Ultracon Opinion

Tea Party Ascendant

2012-01-01T13:34:00.000-08:00

January 22, 2012 is the date of the last update. Read my articles:

Krugman’s Premature Victory Lap
The Company Men
Non-citizen Voting in Connecticut
A Diseased Economy Awaits the Correct Diagnosis
Voter Fraud for the Complete Idiot

Watch this terrific video of Mark Steyn on the Sean Hannity program; especially if you plan to vote next November:

The Restoration draws nigh.

Tea Party Agonistes

2011-01-21T12:19:00.000-08:00

December 6, 2011 is the date of the last update. Read my articles:

Your ‘Fair Share’ in the New Tax Rate Regime

American Elections: The Paragon of Democracy?

The Missouri GOP Wakes Up

Tax Rates for Limiting the Leviathan

Who's the Real Tea Party Candidate?

Joe Stiglitz Wants Your Money

The Left's Big Obsession … newer version HERE … humor? …

Are Drunken Hobos Nullifying America's Elections? ... humor? ...

Inequality: It’s a Good Thing ... also here ...

Creative Destruction in Kansas City?

Tea Parties are like the confederates or something

Stop Coddling Warren Buffett

Tax Reform for a Broke Nation

What took the S&P downgrade so long? … for the Tea Party

Credit Downgrade: Where do we go to get our good name back?

A Ridley Scott Movie for Conservatives

Debt Ceiling: Anything But Spending Cuts

Paul Krugman on Default: Crazy for You … Tenth Amendment Center

Debt Ceiling: The Long Run Is Here … a short blog

Bill O’Reilly Addresses the Tea Party

Can Increased Demand Save the Economy?

Debt Ceiling: Groping for Clarity

ObamaCare and the King’s Royal Deer … also here

Debt Ceiling: The Trap of Budget Cuts in the ‘Out Years’

Presidential Elections: An End Run Around the Constitution?

The “Real” Tax Rates on Top Earners

The Debt Ceiling Showdown in an Uncertain Recovery

Bobby Fischer Against the World

Paul Krugman: The Lesser of Two Evils?

The Ever-Shifting Price of ObamaCare

Hit and Run Journalism in Kansas City

The Debt Ceiling: Who’s Holding Whom Hostage?

Removing the Payroll Tax Cap

Social Security ‘Whoppers’ and the Compliant Media

NY Times columnist wrong: Congress Can End Social Security Whenever They So Choose

The Price of Government Employees

Robert Reich: Who You Calling a Liar?

Paul Krugman: Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt

Kansas City Star whitewashes Senator McCaskill’s offenses

‘Waiving’ goodbye to the Constitution

The Mahdi in the Movies … see a great movie clip

The Unbearable Lightness of the Social Security “Trust Fund”

Who’s afraid of a little election fraud?

The Individual Mandate: Is It a Tax?

The Limits of Federal Power: ObamaCare on Trial

Tea Partiers concerned about America, watch this VIDEO.

Puccini is the best intro to opera -- click below and change your life:

The Restoration is not yet complete.

Tea Party a gogo

2010-05-10T10:09:00.000-07:00

IGNORE the above date, it's actually December 24, 2010; I'm updating an old post with new stuff. Read my recent articles at American Thinker, TCS Daily (now at Jim Glassman's Ideas in Action), GOPUSA, David Horowitz's NewsRealBlog, and The Tenth Amendment Center:

Can the Tea Party Triumph Against Voter Fraud?
Obama Ignores History, Recovery Stalls
Shrink the Fed Before It Shrinks the Dollar .... also here
How We Can Reverse ObamaCare ... also here
Fraud in the November Elections? ... a job for the Tea Party
Tea Party Clarity on the Deficit
How to Fix Pro Baseball
Money Is Still Money, Isn't It? ... updated version here and here
The Pride of Progressive Programs
The Day the Debt Stood Still ... also here
Shared Sacrifice in Obamaland
Obamacare Flushes the Constitution
Obama in the Age of Reaganomics
The Price of Everything
The Reindustrialization of America
Federal Revenue and the Economy
Counting Foreigners in the U.S. Census
The Senseless Census: A Solution
Trillion-Dollar Deficits and the Press
The Dollar's Demise is not Inevitable
The Tea Party's Big Worry
Money and Ruin
The Individual Mandate: We're All Amish Now
Roosevelt Redux?

Ain’t YouTube grand? Folks upload one treasure after another. I found these two gems recently and I’m dedicating them to Mark Steyn, who seems to have a taste for song. The first is of the great Italian basso Cesare Siepi singing Cole Porter circa 1962. Siepi is the very definition of “suave.” Then, as Steyn’s from the Great White North, we have the indispensable Jon Vickers in a rendition of “Ich grolle nicht.” What a voice; what an interpretation.
...and for extra credit, identify these folks:

ULTRACON: awaiting The Restoration in November.

Election Fraud in November

2010-03-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

Go to TCS Daily and check out my articles about the problems for election integrity this November, and be sure to watch the videos:

Tolerating the Intolerable

The New Electorate

Today we bring you a little "music of the spheres"; namely the duet that concludes Act I of Die Walkure. This is about as good as it gets: Leonie Rysanek and the great Jon Vickers. It's from German TV circa 1972. Many thanks to whomever posted this wonderful concert performance.

ULTRACON: Redemption through opera.

Trillion Dollar Deficits -- Part 10

2010-02-25T12:21:00.000-08:00

Check out my article at American Thinker:

A Tax Holiday for Corporations?

and then check out The Divine Angela singing The Divine Wolfie--all for one low price!!

Ultracon: Waiting for November.

The Alternative to UVR

2010-02-17T11:43:00.000-08:00

Read Ultracon's recent article at TCS Daily. And be sure to watch the short video that accompanies it:

The Alternative to Universal Voter Registration

Ultracon comes through again with more of The Divine Angela. This time a promo for a recent EMI recording of Madama Butterfy. Ultracon is also pleased with the Pinkerton, Jonas Kaufman, a tenor with some meat on his voice. Ultracon likes big heavy dark voices, don't cha know.

Perhaps Ultracon's all-time favourite tenor is Jon Vickers. Ultracon also heartily approves of Nicolai Gedda. And of course the only bass in history was Nicolai Ghiaurov (see last post).

Ultracon doesn't know how this melding of conservative opinion with opera videos is working out for the folks. Nor can Ultracon even guess at the effect of constantly referring to himself in the third person.

ULTRACON: It's self-contradicting, like an oxymoron. Why?

Federal Overreach and the States

2010-02-09T08:48:00.000-08:00

Congratulations, Independent voters of the Bay State. Scott Brown now becomes one of this Missouri boy's favorite senators. We expect more stunning developments from Massachusetts. And while you're here, check out my new article hot off the presses at American Thinker:

Federal Overreach and the New States' Rights Movement

Today, we pay homage to Ultracon's candidate for the finest bass that ever sang: Nicolai Ghiaurov.

The following video is the aria "Ella giammai m'amo" from Verdi's Don Carlo. It's of a 1975 concert dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre.

Nick's voice was not only titanic, it was, IMHO, one of the few bass voices that was beautiful.

ULTRACON: a piquant blend of paleocon, neocon and 9/11-con, with zesty libertarian overtones...Try it, you'll like it.

Trillion Dollar Deficits -- Part 9

2009-12-28T12:01:00.000-08:00

Read my article at American Thinker:

Money: Debauched, Debased, and Destroyed

Ultracon finds it easy to pronounce The Divine Angela as history's definitive Mimi. EMI put out a DVD of the following performance; it's available in better stores everywhere, as well as Angela's website: La Boheme.

Here's Mimi's Act III aria, Donde lieta usci; you'll never be the same:

ULTRACON: stuck in 1896.

The Church of Gheorghiu

2009-12-15T12:14:00.000-08:00

Read the latest from Ultracon at TCS Daily:

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Borg

NOTE: If you find the Borg metaphor apt, you might enjoy this video of actress Alice Krige commenting about Power vis-à-vis her role as the Borg Queen.

And now to the serious stuff: The Divine Angela.

The following video is of Mimi's Act I aria from La Boheme. It demonstrates what a terrific actress Ms. Gheorghiu is. Of course the main thing is the voice.

If you want more, find in the playlist returned at the end "O soave fanciulla", which takes you to the end of act.

Ultracon: Good for what ails you.

Trillion Dollar Deficits -- Part 8

2009-11-24T10:22:00.000-08:00

Read this at American Thinker:

Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Federal Trust Funds

and this at TCS Daily:

The Price of the Public Option

Even Ultracon can't spend all his time worshipping The Divine Angela Gheorghiu. So today we offer this French confection from 1967. You will recognize a very young Catherine Deneuve, but who is the brunette? It's Cate's older sister, Francoise Dorleac. Francoise was every bit as fetching as her younger sister. Shortly after this film debuted, Francoise died in an auto accident at the age of 25. The Young Girls of Rochefort was her next to last flic. The film has been restored and is available on DVD. Click on the video below for a taste of this charming diversion.

ULTRACON: for Real Americans

Healthcare for Dummies

2009-11-11T09:18:00.000-08:00

These articles are at American Thinker:

To Hell with the Constitution?

The Price of the Public Option

Health Insurance and the Lure of Someone Else

(A shorter version of the last article appeared Nov. 3 in STAR BUSINESS WEEKLY of The Kansas City Star newspaper. It was titled "Time for Insurance Solutions" .)

Ultracon seems to be becoming The Unofficial Shrine to Diva Angela Gheorghiu. The following video is of a recording session where the Divine Angela is not foo-fooed up to her usual glamorous gorgeous Gheorghiu standard, but the voice is glorious. What a woman.

Ultracon: Accept no substitutes.

Modest Proposals

2009-11-01T09:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a recent article that ran at American Thinker which looked at the coverage of Nick Griffin's appearance on the BBC. I included links to several British websites that had videos of the event and the protests:

Rightwing Fascists and Other Fables

it also has a plug for an important book.

Although this proposal appeared at GOPUSA, it should be adopted by the Dems, too:

The Presidential Primary System And What To Do About It

I don't like the idea of changing the Constitution, but here's a change I do endorse:

Two Tweaks to the Constitution

and then there's The Divine Angela:

ULTRACON: the pause that refreshes

Trillion Dollar Deficits -- Part 7

2009-10-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

My latest article may seem only tangential to our abysmal deficit:

Towards a Simpler, Fairer Tax

but don't let the title fool you.

Lenny only performed the first movement of Mahler's Tenth.

ULTRACON: we're hep.

Trillion Dollar Deficits -- Part 6

2009-10-02T09:41:00.000-07:00

Read my article at American Thinker:

Obama's Deficit: the Devil Made Me Do It

and then listen to the divine Angela--->

ULTRACON: Accept no substitutes.

Trillion Dollar Deficits -- PART 5

2009-08-10T12:23:00.000-07:00

Check out my article at TCS Daily:

The Underlying Principle in Taxation

TCS also ran a piece of mine on the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing:

The Consequences of Government Intrusion into Prices

AND American Thinker recently ran an article of mine on tax reform:

The Fair Price of Civilization?

read 'em and weep.

Election Reform via Technology

2009-06-02T08:26:00.000-07:00

Check out my article at TCS Daily; it's in 2 parts. It concerns the Minnesota contest for U.S. Senate, now in its 7th month. But what it mainly concerns is how to prevent such nonsense by reforming our election system. Click on this:

No More Minnesotas

and tell 'em Jonny Boy sent cha.

EXTRA CREDIT: How is the recent election in Iran similar to the 2008 election in Minnesota?

Trillion dollar deficits -- PART 4

2009-04-30T08:21:00.000-07:00

You have reached ULTRACON, a piquant blend of paleocon, neocon and 9/11-con, with zesty libertarian overtones...Try it, you'll like it.

ULTRACON is right pleased to be at American Thinker:

Where's the "Do Nothing Congress" When You Need Them?

And in case you missed it, check out:

Federal Finance: having it both ways

which is also at American Thinker. And here's my most recent article at TCS Daily, hot off the press, as it were:

The Limitations of Economics

ULTRACON highly recommends Dr. John Ray's blog: Dissecting Leftism. And check out his monographs, which you'll find in the left column.

ULTRACON: Accept no substitutes.

Trillion dollar deficits -- PART 3

2009-02-10T09:36:00.000-08:00

My big fear is that Congress is going to ruin the currency…ULTRACON.

A version of the following article appeared at FrontPageMagazine on 2/11/2009 under the title Overstimulation. This is the longer unedited version:

Stimulating Ourselves to Death
By Jon N. Hall
February 9, 2009

When Democrats campaigned to retake Congress in 2006, they ran on PAYGO.

PAYGO (pay-as-you-go) is a commitment to not expand the federal budget deficit. With PAYGO, spending for new programs would be “deficit-neutral”, as it would be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget. Nancy Pelosi said she was committed to PAYGO and wanted PAYGO to be “the law of the land”.

Fiscal 2007 began October 1, 2006, when the Republicans were still the majority. The federal budget deficit for FY 2007 was $162 Billion. The Democrats have been in control of the budget for the last 2 fiscal years, and the deficit for FY 2009 is now estimated to hit $1.2 Trillion.

So whatever happened to PAYGO? Unfortunately, PAYGO seems to be dead.

When the dimensions of the financial crisis became apparent in September 2008, pundits opined that the Democrats’ plans for universal health-care and other new programs would need to be shelved; there just wasn’t any money for new spending.

But now the Democrat Congress tells America that the economy needs a “jolt”, a “jumpstart”: a stimulus bill entailing massive deficit spending.

At a conference for House Democrats on February 5, President Obama mocked those who differed with him on the stimulus bill:

"So then you get the argument, 'well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.'…[dramatic pause]…What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point," Obama said to laughter.

OK, but if deficit spending is a part of government stimulus, then America has been getting stimulated since 1930. The most generous accounting for the federal budget (the “unified budget”) shows that Congress produced 12 balanced budgets in those 79 years: There were 3 immediately after World War II; 4 in the 1950s; FY 1969; and 4 during the recent bubble economy, FY 1998 through 2001.

So during the last 40 years Congress has stimulated us for 90% of the time [1].

Democrats are fond of telling us that the national debt doubled during the last 8 years. Since the debt is now more than $10 Trillion, that would mean that Congress has done $5 Trillion worth of stimulus in just the last 8 years. Obviously, the stimulus of the last 8 years didn’t prevent the financial crisis. So, is stimulus really the cure for what ails us? Can we really just spend our way out of this recession?

Despite the nearly constant stimulus of the $Trillions they’ve been injecting into America for lo these many years, Congress says it wasn’t nearly enough, we need more. Before we plunge into this brave new world of Trillion dollar deficits “for years to come”, we might do well to remind ourselves how we came to our sorry state.

Debt—by government, business, and households—is what got us into this mess. So it seems counter-intuitive to think that debt is what will get us out of it. But NYTimes columnist Bob Herbert assures us: “There is broad agreement that we have no choice but to go much more deeply into debt to jump-start the economy.”

“No choice”, you say? But what if the “received wisdom” is wrong? What if the various stimuli don’t work and all we end up doing is adding Trillions to the national debt without solving the underlying problem? Perhaps one problem is that Congress and all the gurus aren’t addressing the real problem.

Perhaps stimulus itself is the real problem. America is already over-stimulated. And over-leveraged, over-stored, overbuilt and over-extended. Perhaps the only thing we have to fear is stimulus itself. Stimulus is debt. Debt is bad. We need to stop borrowing so much.

And the folks understand this instinctively. They’re pulling back, cinching up their belts. Many used their stimulus checks last year not to stimulate the economy by buying things but to pay down debt. Or, they just saved it. American households seem to be embracing the “Old Verities” of thrift, postponement of gratification, living within one’s means, self-denial, caution, and, yes, pay-as-you-go.

But Congress says that’s all wrong: We’ve got to spend more; we’ve got to take out more loans; the credit must flow. The folks are trying to go “cold turkey”, but their enablers in Congress are buying them shots of stimulus with money borrowed from the grandkids. Congress is borrowing to stimulate more borrowing.

There are some who say Congress should forget the stimulus bill, and just do nothing. The “do nothing” position is that the economy will right itself—if we just let it. And this would have especial merit if the recession ends before the stimulus starts trickling down into the economy. Indeed, much of the stimulus doesn’t kick in until the out-years. Then there’s the question of whether the items in the stimulus bill are even stimulative. It’s hard to stimulate something that’s already over-stimulated; the patient is building up a resistance to the medication.

If Congress must “do something”, why not lower the payroll tax? That would provide immediate relief. How about lowering the corporate income tax rate? America has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. How about creating incentives for manufacturers to move back home? If Congress wants to get citizens working again, how about repatriating a few million illegal aliens?

After attending the forum at Davos last week, Harvard’s Niall Ferguson writes:

The delusion that a crisis of excess debt can be solved by creating more debt is at the heart of the Great Repression. Yet that is precisely what most governments currently propose to do.

Ferguson’s solutions provide the counterpoint to Bob Herbert’s “broad agreement”. And he actually tackles the problem that started the crisis: mortgages.

Is there any hope for the resurrection of PAYGO?

PAYGO was a sham from the get-go. Democrats, you see, don’t cut spending. Of the 12 surpluses since 1930, only those for FY 1947, 1948 and 1960 coincide with cuts in “discretionary” spending. This year’s estimated deficit of $1.2 Trillion together with the $819 Billion stimulus bill is more than ALL federal spending for as late as FY 2002. With stimulus bills and bailouts still to be decided on, it remains to be seen if this year’s deficit will end up being 10 times what the Democrats inherited just 2 years ago.

“Uncharted waters” does not begin to do justice to where Congress is taking us.

Jon N. Hall is a programmer/analyst from Kansas City.

ENDNOTE:
[1] To confirm my figures, check out the latest budget history from the feds, toggle Bookmarks on the left and click on the third item: Table 1.1—SUMMARY OF RECEIPTS, OUTLAYS, AND SURPLUSES OR DEFICITS (–): 1789–2013. You’ll be on page 25 of Adobe Acrobat, but page 21 of the document itself. (Dial-up users: This 342-page PDF is almost 2.5 megabytes and might take 5+ minutes to download.)

ULTRACON: ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES.

TAX, Baby, TAX

2009-01-23T10:26:00.000-08:00

ULTRACON: A bold fresh piece of humanity or an old broken-down piece of meat? You make the call.

That "a man's reach should exceed his grasp" is evidenced by The Wall Street Journal's rejection of the following article. But due to the beneficence of Google I can provide it to you, and at just the right price.

The Price of Civilization and Its Discontents
By Jon N. Hall
December 6, 2008

It just bugs the dickens out of left-wingers, but we still have “private property” in America. The question is, for how much longer?

Although the Supreme Court decision on eminent domain in the 2005 Kelo case dealt a heavy blow to private property rights, the bigger threat may come from taxation. Even so, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously opined: “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization”.

OK, but might we be getting more “civilization” than we can afford?

Government in America is a ravenous beast. To feed the beast, We the People get taxed on just about everything, including work, consumption, profit, windfall profit, ownership, gifts, fuel, gambling—even life and death. We are hit by individual and corporate income taxes, payroll taxes (FICA), sales taxes, real estate taxes, property taxes, gasoline taxes, capital gains taxes, estate (death) taxes, you name it. The tax on life itself is levied by the “individual mandate”. Heck, they even used to tax voting.

Every expense the government heaps on us can be thought of as a tax, as can our rococo tax system’s costs of compliance. And right when you’ve retired and are beginning to look eternity squarely in the face, the IRS up and complicates your taxes with even more schedules and worksheets. (Can’t the IRS just…send us a bill?)

When I filed my 2008 Personal Property Declaration with Jackson County, Missouri, I noticed that most of what the county assesses is modes of transportation—automobiles, motorcycles, RVs, boats, airplanes, and the like. One’s declaration is for what one owns on January 1. So if it’s late in the year, Missourians will postpone buying a vehicle until after New Year’s Day. That way they won’t have to pay property taxes for an entire year on a car they owned only at the end of the year. (Buying a new car in late December is something a Kansan émigré might do.)

Inspecting my personal property declaration a little further, I noticed in the lower left that I had to list my barrows, gilts, replacement ewes, sows and other livestock.

But why is the county taxing my livestock? Won’t sales taxes be paid when I take my livestock to market? Then I read this: “MARKET VALUE OF ALL GRAIN & OTHER AGRICULTURAL CROPS IN UNMANUFACTURED CONDITION”.

Now this was just too much—what if I’m not selling? What if I’m farming just to feed my family? Is this some vestige of the New Deal? At least they seem to want to leave my “victory garden” untaxed. Or does that fall under “other agricultural crops”?

The thing is: Jackson County hasn’t the means to inspect every farm to see how many calves were dropped or how much grain’s on hand. This is especially so if all the inspections were to be conducted on January 1, as noted above. Last time I checked, Jan. 1 was a holiday, as well as a big game day.

Not long ago, the personal property tax in Missouri was even worse, as the state amended its constitution to exempt household goods, such as furniture and apparel. (Better think twice about buying that plasma HDTV; they might re-impose the personal property tax on your household possessions.) Enforcement of this tax must have been interesting, as I don’t think folks would have taken too kindly to tax assessors coming to their homes and rummaging through their stuff just to see if their personal property tax declarations were accurate. (Hmm, was this Ethan Allen armoire on the list?)

Latter-day lawmakers never seem to remember that this nation was founded by a bloody revolution caused, in part, by unreasonable taxation. To wit:

Some local governments want to tax e-tail, Internet commerce. Compliance would be a heavy tax on these businesses, if not an outright nightmare to administer. Tariffs are taxes on foreign goods. But tariffs cause price inflation, a hidden tax paid by Americans—think of what America pays for cane sugar. What about cap-and-trade? Whether you approve of cap-and-trade or not, it’s a tax, my friend—a carbon tax. (Are we taxing any other elements yet? Molybdenum perhaps?) And don’t forget the taxes levied on things that have already been taxed, like gifts and dividends. One enterprising lawmaker tried to impose a “pole tax” for attendees of “gentlemen’s clubs”.

The actions businesses take to prevent lawsuits—call it “defensive management”—are taxes. Think of the costs of sensitivity training (re-education?) and diversity programs and how they affect the bottom line. What do such government-imposed burdens have to do with the actual products and services of a business? The cost of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act is a tax, and an especially onerous one for smaller businesses. (Are they taxing your patience?)

The government is big on taxing “tangible property”. But why stop there? Why not tax the intangible as well, even the ephemeral? Why not tax this idea I have for a rococo opera in the style of Rameau that concerns this poor wretch struggling to comply with the regime’s rococo tax laws? It’s sure to make a ton of money, and hey, that’ll be taxed, too. Just as we have “thought crimes” (e.g. hate crimes), we can have taxes on thought. And since photovoltaic cells are becoming so popular, let’s tax sunlight.

But regardless of how many types of taxes they institute, the Keepers of Civilization will still spend more than they take in. And no matter how high they jack up tax rates, it’s never enough; the Keepers will still run a deficit. So while we’re at it, let’s not forget the taxes on vice—the “sin taxes”—such as the tobacco tax.

Tobacco users ought to be plenty miffed about the steep tax on their humble vice as it is supposed to be a dedicated tax. But the revenue from tobacco taxes is often spent on other things, even things outside the purview of health-care. It really shouldn’t be spent on anything other than tobacco-related ailments, such as lung and mouth cancers. But the tobacco tax revenue has become yet another government slush fund.

Although aficionados like El Rushbo and the Governator would surely decline, regular tobacco users ought to just “grow their own”. Not only so they won’t have to pay for the government’s fancy trial lawyers—whose fees in the tobacco cases ran to the billions—but to deprive government of its tobacco tax slush funds. (HillaryCare 2.0 and the revamped S-CHIP were to have been funded by new sin taxes.)

It remains to be seen whether, in addition to sin, Congress will tax virtue. If lawmakers do indeed plan to tax virtue, they would do well to take note of a corollary to an Arthur Laffer axiom: If you tax something, you get less of it.

Jon N. Hall is a programmer/analyst living in Kansas City.

Social Security

2009-01-20T11:44:00.000-08:00

ULTRACON: meaner than a junkyard dog.

Inauguration Day

Ultracon is pleased that STAR BUSINESS WEEKLY, an organ of The Kansas City Star, is running his commentary today, which can be found HERE. But the article appears below, too, as the shelf life of The Star’s online side isn’t all that long. This may be the case with all but the biggest of newspapers, like The Wall Street Journal. That’s because newspapers make a tidy sum by selling their content to Lexis-Nexis. So they’re obliged to take it down from their websites. Or so I’m told. As usual, my title got changed. But this title probably needed to be changed. I was thinking of The Fonz, i.e. Fonzi.

(Don Porter (to whom I refer in my article) also states in his letter to the editor that Social Security “is social insurance”. The Star ran my treatment of that issue about 4 years ago, and it’s still up at the Public Program Testing Organization: But is it Really Insurance?)

Yo, Ponzi
By Jon N. Hall
January 20, 2009

In the wake of the Bernard Madoff scandal, folks have chimed in that the Mother of All Ponzi Schemes is none other than Social Security.

Inasmuch as Ponzi schemes are illegal and Social Security is a government program, that claim might not hold up in court.

In “Social Security is not Ponzi scheme” (12/31, Letters, THE KANSAS CITY STAR), Don Porter and Lloyd Hellman have their say. Porter claims: “From the beginning it has been a pay-as-you-go government system and never an “investment””. (One doubts that investors in Mr. Madoff’s hedge fund think it’s much of an investment, either.)

The issue here is whether Social Security operates like a Ponzi scheme.

In a Ponzi, income from new investors is used to pay off old investors. In this respect, a Ponzi is identical to the “pay-as-you-go” aspect of Social Security, where the payroll taxes (FICA) of current workers pay for the benefits of retired workers.

The reason a Ponzi is financed like this is because the dollar difference between income and outgo isn’t fully invested, so there aren’t adequate profits to meet the demands of investors. Here, too, Social Security is identical to a Ponzi – except that Social Security is purer.

Whereas a Ponzi, like Mr. Madoff’s hedge fund, must at least make some investments – if for no other reason than to escape notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission – the Social Security Administration invests none of its surplus. Yes, Social Security does have a so-called trust fund, said to contain more than $2 Trillion. But the treasuries in the “trust fund” differ from “regular” treasuries in that they are not marketable; they’re IOUs. In reality, there is no Social Security trust fund – the government spent the surplus.

Also, the “pay-as-you-go” aspect of Social Security will end – in 2017, it is estimated – when payroll taxes are no longer adequate to pay benefits. At that point, the treasuries in the “trust fund” will be “redeemed” to continue paying benefits at the same pace. And where will the money for those redemptions come? Why, from the general fund of the U.S. treasury. Which means: Social Security benefits paid for out of the trust fund are paid for twice, first by payroll taxes and second by other taxes that go into the general fund.

If the federal government wants Social Security to escape the stigma of being a Ponzi, then it must either limit payroll taxes to being no more than benefits or it must invest the surplus in real income-producing investments, not U.S. treasuries or securities. It should also do away with the accounting fiction known as the “unified budget”.

So, Ponzis and Social Security are operationally identical. The difference between the two is in how their surpluses are used.

In a Ponzi, we’re talking simple grand larceny. But in Social Security, the surplus goes into the U.S. treasury’s general fund. And since money is fungible, the Social Security surplus is used to pay for everything in the federal budget. Which includes the pork and earmarks incumbent Congressmen use to bribe the electorate into re-electing them.

So, dear reader, if you benefit from pork or earmarks and you re-elect these guys, are you a party to a Ponzi scheme?

In Mr. Hellman’s letter to the editor, he asserts: “Social Security is not and never was a Ponzi scheme…I am not only entitled to the return of the money I paid in, but the interest I earned for 64 years”.

Not so fast. We’ve already been here.

In Flemming v. Nestor (1960), the Supreme Court “established the principle that entitlement to Social Security benefits is not contractual right”. In other words, taxpayers have no property rights to Social Security benefits whatsoever.

Moreover, in Section 1104 of the 1935 Act: “The right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision of this Act is hereby reserved to the Congress.” Which means: Congress can end Social Security whenever it so chooses.

Folks might comfort themselves by thinking: Congress isn’t going to kill Social Security. And they’d be right – it would be political suicide.

But America is entering uncharted waters. The population is aging. The deficit is skyrocketing. We’re at war. And Congress is on a spending spree like no other and wants to “give” health-care and Lord knows what else to every last one of us including illegal aliens. The question isn’t just whether Social Security will be there for you, but whether the good ole U.S. dollar will still be worth anything.

So as you survey your family’s future security, social or otherwise, think about how the government finances things.

Jon N. Hall is a programmer/analyst from Kansas City.

Trillion dollar deficits -- PART 2

2009-01-10T10:17:00.001-08:00

ULTRACON: the blogger who refers to himself in the third person.

The following article appeared at the now-defunct DissectingPopCulture.com, RIP. Ultracon then disseminated the thing through the ether via email in the hope of infusing the electorate with some sense before the election, alas. The fears expressed have all come to pass…and in spades: Trillion dollar deficits for years to come.

The Budget Deficit: Deflecting Blame, Abdicating Responsibility
By Jon N. Hall
October 16, 2008

One of the disadvantages of being the majority is occasionally you have to act like one.

When Democrats captured Congress in 2006, fiscal 2007 became the last year the Republican Congress could be held responsible for the budget. Total federal revenue for fiscal 2007 was a record $2.56 Trillion. The last year Democrats had produced a budget was fiscal 1995, when total federal revenue was $1.35 Trillion.

So, the new Democratic Congress had about $1.21 Trillion MORE with which to balance the budget than they had had 12 years earlier in their last attempt.

Would it be enough?

For the first 6 months of fiscal 2008, the federal deficit hit an all time record high of $311.4 Billion, up 20.5 percent from the previous year (also here, and for wonks here). The 2008 budget is the Democrats’ first budget since regaining control, and its deficit can’t be blamed on low revenue—federal revenue for the period also set a record.

There’s your Democrat Congress for you, the all time worst performance on the deficit for the first half of a fiscal year despite record high revenue. Not to rest on their laurels, the Democrat Congress went on to set the record for an entire fiscal year with a deficit of $455 Billion for 2008. This comes immediately after 3 solid years of progress by the Republicans, during which they reduced the on-budget deficit by $224 Billion—all wiped out by the spendthrift Democrat Congress’ first budget.

And remember, this Democrat deficit comes before the addition of universal health-care, universal pre-kindergarten and universal you-name-it. And it comes before the recent bailouts and rescues. Some predict a $1 Trillion deficit for fiscal 2009. (A trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon you’re talkin’ real money.)

After 12 years in the minority—far longer than any other stretch since 1932—the Democrats immediately revert right back to their old playbook. The Democrats just can’t help themselves; they are genetically incapable of spending restraint. When confronted with what has been called a financial Pearl Harbor, they couldn’t resist larding up the $700 Billion bailout/rescue with pork—in what they themselves described as one of the most important votes of their careers, they couldn’t produce a clean bill.

The Democrats’ answer for everything is to raise tax rates on business and the wealthy, all the while demonizing them.

So how could the economy NOT be faltering? Investors and businesses are looking straight into the jaws of massive Democrat tax rate hikes. For the economy’s sake, wouldn’t it be better to leave the capital with the capitalists?

The Party of Taxes “needs” your money, nonetheless. And you should gladly fork it over to them, because Democrats know so much better how to spend your money than you do. After all, they’re the Keepers of Civilization.

July 13 on Meet the Press Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo) said: “and, and it was interesting that Carly [Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard] referred to the boom years. That's when we had a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress. Those were the boom years. And that's the, the years we want to get back to.”

Whatever could Sen. McCaskill be referring to? When were these halcyon days of yore? The 1990s? Didn’t we have a Republican Congress in those “boom years”? She certainly can’t be referring to the Carter years. The last time a Democratic Congress produced a “real” balanced budget—that is, without an on-budget deficit [1]—when a Democrat was in the White House was fiscal 1951. The last time a Democratic Congress produced a “real” balanced budget under a Republican president was fiscal 1960.

Record deficits, soaring tax rates, rampant spending: This is what GOP Congressional candidates should run against this fall. They should ask America: Are you better off now than you were—2 years ago?

But Republicans are allowing Democrats to deflect blame for the record deficit onto the President, as when Speaker Pelosi spoke at the Democrat Convention of “the failed Bush policies that has [sic] weakened our economy and taken us from the Clinton surplus to reckless Bush deficits”.

“Clinton surplus?” “Bush deficits?”

When did Congress lose its responsibility for the budget? When was the Constitution amended to throw out Article I, Section 9 (7), which states: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time” [emphasis added].

Budgets are legislation. Legislation is Pelosi’s area. This is Pelosi’s deficit. The predicted $750 Billion deficit for fiscal 2009 belongs to Democrats—they’re the majority now.

But Democrats seem to want to campaign this fall as though they were still the minority. And well they should, for what have they accomplished since capturing the majority? Nonetheless, the word from the media is: 2008 is a Democrat year.

But why, this Democrat Congress has performed abysmally. Even Democratic voters think so. Congress’ approval ratings are in the toilet; 11% in the Reuters/Zogby poll, which was taken before their “miserable failure” with the budget. Congress’ approval ratings have since plunged to an all time low of 9 % in the Rasmussen poll.

Under the current crop of Democrats, Congress has become the branch of government that folks hold in the most contempt.

If John McCain is to lead Washington back to fiscal sanity, he’ll need help. And that can mean only one thing—real conservatives in Congress. But ending earmarks, cutting pork, and rooting out waste won’t be enough; McCain, a genuine fiscal hawk, will need to reform entitlements. And that will be impossible without a GOP Congress.

To retake Congress, Republicans must create a compelling new vision of what they abandoned in 2001—the Contract with America. Republicans must tell America exactly how, if given the majority, they will balance the budget. And America should listen up, because the GOP is the only party to have actually balanced the budget since 1960.

Forget the barbarians at the gate for a second. If Congress doesn’t soon get a handle on its infernal spending of money it doesn’t have, Congress itself will be quite enough to bring about the End of America as We Know Her.

It’s the spending, stupid.

Jon N. Hall is a mainframe programmer/analyst from Kansas City.

[1] Democrats like to cite fiscal 1969 as having had a balanced budget. But there was an on-budget deficit of $507 million that year. If you doubt my budget figures, check out the latest budget history from the feds, toggle Bookmarks on the left and click on the third item: Table 1.1—SUMMARY OF RECEIPTS, OUTLAYS, AND SURPLUSES OR DEFICITS (–): 1789–2013. You’ll be on page 25 of Adobe Acrobat, but page 21 of the document itself. (Dial-up users: This 342-page PDF is almost 2.5 megabytes and might take 5+ minutes to download.)

Trillion dollar deficits

2009-01-08T09:36:00.000-08:00

With Trillion dollar deficits “for as far as the eye can see”, Ultracon trots out an article from April of 2007 that appeared in the STAR BUSINESS WEEKLY, page D8. (One slight alteration from the STAR is the dropping of “ic” from “Democratic”, done for Mr. Howard Dean’s sake.)

If you doubt Ultracon’s budget figures, check out the latest budget history from the feds, toggle Bookmarks on the left and click on the third item: Table 1.1—SUMMARY OF RECEIPTS, OUTLAYS, AND SURPLUSES OR DEFICITS (–): 1789–2013. You’ll be on page 25 of Adobe Acrobat, but page 21 of the document itself. (Dial-up users: This 342-page PDF is almost 2.5 megabytes and might take 5+ minutes to download.)

One might quibble with Ultracon’s positing of a better than 50% rating for the GOP. This was based on not counting 1931, 1932 and the first 6 years of the Reagan terms. Although the GOP won the House in 1931, the House was organized, if memory serves, by Democrats due to GOP death(s). Also, during the first 6 years of Reagan, the House was in Democrat control, but cooperation from conservative Democrats, Blue Dogs, coupled with a GOP Senate allowed the GOP to have its way. But go ahead and count those 8 years for the GOP and the GOP still has a 40% rating at balancing the budget as opposed to the Democrat’s less than 10%. However, Ultran was counting 2001 and 2002 for the GOP, but the defection of Senator Jeffords in 2001 put the Senate under Democrat control. In any event, no matter how you look at it, the GOP has a better record at balancing the budget than Democrats. That is, if you think Congress is responsible for budgets.

Now it’s the Democrats’ turn to balance the budget
By Jon N. Hall

Back in 2002, Howard Dean told Greta Van Susteren on her Fox News Channel show: “No Republican president has balanced the budget in this country in 34 years. It seems only Democratic presidents do that.”

Dean was referring to fiscal 1969, the first year of the so-called Unified Budget. The Unified Budget mixes general fund revenue with off-budget revenue from dedicated taxes, such as Social Security. It allows off-budget surpluses to offset (and mask) on-budget deficits. And indeed, 1969 saw an on-budget deficit of $507 million.

But who are these “Democratic presidents” Dean refers to? Certainly not Carter, LBJ or JFK. The last president before Clinton to preside over a balanced budget was Eisenhower, and the last Democrat was Truman.

The biggest problem with Dean’s statement is this: NO president—neither Democrat, nor Republican, nor Whig—has ever balanced the federal budget. “It seems only [Congress does] that.”

Budgets are legislation. Bills. Presidents don’t vote on bills. Presidents only sign bills, which makes them laws. Or they veto them. Which is why Clinton needs to accept at least half of the responsibility for the government shutdown in 1995—he vetoed a budget that would have kept the government going.

The responsibility for the budget rests with Congress, as is illustrated by the current calls to cut funding for the Iraq war. No Congress should rubberstamp any president’s proposed budget. Congress has it within its power to reject any of a president’s budget proposals. Folks should direct their unhappiness over the return to deficits at Congress.

The Democrat establishment has for years laid responsibility for the budget at the feet of the president, crediting Clinton and blaming Republicans. But if Congress has the ultimate responsibility for the budget, why do Democrat congressmen deflect attention elsewhere?

It is because the only balanced budgets during the last 47 years occurred when Republicans controlled Congress.

That’s right. The last balanced budget produced by a Democrat Congress was in fiscal 1960. And going back to 1920, the only other times Democrats balanced the budget were in fiscal 1947, 1951, 1956 and 1957. And since Democrats controlled both houses of Congress for 52 of those years, it means their record is below 10 percent.

The Republicans have certainly disappointed fiscal hawks lately, but they balanced the budget in the 11 years from 1920 through 1930, and in 1948, 1999 and 2000. They controlled Congress for 27 of the years in question and so are averaging above 50 percent.

Democrats might object to the exclusion here of fiscal 1969. But we’re not including any years with Unified Budget surpluses if they ran on-budget deficits. That means we’re also not including 1949, 1998 and 2001, which would accrue to the Republicans’ record.

What does it take for a Democrat Congress to balance the budget? The top tax rate during the period when Democrats balanced the budget was 91 percent. When the top rate was lowered in the 1960s to 70 percent, Democrats never again balanced a single budget.

But now, after 12 years, the Democrats have another shot at balancing the budget. And they have a Trillion dollars more revenue to work with than in their last budget. They’re not used to such large sums. Will it be enough for them to balance the budget? Or will they launch more programs, more entitlements, and just spend it?

Democrat congressmen who continue to lay the responsibility for the budget on the president are doing nothing less than abdicating their own responsibility. And since Congress can pass rescission bills, the Democrats are, as of now, responsible for all the waste, fraud and abuse in the federal budget. (At least the Republicans killed the “bridge to nowhere”.)

Should the Democrat Congress be unsuccessful at balancing the budget, it will be interesting to see if they blame President Bush for it.

[This article originally appeared April 17, 2007 in STAR BUSINESS WEEKLY, put out by The Kansas City Star newspaper.]

Jon N. Hall is a programmer/analyst form Kansas City.

ULTRACON: the blog for Real Americans.

Health-care Reform

2008-12-27T10:45:00.000-08:00

It has come to our attention that there may be a TownHall.com blog operating under the name Ultracon. Do not be deceived: This is the home of the one, true and only Ultracon—ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES.

Since America is soon to be overrun by progressives—that is, we’re gonna have an all-Democrat federal government—and since they seem intent on delivering “universal health-care” no matter the cost, it’s time to revisit some old articles of mine on health-care reform:

Our 1st article appeared at the Public Program Testing Organization, which is run by Joe Fried. (Joe’s new book garnered an interview at FrontPageMag.) Anyway, PPTO ran a longish piece of mine a while back; I don’t know if all the links are still operative. In hopes of getting readers to keep on, I tried to leaven the dry subject matter with a little humor. But I still tried to address the serious problems of the feds “giving” us healthcare: A Cold Eye on Healthcare Reform.

Our 2nd article appeared at TCS Daily. TCS was the brainchild of James K. Glassman, but is now under different management, Nick Schulz. TCS sports a fine array of writers; I discovered Johan Norberg there. I had wanted to come up with a short article for a newspaper by excising a bit of the long piece above. I don’t believe any newspaper ran it, but TCS did: What Healthcare and Higher Education Have in Common.

And our 3rd piece appeared at FrontPageMag. For current affairs, FPM is one of our most vital websites. So I was right pleased to get something accepted by them. I don’t believe they edited a word of the article, but they gave it a new title, an audacious title, full of HOPE and CHANGE: Hillary Taxes Breathing.

(In my oh-so-lucrative career as a “citizen journalist”, I’ve noticed that re-titling is the order of the day. I’d wager that this is more common in print, such as newspapers, where they’re also more likely to edit your articles (I guess so your article will conform to their Style Book). They even seem to do this with syndicated columnists, which I find beyond the pale. I once caught a big-city newspaper changing a single word of a Tom Friedman column, which reversed its meaning. I notified them and they issued an erratum. American newspapers are in dire straits. They need to come up with a different business model and move exclusively to the Internet, like the Christian Science Monitor.)

Oh yeah, don’t forget to read my pieces on health-care reform (above).

Boxing Day

2008-12-26T09:24:00.000-08:00

In the Age of Bailouts, remember economist Allan Meltzer's sage observation:
"Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin."

Are you worried about the right things??? If EMP is not at the top of your list of worries, then check out this piece at the Wall Street Journal and this one by Mark Steyn.

I've written 5 articles on "election fraud"; you might start HERE and follow the links.

JERUSALEM

AND did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

William Blake (1757-1827)

True blue Ultracons follow these sites religiously:

FrontPageMag and National Review Online (NRO)

A Quick Fix for America’s Elections

2008-12-24T10:05:00.000-08:00

By Jon N. Hall

On March 12 before the Senate Rules Committee, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan testified on voter fraud and her opposition to photo ID laws. “A dog has never voted in Missouri, nor has a dead person come from the grave and voted…I think this shows the system is working,” [1] she said. Carnahan went on to assure the committee that there are few election problems and little voter fraud in Missouri. One might doubt her assurances: What are dogs doing on Missouri voter registries?

What’s really disheartening about America’s election problems is that the solution is so very obvious—technology. But few seem willing to seriously consider technological solutions to our election woes. Some states are even regressing back to paper ballots.

In the information technology profession we sometimes describe certain fixes in computer programs as “quick and dirty”. Well, I wanted my fix to be quick and clean. And I wanted it to be as simple and easy on folks as I could make it. My solution is not high-tech, but then it’s not low-tech, either. It’s probably middle-tech, and it’s something that could have and should have been done decades ago.

What I’ve tried to fix is the problem of corrupted voter registries. Because the states have been doing such a poor job of vetting voter registrants—verifying their eligibility—my solution takes that responsibility away from the states. I also wanted to satisfy the demands of those concerned about voter participation. And I wanted to make the process of registration as painless as possible. So my solution does 2 nifty things: It takes away the requirement to register, and yet registers everybody (citizens, that is).

However, the most important feature of this solution vis-à-vis fraud is this: The entire Social Security Number (SSN) is used to create the registries. Currently, this isn’t done. In Missouri, for instance, only the last 4 digits of the SSN are asked for.

(Incidentally, I don’t flatter myself that my solution is particularly brilliant. In fact, it’s the kind of solution that any competent computer programmer worth a hoot would think of between sips of coffee on an early Monday morning while he’s slowly letting up on the clutch trying to ease his brain into gear. In the parlance of the day, it’s “a no-brainer”. It’s a typical data processing type of solution, which I imagine has occurred to other computer programmers, causing them to wonder: Why aren’t we doing this?)

HOW TO FIX AMERICA’S BROKEN VOTER REGISTRATION SYSTEM:

Whenever a dog, a cat, a dead person, a person in a coma or in a persistent vegetative state or in a nursing home suffering from Alzheimer’s, a felon, an illegal alien, or any otherwise ineligible “voter” appears on a voter registry, or whenever anyone appears on more than one voter registry, an eligible voter is in jeopardy of having his vote cancelled out. And if anyone uses someone else’s registration or a registration established by fraud to actually cast a vote in an American election, an American citizen will have been effectively disenfranchised. His vote will have been nullified, his birthright stolen.

Throughout America, the flimsiest of IDs can get just about anyone put on a voter registry, allowing ineligibles to vote. Also, voter registries are not kept current. For instance, the dead are often not purged from voter registries for years, allowing the living to use their registrations to vote “for them”. And then there’s the failure to purge those who have moved to another state, such as Faye Buis-Ewing, which makes it possible to vote twice.

If voter registries are corrupted, how can we be assured of clean fair elections, the cornerstone of democracy?

If you are a taxpaying law-abiding American citizen, you should have little doubt that the government knows your whereabouts. If you fail to pay your income tax on time, you can be assured that the IRS will descend upon you; come to your house; perhaps even seize it. And if you run afoul of the law, the FBI, despite its computer problems, will most likely find you. (That is, unless you’re part of the criminal underworld. In which case, who cares if you can’t vote.) And you’d better hope the feds know where to send your tax refunds and benefit checks.

Certain politicians have long insisted that voter registration should be easier. But if the government already has all your data, including your address, why do they require you to register? Isn’t the requirement to register a bit like a retailer making you scan your credit card for each and every item you’re buying, rather than just once?

Friends, I’m here to tell you: You shouldn’t have to register to vote—the government should do it for you. Here’s how: The feds would write computer programs to extract each eligible citizen’s data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) database, and then send the data to the states, which would use it to create the voter registries.

The primary virtue of this method is: Only citizens would be registered. And furthermore, each citizen would be on one and only one state registry, unlike today. You could think of the SSA database as the “National Voter Registry”.

And another thing, all those volunteers laboring to get folks registered would be free to volunteer for some other noble work—everyone would be automatically registered.

BUT IS THERE A FLY IN MY OINTMENT?

If you question the feasibility of this reform, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger—I did, too. I had no doubts about my idea; it’s pretty simple. But we’re talking about the federal government here; perhaps there was some obscure something I didn’t know about. Also, I’d never worked for the feds, nor was I familiar with their databases. So I thought I better rummage through federal websites just to be sure all the information was where I thought it should be—on the SSA database.

But first, what is this information? It’s actually precious little (example here). To place an American citizen on his correct voter registry requires just 3 pieces of information: personal identification, date of birth, and address. (Incidentally, the data is so tiny the entire U.S. electorate could fit on an iPod.)

The SSA places folks on the SSA database soon after birth and naturalization, which includes name and date of birth. So the entire issue of feasibility seemed to boil down to this question: Does the SSA keep our addresses current (updated) on its database? If so, my reform would seem quite doable.

I knew that employers were already accessing the SSA database through the Department of Homeland Security’s internet-based E-Verify system to validate data on Form I-9, required of all new hires. And one of the items of information on Form I-9 is—address.

So I went to the SSA website, and there in the upper right of the screen was QUESTIONS, a drop-down menu containing Change of Address. But I discovered that the SSA doesn't carry addresses for folks who aren't receiving benefits.

There appeared to be a fly in my dang ointment—I had hit a snag. But I would not be denied; perhaps the screen was wrong and needed updating. So I telephoned USCIS, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, to see if their E-Verify system allows employers to verify the address on Form I-9 in addition to the SSN. A polite helpful federal employee told me it did not.

Then it occurred to me that I myself regularly receive notices via snail-mail from the SSA, even though I’m not receiving benefits. Poking around a bit more in the SSA website, I read that the SSA gets the addresses for those notices from the IRS.

Bottom line: My reform needs something besides the extract program. There are many ways to skin a cat, but here’s what I think the feds could do:

The SSA database should “carry” the residential addresses for ALL citizens, not just those receiving benefits. The SSA would get this information from the IRS database. For many Americans, our address on the IRS database is identical to our voter registration address. These folks would be set, and wouldn’t need to do anything. But others would need to change their address on the IRS database, using IRS Form 8822.

Under my reform, “voter registration” devolves into nothing more than keeping the feds informed of your residential address. This would be the citizen’s only responsibility in “voter registration”. And you’re already doing this when you file your 1040 tax return. But if you relocate just before an election, you would use Form 8822. (The SSA even allows folks to change their address online.)

However, under my reform, even if you failed to inform the feds of your new address in time for an election, you’d still be registered to vote, albeit at your old address.

(A possible side benefit of having the addresses of all citizens on the SSA database is that it might help employer’s detect stolen SSNs when using E-verify. It would provide one more datum to triangulate on. Since identity theft has become such a big issue, America would approve.)

COMPARE MY REFORM WITH THE CURRENT SYSTEM:

The whole point behind my reform is this: Voter registries should be derived from a single centralized database. Computer professionals understand the necessity of this. Anything less leaves our elections wide open to fraud and error. Insofar as data about American citizens is concerned, the SSA database is the Holy of Holies. At least, it better be. If you can’t trust it, you can’t trust anything. The SSA database is the font from which our national identities flow.

The absurdity of our current voter registration system isn’t just that American citizens are required to give government information it already has. It’s that it demands a tremendous amount of extra work and expense, all of which is unnecessary.

What’s even more ridiculous is the requirement to sign affidavits affirming that we are citizens and that we aren’t felons. Doesn’t government know whether we’ve been through its judicial system or not? The absurdity is compounded because registrars don’t have the means to verify our affidavits. That would entail the SSN. But the registrars are forbidden to ask for that. Voter registration is entirely on the “honor system”, except without the honor and the system. (Sí, Se Puede, amigo mio.)

And then to top it off, we end up with registries they are unreliable, corrupted. Wouldn’t it be better to have computers create our registries for us? All it would involve is a few dinky little computer programs that could probably be written before lunch.

So why is government making the citizenry jump through all these hoops? Why is government dumping so much work on unpaid volunteers? (Might these volunteers someday up and quit?) Why does government persist in its backward ways? The least uncomplimentary explanation is: the inertia of Congress.

Congress is great when it comes to doing the really heroic things, such as changing the light bulbs in the Capitol to compact fluorescents. But for lesser things, like bringing integrity to America’s elections, Congress needs a committee, and a study, and a report, and…well, we really need to see how they do things in Europe. Mustn’t be precipitate.

I’m not a lawyer, but I do believe my reform would require federal legislation. This is because election law is a state matter. So my reform would have to be imposed on the states by the feds. This is the real snag in my reform: getting the Do Nothing Congress to do something. This is where the “quick” part of my “quick fix” might break down. The rest of it is pretty simple stuff.

The federal government has within its means the wherewithal to create voter registries that are correct. Will it do so?

My reform actually hands the states their voter registries—on a silver platter. When the states receive their registries, they would then apply state law to them. This would mainly consist of identifying the voters who are ineligible due to state law, such as felons, and deleting them from their registry. After this is done, the states would have finalized their registries; they then would create signature rosters for each precinct, and their election could proceed.

THE NEW VOTER ID LAWS:

Arizona is currently the only state to require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Arizona is also the only state to require all employers to use E-Verify. (Arizona is also home to one of America’s finest law enforcement officers: Sheriff Joe Arpaio.) Arizona seems to be more sophisticated and more advanced on these issues than other states. But then it has to be; Arizona is on the front lines of an invasion from the South.

But Arizona’s new requirements don’t do anything about those already registered. Shouldn’t Arizona require those registrants to come back and present proof of citizenship? With my reform, Arizona, along with the rest of the nation, could be assured of the citizenship of its voter registrants.

The new voter ID laws are inadequate; they go only so far. They don’t identify those already registered who shouldn’t be; they don’t correct registries; they’re just concerned with new registrants. With my reform, the states would receive new registries just before their elections, and these registries would reflect all the changes in address and eligibility since the last election.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SSN:

If we really want to ensure the integrity of our elections, not only would we use the SSN to create our voter registries, we’d require the voter to produce his SSN when voting.

But can you imagine the hubbub from the American Civil Liberties Union if polling stations started demanding the SSN to vote? The ACLU is apoplectic over even a photo ID requirement. (The ACLU doesn't like E-Verify, either.)

On January 9 during oral arguments in the Indiana photo ID case before the Supreme Court, Justice Alito pointedly asked, “Is it your position that a state can’t require any form of identification and can only require a signature?”

The photo ID is the most minimal form of ID, yet the ACLU objects to it. (By the way, are polling stations in Indiana going to carry photos of their registrants? You know, so they can match them to the voters’ photo IDs?)

The SSN is a far more powerful form of identification than a photo. Requiring the SSN to vote would obviate the photo ID requirement. And seniors, whom the ACLU cares so much about, are the ones most likely to actually know their SSN, since they’re receiving social security benefits. Of course, requiring the voter to produce his SSN to vote would entail having his SSN at the polling stations, so the 2 can be matched. Which means the feds would have sent the SSN to the states along with the other registration data.

The NYTimes recently related the case of 78-year-old St. Louis resident Lillie Lewis and her difficulty in obtaining a photo ID. “I have voted in almost all of the presidential races going back I can’t remember how long, but if they tell me I need a passport or birth certificate that’ll be the end of that”, she said. How can government place such burdens on senior citizens? With my reform, the only ID Ms. Lewis would need to present at the polls would be her SSN. With my reform, the difficulty folks are having in obtaining the documents needed to get a photo ID would just float away.

If America were ever to migrate to a fully computerized, state-of-the-art system which allowed folks to vote at home or from abroad using the internet, I can assure you: The SSN will be required to vote. Until such time, we should require the SSN be written on any and all paper ballots, especially provisional and absentee ballots, the source of so many of our woes.

I’m always amazed when I encounter someone who hasn’t memorized his SSN. The reason the SSN is so important is that it is a “unique identifier”; no one else can share it. Unique identifiers are used throughout contemporary America for all manner of things. They’re what allow businesses to keep track of their inventories, and brokerages and banks to balance accounts down to the penny. Even banks themselves have their own unique identifiers: the routing number you enter on your 1040 form. The necessity of unique identifiers for life as we know it requires no discussion. Yet, we do not currently demand that voters produce their unique identifiers, even though they all have them.

Do you do online banking? The only online banking I do is transfer money between my accounts, and I don’t logon to the net to do so. I just pick up the phone and start punching numbers, and the first number I punch in is my dear old SSN. Then I have to punch in my PIN number and the numbers of the accounts from which and to which I’m transferring money. Such a transfer is done in real time, so I have access to the money immediately. Try that with a photo ID.

How concerned would you be if every monthly statement you received from your bank had errors on it, or showed other folks using your account? You’d be outraged. You’d drop your account pronto and sue the bums. Yet that is exactly the sort of thing the American People countenance with their elections. Elections should be more like banking and other enterprises that strive for data perfection.

The thing is: You can’t pay your taxes, nor get a job, nor even open a checking account without surrendering your SSN. But the ACLU seems to think you should be allowed to vote for the Leader of the Free World with a utility bill. (Why not a laundry ticket?)

The SSN is the de facto national ID. So the unauthorized creation of an SSN and, especially, the theft of an SSN are very serious crimes, and should be punished by very serious hard time. (I’d prefer such perps be drawn and quartered, but that’s just me.)

As long as we re-use the numbers of deceased citizens in a timely fashion, the SSN will be sufficient as long as our population stays below 1 Billion. So the SSN won’t present any Y2K-type problems for a good while.

If you were really obsessive-compulsive about ensuring election perfection, you’d not only require the SSN at the polls, you’d require fingerprints and a retinal scan, as well.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves; first we must fix the registries.

MORE TECHNOLOGY, PLEASE:

Creating voter registries by the method just outlined would by no means end all voter fraud, but it would make it harder to commit. Also, this method would render irrelevant such things as the Motor Voter act of 1993, which is reason enough to adopt it.

So much of what Congress and the states have done in recent years has exacerbated the problems in our elections. In trying to make registration and voting easier and more convenient, they’ve made a mountain of extra work for registrars and poll workers. In short, our elected officials have actually flung open the doors to voter fraud, made it easier to commit. They’ve complicated things, but provided no means by which to ensure that our elections are right. And again, the means by which to ensure that our elections are right is technology.

As someone who has worked on computers for years, I can see absolutely no technological reason why our elections cannot have the same precision and reliability that our banking, securities, and other computer-based enterprises have. There’s nothing to keep us from having perfect elections; elections where we know what the correct vote counts are and can prove it. We just have to get up to snuff on our technology.

However, there doesn’t seem to be much will on the part of our elected officials to move toward complete computerization of our elections, nor much interest in it. It’s easy to think that our elected officials have contempt for the voter.

But regardless of whether we upgrade to a 21st century system anytime soon or not, we still need to derive our voter registries from a single centralized database. Even if all the states were to regress back to paper ballots, this reform would still be sorely needed, even more so. It would help prevent fraud, and compared to other reforms, fixes and upgrades would be much cheaper and far quicker.

Jon N. Hall is a mainframe programmer/analyst from Kansas City.

[1] David Goldstein, “Voter I.D. debate centers on pooch”, THE KANSAS CITY STAR, March 13, 2008, B2 (The pooch in question was the infamous Ritzy Mekler)

VOTERS: The Movie

2008-12-23T11:17:00.000-08:00

Caution: this page under construction

Table of Contents

ULTRACON’s articles have appeared elsewhere:

Archive at TCS Daily

Archive at American Thinker

Archive at Front Page Mag ... and ... David Horowitz's NewsRealBlog

Archive at Tenth Amendment Center

These articles appeared at GOPUSA:

The Presidential Primary System And What To Do About It
The New Electorate
The Tea Party’s Big Worry

These articles appeared at PPTO (Public Program Testing Organization):

But is it Really Insurance?
Privatization: the real "nuclear option" for Social Security (2nd article)
Privatization and the deficit
A Cold Eye on Healthcare Reform

Ultracon’s articles at STAR BUSINESS WEEKLY, put out on Tuesdays by the Kansas City Star newspaper, stay up on the Internet for only a short while. Try Lexis-Nexis.

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Jon N. Hall is a programmer/analyst from Kansas City.

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Election Fraud: Detection and Quantification

2008-12-12T11:39:00.000-08:00

By Jon N. Hall

Without the vote, Democracy is nothing. The franchise is the core of America’s system. Universal suffrage, political campaigns, casting ballots, counting votes: These are at the very center of what we as a nation are all about. It follows then that anything that thwarts the will of We the People by compromising the integrity of an election is a dagger in the heart of Democracy itself.

But some folks contend that allegations of widespread election fraud are themselves a fraud. For them, election fraud is a "myth", a “witch hunt”; like looking for “Sasquatch”. They maintain that the evidence for election fraud is “painfully skimpy”.

One little problem for these folks is the successful prosecutions—people are in jail for election fraud. Since we know election fraud occurs, the question should be: How prevalent is it? But nobody knows the answer to that, and for reasons that will become “painfully” clear.

So, how would you go about demonstrating the true size of our election fraud problem? Here’s just some of what you would have to do:

To begin with, you would need to verify voter eligibility. Yes, this was supposed to have been done when folks registered. But voter registries throughout America carry listings for those who are NOT eligible, including pets, literary characters, and illegal aliens. But not only do we have registrations created by fraud, we also have registrations due to error and to election officials simply not getting all their work done on time. By which I mean the failure to purge those who have died, become incapacitated, moved to another state, or become ineligible due to felony conviction. Some registries even have more registrants than residents of voting age.

So here at the very outset of your task you run into a major snag: The means by which you must prove your claims, the registries, are what we in the data processing profession would call “corrupted”, i.e. bad data, unusable data. But wait, it gets better.

Not only must you verify the eligibility of the registrants on each registry, you must show that each registrant is registered on no other registry. So for each registrant you’d need to look at all the other registries—in the nation. Multiple registrations, such as those for Faye Buis-Ewing, make it possible for a voter not only to vote for a presidential candidate more than once, but also to vote for several senators and representatives, and ballot propositions and initiatives in several states, and so on. They can do this by means of absentee and provisional ballots.

Because the voter registries are corrupted, you’d have to do what the registrars should have done in the first place: You’d have to register everybody—again. And this will be one very difficult chore, as so many states operate on the honor system. For example, to vote in America one must be a citizen; but only one state, Arizona, requires proof of citizenship to register. So you’ll need to go well beyond the “trust but [don’t] verify” standards of the states to determine if a registrant is a foreign student, a foreign tourist, a foreign jihadist, or just your garden-variety illegal alien.

So you’ll need to contact the registrants. This happened to me here in Missouri when the Jackson County Board of Election Commissioners, pursuant to the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, asked for the last four digits of my social security number (despite my regular voting in the same precinct for 10 years). The 4 digits were to be used to triangulate with other info, such as name. But since you’re trying to detect all fraud, the better route is to get the registrants’ full social security numbers and then look them up on the social security administration’s database, where you’ll find birth dates, as well.

And why must you go through all this rigmarole? It’s those iffy registries. The voter registries can’t be trusted because the registrars are forbidden to ask for the documents that would confirm a registrant’s U.S. citizenship. (Sí, Se Puede, indeed.)

Even when you’ve identified the legitimate registrations, you’ll still have lots of work ahead of you. For it isn’t registrations that do the electing, it’s ballots. So you’ll be moving on to the next phase of your project: an examination of the elections for which the registries were created. (Are we having fun yet?)

If more ballots had been cast than there were registrants, anyone could infer that fraud has occurred. You, however, are armed with your corrected voter registries, and are thereby able to detect which unlawful registrations were used to vote. So you’ll examine the “signature rosters” to see if someone signed in using one of the unlawful registrations you identified. Your corrected registries allow you to quantify voter fraud. But how voter fraudsters affected the vote counts would be quite beyond anyone’s capabilities. This is because of another snag: There's nothing on the ballots to link them to the voters who cast them. Consequently, the vote counts can’t be corrected.

(NOTE: To protect the integrity of the vote counts, voter fraud must be detected when the voter is checking in at the polls, before he’s given a ballot. To apprehend unlawful voters, we must catch them in the act (in flagrante delicto), or not catch them at all. The means by which we can catch them is the registry. Which means the vetting of registrants must be completed by Election Day. Afterwards is too late. So if we’re really serious about nabbing voter fraudsters, Election Day becomes one giant nationwide dragnet or sting operation, rather than the spirited celebration of Freedom it was meant to be.)

But it’s not only registrants and voters who commit election fraud; poll workers and other election functionaries can commit it, as well. So it wouldn’t be enough to just examine the tallies and signature rosters after elections, you’d need to be an election observer, too, so you could check out any hanky-panky on the part of election officials. Which means you’d be conducting your fraud detection right alongside the poll workers conducting the election, bringing into play the observer effect (not to be confused with the Uncertainty Principle). Also, if there were a recount, you’d need to observe that, too. But would the authorities allow such intrusions into their elections?

There are 3 types of election fraud: registration fraud, voter fraud, and other. This last phase of your project—observing elections and recounts—falls under type 3, and it is murky and does not lend itself to definitive answers. Unlike registration and voting, where there’s a surefire means to establish eligibility and detect fraud—if only the government would use it—shenanigans by poll workers can go undetected. Because you verified the registrants earlier in your project, you will be able to verify those mysterious ballots found in the trunk of a car. But will you be able to prove that some poll worker created them? We’re not expecting you to prove a negative, so we can’t expect you to completely resolve the question of poll worker and recount fraud. But this is an arena of election fraud, so try you must.

Since election law is a state matter and procedures and hardware vary from state to state, you would need to conduct your election fraud detection project in all 50 states.

So far we’ve only been talking about “regular voters”, those who trek to the polls on Election Day to vote. But after vetting Election Day voting, you would enter a new phase of your project; vetting what is perhaps the biggest factor in voter fraud: the absentee and provisional ballots. You’d also need to “scrub” the registries for those who had died or become otherwise ineligible after the cut-off date when the registrars stopped taking applications, and see if those registrations had been used to vote. And then there’s always the possibility of a recount, which could go on for weeks and involve whole armies of “counters”. But Inauguration Day is fast approaching and we need to get this election decided—so if you could just step aside while we count these votes, thank you.

The above is only a taste of what your project would entail. And notice that we don’t really get into the logistics and the nitty-gritty of how any of the above tasks would be accomplished. We’ll leave that to you.

Now, given the enormity of your project, do you think you’d be able to complete it? Would you even be willing to undertake it?

Debates about how much election fraud occurred in this or that election are just so much jibber-jabber. It’s all speculation, as silly as trying to divine the intent of a voter from a dimpled, hanging or pregnant chad. And it’s a national embarrassment. If the amount of fraud is anything other than zero, then it is uncertain, indeterminate. Given our current systems, the exact size of election fraud is unknowable. So if we don’t know how much fraud was perpetrated, then we don’t know what the correct vote counts were, either. And in contests like Minnesota’s still-undecided 2008 race for U.S. Senate, any fraud at all can swing an election.

If the detection and quantification of election fraud isn’t doable with our current systems, then what we should be trying to do in These United States is create systems that will make election fraud as impossible to commit as we can. That, or give up on Democracy.

(This writer has tried to devise systems that would make it far harder to commit election fraud. You can read about them HERE, HERE and HERE.)

Jon N. Hall is a mainframe programmer/analyst from Kansas City.

Votes: Accounting for the Counting

2008-11-21T12:43:00.000-08:00

By Jon N. Hall

Of all the problematic American elections in recent years, the 2004 gubernatorial election in the state of Washington is the clear winner in the fraud category.

What makes that election stand out is not just that it was probably stolen, but rather the volume and sheer audacity of its irregularities. The loser, Dino Rossi, won 2 of the 3 vote counts, and won the count with the widest margin, 261. But no one knows what the lawful correct vote count was, nor can anyone demonstrate it.

That, however, can be said of just about every American election ever held. So, why can’t we know the correct vote counts in our elections? Here are the 2 main reasons:

Reason #2: There is no “linkage” between the voter and his ballot. Which is to say, there is nothing ON a ballot to tie it to the voter who cast it.

Now, folks will say that’s the way it has to be because of the right to a “secret ballot”. OK, but what that means for our elections is: The vote counts aren’t correctible.

The lack of “linkage” between voter and ballot means that when an election official knows that an unlawful registration has been used to cast a ballot, he cannot then identify that fraudulent ballot so that he can subtract its votes from the vote totals. What he will most likely do is just let the election stand, warts and all, even though the votes of legitimate voters will have been canceled out by the fraudulent votes.

Some pooh-pooh the idea that voter fraud is a problem in America. But in contests with exceedingly close margins, like that 2004 election in Washington, any fraud at all can tip the outcome. Take Unity, New Hampshire, where Obama and Clinton each received 107 votes. If you can’t back out the fraudulent ballots, then you can’t know the correct vote counts. And therefore in close elections you can’t know the winner.

So what we have here is a head-on collision of 2 fundamental rights: The right to a secret ballot versus the right to a fair election, where only legitimate votes are counted. For me, the interest of fair elections trumps the right to a secret ballot.

However, if “linkage” cannot pass constitutional muster, then it is incumbent upon Congress to make fraud as close to impossible to commit as they possibly can. If we aren’t going to be able to back out fraud that has been committed, then we must do everything we can to prevent fraud from happening in the first place. Which means we must fix the “front end” of our election systems. And that brings us to the other reason why we can’t know what the correct vote counts are:

Reason #1: America’s voter registries are unreliable.

But no registry on this earth can be totally correct—at least not for long. That’s because eligible voters become ineligible—they die, slip into comas, become felons, become incapacitated, etc. The finalization of a voter registry doesn’t stop any of this.

So there is always a “lag” between changes in eligibility and when those changes get reflected in a voter registry. The “lag” means that even at the moment of its finalization, a registry can already be out of date, as changes that have already happened may not yet have been reported. Even if a registry were online and could be updated during the voting on Election Day, it would still be impossible to keep up with the march of change.

Bottom line: Regardless of how carefully engineered a voter registry might be, almost invariably there will be more folks on it than there should be.

Of course, after an election we could “scrub” the registries to account for changes in eligibility. For instance, an election official could read the obituaries and create a list of recent deaths. Then he could look at the signature rosters to see if anyone had signed in using the registrations of those recent decedents. That would allow him to detect fraud, but it would do nothing about correcting the vote counts. To adjust the vote counts—perhaps changing the winners—would require the aforementioned “linkage”.

But, if the Constitution forbids “linkage”—forbids us, say, to put a unique identifier on the voter’s ballot and his signature roster entry—then I’m afraid this situation where we can’t back out fraudulent votes and correct the counts is going to persist.

So far, we’ve only been considering the voter fraud that comes to light because of public announcements, such things as deaths and felony convictions. (Again, if “linkage” were allowed we could fix this type of fraud.) But there is a 2nd category of voter fraud that we wouldn’t be able to fix even if we had “linkage”, and that’s because we wouldn’t even know it’s happened.

This undetectable fraud is due to people who should never have been registered—but were. If, say, a foreign student or an illegal alien manages to get on a voter registry and then actually votes, the chances are it’ll never be detected. Unlike the 1st type where we have a tip-off from public notices, we must go looking for the 2nd type of fraud. And that would be one monumental chore, as you’d need to vet each and every voter, essentially re-registering them. And this is all due to the failure of registrars to fully vet registrants. (Currently, only one state, Arizona, requires proof of citizenship to register.)

Since the 2nd type of voter fraud is undetectable, the extent of it is unknowable.

This sorry state of affairs is why fixing our voter registries should be the first order of business in any serious election reform.

Recently, representatives of ACORN—the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now—have downplayed the significance of the problems in their registration drives. They say it’s only a registration problem, NOT actual voter fraud. But once an ineligible gets on a voter registry, the game is up—all the ineligible need do is show his ID and off to the voting booth he goes. Mail-in voting can be even simpler.

Voter registries are the gateway to voting. Fix voter registries, and whole species of voter fraud become extinct.

The good news is: We have the means to fix voter registration so that the 2nd type of voter fraud can’t happen. That is, we have the means to keep those who aren’t eligible OFF our voter registries. (I’m talking about those who register fraudulently, not those whose registrations should have been purged, like decedents.) Also, we can easily ensure that citizens aren’t doubly registered. All we have to do is adopt my plan. Its features:

ALL eligible U.S. citizens will be registered
ONLY U.S. citizens will be registered
Each U.S. citizen will be registered in ONE state only
Automatic registration—citizens needn’t do anything to be registered
Voting won’t require a photo ID
The maintenance of voter registries will entail much less work

If I do say so myself, my method of establishing voter registries may be the cleanest, quickest, cheapest and most correct method out there. And not only that, it puts the voter registration arm of ACORN and similar outfits out of business.

Nonetheless, there may well be resistance to it. Not from the voters, they’ll love it, but from the professionals. I’m talking about the little empires of the secretaries of state and the election boards. My plan won’t make them obsolete, but it will diminish their duties. They will no longer be in charge of maintaining the registries. Instead, they will receive a pristine new registry before each election. The professionals would, however, retain the responsibility for purging those who had become ineligible. But with fewer duties, they’ll be able to devote more time to that chore.

You can read my plan HERE.

Jon N. Hall is a mainframe programmer/analyst from Kansas City.