Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Fifteen Reasons to Abolish the U.S. Federal Minimum Wage Law



1. The federal minimum wage law is administered through the use and threat of coercive force and taxation – a euphemism for “theft” – rather than through the use of incentive, reward, encouragement, and voluntarism.

2. The rate and the value of the minimum wage are set by coercive statist government, rather than by the average going subjective free-market values of entry-level labor and currencies.

3. The increase of the minimum wage can be justified by citing the need for the federal government to extract more in personal income taxes from working citizens.

4. The increase of the minimum wage can be justified by citing the need for labor unions – which, where they exist, almost always wield an exclusive monopoly in the representation of workers to management – to extract more in dues payments from working union members.

5. The minimum wage law constitutes an undue financial strain on producers, managers, employers, and payroll departments; all other things remaining constant, increases in the minimum wage may contribute to any or all of the following problems: mass layoffs, decreases in profitability and the ability to invest capital, declines in the quality of the services or products, declines in workplace safety and other conditions, and declines in employee benefits.

6. The increase of the minimum wage is a major factor contributing to inflation.

7. The inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage peaked in 1968, and it only increases one out of every four years.

8. The inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage decreased by 20% from 1997 to 2006, and 27% from 1981 to 1989.

9. When the rate and value of the minimum wage do actually increase, the only individuals who benefit are those who are already employed.

10. Increases of the minimum wage cause increases in unemployment by making it more difficult for the unemployed to justify such an inflated wage.

11. An inflated minimum wage makes it more difficult for those who lack education, specialized skill sets, and job training and experience to justify such a wage, creating a barrier for the entry of young people, people without advanced degrees, and the disadvantaged and impoverished into the labor market, and it entrenches the socioeconomic privilege of the well-educated, those with specialized skill sets, those with employment experience, the middle class, and adults in general.

12. An inflated minimum wage makes it more difficult for those who lack proficiency in English to become employed, and entrenches the socioeconomic privilege of those who speak English fluently.

13. A standard minimum wage fails to account for the differences in the standards of living wages and conditions across the various cultural, national, ethnic, and racial groups; this tends to cause competition between members of such groups, thereby breeding resentment, which undermines the international solidarity of the working class.

14. The enforcement of the minimum wage law contributes to the increased marginalization and legal risks of undocumented foreign-born workers who are content to earn less than the minimum wage; this tends to breed resentment – as well as, occasionally, a secret and confused jealousy – in and among those who have come to feel a sense of entitlement to receive “a decent wage” due to their obedience of the law and their native-born status.

15. The federal minimum wage law is obligatory neither on the states, nor on the companies and agencies which are granted exemptions from it.



Post-Script, Written on January 24th, 2016:

            Raising the minimum wage is unnecessary, and only serves to fuel the cycle of price inflation. Instead of raising the minimum wage, let’s keep the minimum wage where it is, or lower it, or just get rid of minimum wage laws entirely. Let’s do this so that we can achieve full employment; abolish the Federal Reserve and fractional reserve banking, so that our currency – and, by extension, our earnings – is actually worth something; lower government spending so that people don’t have to pay such high taxes on the little money that they do earn; and tax landlords who abuse and neglect their property, so that the rents aren’t so damn high.


Originally Written in November 2011

Post-Script Written on January 24th, 2016

Edited on January 2nd and 26th, 2016





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Sunday, October 30, 2011

The Business Cycle Under Globalism, the Free Market, and Protectionism

Published on October 30th, 2011
Edited in late July 2015







For more entries on banking, the treasury, currency, inflation, and business, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/response-to-campaign-for-liberty.html

For more entries on enterprise, business, business alliance, and markets, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/enlightened-catallaxy-reciprocally.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/agorist-protection-agencies-and.html

For more entries on free trade, fair trade, the balance of trade, and protectionism, please visit:
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Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Occupy Madison Flyer


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Monday, October 10, 2011

The Pay-Gap Tax

The Accelerated Graduated Income Ratio Tax Act of 2013 (A.G.I.R.T.A.)


The Accelerated Graduated Income Ratio Tax (A.G.I.R.T.; a/k/a "the Pay-Gap Tax") taxes individuals’ personal income in proportion to the salary of the highest-paid employee of a company divided by the annual income of the average employee of the same company. The tax also takes into account government spending divided by gross domestic product, as well as the average C.E.O.-to-average-worker pay gap in the country.
      Implemented properly, the Pay-Gap Tax replaces the entire tax code of any given government of which it becomes law. The Pay-Gap Tax does not permit deficit spending (if and when administered in conjunction with a Balanced Budget Amendment and / or a Cut, Cap, and Balance law).
      The Pay-Gap Tax has no bracket system, nor exemptions; it is a simple mathematical formula that applies to everyone, and it can be explained through a simple step-by-step process which can be performed on an internet search engine calculator.


How One’s Taxes Are Calculated





How One’s Taxes Are Calculated

      The taxpayer takes the following steps to determine how much he pays in taxes. First, he divides the salary of the highest-paid employee of the company which employs him by the average annual income of the employees of that company. Second, he applies that figure as the degree of the root of the annual government spending as a fraction of the gross domestic product (this figure is provided by the government). Third, he takes the inverse of this result (meaning that he divides 1 by the result). Fourth, he multiplies the result of this calculation to the power of the average C.E.O.-to-average-worker pay-gap ratio (another figure which would be provided by the government).
      While the Pay-Gap Tax - in conjunction with any type of properly-enforced balanced-budget rule - would never permit deficit spending, it ignores the debt that governments already have. So that the Pay-Gap Tax properly serves governments which have accumulated debt, I would recommend that the result of the formula described above be simply multiplied by some fixed or variable amount. This number would take into account how quickly the government would find it appropriate to pay off its debt, as well as the rate of economic growth and the rate of the increase in government spending.



An Example of How the Tax Would Be Applied

      As an example, under this plan, the C.E.O. of Viacom (who - as the highest-paid C.E.O. in the United States - earns over $85 million a year, which is about 1200 times as much as his average employee) would pay about 70% of his taxes to the federal, state, and local governments (combined) which have jurisdiction over his residency or workplace. After taxes, he would take home more than $25 million a year, which he would be able to spend, save, and re-invest.
      Meanwhile, employees of Viacom earning less than the average worker in that company, all other U.S. workers earning less than the pay of their average co-worker, and all workers in egalitarian-pay workplaces (including managers) would pay nothing in taxes. Non-taxpaying workers would continue to comprise a solid basis for the creation of wealth (without which high-paid C.E.O.s would not exist), while reaping their fair share of the benefits of adequately-funded government.



Purposes and Effects

      The Pay-Gap Tax strikes at the root of the disproportionate exploitation of labor by management (such disproportionate exploitation being that which gives capitalism and the free market negative connotations). It solves the utilitarian dilemma of the increase of marginal returns by imposing a tax that diminishes marginal return (simply, by creating a disincentive) for each decision by a business manager to increase profitability for himself and his other relatively well-paid cohorts at the expense of workers.
      The Pay-Gap Tax catalyzes socioeconomic mobility because its graduation rate accelerates (rather than decelerating or stagnating), meaning that there are no barriers preventing the middle-class or the lower upper-class from earning more wealth (as long as that wealth is not earned through the disproportionate exploitation of labor.
      The Pay-Gap Tax – while not being overtly redistributive – effectively redistributes the wealth for management by governments (and by citizens participating in their government processes), that wealth being distributed to citizens in the form of the provision of government services.
      The Pay-Gap Tax is based on levels of governments’ projected spending rather than on their actual budgets, making huge deficits and the indebting of citizens en masse things of the past.



Refutation of Anticipated Criticism

      The proposition of the Pay-Gap Tax will likely draw criticism from Green Party supporters, socialists, and populist and progressive Democrats who would like to see an increase in the outright tax on income, such as the 90% federal tax rate on personal incomes which were levied from the late 1930s until the early 1960s.
      Against such criticism, I would argue that the general earning of wealth through the reasonable exploitation of labor does not negatively impact socioeconomic mobility in any manner similar to the manner in which does the disparity of wealth and pay within whatever given business; that is, to the earning of wealth at the expense of vulnerable individuals who need employment and have no ability to significantly affect the decisions made in their employing companies' payroll departments.
      The proposition of Pay-Gap Tax will likely draw criticism from libertarians and Tea-Party conservatives who oppose the 16th Amendment and its legalization of unapportioned federal taxes.
      Against such criticism, I would argue that unless one advocates abolition of each of the five types of taxes currently collected from the public by the I.R.S. (the personal income tax, employment taxes, the corporate income tax, excise taxes, and transfer taxes such as the gift tax and the estate tax [also referred to as the inheritance tax or the death tax] ) – none of which are apportioned according to population - then one has no basis from which to judge any tax as relying upon the constitutionality of the 16th Amendment.
      In addition to these five types, I would describe as unapportioned - and therefore, in violation of a strict construction of the Constitution - all four of the following proposed methods of collecting federal government revenue: the FairTax on incomes, the Flat Tax on incomes, the National Sales Tax (also known as the Value-Added Tax, or V.A.T.), and the idea of user fees for government services (which is not a tax policy, but a taxless source of government revenue). I also believe that taxes on real and personal property should not be regarded as direct or apportioned.
      There are only two possible tax policies which I believe would satisfy the conditions necessary to be described as truly direct. The first policy is capitation, which I feel would only be acceptable as a direct tax if each person were charged exactly the same amount.  But being that some people have no money, that other people are in debt, and that many people would like to see their government behave as a charity organization which provides services for those who cannot afford them but promise loyalty to government in exchange for some benefit, it would be impossible to impose an equal capitation on everybody. That is, unless that capitation were zero and all government services were provided through volunteer means.



      This brings me to the second possible direct tax policy, which is no taxation at all. I feel that the prospect of administering all government services through volunteer means is a far-off notion, and that it would only be possible if and when the sphere of the provision of services by government were significantly reduced, decentralized, and personalized, and if and when governments become required to compete fairly with private enterprises providing similar services in a free market.
      Therefore, I believe that until that day comes, libertarians who care about balanced budgets and the fiscal solvency of government even one bit more than they value a strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution should seriously reconsider the validity of the purpose of the 16th Amendment.
      As it can be argued that the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified, I contend that - as one of many necessary means to ensure that Pay-Gap Tax would be constitutional - the 16th Amendment should be deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, and that the Congress should propose and properly ratify the exact text of the amendment. This would provide that the collection of federal tax revenue according to income in a manner that is not apportioned according to Census results be indisputably constitutional, and it would (while – unfortunately – also legitimizing the eleven indirect methods of collecting federal revenue which I previously outlined) help to legitimize and defend the proposed Pay-Gap Tax.
      So that the Pay-Gap Tax may be best defended, it will help to revisit and rethink our philosophy of government; with regard to its role in economics in particular. We will leave aside the most important principles of a government that embraces liberty, given the complexity of the details of when and how the institution of government is legitimate in the first place (suffice it to say that it involves voluntary participation, the ability to revoke consent, and consistency with the traditions of common contract law).
      Second to these principles, the next most important principle of a government which embraces liberty is the localistic principle. That being said, I regard municipal public planning departments – when and if they are instituted legitimately – as the basic units of government. A public planning department decides who and what exist inside the territory which is deemed to be subject to its jurisdiction, and it decides when, whether, and under what conditions people and businesses existing in that territory but not wishing to contribute to their neighbors continue to live in the community and to reap the benefits of its protection.
      What I am asserting is that public planning departments are private mutual insurance-and-protection corporations which have the right to discriminate against individuals and businesses which would like to use their services.



      As such - being that it would be ridiculous for a business to set up shop in the middle of a desolate, abandoned field which is miles away from public services such as roads, due to the fact that businesses prosper best when they are conveniently located within reasonable distances of areas occupied by concentrated populations of people – if a business would like to begin operation within the boundaries of a territory over which jurisdiction is claimed by some public planning department, not only does the public planning department have the right to negotiate with the business about the conditions under which it may operate within the territory, but – additionally – the public planning department has the final say on the matter, even if that say is that the business may not operate within the territory.
      The result of affecting these principles in conjunction with the proposed Pay-Gap Tax would be that businesses intent on maximizing profit, marketing effectively, and staffing their operations fully would be willing to accept the conditions imposed by the public planning departments exercising jurisdiction over the territories in which such businesses would seek to operate. I believe that to adopt this philosophy of government would be sufficient to defend the A.G.I.R.T. Act, both in general and – especially – as conducive to the free market.
      In the event that C.E.O.s, highly-paid members of corporate boards, and individuals earning more than the pay of their average co-workers begin to relocate their residences and their places of business to desolate, abandoned fields – and to pay exorbitant amounts to have private, non-subsidized, extra-governmental services such as water, liquid and solid waste disposal, fire protection, and protection and security provision – installed in their homes and / or delivered to themselves and their businesses – A.G.I.R.T.A. may have to be amended to require that the taxes be levied according to where income is earned rather than where the individual earning the income resides.
      Another flaw of the Pay-Gap Tax is that it would give governments a simple tool to raise taxes to unjustifiable levels and / or to pay off the debt too rapidly; it could be derided as a so-called "tax pipeline". I would argue that I believe this impulse would be controlled by the political process, but only to the extent to which the public would be aware of the necessity of reviving the economy in a manner that allows a deliberate consideration of the needs of both the stability in economic growth and the timeliness of debt service.



Ensuring Effectiveness

      In order to ensure the maximum effectiveness of A.G.I.R.T.A., citizens should elect representatives who promise to vote to support the S.E.C. Transparency Act of 2010 (H.R. 5970) – which would repeal the amendments made by section 929I of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act relating to the confidentiality of materials submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
      For the same reason, citizens should also elect representatives who promise to vote to ensure that section 953(b) of Dodd-Frank – which requires the Securities and Exchange Commission to adopt rules mandating the disclosure of the median of the annual total compensation of all employees and the ratio of C.E.O. compensation to median employee compensation – remains law.





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Wednesday, September 14, 2011

The Spooner Amendment

 
The Spooner Amendment



The following is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution. Its purpose is to put into practice principles which were endorsed by Reconstruction-era author Lysander Spooner in his 1867 essay “No Treason”.



Section 1.
      Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, according to the whole numbers of citizens in each State.
Section 2.
      All elections to federal, state, county, and municipal public offices shall be conducted through open ballot voting, wherein the evidence of the candidate or candidates for whom each participant in an election voted is open to public scrutiny.
Section 3.
      The Senators and Representatives, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution, and the Oaths and Affirmations before mentioned shall be written, signed, sealed, delivered to, and witnessed and acknowledged by the persons who elected them, or their servants, attorneys, or Representatives, under penalty of forfeiture of salary, removal from office, and revocation of citizenship of public officers, and of revocation of citizenship of voting citizens.
Section 4.
      For having been party to the proceedings of elections, or to assumptions to and execution of the duties of public office, which shall have occurred prior to the enactment of this legislation, and in a manner which is inconsistent with the processes required by Sections 1, 2, and 3 of this legislation, no person shall be held to answer to a charge of any criminal or civil offense.
Section 5.
      The Senators and Representatives shall not be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance of the Session of their respective Houses, nor in going to nor returning from the same, and in addition to any Speech or Debate in either House, they may be questioned in any other Place.
Section 6.
The Congress shall make no law prohibiting any person from questioning, contesting, disputing, or doubting the validity of the public debt of the United States.
Section 7.
      The several States may enter into any Confederation.
Section 8.
      The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.



In defense of Section 2 of my proposed legislation:
In "No Treason", Lysander Spooner wrote the following on the subject of voting:
"No man can reasonably or legally be said to do such thing as assent to, or support, the Constitution, unless he does it openly and in a way to make him personally responsible for the acts of his agents, so long as they act within the limits of the power he delegates to them...
"[T]he general fact that our government is practically carried on by means of [secret ballot] voting, only proves that there is among us a secret band of robbers, tyrants, and murderers, whose purpose is to rob, enslave, and... murder, the rest of the people...
"[Secret ballot] voting furnishes no legal evidence as to who the particular individuals are (if there are any), who voluntarily support the Constitution. It therefore furnishes no legal evidence that anybody supports it voluntarily. So far, therefore, as [secret ballot] voting is concerned, the Constitution, legally speaking, has no supporters at all."
      “On general principles of law and reason, the oaths which the pretended agents of the people take [‘]to support the Constitution,[’] are of no validity or obligation… [because] …they are given to nobody. There is no privity (as the lawyers say) – that is, no mutual recognition, consent, and agreement – between those who take these oaths, and any other persons.
      “…[S]ay that, among… persons, in whose presence the oath was taken, there were [a given number of persons], who had secretly – by secret ballot, and in a way to avoid making themselves individually known to me, or to the remainder of the [people] – designated me as their agent to rule, control, plunder, and, if need be, murder these… people.
      “The fact that they had designated me secretly, and in a manner to prevent my knowing them individually, prevents all privity between them and me; and consequently makes it impossible that there can be any contract, or pledge of faith, on my part towards them; for it is impossible that I can pledge my faith, in any legal sense, to a man whom I neither know, nor have any means of knowing, individually.”
      Spooner criticizes secret-ballot voting by invoking the term “privity” (meaning a legally-recognized relation between two parties, such as that of service) as preferable to and distinct from “privacy” (meaning the state or condition of being free from public attention).
      It is precisely this freedom from public attention which is embodied in the practice of secret-ballot voting that makes that system of voting antithetical to the idea that government processes should be open to the public, and to its scrutiny.
      This is because any defense of the secret-ballot system which invokes the necessity of defending individual “privacy” rather than “privity” undermines the openness of the legitimate, voluntary social contract, whereby people make themselves individually known to one another, and the decisions which they make in the public sphere known to one another (or, at least, potentially so).
      In topics pertaining to the administration of public policy (particularly in regards to elections whereby authority is delegated), the term “privacy” is, practically, synonymous with the term “secrecy”, as has been (in some cases) the term “independence”.
      It is for these reasons that I contend that Section 2 of my proposed legislation, which mandates that "[a]ll elections to federal, state, county, and municipal public offices shall be conducted through open ballot voting, wherein the evidence of the candidate or candidates for whom each participant in an election voted is open to public scrutiny”, would – as Spooner prescribed – provide for the furnishment of legal evidence that certain individuals voluntarily support the Constitution, and that it would also make individuals personally responsible for the acts of their agents, so long as such agents act within the limits of the power delegated to them.

In defense of Section 3 of my proposed legislation:
In "No Treason", Spooner wrote the following on the subject of contracts:
"...[S]ince 1677 – there has been on the statute book of England, and the same, in substance, if not precisely in letter, has been re-enacted, and is now in force, in nearly or quite all the States of this Union, a statute, the general object of which is to declare that no action shall be brought to enforce contracts of the more important class, unless they are put in writing, and signed by the parties to be held chargeable upon them.
"...Furthermore, the law everywhere (probably) in our country, as well as in England, requires that a large class of contracts, such as wills, deeds, etc., shall not only be written and signed, but also sealed, witnessed, and acknowledged.
"...[W]e are so insane, or so wicked, as to destroy property and lives without limit, in fighting to compel men to fulfill a supposed contract, which, inasmuch as it has never been signed by anybody, is, on general principles of law and reason – such principles as we are all governed by in regard to other contracts – the merest waste of paper, binding upon nobody, fit only to be thrown into the fire; or, if preserved, preserved only to serve as a witness and a warning of the folly and wickedness of mankind."
The statute to which Spooner referred was An Act for Prevention of Frauds and Perjuries (29 Chas. 2 c. 3), a 1677 Act of the Parliament of England. The act provides that contracts of surety (also called guarantee) for another’s debt are unenforceable unless evidenced in writing.
      It is for these reasons that I contend that Section 3 of my proposed legislation, which mandates that “[t]he Senators and Representatives, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution, and the Oaths and Affirmations before mentioned shall be written, signed, sealed, delivered to, and witnessed and acknowledged by the persons who elected them, or their servants, attorneys, or Representatives, under penalty of forfeiture of salary, removal from office, and revocation of citizenship of public officers, and of revocation of citizenship of voting citizens”, would – as Spooner prescribed – provide for the furnishment of authentic evidence that a given individual has voluntarily delegated to a given public official the authority to act as his or her agent and representative.
The effect of Section 3 of my proposed legislation would be to amend Article VI, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that “[T]he Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution…”
 
In defense of Section 1 of my proposed legislation:
 To enact and enforce Sections 2 and 3 of this bill but not Section 1 would eventually cause some problems with regards to the apportionment of the U.S. House of Representatives according to the populations of the respective states.
This is because population-based political apportionment is based on the principle that political liberties and responsibilities shall be distributed according to the number of persons living within the territory over which a given government claims and exercises jurisdiction, rather than according to the number of persons whom actually voluntarily submit to such jurisdiction (and – at that – in a way that is both authentic and verifiable).
It is because population-based political apportionment is based on the assumption that it is desirable that the federal government distribute political freedoms based on the number of people available to be coerced within a given territory rather than based on the number of people actually volunteering to part with certain freedoms and liberties in exchange for the privilege to participate in the government of themselves and of their consenting compatriots.
Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution states that "[r]epresentatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."
Section 2 of Amendment XIV to the United States Constitution – which amended the aforementioned clause – states that "[r]epresentatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed."
      Being that to have either of these two laws in place while enforcing Sections 2 and 3 of my proposed legislation would cause different percentages of populations living within the territories in which governments claim and exercise jurisdiction to voluntarily consent to participate in the American governmental system operating under the authority of the Constitution, the outcome of this would be that the relative number of consenting individuals represented by the various members of the United States House of Representatives would eventually tend to vary by a wide margin – that is, to an even further degree than that to which is does currently – because some people living within the jurisdictional territorial boundaries of the United States – and of its subsidiary governments – would choose to not subject themselves to their laws.
      It is for these reasons that I have included in my proposed legislation the mandate that “[r]epresentatives shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, according to the whole numbers of citizens in each State”; i.e., citizens who are citizens because they consent to the Constitution in a manner that is voluntary, authentic, and verifiable, rather than because they begrudgingly, inauthentically, and unverifiably became citizens for the purpose of retaliating in a civil and civilized manner against the perpetrators of some secretive, aggressive act of initiatory coercion and / or expropriation.

In defense of Section 5 of my proposed legislation:
In "No Treason", Spooner wrote the following on the subject of the questioning of federal public officials:
"...[B]y the Constitution... the properties, liberties, and lives of the entire people of the United States are surrendered unreservedly into the hands of men who... shall never be [‘]questioned[‘] as to any disposal they make of them.
"...Thus the Constitution (Art. I, Sec. 6) provides that, '[f]or any speech or debate [or vote,] in either house, they [the senators and representatives] shall not be questioned in any other place.[']... this provision protects them from all responsibilities for the laws they make.
"...The Constitution also enables them to secure the execution of all their laws, by giving them power to withhold the salaries of, and to impeach and remove, all judicial and executive officers, who refuse to execute them.
"Thus the whole power of the government is in their hands, and they are made utterly irresponsible for the use they make of it. What is this but absolute, irresponsible power?... they shall never be [']questioned,[']... for violating their oaths... The right of absolute and irresponsible dominion is the right of property... The two are identical... they own us as property... they are our masters, their will is our law."
      It is for these reasons that I contend that Section 5 of my proposed legislation, which mandates that “[t]he Senators and Representatives shall not be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance of the Session of their respective Houses, nor in going to nor returning from the same, and in addition to any Speech or Debate in either House, they may be questioned in any other Place” – which would amend Article I, Section 6, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution, and also invalidate a portion of it – would, as Spooner prescribed, permit the senators and representatives to be questioned; which is to say that – just as the senators and representatives may withhold the salaries of, impeach, and remove from office judicial and executive officers – senators and representatives would be subject to the same type of "questioning" which I have just described, but by their electors – i.e., the people who voted in the elections which they won – rather than by the executive and judicial branches of government.
Additionally, I would note that such "questioning" of senators and representatives could take place immediately upon refusal of any such public official to sign a written oath in support of the Constitution, and – in pursuance of Section 3 of my proposed legislation – such “questioning” would be administered in the form of “forfeiture of salary, removal from office, and revocation of citizenship” of the offending public officer.

In defense of Section 6 of my proposed legislation:
In "No Treason", Spooner wrote the following on the subjects of taxation and debt:
"...[T]axation is made compulsory on all[;] whether they vote or not, a large proportion of those who vote, no doubt so as to prevent their own money being used against themselves; when in fact, they would have gladly abstained from voting, if they could thereby have saved themselves from taxation alone…
“To take a man's property without his consent, and then to infer his consent because he attempts, by voting, to prevent that property from being used against his injury... is... no proof at all [that he supports the Constitution].
"On general principles of law and reason, debts contracted in the name of [']the United States,['] or of [']the people of the United States,['] are of no validity. It is utterly absurd to pretend that debts... are binding upon... millions of people, when there is not a particle of legitimate evidence – such as would be required to prove a private debt – that can be produced against any one of them, that either he, or his properly authorized attorney, ever contracted to pay one cent.
"...[T]here is in existence no such firm, corporation, or association as [']the United States,['] or [']the people of the United States,['] formed by any open, written, or other authentic and voluntary contract, and having corporate property with which to pay these debts... this secret band of robbers and murderers, who were the real borrowers of this money... do not propose to pay their debts otherwise than from the proceeds of their future robberies and murders."
The full text of the first sentence of Section 4 of Amendment XIV to the United States Constitution reads, "[t]he validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."
The fragment of that sentence to which I aim to draw attention is, "[t]he validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law... shall not be questioned."
Not only did Spooner point out that, when a person is taxed against his or her will, a subsequent act of consent by that person to the so-called authority which levied the tax does not validate or confirm that person's consent retroactively; but Spooner also makes it clear that, when such a person consents to the authority of such agencies, that consent is not even legitimate because no authentic written evidence can be produced that such an act of consensual delegation of authority ever took place.
To reiterate and summarize, all government proceedings have, thus far, occurred without authentic, verifiable, written proof of consent to delegate authority, the payment of such debt is always contingent upon the future power and ability of governments to coercively extract payments from persons.
It is for these reasons that I contend that Section 6 of my proposed legislation, which mandates that “[t]he Congress shall make no law prohibiting any person from questioning, contesting, disputing, or doubting the validity of the public debt of the United States”, would ensure that no person shall be punished for questioning the validity of the public debt of the federal government.
 
      In defense of Section 7 of my proposed legislation:
      Article III Section 3 of the Constitution states, “[t]reason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”
      The statutory Act of April 30th, 1790 states, “…[i]f any person or persons, owing allegiance to the United States of America, shall levy war against them, or shall adhere to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort, such person or persons shall be adjudged guilty of treason against the United States, and shall suffer death.”
      About the Act of April 30th, 1790, Spooner wrote, “[t]he whole pith of the act lies in the words, [‘]persons owing allegiance to the United States,[’]… [i]t does not attempt to show or declare who does [‘]owe allegiance to the United States;[’] although those who passed the act… wished others to think, that allegiance was to be presumed… against all born in this country… As the Constitution professes to rest wholly on consent, no one can owe allegiance, service, obedience, or any other duty to it, or to the government created by it, except with his own consent.”
      This is what Spooner intended to imply in choosing the title of his essay, which is that no act of treason was committed in the action of the Confederate States in attempting to dissolve the political bands which had once connected them to the Union.
      The fact that the Confederate States no longer felt that the manner in which the Union interacted with them upheld the Constitution – and their revolt against the Union – embodies the revocation of consent which is implicit in the notion of legitimate delegation of authority; namely, that the administration of all governance is predicated upon the existence of consent of the governed to continue to be governed.
      The significance of this is that any and all aggression which was committed against citizens of Confederate states whom did not own slaves and / or participate in the legalistic sanctioning of their continued slavery is deemed to have been initiatory aggression – and therefore immoral, unjust, and in violation of the non-coercion principle – while violence against slave-owners and those who utilized the rule of law to officially sanction the propagation of slavery is deemed to have been moral, just, and an appropriate exercise of (what would incorrectly be described as) force.
      It is for these reasons that I have included in my proposed legislation the provision that “[t]he several States may enter into any Confederation” because Lysander Spooner’s primary reason for writing “No Treason” was to argue against slavery – and in favor of the right of the Union to demand that the Confederacy emancipate the slaves – while defending the Confederate States’ rights to secede from the Union, as an act of legitimate revocation of consent to be governed by a Constitution which was illegitimate to begin with.
      The effect of the enactment and enforcement of Section 7 of my proposed legislation would be the invalidation of Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which reads (in part), “[n]o State shall enter into any… Confederation…”.
 
In defense of Section 4 of my proposed legislation:
      I have included in this bill the mandate that “[f]or having been party to the proceedings of elections, or to assumptions to and execution of the duties of public office, which shall have occurred prior to the enactment of this legislation, and in a manner which is inconsistent with the processes required by… this legislation, no person shall be held to answer to a charge of any criminal or civil offense” because the election of the public officials who may vote on my proposed legislation – in addition to the actual voting on the bill itself – as well as the potential ratification and signing-into-law of the bill (due to there being a total lack of written evidence that any such public officials had ever been properly delegated the authority of the persons who they claim to represent) shall not have been legitimate in the first place, given the secret-ballot voting system which has been (evidently, de-facto) in place since the Constitution was written, as well as the aggressive actions which were and have been required to implement it, its subsequent amendments, and the statutes whose legitimacy is predicated upon it.
      The unfortunate significance of this concession is that my proposed legislation itself – even once it has become “law” – would never be authentic, or, indeed, truly legitimate. I also concede that the moral and legal implications of Section 4 are monstruously hypocritical and duplicitous, and I would even go so far as to conjecture that it would be vehemently criticized, opposed, disregarded, neglected, and / or ignored by Lysander Spooner himself, as well as by the vast majority of his supporters (at least those who understand contract law, and, thus, would properly interpret my proposed legislation as an apologia for Statism and for its institutions and processes).
      However – being that the very enactment and enforcement of the Constitution represented an aggressive act of initiatory force (i.e., violence) against its supposed subjects – were public officials who were to assume and execute the functions of public office to be charged, prosecuted, and punished for the offense of doing so illegitimately, the only appropriate crime with which they would be charged would be treason – which is traditionally punishable by death – and I believe that the execution of some half-a-million elected U.S. government officials and another twenty million appointed and hired civil employees would constitute a great loss of civic and governmental procedural knowledge for our society.
      Additionally – in regards to the some hundred and thirty million people who vote in the United States every year – it would be preposterous to argue that three out of every seven Americans should be arrested, charged with treason, prosecuted, and executed for participating in a process which they believe to be legitimate, but which does not conform to standards set by a British legal document which is nearly a hundred years older than is their government itself, and which is relatively obscure by the standards of the modern civic and political culture of the United States.
      Although it may ultimately prove futile to do so, I would defend this assertion by once again quoting Spooner himself: “…a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist… [h]e sees… that, if he will but use the ballot… he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave… a man’s voting under the Constitution of the United States, is not to be taken as evidence that he ever freely assented to the Constitution, even for the time being… until every man is left perfectly free to consent, or not, without thereby subjecting himself or his property to injury or trespass from others.”
      In summary, I would use this quote to defend the notion that voters and public officials should not be held responsible for their participation in the governmental system – as it stands right now – due to the fact that each of them was compelled to do so, that compulsion having been in the guises of liberty, voluntarism, and consent.

      While I can only hope that this defense of my proposed legislation will be sufficiently satisfactory to the citizens of the United States in general, and the followers of Lysander Spooner especially, I believe that unless and until this bill is passed, enacted, and enforced, the legitimacy of American government, the transparency, responsibility and accountability of the action of its agencies and its officers, and the liberty of its subjects, will remain a usurpative delusion which flies in the face of common law, contract law, and the freedom of association.



 SUMMARY

SECTION 1
Require the apportionment of the House of Representatives by the number of citizens (not denizens) in each State
[Amending Section 2 of Amendment XIV to the U.S. Constitution;
which itself amended Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution].

SECTION 2
Permit the public scrutiny of the evidence of voting results for elections of candidates in all jurisdictions.

SECTION 3
Require that the oaths of public officials to support the Constitution be written, signed, sealed, delivered, witnesses, and acknowledged
[Extrapolating the contract-law-relevant English Act for Prevention of Frauds and Perjuries as applicable to U.S. common law; amending Article VI, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution].

SECTION 4
Immunize public officials from criminal and civil prosecution for having governed without written evidence of having been elected and having signed an oath to support the Constitution.

SECTION 5
Completely revoke U.S. Senators’ and U.S. Representatives’ privilege from arrest
[Amending Article I, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution].

SECTION 6
Legalize the questioning of the validity of the public debt
[Invalidating Section 4 of Amendment XIV to the U.S. Constitution].

SECTION 7
Permit the States to enter into confederations
[Invalidating a portion of Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution].

SECTION 8
Empower the Congress to enforce the provisions of this article by appropriate legislation.




For more entries on elections and campaign finance, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/why-voting-is-not-necessarily-evil.html

For more entries on government secrecy and N.S.A. surveillance, please visit:
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