, is the fault then it lies with Congress at the very passage of it and all programs and functions created by it go away, and the data stores are destroyed.  A lack of Executive accountability, however, puts the Executive at jeopardy for not performing a duty to Congress as required by Congress so that Congress can exercise oversight.  In this instance a program and law can be Constitutional but both Mr. Snowden and all who are in the Executive reporting chain can be held accountable for not properly accounting the program to Congress.

These are the possible problems that Mr. Snowden may have seen and the remedy for his defense is not in Amendment IV, the basis for his revealing the program which he sees as problematical, but in Amendment VI:

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

This procedure in which the prosecution hands over all its collected evidence to the accused and opens those items up to further scrutiny by the accused is known as 'discovery'.  When getting a Warrant the Executive seeks to discover more information about someone and when it accuses them that information is then handed over.  That scrutiny is critical because the defense must be allowed access to exculpatory information in the way of witnesses and documents.

In this case the discovery would presumably happen on the PRISM program within the NSA.

The scope of it would be limited to those documents and procedures that detail the entire history of the program from its original emplacement in a Bill and authorized by Congress, to the implementation and creation of it, to how it functioned so that the Executive demonstrates that it is doing a responsible job in executing the program and properly informing Congress of it on a basis set by Congress.

The defense would not actually want much in the way of things like hardware, software, and who is running which piece of equipment as those would be a distraction and not relevant to the defense.  What is wanted is the high level Legislative enabling Bills and then how the Executive processed those to programs, with given scope and necessary high level overview of the program, and then how it proceeded over time.

The defense has multiple ways to demonstrate that Mr. Snowden operated under his Oath and duties to the Constitution and need but show how the scope of PRISM contravenes the power granted to the federal government in any single particular: with just one Constitutional problem he is vindicated.

An accuser has the power of the State behind them, but in this case it would be relatively open and shut if there is a strong belief that PRISM did all of the following:

1 – Is a Constitutional power granted to Congress.

2 – The Executive properly carried out the power that Congress enacted.

3 – The Executive properly ran the program within the scope of the power grant from Congress for the program.

4 – That no Warrants exceeded the Constitutional limits placed upon the NSA.

5 – That the Judicial branch did not improperly authorize any Warrant for the PRISM program.

6 – That the Executive branch kept Congress properly informed about the program so that Congress could give scrutiny to it so that the program was being run to their satisfaction.

Even though 6 is not a killer to getting a guilty verdict, it then opens the entirety of the reporting chain to prosecution.  And that opens up whole bunches of cans of worms because when the NSA goes rogue and lies to Congress, there is a huge problem in the National Security establishment, all the way up to the DNI who said that such programs didn't even exist nor collect data on American citizens.

So it is my dearest and most sincere wish that Mr. Snowden turn himself in because his worries of Triad contacts inside the US political establishment are valid, and drones are not the only thing in the clandestine arsenal that can take out an individual overseas.  And even Russia isn't safe, either, come to that.

If you are a supporter of the PRISM program then you want Mr. Snowden brought in for trial because you believe it will withstand Constitutional scrutiny.  Really, there is little to worry about in that instance if you believe that.

If you are not a supporter of the PRISM program then you want Mr. Snowden to come in on his own and then support him to get the best crack team of lawyers who know the security laws and how to dance them.  People used to chasing down bureaucratic paper trails, using documents to build a defense and showing just what the scope of the PRISM program actually is.  You don't get that with finger-pointing and argument, but with a court case.

And if you simply want Justice to be served, you want Mr. Snowden to come in or be brought in to trial.  If he acted properly in his assessment of the PRISM program, then he will be vindicated and the program shattered in public disclosure after he is found innocent.  And if he is guilty and the program is Constitutional and legally constructed and run, then the security apparatus will ensure that the information in the trial doesn't see the light of day.

If the entire process, including the Judiciary, has been corrupted thoroughly, then a trial will also show that, quite well.

Being on the run is only a temporary phenomena and you either find a safe haven, get brought in to trial or wind up dead because you know far too much and a trial would reveal that and possibly more.  If Mr. Snowden winds up dead, you will know that is exactly the case.  And then we have a real problem on our hands because someone no longer wants the process to preserve the system.

Ideology of Tyranny

Recently I've looked at how Russia has moved from a Communist State to a Police State run by the secret police.  This shift from totalitarianism via political ideology derived from Marx to one derived from the pure use of power is one that is a direct flow, culturally, in Russia dating back to the early Czars all the way to Vladimir Putin.  The horror of such a regime isn't in its biased enforcement of laws to keep a regime elite in power, but in the violation of the social compact with those that merely try to enforce an equality of law upon all citizens.  That is the End Game Against Freedom article that centers on a film documentary by Andrei Nekrasov who recounted the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in Poisoned by Polonium.  Litvinenko attempted to simply put down a moral basis to do his job of law enforcement so that the law could be upheld in a neutral manner.  This was inside the FSB, the secret police organization that traces its roots directly back to the Cheka of the Czars, and he had an entire unit of men who also viewed with horror the things they were being asked to do to keep the regime in power: harass citizens, extort money from businessmen, plant evidence, use blackmail on judges, and even murder those who had the temerity to simply want a common law enforced for everyone.  Not only was the man they were going after inside the police, but he upheld an ideological point of view that Litvinenko's unit was in agreement with.  The men of the unit went on record as to what they had been ordered to do, who ordered them to do it, and why they thought they had been given such orders.  By revealing that the secret police, as individuals and units, had their own, separate funding garnered by extortion and blackmail of businesses, this unit had exposed how a secret police can act secretly even to its own budget to the enrichment of the police officers involved.  From Alexander Litvinenko:

Everyone realizes I don't know any secrets.  The only secrets I know are about organized crime and corruption, and they can't legally be considered state secrets.  Even if I wanted to work for British intelligence, I have nothing to tell them.  How can I be a traitor to my country?

Why are they so angry with me?

Because I have spoken about the one thing that is important, holy to them.  One officer said to me, "You can out all our agents, to hell with them.  We'll recruit new ones.  But you did one deadly thing.  You made public our system of earning money.  Do you want us to use the underground?"

That is why they hate me so much.

In any normal society this would be the activity of organized crime, but in Russia there is a political blending between the FSB and organized crime: between the State and criminals. I went over that in A taste of Oil For Food and its chefs, and it works out like this:  Marc Rich (the man who was on the run from FBI prosecution and who would be pardoned by President Clinton at the behest of Eric Holder) ran in a predatory investment environment so that he was willing to invest in places where there were either sanctions against investing or steep penalties for doing so, so that he could make money off of troubled regions of the world.  Russia, just in the post-USSR period, was very troubled in that it had no foreign cash reserves and its industrial base had no owners and no way to run things.  Organized crime in Russia had cash, and so did Marc Rich and together they were able to get legislation put in place that would allow criminal money to be used for purchasing ex-State run industries.  From that there were three types of owners for these businesses at the start of modern Russia: the State, Organized Crime, and corrupt outside investors.  This is a pattern from Marc Rich of finding raw materials concerns in foreign Nations that have limited access to markets via sanctions, purchasing those goods at a pittance, and then working those black market goods into the grey and open markets.  In Russia this was augmented by a process of 'tolling' which was exchanging goods from the USSR for cash, and not having any taxes to pay for the importation of any other goods.

When dealing with sums involved in such transactions the banking system must be used, and it was (and still is) relatively porous to criminal funds moving through the global financial system. In my article on the Red Mafia and its connectivity, I outline how the Bank of New York was penetrated by at least one organization of the Red Mafia (and because it still has not been thoroughly investigated, no one can say for sure just what the current extent of the penetration actually is nor how many organizations have penetrated it) that was moving $70 billion worth of funds and transactions over a period of years between other Nations and Russia.  Most of that was for Oligarchs, yes, but there are definite tracks that lead to an outfit run by the Chernoy brothers, who used the unique method of not being computerized and having one brother with an eidetic memory to remember where all the paper front companies were.  Literally no one working inside their main front organization actually suspected that the transactions that were taking place were between off-shore companies stood up just for the length of the transaction and then dissolved soon thereafter.  Without a paper trail, no one can be prosecuted, and that unique approach means that just how much illicit money through drug running, extortion overseas, white slavery and murder for hire went through the system is unknown.  What can be said is that one large swindle involving Semion Mogilevich in the YBM Magnex scandal netted $1 billion over its 4 years of operation in cornering the permanent magnet market via illegal trades.  Note that this was the Canadian market that was penetrated by a Russian operation started by a Red Mafia leader in Virginia, USA, with funds then being funneled through the penetrating group of the Bank of New York in NYC and then filtered out to Cypress, where Mogilevich had a holding company, and then filtered into Russia to support his organized crime syndicate that stretched all the way from Moscow to China.

This puts the life and times of Mikhail Khodorkovsky (from Khodorkovsky a documentary by Cyril Tuschi ), which I went through in End of the moral State, into fine focus.  The USSR had no banks, no one had a checking or savings account, nor credit cards, nor owned stock or bonds in companies.  Yet the Red Mafia had been dealing with capitalist regions for decades, faced brutal repression in the USSR and became far more brutal because of the repression.  Khodorkovsky saw the need for a banking system in Russia if it was to make a post-Communist transition, but knew little of what banks were, what they did or how they operated.  Those few with any cash standing up Menatap Bank had to go to Great Britain's banking industry for help on just the basics, and that also led to problems in those early days of keeping track of just where funds were coming from.  Surely funds coming from a well established, well known Western global banking system were secure, right?

Yet that was not the case and Menatap suffered because it was becoming known as a conduit for funds that was not transparent, did not keep open books and was suspected of helping to funnel organized crime funds into Russia.  This was the result as seen from Irina Yasina journalist who worked with Khodorkovsky to help establish his education works and who was the director of Open Russia:

At some point, Yukos was also a non-transparent company.  Minority shareholders were treated badly and no quarterly reports were submitted, like in the West.  That's what it was like in the beginning. After a series of scandals, Khodorkovsky understood:  If you make a company transparent, you attract investment.  He learned from his mistakes and knew this would also make money.  So it was actually a business project.

What happened is that Mikhail Khodorkovsky learned the basis for a capitalist system:  open books and transparency of accounts.  This would wind him up in Siberia, now having his sentence extended by the Putin regime for a third time because he was running an organization that could no longer be extorted for funds.  Both Menatap and Yukos would demonstrate that the fundamental requirement for a working capitalist system is open accounting, transparency and equal application of the law to all businesses with favoritism towards none.  This changed the course of Khodorkovsky's life and businesses from those that were not transparent with few willing to invest, to ones with open transparency and books and loads of investors.  Going from nothing to the richest man under 40 on the planet in less than a decade can be done legally, and Khodorkovsky proved it.  If he had not actually pushed back against the corrupt politicians put in place by the FSB, he would now be the richest man on planet Earth.

What did he run up against?

Again from the Litvinenko film:

In our country, the special services are, in fact, a secret political organization that uses sharp methods, secret methods, not against spies and terrorists, but solely to keep a ruling class in power.  In 1999, for example, to seize power, the FSB used secret methods that are only allowed against terrorists and spies.  If the army were to seize power, they'd roll in with tanks and guns and fly in with jets maybe.  But everyone would notice. The FSB, on the other hand, has secret methods, and nobody noticed anything until chekists made up the government and seized every organ of power.  If the KGB was the armed unit of the Communist Party, then the FSB is the armed unit of – of a caste of corrupt Russian officials.

In the USA, Congress has been willing to hand over more and more policing powers not just to individual agencies (which they are allowed to do) but to larger police organizations which now fall under the Dept. of Justice rubric.  Further the tax collection system has also garnered not only its own policing powers but its own court system, which is run to the interest of collecting taxes, not protecting individual rights and freedoms.  Under the guise of 'financial penalties' Congress has empowered the IRS to use both jail time and punitive fines as coercement techniques and that has now spread via special 'categories' of companies to allow the forceful hand of the elite to put pressure on citizen political concerns.  If the IRS were to seize power by disenfranchisement of individuals through: suppression of freedom of speech,  suppression of freedom of association, intimidation tactics against not just those wishing to start companies but their families, donors and families of donors, discourage the citizen's protected right to directly address government, and then hold the penalty of perjury over any wrong detail... would you notice?

This coercion and intimidation did not start with the election of Barack Obama, no this had started long before that.  Long before Richard Nixon threatened to do this.  Coming from The Federalist #12 (Courtesy: constitution.org) by Alexander Hamilton we get this view on taxation after looking at wartime taxation:

But it is not in this aspect of the subject alone that Union will be seen to conduce to the purpose of revenue. There are other points of view, in which its influence will appear more immediate and decisive. It is evident from the state of the country, from the habits of the people, from the experience we have had on the point itself, that it is impracticable to raise any very considerable sums by direct taxation. Tax laws have in vain been multiplied; new methods to enforce the collection have in vain been tried; the public expectation has been uniformly disappointed, and the treasuries of the States have remained empty. The popular system of administration inherent in the nature of popular government, coinciding with the real scarcity of money incident to a languid and mutilated state of trade, has hitherto defeated every experiment for extensive collections, and has at length taught the different legislatures the folly of attempting them.

And then further on:

In France, there is an army of patrols (as they are called) constantly employed to secure their fiscal regulations against the inroads of the dealers in contraband trade. Mr. Neckar computes the number of these patrols at upwards of twenty thousand. This shows the immense difficulty in preventing that species of traffic, where there is an inland communication, and places in a strong light the disadvantages with which the collection of duties in this country would be encumbered, if by disunion the States should be placed in a situation, with respect to each other, resembling that of France with respect to her neighbors. The arbitrary and vexatious powers with which the patrols are necessarily armed, would be intolerable in a free country.

In the modern USA all attempts to garner more and more money for government by taxation has found that after a certain point the increases become detractions to revenue generation, as was demonstrated by Art Laffer.  Yet tax regulation has gone inexorably upwards, more and more power over personal information is vested in the IRS, and it now has an army of agents willing to roam the land to enforce its own form of political viewpoint AND use arbitrary and capricious audits against not just businesses but individuals as well to both garner revenue and suppress speech.  And as the IRS is the agency put in to the role of collecting your medical information under Obamacare, the inroads and reach of the US federal government into the lives of individuals is about to increase many fold.

This, too, was seen by Hamilton:

What will be the consequence, if we are not able to avail ourselves of the resource in question in its full extent? A nation cannot long exist without revenues. Destitute of this essential support, it must resign its independence, and sink into the degraded condition of a province. This is an extremity to which no government will of choice accede. Revenue, therefore, must be had at all events. In this country, if the principal part be not drawn from commerce, it must fall with oppressive weight upon land. It has been already intimated that excises, in their true signification, are too little in unison with the feelings of the people, to admit of great use being made of that mode of taxation; nor, indeed, in the States where almost the sole employment is agriculture, are the objects proper for excise sufficiently numerous to permit very ample collections in that way. Personal estate (as has been before remarked), from the difficulty in tracing it, cannot be subjected to large contributions, by any other means than by taxes on consumption. In populous cities, it may be enough the subject of conjecture, to occasion the oppression of individuals, without much aggregate benefit to the State; but beyond these circles, it must, in a great measure, escape the eye and the hand of the tax-gatherer. As the necessities of the State, nevertheless, must be satisfied in some mode or other, the defect of other resources must throw the principal weight of public burdens on the possessors of land. And as, on the other hand, the wants of the government can never obtain an adequate supply, unless all the sources of revenue are open to its demands, the finances of the community, under such embarrassments, cannot be put into a situation consistent with its respectability or its security. Thus we shall not even have the consolations of a full treasury, to atone for the oppression of that valuable class of the citizens who are employed in the cultivation of the soil. But public and private distress will keep pace with each other in gloomy concert; and unite in deploring the infatuation of those counsels which led to disunion.

The wants of any government can only be met by totalitarian excesses of control of all parts of the economy: and yet even that will not fund it nor will it guarantee security and, in failing that, it will lose respect and support.

In Russia the secret police (Cheka, KGB, FSB) gained control by infiltrating all levels of law, and then moving into politics to control all levels of the economy.  Taxation plays only a small role in Russia where the population has never had a democratic expression of the popular will without the influence of the elite or organized crime, when the two can be told apart from each other.  Vladimir Putin swindled St. Petersburg, Russia of tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in what was supposed to be a goods for food arrangement with Western Europe.  The goods went out and he pocketed the cash, and formed a money laundering bank that then reached out to the Colombian cartels.  With that personal money he was then able to help push the FSB forward with political candidates directly FROM the FSB, so that the second generation of laws could be geared towards the FSB and the elite, with the FSB serving not only on the criminal apprehension and prosecution side of things, but also serving as 'advisors' to courts and judges, letting them know who to judge guilty.

In the USA we have a system of politicians using the laws to create an arm of government that reaches into the financial and now health concerns of every American and suppresses attempts by citizens to form organizations to cut all of government down to an accountable size, remove broad powers from unaccountable agencies and their agents, all while trying to keep out of a court system run by and for those same agencies and agents.  On the DoJ side there are abuses of power under the rubric of National Security to wiretap journalists without informing those organizations they are tapping of who they are tapping and why they are tapping them and how long such taps will be used, and for what purposes as is required by law.  Further the DoJ goes 'judge shopping' to find a judge who will sign off on such open-ended, clandestine wiretaps, all to try and find out who the sources for a journalist are when that journalist is exercising First Amendment rights.

That same DoJ is given oversight on running the BATFE and then abusing that privilege by sending unaccountable arms to organized crime across the border and even overseas, without using proper IMEX treaty controls to do so, thus contravening not just federal law but international law as agreed to by the USA and places like Mexico and Honduras.  Those arms then filter back into the USA via those criminal organizations, and has led to the death of Brian Terry and other federal agents inside the USA.  This is only surpassed by the State Dept. running arms to other organized crime organizations in Mexico, moving Libyan MANPADs to 'rebels' in Syria affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda and then not bothering to protect Ambassador Stevens when the same jihadi-based organizations we got to protect him then turned on him, thus obscuring just which arms were shipped into and out of Libya and by whom.

Apparently there is another group of elites in the world who see fit to use the government of the USA and its organs against the people of America and who then create disorder overseas via US federal agencies and organs to their own ends which are neither legal nor lawful in any way, shape or form.

Do note that this is caused by both parties in the USA, over a number of decades and slowly built to control not just the lives of American Citizens, but to bring to heel multiple Nations through different means via the utilization of corrupt politicians with the Ideology of Tyranny.

What is that Ideology of Tyranny?

Raw power for the elites in charge to terrorize the lives of the common man on all corners of the Earth.

You can see it in small scale in Russia.

It is about to be on your doorstep and the doorstep of billions of people across the globe.

The only thing to stop it is each of us being awake, pointing out the outlines of such Tyranny, and continuing the civil discourse until the Tyrants can't take it any longer.  Then comes our Natural Right to protect ourselves, our loved ones, our property and our society against the inroads of such Totalitarianism.

And, just so you know, the best form of attack to bring the Tyrants of the world up short: humor, derision, and just pointing out how damned stupid they are to think that power, control and force actually make THEM safe.  There are plenty of fine examples of elites with lopped off heads, spilled guts, sudden attempts to fly out of 10 story windows, and just plain old numbers on their backs so they can be worked to death by the thing they create.  In their attempts to make everyone heel to them, they always forget to heel themselves to any inner guidance beyond all consuming power.  All consuming power consumes all, including those doing the holding.  Laugh at them for their willful ignorance of history, deride them in thinking that a necessary evil can be given good things to do and not become a pure evil, and that societies are created amongst men and governments mere temporary things used to help sustain society and that when government attempts to become society it becomes its own enemy and will soon be attacking itself.

You can't ask Litvinenko about that.

You might get a word from Khodorkovsky.

And you might just want to physically write down that you will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed or numbered.

Your life is your own.

And smile when you do it.

Tyrants hate those who smile in freedom.

It will make you a target, but soon, very soon, the targets will all be pointing in at the elites.  When everyone else is the target, then you aren't in a good situation because it is you that are the violent one and it is you that are in the 10 ring: target all others and you become the target.

And that day is also coming.

Abolish the DNI

There are now news reports (Source: The Blaze citing CBS) that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) altered CIA information on the 9/11/12 Benghazi attack to remove references to terrorism.

As a member of the INTEL Community (IC) when the DNI was proposed, myself and my colleagues understood that it was a path to failure, not success.  Why?

Whenever a bureaucracy is put over a set of bureaucracies there are new fiefdoms for individuals to control (that is, areas of responsibility that get divvied up and individuals then begin turf wars for resources).  This is true of ANY bureaucracy, not just the DNI.

Why was the DNI formed?

In response to a Blue Ribbon Commission investigating the 9/11/01 attacks to find out how so much INTEL could not be coordinated between Agencies within the IC. 

The solution was NOT to remove barriers between common work areas across Agencies. 

The solution was NOT to spin up a cross-agency task sharking system so that INTEL could be shared at the Analyst level and work assignments done utilizing specialists across Agencies.

The solution was not to pare down an obviously inefficient set of bureaucracies to both make them more efficient and to punish such Agencies that had continually asked for more personnel to 'get the job done'.

These were NOT the solutions put into place.

Instead the DNI, a bureaucracy above other bureaucracies, each of those sub-pieces that would now need additional manpower to interface with the new bureaucracy, was created.  This is understood as a path to failure.

There is or should be an Iron Law of Bureaucratic Size for Oversight.  It would simply read:

Any bureaucracy that is increased with the goal to enhance oversight and efficiency instead reduces oversight, efficiency and accountability by requiring more bureaucracy between individuals and more individuals to point the finger at when something goes wrong.

That is what has happened with the DNI.

It failed, as an Office created to discern indications of terrorism, to correctly ID a terror attack after it happened with resources telling it that this was, unmistakably, a terror attack.

On 9/11.

The irony would be mirthful if there were not 4 Americans dead in the streets of Benghazi.

By the reason it was created, by the standards to which it was set to adhere to, the DNI has failed completely and utterly in its mission.

If you want a better working IC get rid of the DNI, strip out bureaucratic staffing at the GS-13 to GS-15 levels, and have the IC get together as working units to determine how best to address information gathering, processing, analysis and draw conclusions by removing fiefdoms and ownership over resources now bestowed upon Agencies.  What is needed to get a job done is best determined at the working level of the Analyst.  Agencies should have as their mandate the requirement to identify key skills and then SUPPORT THEM and recruit individuals to meet REQUIRED SKILLSETS to properly work through INTEL.

Make project heads accountable for their work product and grade analysts directly on the quality of it as seen by their USERS, not by their BOSSES.

Reward good work, efficiency and actually getting the job done correctly and to the end-user's satisfaction.

But above all else, if nothing else is done, get rid of the DNI as we are LESS able to ID terrorism NOW than on 9/10/01.

The deals, fiscal cliff and Weimar

When the Weimar Republic went into a tailspin it was due to outstanding debt (war debt from WWI) that it couldn't repay coupled with a hoarding binge set off by the need to actually feed returning soldiers.  Hoarding of food started the German Mark going on an inflationary spiral as the amount of food dwindled the price of the remaining food skyrocketed.  As costs rose the German government tried to cover that by printing more money, thereby devaluing their currency which then caused foreign debt holders to doubt the value of their debt assets as they were getting paid in money worth less and less because it was not pegged to the gold standard.  When that happened hyper-inflation set in to the point where you had to spend a paycheck when you got it just to get anything of value from your work.

Money is an exchange value of work put in to perceived value for final goods, after all, so when any government starts to print money they are saying: your work is worth less to you because we can't manage the value of the currency.  Because there is an inherent work valuation in finished products delivered to market, when more money is printed the goods are worth more, as well, which is inflation: it is more money trying to chase a set intrinsic value of work investment in goods production and when the currency is devalued then more of it is needed to get that intrinsic value.

When the foreign creditors came knocking the German economy imploded with hyper-inflation as the government tried printing more money to the point where you needed carts and wheelbarrows to get money to a store on the hour you were paid... yes you were paid by the hour at that point and the government had set up rationing of how much you were allowed to get, but that was meaningless when you couldn't buy anything.  Finally the German Mark was worthless and everything ground to a halt in Germany: the banks shut down, the industries imploded and stopped manufacturing, and the agricultural sector only got by if they could barter actual food for work.  Thus you had barter.

Welcome to the land of the US 'fiscal cliff' brought on to you by the debt given to you by the US federal government which went off the gold standard under Richard Nixon!

The US debt by our government is $16 trillion and growing at a phenomenal rate.  The annual deficit, per year, of the federal government is heading north of $1.5 trillion/year.  The Federal Reserve (that set of private banks the US government allows to handle our debt servicing for a fee, lucky them! and the printers of cash) are now inflating the US dollar under the guise of 'Quantative Easing' I, I II and a limitless III, with worthless cash now sitting in reserve to cover the US federal government's spending because, surprise!, no one overseas wants to buy it.  The largest holder of the US federal debt is the Federal Reserve.

What is the 'fiscal cliff'?  The inability of the US federal government to get spending under control and wanting to turn the US economy into the Weimar Republic by being unable to stop the red spread of ink to cover the stuff that can't be covered by taxes.  This was approached just after the prior election cycle and a deal was made to keep the economy going: raise the debt ceiling for more deficit spending in exchange for keeping tax rates where they were under what became the Bush/Obama tax cuts.  Now the debt ceiling is approaching, the deal is about to end and the tax rates are about to skyrocket taking another chunk out of the US economy to go into the federal bottomless pit.  Capital gains taxes will rise from 15% to 20%.  The Alternative Minimum Tax, set up to hit 'the rich' way back when, is not indexed to inflation and will go up to take in about 30 million citizens who are far and away just in the upper middle class to rich category.  Because everyone, to some extent, has money in the equity markets and capital gains are utilized to garner money from the growth of companies, all Americans will suffer.  Once the taxes are in place there will be less incentive to gain money from capital growth and less reason to increase wages and earnings due to the cost of running companies rising due to the Quantative Easing.

The rich get this hit, the poor get this hit, everyone gets this hit.  Income tax goes up in each bracket so the lowest bracket goes up from 10% to 15%, the middle class goes from 33% to 36%,  and the highest bracket  goes up from 35% to about 40%.  Some other cuts expiring are the child tax credit, some higher education expenses tax credits and FICA goes up 2% on every wage earner.  Added tax for Medicare goes up by 3.8% as well as the brandy-new Obamacare. The Estate Tax goes up.  You see?  Fairness!  Everyone suffers.

Net amount gained?  $440 billion

Because of the deal there are also some spending cuts, mostly to the military, which are a figurative 'drop in the bucket'.  The entire US military could drop out of the budget and you would still have over $1 trillion in deficit spending without 'the deal'.  The 99 weeks of unemployment goes back to 26 weeks... and good luck in finding a job, eh?

So while the US economy locks up, there is that other thing coming around again: the debt ceiling.

For the $2 trillion plus $440 billion and change the US government gets in tax revenue, it spends $3.5 trillion per year.   And if you did make the military magically go away as the Left keeps on wanting it to do, you would only have... $3 trillion in spending.  Needless to say there needs to be some military to protect the Nation and we can start shutting down bases wholesale overseas to trim just a bit more out of structural costs.  In other words due to the amount the Obama Administration has asked for in structurally increased spending, the expiring tax cuts would only lower deficit spending from $1.5 trillion to $1.1 trillion per year.

Now what are the major line items that the federal government will have to rack up?  First is servicing that $16 trillion debt:

Debt Service: $250 billion

After that the military.  Now lets take a 20% across the board hit plus a bit more and give every Leftists a wet dream just to paint the rosiest of rosy pictures for them and they can't say I didn't give them what they asked for:

DoD: $400 billion

Say that leaves $1.75 trillion per year!  Say did you know that Social Security (FICA tax) and the Medicare tax don't cover the cost of those programs?  They are both running in the red with SSA cashing out 'special bonds' which will increase the cost of our Debt Service line... but lets say that it doesn't just to keep things simple.  Now you would think that ANY GOVERNMENT should be able to do basic functions on that remaining haul, right?

First up paying up on SSA:

SSA: $880 billion

Ok, you are down to having a total of $870 billion of revenue to spend!  Geeze, can't we get by on that?  Next up are the M&M's, Medicare and Medicaid (sans Obamacare), which aren't bad but aren't all that hot, either:

M&Ms: $800 billion, approx. no one can give exacting figures due to Obamacare cuts and changes

For $70 billion you can now fund the rest of the federal budget.

Now to be fair, Obamacare rightly belongs with the M&Ms, making them the MMO, so lets add in that to get the actual cost change to the system:

MMO: $920 billion (again inexact as NO ONE has an idea of the TRUE COST of Obamacare)

Your $70 billion to spend now goes into a $50 billion deficit, red ink in other words.

The rest of the federal government has not been funded at this point.  Here are some relatively mandatory agencies based on what their functions are (although do regard them with a huge grain of salt as they are summaries and, unfortunately, the actual functions tend to be small parts of a bureaucratic morass):

Homeland Security:  $40 billion

VA:  $61 billion

State Dept: $48 billion

INTEL Community: $0.5 billion

HHS: $78 billion (the overhead cost in personnel and such  to run MMO)

Interior:  $11 billion (but they want to close the parks!!!)

Treasury: $4.7 billion (remember the Federal Reserve is a quasi-governmentally chartered organization, NOT the Treasury)

SSA: $9 billion (the overhead cost of personnel and such to run SSA)

Cost to run these parts that are Constitutionally required (in whole or in part) or to keep discretionary wealth transfer payments going is thus

Cats & Dogs: $255 billion

To fund the C&Ds with Obamacare gets a $305 billion deficit, and without it a $185 billion deficit.

Everything else (EPA, Education, Justice, Labor, HUD, Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Transportation, Corps. of Engineers, NSF, SBA, all of this stuff) gets zeroed out and eliminated from the US federal government.  The big goose-egg for funding, but the property can be sold off to get a bit of revenue, which doesn't matter a lot, but gets you something.  Also the regulatory behemoth gets it right in the heart and topples over dead as a doornail.

If the agreement made post-2010 is actually kept for taxes and then the debt limit is NOT RAISED, then what to fund in the federal government becomes a very interesting proposition.  Take all the truly mandatory (as in specified in the US Constitution) stuff and you get, in spending:

Debt Service: $250 billion

DoD: $400 billion (unrealistic, but fun to tweak the Left with on their wet dreams)

Cats & Dogs: $255 billion

Absolutely mandatory, by the US Constitution required spending: $0.905 trillion

That isn't bad.

Cost of voluntary spending:

SSA: $880 billion

MMO: $920 billion (again inexact as NO ONE has an idea of the TRUE COST of Obamacare)

Total spending on Entitlements: $1.8 trillion

Total spending: $2.705 trillion (but probably more as these things go)

Total revenue from all sources: $2.44 trillion

Total deficit in 2013:  $300 billion (approx.)

And no other parts of the US federal government left outside the mandatory Cats & Dogs.

This is the sort of math that gets done if you don't raise the debt ceiling: you make hard choices of what to cut, and something else outside of DoD (which I gave the Leftists a wet dream on) and more taxes is the issue as that voluntary or discretionary portion of the budget is set to be the long-term budget buster as no one forecasts those outlays to go DOWN as a structural portion of the budget, but only UP and sharply upwards.  Remember that before Obamacare was factored in you had a $70 billion surplus before you got to other mandatory spending and that other mandatory spending would have given you a deficit of $800 billion without Obamacare.  There is no way to run any of the math on Obamacare and have it come out cost neutral or actually cut the cost of the government because it RAISES the cost of government.  That one CBO report was so rigged, so based on non-adjusted numbers and static (meaning it didn't take into considerations responses to the law) that it was a lie, pure and outright.  It just doesn't work that way.

So if you cap off spending you then have areas you must cut.  You can save a bit trimming at mandatory spending, but that is not the problem in this budget: 'entitlements' are.

Let's say that everything was capped and, say, Obamacare not funded, a bit of trimming at State, HHS (unfunded Obamacare), unnecessary functions at DHS (like the TSA) and Interior (like handing back land to the States to get rid of overhead functions) and you get a deficit neutral budget.  What happens, firstly, is the regulatory overburden from the rest of the government, plus the subsidies to do inefficient things (like corn based ethanol and 'green' energy) go away.  So does DoJ, which includes the FBI, BATFE, and a number of other functions all blow into dust and Eric Holder is out of a job.  Labor goes away as an agency, and so does OSHA and all the federal overhead with it.  The EPA becomes dry gulch of unsustainable regulations no one will enforce at the federal level.  After that the Cost of Living Adjustments for SSA and M&Ms might be frozen for a few years and harsh means testing put in place to get the upper middle class off of the M&Ms.

Basically it is saying to the States: you are on your own.

It also gives a major signal to the credit markets: the US is now serious about paying off its debt and can be considered a secure place to invest as we are no longer in the red at the federal level.

The Federal Reserve to liquidate its worthless cash then starts to jack up interest rates to, say, 25-30% for 4-6 years which has a two-fold effect of making loans for a number of banks nearly impossible to make, but also draws in external capital and cash to start funding companies in the US that are now unshackled from the federal regulatory monster (although the tax problem is a major one, still, that regulatory overburden will allow companies to free up their own capital to invest).  Unemployment goes up for 2-5 years as the job market expands and new entrants try to find positions in it and labor participation rates increase, and this is a GOOD THING, unlike now where labor participation rate is dropping which is a BAD THING.

The worst of all scenarios is just agreeing on anything like the path we are on.

A half-way decent agreement would be one to scrap Obamacare and all the stuff Obama has put in, for an exchange of another debt ceiling limit raise which will also be the LAST time and that will be made clear to everyone.  This gets a couple of years to restructure entitlements, roll back government slowly, and get the Federal Reserve to stop filling up the swimming pool sized punch bowl for us to drown in and pull out the plug on the monetary Debt Star.

The best of all scenarios is for the House to hold out that Obama asked for the cliff in exchange for a one-time ceiling hike, and now that he has gotten all the taxes he wanted, he should be smart enough to figure out how to fund the government with $2.44 trillion.  He asked for it, so give it to him.  If this is what all these bozos got elected on (and that is what the Left is saying for taxes) then the agreement MUST be good.  Hard medicine to go cold turkey on spending, yes.  But it is, after all, what was agreed-upon: the deficit addict goes cold turkey after one last hit on taxes and then balances the budget in one year.  The Left wanted, with a vengeance, the 'Clinton Era Tax Rates' so GIVE IT TO THEM and demand a return to CLINTON ERA SPENDING RATES and the CLINTON SIZE OF GOVERNMENT to boot.  They loved the Clinton era so much, then tell them to bring it ALL BACK on both taxes and spending.   You can formulate your own approach, but the basics are to get spending in line, kill regulations, put the States on their own and let them all know: no bailouts for you.

These idiots Upon The Hill I expect to be the worst of all possible people.

Idiots.

Fools.

Debt Junkies.

And they HATE that your WORK is worth something to YOU and want to PUNISH you for being PRODUCTIVE.  They want to CONTROL YOUR LIFE from cradle to grave, take all you own and then have you THANK THEM for being so nice to you.

When you hear the words 'Grand Bargain' and it doesn't include any rollback, then you will have your answer if we are going Weimar or not.

No rollback: Weimar.

Rollback and government accountable to citizens: America.

I'm preparing for Weimar.

I am hoping for America, but hope is not a strategy, preparation is and sends a message all its own that is unmistakable.

Thoughts for the future post-election

My views on the past election are simple and clear, or so I hope.  Taken from my commentary at Hot Air:

The next four years has a set of problems that remain unchanged, and they are due to a century of turning away from a fiscally responsible course and never working to pull back programs and hold institutions accountable for what they do. This does not change in 2 years of a Tea Party.

The ‘fiscal cliff’ of higher taxes, unsustainable debt, and the resulting low investment into the economy which gives lower jobs cannot be avoided no matter who is in office. Over-regulation of society and institutions by government was always going to be a hard job and will be harder because of who is elected, but the problem, itself, remains. The lowered productivity is a result of this, as well as an increasing cost to everything as central management fails as it has done since the beginning of time and only absolute poverty of thought and pocket have allowed such conditions to spiral into Iron Times.

As a Nation we see insolvent States about to go belly-up: CA, IL, NY to name but three. Yet Obama winning does not detract from the fact that at the State level the movement is away from ‘just accepting’ dictation from above. With 30 States with Governors who do not necessarily follow the federal government’s lead and Statehouses tasked with survival of their States likewise aligned, the coming problems of a few States going insolvent will point out that the Constitution is not a suicide pact: no State is ‘too big to fail’. That decision isn’t made at the federal level, but the State level and when the good and thrifty States put forth that their people did not vote for pensions in CA, IL, NY and elsewhere, then the second level of accountability comes into play along with its checks and balances.

These things were on the agenda no matter who won last night, and the American people are not giving a solid message but one that is nuanced with an innate understanding of what federalism is, even if it is not talked about. The fight now moves from the failed National institutions to the State and local level just where so many have said it would be and should be since the rise of the Tea Party. In that realm is the hardest fight for those who would correct the problems of society as the federal government will no longer be able or ready to help as it becomes insolvent in its own right. We will have a devalued currency, soaring prices for everything, and a bankrupt educational system from K-12 through to the University level that cannot be sustained and will, due to its own weight, collapse as it has already started to do.

Hard times are ahead and they always were. Mitt Romney promised to put pressure on the wound to at least allow it to clot up and perhaps limp along until something a bit better could be done. Now comes the next path, the harder path, the unpleasant path, the painful path and as we see our Nation devolve at the federal level it is up to the States to bring it back in line. We have grown overly fond of the 20th century Nation State and yet, driven by 19th century dogma against eternal 18th century understandings, it is up to us in the 21st century to apply the thing that is left to us: cauterize the wound. Our fellow citizens won’t want to face that now, but when they are slapped silly by having to pay for what others have promised and cannot deliver, when what they have been promised cannot be delivered, when their straits grow so dire because of unwise governmental choices then what other end is there?

Hold the Left to their lovely promises and continually ask how they can pay for it without killing people. Because medical rationing is the State deciding who should die and when – it is killing people via the element of the State. Taking from the rich does not make the poor wealthy as the economy declines, and that, too is the State deciding winners and losers and extending and deepening poverty for all which will kill those at the lowest part of society. This is the mirror that now must be held up to the gloating, smirking, finger-pointing, condescending Left and point to the blood on their hands and pooling around their feet. If all their lovely ideas are so grand, then why is such misery required and such impoverishment guaranteed? For this does not work out no matter when it was tried or by whom: it cannot be done ‘right’ because of the required misery that none on the Left dare to acknowledge and always decry as ‘someone else’s fault’ never their own.

That is your job: educate those who will listen, warn those who can hear, work with your fellow man to insure his safety, point out that the ills of the many are not solved by making the few worse off and killing the old, the poor, the young and the enfeebled. Help the educational system to implode and be prepared to take its place in your neighborhood so that the young can learn of our folly and that of their grand-parents and great-grandparents. Be an example to others, lead a good life, uphold your ideals, and prepare as many as you can for what comes next for it will be awful in ways we cannot conceive. Winning an election is not the same as surviving the victory, and an election is not a war but a battle.

As Breitbart said, we are at WAR.

I’ve been preparing for the long haul no matter who wins or loses a battle.

Have you?

ajacksonian on November 7, 2012 at 9:10 AM

What institutions are about to fail?

- Medicare and Medicaid, the M&Ms, aided and abetted by Obamacare.  These are no longer vital and insolvent and show the folly of government trying to figure out medicine and, with Obamacare, just decide who lives and who dies.  Just like with cronies in business, the government seeks to make newborns a crony to the ruling government via having to thank it for being allowed to live.  Yet this is fiscally and morally irresponsible, and those two go hand-in-hand.  And these hands drip with blood.

- Social Security is in the red and after a few years of getting paid off with inflated dollars in their bonds, it will soon be insolvent.  The government has attempted to set a retirement age while demographics has been pushing the upper limit of human healthy old age for decades.  Luckily with the Obamacare death panels, government might try to make SSA solvent by killing the old, the sick, the infirm.  That will be YOU because ideology and politics will be involved, and getting SSA will soon get not means tested but compliance tested as this is how tyrants secure power to their government.

- Education – As a 13th century institution it has run its course, and has varied from the best route of teaching one how to think and replaced it with rote learning.  The first gets you a vibrant and constantly questioning citizenry, while the latter gets you a compliant one.  Yet to perform this there must be more bureaucrats than educators, more overburden and less to sustain it, which causes the institution to become brittle, frail, and to implode due to the move to sustain ever growing revenue to ever more bureaucrats, and far less capable teachers who can no longer think on their feet.  This one is coming hard and fast at the post-secondary level, but even at the lowest level these institutions have been crumbling and no amount of money will sustain them.

- Banking at the National Scale has enabled and empowered deficit spending which can only be paid for by one of two routes: inflation of the currency to pay off past debt in devalued currency, meaning you are deprived of wealth as more money is in circulation without work to back it, or, high interest rates so that excess currency can be removed from circulation which lowers the tax base by having people paid less in more valuable currency and the taxes set up for a low valuation currency cannot adjust downwards fast enough to cover the delta.  With lowered tax revenue there is a call to increase taxation, but what does one do when the hard and fast poverty line is numerated in inflated currency?  Taxing the new 'poor' doesn't sell and the old 'rich' are paying less because of a stronger currency as well.  Neither of these will make the bankers to be nice people, and for not doing their duty a decade and more ago of taking the punch bowl away when the party was starting to roar, we will find ourselves truly questioning why we have a National Banking System known as the Federal Reserve as they will be shown to be clear currency manipulators doing the bidding of spendthrift politicians.

- Insolvent States – 'Too big to fail' will be attempted to apply to States like CA, IL, NY and any others that have over-obligated their tax base to pensions and pay-offs to retirees.  This now drives the debt burden up to these States to the point they cannot be sustained.  The States, as signatories to the US Constitution, do have the power to negate and change contracts, to put forward that contracts done with ill intention or just absent-mindedness can be dissolved.  The other States will be pointing this out to those insolvent States and that the power to re-organize is well within the legislative process inside the States.  Other States will refuse to accept the burden of 'too bit to fail' for other States and point out that THEIR taxpayers had no say in the debt incurred and obligated by States they DO NOT LIVE IN.  This will not 'break' the Union, but put up the mirror that it is upon those who obligate such debt to deal with it.

Then there is the backdrop to all of this on the Global level as crony systems fail and become insolvent globally.  The EU is unlikely to last out another decade and it may only have months to live at this point.  Unless you want to see Germany put in charge of it, which would be the equivalent of winning WWII and losing it a generation later.  Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and now France all teeter on the brink of chaos due to Left politics and social policies that can't be sustained by anyone, not even Germany.  Germany might be able to cushion a collapse of that international monstrosity, but it will not be tied to it as their people did not agree to the debt incurred by other European Nations.  See how that works?  It is a mirror of America a few months ahead of us at this point.

China  has spent capital and wealth for cities none can afford to live in and impoverished their people and inflated their currency by stealth.  Already the rumblings of problems from east to west, from polluted and failing industrial provinces to the rise of radical Islam are hammering at that Nation.  Communism has failed.  Corrupt and crony National Socialism has failed which is what China moved to in the post-Mao world.  China has been used to bloody solutions in the past but never had a population educated enough to actually formulate resistance to it.  For the first time ever in Chinese history its government will have to face an industrialized Nation being impoverished that is just educated enough to know what is being done to it and with 21st century electronic and social media tools to talk with each other about their plight.  When all of the Western debt holding move to lower value either via Nation State insolvency or inflation (or both) China's economy will implode and has already started that in seeing low cost labor jobs moving via Chinese companies outside of China.  China is not the last bastion of cheap labor: SE Asia and Africa are and now China will reap what it has sown.

India has grown by leaps and bounds, yet its infrastructure has not followed suit and its ability to uplift the poor has only incrementally improved.  With global problems comes threats to the modern infrastructure of electricity, sewage conditioning and potable water (where they are available).  Technologically India has taken vast strides in the late 20th century with the fall of the USSR and having never fully vested in its backwards economic system, India has allowed areas for growth internally.  Yet those, too, rely on debt and foreign sources for materials and finished goods, along with food.  Unrest due to lack of food has hit not just India but other Nations as well, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, and these will only grow as Western food sources decline in productivity due to backwards government spending.

The Middle East is in the midst of upheaval due to Radical Islam and broken, crony infrastructure that is used to repress peoples.  The elements of Radical Islam do not have any modern notion of economics and will cause further strife, chaos, disorder and starvation in their wake.  Starving masses usually don't provide for competent military machines, however, and utilizing jihadi self-destructive violence only makes problems worse for those Nations supplying such as productive and young individuals are removed from the workforce.  The human bomb of demographic domination is built on a house of cards sustained by Western agriculture and productivity, and once those disappear the problem becomes a demographic one internally to those Nations of the 'Arab Spring'.  North Africa will export foment and jihadism, yes, and the population crash will redouble the devastation upon that weary continent.

In the sub-Saharan southern Africa there are few good and viable Nations outside of South Africa, and even there social turmoil due to ethnic strife is not unknown.  If South Africa cannot assure its food supply then the problems about to beset the rest of the sub-Saharan region will come its way as well.  Outside of South Africa things are not so bright and the list of Nations undergoing social strife, ethnic cleansing, kleptocratic governments, and all with a backdrop of AIDS removing most of a generation is sobering.  It may well be that only the morally and socially upright populations and sub-populations survive to any great extent in 50 years due to the horror besetting their part of the world.

S. America is only meta-stable due to resource industries, which will collapse once Europe and North America no longer have industrial capacity nor demand to utilize them.  Nor will China in recession going far beyond anything we know as modern recession, be able to sustain internal demand (by building cities) to keep industries going.  Without industrialization spread deeply into S. America the opportunity to create vibrant economies is limited.  Chavez has pointed out that the end of socialist doctrines is internal lack of productive capacity and that indenturing people to the State (even if it is competently run) means lowering of living standards for all, not just the rich.  Argentina has had cash problems for more than a decade and its currency is suspect.  Brazil's crony socialism is about to see the end of ready cash flow, which means that without heavy industry and shifting away from agriculture, the Nation will be at extreme peril for internal problems.

Mexico had unwisely signed on to NAFTA, which exposed its backwards agrarian sector to the modernized US agribusiness.  Rural Mexico was deeply harmed as young men moved north to find jobs (first in transplanted US production facilities and, later, as illegal migrants seeking work) now find that those jobs are gone.  Organized crime and the foreign jihadi element helping the criminals now seeps into Mexico via standard means of corruption and through outright murder, often on a scale that dwarfs current wars.  Mexico had signed on to 'Green' ideas and limited marginal expansion of oil and natural gas, meaning that it is now bereft of those sectors to sustain the economy.  Mexico used to be able to feed its own people (albeit poorly) prior to NAFTA, and now that form of agriculture has been decimated by 20 years of NAFTA and those skills and knowledge of local farming, once lost, will not come back easily if at all.

Australia has been a relative bright spot for the world outside of Israel, as it had started to undo some of its socialist policies on retirement and put a relative amount of freedom back into the hands of its people.  Agriculture has done well in Australia and it is serving as the supplemental breadbasket of the world.  The internal problems of Australia are unique to it, including jihadists exporting problems to its shores.  As the British Commonwealth falters, it is Australia and Canada that will become those places trying to repeal the most onerous and financially lethal government policies the fastest.  The rest of the Anglo-sphere had best take note of this as these two Nations have resources, arable land, water, and relatively high productive capacity for the near term.  Longer term issues of global market collapse will hit these Nations, as well, but they will be able to weather these storms by having their people understand that the problems of government trying to control their economies (and their very lives) is the cause of the world's problems, not its solution.  Both Nations have had backwards laws on firearms and preservation of freedom, but nothing like Great Britain itself now has.

That these problems were all known before the election is troubling.  That the American people have not factored them into the Nation State federal government is more troubling, still.  Yet the US wellspring of revitalization starts at the bottom, not the top, which is why so many States moving to get responsible and responsive governments in place is heartening.  As the States are signatories to the US Constitution after in-State ratification by the people, it is these set of governments that hold the major key to renewal along with the people of the Nation as a whole.  If the socialist movements of the 20th century was to put more power into the hands of Nation State governments, America holds the card of that Nation State actually being formulated by the States and must serve all of their needs, not just any one of them or collection of them.  America was instituted on the self-evident observation that governments are instituted amongst men to preserve freedom and liberty and that it is very hard to give up any government even when it becomes contrary to the needs of its people.  The people will undergo great harm, even tyranny, before they finally have enough to change or abolish such government and to renew the tenets that government is given few things to do and must, actually, do them and leave the people to figure out the rest on their own.  First we must do all the stupid things, the good feeling things, the bass ackward things until we finally realize that we are far better with little government than with much of it.  Let us hope that we survive the troubled times ahead.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.

-Winston Churchill

Not Necessarily Post Awful

The following is a white paper of The Jacksonian Party.

Brought to my attention at Hot Air is the ongoing problem of the US  Postal Service operating in the red... well its been doing that for ages, really, but now its really starting to look pretty awful. So what is the answer to this ongoing sinkhole of incompetence caused by over-unionization and the federal monopoly on creating this service?

Well the US Constitution is pretty clear on the subject in Article I, Section 8 with the powers of Congress:

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

This is a sovereign power held by the federal government, to create Post Offices and post Roads.  This was a big deal during the time of the Colonies as getting mail from town to town meant spreading the word of what was going on not just during the Revolution but before and after it.  Much of the discussion during the Framing of the Constitution was done via printed messages in papers that had to be carried between towns as part of a uniform service so that the conversation, in public, could continue.

The source of this being put in was Ben Franklin who, it must be remembered, ran his own post office service and he would be the first Postmaster of the Nation in 1775.  The US Post Office pre-dates the US Constitution, Articles of Confederation and the Declaration of Independence, so it is, in some ways, the founding office of the Nation as a whole.  Thus the importance of the Postal Service was one that was considered prime as, without it, there would have been less communication between the Colonies and the States and our Nation might even have failed without such good movement of mail between individuals.

Thus the power grant to the sovereign via the Constitution is a natural one as it is important for a free people to be able to communicate with each other.  Yet the basis for the postal system started out in private hands, those of Ben Franklin.  This is a monopoly power grant, yes, but does it naturally follow that it must be a monopoly service?  To answer that question it is necessary to step forward a few decades to another monopoly service that was created due to the monopoly power grant of the federal government during the Second National Bank Veto.

Congress has the ability to create services based on its powers, and the National Bank system was seen as becoming corrupt, crony and allowing for foreign interests to have indirect power of the US economy.  Over time those directing the system were seen as having more interest in running a corrupt system, with paybacks and guaranteed payout for holding stock and interest in the company, than they had in looking after the financial interests of the economy and seeing that it was a good service to all of the people.

Any similarities between this and the union run and captive USPS is purely intentional.  Or the modern day equivalent of the National Bank, which is the Federal Reserve.

Thus stepping back to 1832 and the National Bank we must keep in mind that President Jackson was speaking about a voluntarily created banking system made via a power grant from Congress, not a mandatory power requirement from the Constitution.  Yes, this means the Federal Reserve is a voluntarily made organization that comes from a voluntary power grant from Congress to get its service.  The USPS is created via a mandatory power grant to create Post Offices and post Roads to get postal service.  Now on to a few pieces of the Bank Veto Message (Source: The Avalon Project):

But this act does not permit competition in the purchase of this monopoly. It seems to be predicated on the erroneous idea that the present stockholders have a prescriptive right not only to the favor but to the bounty of Government. It appears that more than a fourth part of the stock is held by foreigners and the residue is held by a few hundred of our own citizens, chiefly of the richest class. For their benefit does this act exclude the whole American people from competition in the purchase of this monopoly and dispose of it for many millions less than it is worth. This seems the less excusable because some of our citizens not now stockholders petitioned that the door of competition might be opened, and offered to take a charter on terms much more favorable to the Government and country.

[..]

If Congress possessed the power to establish one bank, they had power to establish more than one if in their opinion two or more banks had been " necessary " to facilitate the execution of the powers delegated to them in the Constitution. If they possessed the power to establish a second bank, it was a power derived from the Constitution to be exercised from time to time, and at any time when the interests of the country or the emergencies of the Government might make it expedient. It was possessed by one Congress as well as another, and by all Congresses alike, and alike at every session. But the Congress of 1816 have taken it away from their successors for twenty years, and the Congress of 1832 proposes to abolish it for fifteen years more. It can not be "necessary" or "proper" for Congress to barter away or divest themselves of any of the powers-vested in them by the Constitution to be exercised for the public good. It is not " necessary " to the efficiency of the bank, nor is it "proper'' in relation to themselves and their successors. They may properly use the discretion vested in them, but they may not limit the discretion of their successors. This restriction on themselves and grant of a monopoly to the bank is therefore unconstitutional.

In another point of view this provision is a palpable attempt to amend the Constitution by an act of legislation. The Constitution declares that "the Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever" over the District of Columbia. Its constitutional power, therefore, to establish banks in the District of Columbia and increase their capital at will is unlimited and uncontrollable by any other power than that which gave authority to the Constitution. Yet this act declares that Congress shall not increase the capital of existing banks, nor create other banks with capitals exceeding in the whole $6,000,000. The Constitution declares that Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation over this District "in all cases whatsoever," and this act declares they shall not. Which is the supreme law of the land? This provision can not be "necessary" or "proper" or constitutional unless the absurdity be admitted that whenever it be "necessary and proper " in the opinion of Congress they have a right to barter away one portion of the powers vested in them by the Constitution as a means of executing the rest.

On two subjects only does the Constitution recognize in Congress the power to grant exclusive privileges or monopolies. It declares that "Congress shall have power to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Out of this express delegation of power have grown our laws of patents and copyrights. As the Constitution expressly delegates to Congress the power to grant exclusive privileges in these cases as the means of executing the substantive power " to promote the progress of science and useful arts," it is consistent with the fair rules of construction to conclude that such a power was not intended to be granted as a means of accomplishing any other end. On every other subject which comes within the scope of Congressional power there is an ever-living discretion in the use of proper means, which can not be restricted or abolished without an amendment of the Constitution. Every act of Congress, therefore, which attempts by grants of monopolies or sale of exclusive privileges for a limited time, or a time without limit, to restrict or extinguish its own discretion in the choice of means to execute its delegated powers is equivalent to a legislative amendment of the Constitution, and palpably unconstitutional.

The USPS is not a purchased monopoly... well, it was let out to be run by a non-governmental organization, wasn't it?  That is the people running the USPS are not, necessarily, federal employees these days.  The bounty of Government to have Post Offices is currently restricted to one service, but that is more an accident of history than of actual intent via the Constitution.  One can imagine Ben Franklin not being the only one running a postal service before the Second Continental Congress and that there would be both competition for service and cooperation amongst services for delivery out of their local area.  This was standardized so as to allow the Continental Congress members to remain in contact with each other via a uniform system run by Franklin.

Like the National Bank run out of DC, which Congress has the sole authority to do things, the Post Offices are a sole power grant to Congress for the Nation, as a whole.  And yet this power also allows the Congress to set up as many Post Offices as are necessary to run the system, and does not limit Congress to a sole service: just as there could be many services to have a uniform standard with Franklin so, too, could that exist today.

Something like this was done with the award of Air Mail contracts by the US Government during the development of aircraft in the 1910's through 1930's.  The Smithsonian National Postal Museum has a page on this from which can be garnered the following:

The United States Post Office Department created the nation’s commercial aviation industry. From 1918 to 1927, the Post Office Department built and operated the nation’s airmail service, establishing routes, testing aircraft and training pilots. When the Department turned the service over to private contractors in 1927, the system was a point of national pride.

The Department’s assistance did not end in 1927. Early passenger traffic was almost non-existent. Mail contracts provided a financial base that encouraged the growth of the nation’s fledgling commercial aviation system. Companies used those funds to purchase larger and safer airplanes, which encouraged passenger traffic.

By the end of the 1930s, legislation had stripped all remnants of control of airmail service from the Post Office Department. The Department continued to award airmail contracts, but its influence over the industry had all but vanished. With the appearance of the Douglas DC-3 airplane, passenger traffic finally began to pay off.

Yes this service was important to early aviation and is now a part of the standard delivery of mail today.  It was done via a system started by the USPS and then handed over to private contractors to run.  This was not contrary to the Constitution but fully in accord with getting a standardized service for air mail: uniform service standards were set for private contractors to meet, just as standards were set for aircraft that could have reliable distance standards and meet uniform standards for things like engine failure (the one engine fails in flight yet plane gets to destination standard).

So what would privatizing the postal system today look like?

First Congress is still on hook for Post Offices: these are centralized gathering facilities and/or distribution centers.  This is the public set of buildings we know as the Post Offices to this very day.

Beyond that Congress can set standardized service requirements as part of an interoperable system run by multiple contractors who meet uniform standards for gathering and delivering the mail.  Note that any organization able to meet those uniform standards would become part of the system for service: there is nothing beyond that which Congress need do, and this would be a competitive system with well known uniform standards for all carriers to meet.

What are these standards?

1. Ability to pick up and deliver First Class Mail and Packages and meet all standardized and special services which are part of the uniform standard.
2. A time-based movement ability for said packages given certain geographic distances from Post Offices within the system (that is those individuals far away from a Post Office might have greater time lag to getting mail, but it would be no greater than today's current delivery schedule).  This can be done by a sole contractor or as an agreement system amongst a variety of organizations.
3. Uniform interoperability, which would mean that any organization within the system must honor all other carriers letters and packages and coordinate between them for reciprocity of service.  There might be inter-carrier payments, but the individuals sending or receiving packages are not on the hook for those, only the up-front payment to get a letter or package into the system for their carrier.  Thus these are transparent to the users of the system for service.  It is up to the carriers to work out how this is done, Congress would have no say in that so long as the uniform standards for service are met for the system as a whole.
4. All carriers would operate from Post Offices or at least have pick-up/drop-off agreements for them so as to assure letters and packages dropped off for them at the Post Office would get into the system for service.

Everything after that is up to the individual carrier to show they can become a part of the system and inter-operate with other carriers to deliver uniform service.

What varies with this?  Price.

Pricing is non-uniform for carriers and some carriers may offer relatively decent rates for some things (say First Class Letters) and pretty awful price for other things (packages, perhaps) and yet still must be able to pick-up/deliver said items as part of their service for the system.  Your response, of course, would be to choose a different carrier for those items so as to get the price you want for the delivery of them within a given time-frame for standardized service.  You would expect to pay a premium for special services, like over-night delivery, registered or certified delivery, etc.  As special services are a part of the current system they are part of the uniform standard, and carriers can adjust their pricing accordingly.

What also disappears is uniform postage in the way of stamps, although all carriers must honor the standardized service postage of all other carriers, including the special services that are part of the standardized service agreement.

What describes this sort of thing, currently?

Airports.  You have standardized pick-up/drop-off areas (the airport), uniform standards for all airlines to meet, and an interoperable system where individuals can get a set of services that then gets them tickets to various airlines as part of their itinerary which varies by time and price.

The Internet.  You have a uniform standardized service (TCP/IP), with various rates of speed, but has agreements between all carriers for interoperability, storage and forwarding of messages (which is transparent to the user), charging between carriers in the system (which is transparent to the user) and delivery of messages based on carrier speed for the local service agreement.  You pay for your local connectivity for this uniform service standard, thus you can pay more for faster speeds or less for lower speeds, or pay for bundles of options which go beyond the uniform service.

Such systems as these are not only workable, but create competition while having uniformity of service to a given set of standards for different organizations to work together and yet still provide variability of pricing.

Thus the ideas presented by President Jackson for how a National Bank power grant could be changed to be more amenable to the public, open up service and create competition are as relevant today, for the USPS and other parts of the federal government, as they were in 1832.  While the venues for the concepts change, the viewpoint on how sovereign powers can be exercised with greater openness to the benefit of all are timeless.