So a year later after the floods came we have the Department of Labor only still giving out half of the money it promised to give?  What a bunch of cheapskates!  Ok, first of all this is unconstitiutional.  The Constitution gives no authority for the federal government to disperse disaster relief.  But secondly, aren’t these people back on their feet yet?  It has been a year.  You know, in a free market the damage would have been fixed by now.  This sounds more like the Soviet Union where everything in disrepair stays in disrepair.  Some of the money went to “provide temporary  work” for people affected.  Well, isn’t that just the government for ya!  Another make-work project.

Look, if the “temporary work” they were doing was anything that the free markets demanded the government would not need to provide money to get them these jobs.  And they say there is no where to cut spending in the federal budget?  I can think of $16 + million …

On top of that, the DoL released a wheelbarrow full of money, two million dollars, for 1,175 workers in North Carolina.  Why?  Well, to pay for “partial premium payments for health insurance coverage”.  Gee, must be nice to have big daddy government help you pay your bills huh?  Exactly where in the Constitution is this sort of expenditure allowed again?

And people wonder why we are over $15 trillion dollars in debt?

The payroll tax, paid half by the worker and half by the worker’s employer, funds unconstitutional spending; Social Security and Medicare.  The Tea Party formed based on a hate for the unconstitutional actions coming out of Washington.  Thus, we are certainly not against the cut.  In fact, any true Tea Partier would be for a complete cut in the tax down to 0% rather than just a 2% cut.  That would put 6.2% back in the paychecks of workers and 6.2% back in the accounts of businesses per worker which would be a win/win for the economy.

But what about Social Security and Medicare and those who foolishly believed the government should take care of them in their old age?  Well, I hope they were nice to their children.  That would be the first line of responsibility.  If not there are thousands of charities and there is always GASP the church to turn to.  Sound mean?  It’s called freedom and restoring our government to its constitutional bounds.

Hey, reality sucks.  And if you ignore it long enough it jumps up and smacks you in the nose.  Ignore that punch in the nose and you become just like the ex-Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, Greece, Italy or one of the many failed socialist “utopias” around the world.

Yesterday the Department announced that it was granting 180 “special” workers in Massachusetts $992,000 (a whopping $5,511.11 each!) for “re-training and re-employment services to speed their transition to new jobs in growing local industries”.  In other words, these workers are so inept and unskilled that they have no tallents to offer anyone except their previous employer, Solo Cup?  Wow, talk about the bottom of the barrel!  No wonder they are currently unemployed!

You mean to tell me that these poor souls seriously have no tallents that can be cross applied to other industries already?  Nothing at all?  What were these people doing?  Watching the paint dry and getting paid for it?

Bet you would love to get $5,500 worth of retraining services for free when you get laid off wouldn’t you?  This sounds more like a political bribe, and a very expensive one at that, designed to shore up votes for the President in this very liberal state for next year’s elections.  If you ask me.  I can see the campaign ad now! ”Sure liberalism crashed the economy … but liberalism also paid for you to be unemployed.”

And the day before yesterday, the Department of Labor was again playing Santa Clause when it chose to send a $1,424,500 National Emergency Grant to 1,100 laid off workers in Louisiana for the same reason.  These workers are less “special” than the ones in Massachusetts, getting only $1,295 a head to help them gain skills that would make an employer want to hire them.  Again, skills which it is amazing they do not already have.

Sure must be great to be in the favor of the Nanny State.  Meanwhile those of us who are working an paying the taxes are footing the bill.  And if there is not enough tax revenue to cover the bill?  Well, that is ok.  The government will put our children into hock to borrow the money.

And where exactly in our Constitution, you know, the Supreme Law of the Land, is our government given permission to pay for such services for the unemployed?  There isn’t any such authority.  But we went through the guardrails of our foudning documents so long ago what’s another couple million spent in pursuit of left wing social policy now?  Right?

But year after year, bureaucrats, politicians and petty tyrants of all stripes at all levels of government think that they are not held to these clear standards.  One of the most common offenders are Home Owner’s Associations.  These governmental bodies think they can do what ever they want, when ever they want.  Just like this one in my home town of Pittsburgh.

These associations often try to over regulate the members of the community and, to be honest, the members of the community have no one to blame for this but themselves.  The abuse of these associations is well documented and anyone that moves into one of them is more than partially to blame.  When my wife and I were looking for our new home a decade ago, we walked away from several properties without even looking at them when I ask and was told they were part of a Home Owners Association.

Steven Vasko and his family face a $4,000 fine and have had their property stolen from their own home because the association reference above did not like the fact that they were practicing their religion, which includes displaying religious symbols in a way that does not interfere with anyone else’s rights.  The association came on their property and swiped a 150 lb statue of the Virgin Mary and the Vasko’s have been bared from parking on their own property.  So much for private property rights huh?  The association says the Vasko’s are violating their contract which prohibits such displays and this gives them the right to act like this.

Now, the common excuse from non-thinkers is that the home owner’s association is in the right because the Vasko’s are violating a signed contract.  But the truth is that no one can sign away their rights.  Those rights are inalienable, meaning they cannot be granted OR taken by man.  So any contract which is signed that requires such is null and void in whole baring a servability clause which would allow the rest of the provisions to stand.

Non-thinkers confronted by this truth then fall back on the equally specious argument of the Vaskos just have to practice their religion in accordance with the rules.  Again, wrong because freedom of religion is just that; the freedom to practice one’s religion, including proselytizing that religion in a manner each individual sees fit and which does not impede anyone else’s rights.

If this were truly America as it was designed to be, these petty tyrants would be ordered by the courts to redress this greivence, return the statue, drop the fines and be tossed into a prison cell for a week or two to teach them a lesson.  If the courts would not do this, these tyrants would be tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail and shunned from entering any other town that valued their liberties.  Of course, if this was really America as it was meant to be, these sorts of tyrants would not exist at all.

The case is a lose lose issue for President Obama.  Yes, I know that the President pushed for a speedy resolution through the courts because he wants to see the law upheld.  But this, let us remember, is a man who has such a loose grasp on reality and the Supreme Law of the Land that he will believe anything he sets his mind to believing.

Let’s explore why Obama loses no matter what happens.

First, lets say that someone like a Kennedy decides to side with the liberal bloc of the court (Sotomayor, Ginsburg, Breyer and Kagan) and upholds the law.  With somewhere around 60% of Americans seeing the law as overbearing and not wanting it, in such an instance the odds of Americans rushing to the polls to kick out Obama and Democrats from Congress in droves is not only likely, but probable.  If the Supreme Court upholds Obamacare only repealing it gets rid of it and that will not happen, Americans know, with Democrats in any position of power anywhere near Washington, D.C.  What is President Obama going to appeal to voters with to stop them?  The booming economy his policies have brought?  Oh … wait … never mind on that!

Now let us look at the alternative.  The Supreme Court votes down Obamacare on a 5-4 vote with the left wing bloc of Justices stammering out a poorly researched dissent.  Now President Obama has not a single achievement to run on.  Again, it is not like he can fall back on a booming economy or anything like that so why would voters be interested in voting for him.  Plus, they know if they reelect him he will just have more schemes like Obamacare that he will want to pimp.

It doesn’t look good.  There’s a rock and a hard place.  And Obama is stuck between them.

If the federal government can tell us to buy health insurance, and remember, they already force American workers to, just for working, purchase into a national retirement ponzi scheme, then what is next? Can they force us to buy a car? Maybe an electric one? A house? Perhaps a solar powered one? A new suit or Sunday dress? Maybe one constructed out of 100% recycled materials?

All the government, if we are to believe liberals, would have to do is claim that in forcing us to do any of these things us doing said things would abate a national crisis of some sort or other. That slope is too slippery. And of course it is at its most basic just downright and fundamentally flawed.