Eisenhower Quotes Mis-Conceived

Alan Gregory Wonderwheel, in his blog, quoted Eisenhower as a way of saying Social Security should be kept intact.

Here is my response:

Thanks for the quote. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make, but I’m guessing you are basically saying George W. Bush is stupid for pressing Congress to change the social security law so that its funding continues to be possible and practical in the future. Maybe you are even trying to say the social security law in its present and past implementations were consummately wise, and to change them at all would be stupid. If so, perhaps you should study the issues with a bit more craving for truth and less political prejudice. In any case, I have several comments to make.

1. Eisenhower was not the great and wonderfully wise man the article implies he was, certainly not to the extent that we should hang on his every word and suggestion as though they came from God.



1. Forty years ago the John Birch Society published a number of books and articles about the reality that Eisenhower was a politician who, because of his unwise (and perhaps ill-intended) efforts to drop all of Eastern Europe into the hands of Communist tyrants at the end of World War II. In my opinion, looking back at the 45 years of political pogroms, murders, plunder, economic destruction, and despotism that enslaved and ravaged Eastern Europe, and destroyed the work ethic of its people, Eisenhower was wrong.



2. Ike was also wrong in asserting that the president, being the elected head of the Republican party, is the definition of what a “real” Republican is. The principles of Republicanism are not limited and condition by the nature of the president, but rather by these principles of good and wise government – that the government should not pander to people wanting handouts, that it should encourage strong business development because thereby jobs are had and the nation is enriched, and that the Central government should be limited, with more power going to the states and the people, respectively. Regardless of who is president, those principles stand firm. All presidents do is demonstrate the extent to which they support or violate those principles.



2. The Social Security Act was ill-conceived from its inception, and its meaning has been warped as time has passed. Most Americans think there is a social security fund and their social security “insurance” premiums are what populate that fund. They are dead wrong, of course.



1. There is no social security fund. There is merely an allocation of money from the general treasury to populate a bank account on which social security checks are written. The social security insurance premiums are nothing more or less than another abusive income tax.



2. Social Security premiums (taxes) are not invested in any kind of interest-bearing or inflation-protected account or enterprise. They merely go into the treasury like all other government revenue does. And then the money belongs to Congress and Congress may allocate it to any desired purpose, or spend it on anything they like.



3. On its face, Social Security taxes are a violation of the Constitution, just as are normal income taxes. They are in fact a direct tax (and are treated as such) on individuals, and income is the means of measuring how much tax is stolen from those individuals. The Constitution specifically states that the only way Congress may tax people directly is by taxing the states, using the rule of apportionment by population. So if Congress wants to raise 10 billion dollars, and California contains 10% of the population, California owes 1 billion, and the rest of the states owe according to percentages of the population that reside within them. Only the state governments have the constitutional right to go directly to individual persons and demand a Federal tax payment for Federal revenue purposes.



4. Although income tax is not the issue at hand, it should be addressed here. You might wonder why, if it is treated like a direct tax, Congress allows the IRS to harass people to death in order to collect income taxes. That is because the 16^th amendment defined income taxes as “indirect” taxes.



1. It is important to note that an indirect tax cannot, by definition, be a tax on one’s person, labor, or property, for numerous courts have held that such taxes are in fact, and by definition, direct. What is left to be taxed indirectly, if not one’s person, labor or property? Well, indirect taxes may be levied on activities, events, happenings, or occurrences. And normally such taxes are levied because the event or activity is intrinsically evil, dangerous, or harmful. For example, it is right that income taxes be levied on the activity of manufacturing or importing guns, cigarettes, and whiskey. Look at the damage those have done to people. And, in fact, 26USC (the Income Tax law) does in fact establish taxes on those activities.



2. However, you should rightly ask “In what activity, event, happening, or occurrence am I involved that makes me subject to or liable for an income tax for revenue purposes?” If you look long and hard, you will find that you are doing NO such activity. Therefore, you are not under the purview of Title 26. It’s front page says “This code applies only to taxpayers.” You are not doing any taxable activity, so you are not, by definition, a “taxpayer,” and therefore Title 26 simply does not apply to you.



3. How is it, then, that the IRS hoodwinks you into filing a W4 or 1040 form, or acceding to a 1099 form for contract work? Very simply, they do it by advertising, fraud, and deception. Once you sign any such form, you have provided the IRS and the justice department prima facie evidence that you are a “taxpayer,” and they will treat you as such. If you do not stand up for your 5^th, 6^th, and 14^th amendment constitutional rights to due process and privacy aggressively and assertively whenever an employer, contractor, bank, IRS agent, or any other party attempts to deprive you of those rights, then you have effectively given the violator permission to violate those rights. Bottom line, it takes assiduous attention and rigorous expense of energy to safeguard your rights.



4. You need to know the law, and you need to fight any bastard who tries to overstep authority in attempting to get you voluntarily to yield your rights. For example, if an employer demands that you sign any tax form, or attempts to report your earnings to the IRS or deduct taxes from your pay, you should inform him he is violating your rights, demand that he cease and desist, threaten him with a law suit, and then sue him. You need to do the same to any bank that honors an IRS notice of lien or levy against your account without a signed order by the judge of a court of competent jurisdiction. And you need to do the same to any IRS agent who attempts to coerce you to yield your personal information or records. And, finally, because no law requires you to have a Social Security number, it might be wise to write to the Social Security Administration and rescind you signature on any SS document that caused you to get such a number. The IRS has been known to use SSNs as evidence that a citizen is a taxpayer. As a matter of fact, the Treasury Department has modified banking regulations illegally to require Americans to show an SSN to open a bank account, even though the SSN was never intended to be used for identification purposes. The purpose of this is to make it easier for the IRS to harass people, of course, not to identify people who want to open an account. The Treasury Department claims the regulation was changed to support the Patriot Act, but the Patriot Act does not require a social security number for any purpose.



5. The main problem with the SSA is that it is an enormous tax burden on Americans, greater now than Income tax for most people. That is because the average lifespan was 62 when the SSA was signed into law, and now it is 78. Within the next 10 years when baby boomers retire, there will be only two or three people paying SS tax for every one person receiving benefits.



6. Another major problem include the fact that the money paid into the system is not accounted for or invested, so the money received does not actually grow at a rate greater than inflation. In fact, it is always behind the inflation curve. It is utterly stupid to allow Congress full use of that money without demanding they wisely invest it so it can produce a return for the investor.



7. A huge problem is that the SSI recipient almost never receives back as much as he paid in, and if he dies, his family never gets that money either. This is dead wrong. When people pay into a retirement account all their working lives, they should be able to expect that the accumulated money, with interest, belongs to them and their heirs. Because they cannot expect this, you can rightly conclude that the government is criminally defrauding them out of what should rightly be theirs.



8. There is sufficient money available to investors as a return on investment to pay a person’s maintenance and lifestyle needs for a full range of retirement years, and still to provide a surplus to help others who were for some reason unable to pay into the account.



9. The SS program was wrongly conceived from the beginning because it did not plan to give back fairly to people who invested in it, and it was handled as just another income tax program to bilk people out of their hard-earned money so as to fund frivolous government programs.





3. There are too many idle loafers in America who are receiving undeserved money from the government. For this reason, there should be a prime condition for anyone who receives money in excess of what he should rightly expect as return on investment, and that include people who get more SSI than they should, people who receive unfunded medical treatment, and people on any kind of welfare from cash to government food to food stamps to job training. That condition is: they should be required to put in a minimum of 4 hours per day in organized community service, at least half of which requires them to do personal work for others who cannot or will not do it themselves. Personal interaction between service givers and service recipients should be mandatory. Even people on welfare should be required to devote such time to helping others. Eventually, this program will get people off welfare, all except for the most wretchedly needy. For some reason our Federal and State Congresses seem oblivious to the benefit of such a program. Where is the wisdom for which we elected those greedy, spendthrift derelicts?