"Equal Protection Under the Law," Today

A long held concept embodied throughout the history of American jurisprudence and the very formulation of our nation's founding documents, and their underlying philosophy called: "Natural Law," is that of equal protection under the law. Yet, today, as a means of either rewarding or punishing, encouraging or discouraging, certain groups, businesses, associations, lobbyists, or individual social or economic behavior, this idea has been turned on its head and seems totally absent from the very government our Founders created to protect our Rights from infringement and/or unequal protection.

Whether it is the unlawful actions by the Justice Department charged under the Executive Branch to enforce the laws Congress writes, yet broke them via the "Fast and Furious" program shipping firearms procured within our borders to known Mexican drug cartels absent any "tracking" with the full knowledge they would be used for heinous purposes in the commission of crimes up to and including murder which they were in hundreds of cases south of the border and at least one case - on Federal Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry - on our soil, or the IRS targeting of specific groups or individuals solely based on political views generally in opposition to government overreach by other three letter agencies like the NSA, EPA, HSA, etc., or the utter abandonment of State Department public servants, namely: Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods, by an administration claiming just prior to an election that "terrorism is defeated," or more recently the "closure" of open air Federal Parks and memorials under the dubious and too frequently used auspices of public safety, I submit the premise of these actions is faulty, the hypocrisy is blatant, the decisions callous, and the effects very personal to all those directly affected.

How can the Federal government which is still operating at 83% of its usual funding during this partial shutdown spend wholly unnecessary extra sums of taxpayer money to barricade national parks and monuments from visits by veterans while opening them for illegal immigrant rallies? How in good conscience can the Executive and Legislative Branches continue to fund most of their own salaries while lower level workers are furloughed in view of the fact that the imperial Executive refuses to negotiate unless the House which is Constitutionally charged with the "power of the purse" under Article 1 Section 7, surrenders to the Executive Branch and Senate leadership which itself has not moved forward a House passed budget in over 5 years which is its Constitutional duty? Isn't it obvious that with $17 Trillion in Debt, and another over $90 Trillion in unfunded liabilities due to promises made by Social Security, Medicare, and Federal Pension programs, that our path is unsustainable and to further ignore it is to perpetrate a fraud and a theft of future generations. I believe part of the House reluctance to continue to just "go along to get along" and the righteous, Constitution respecting stands taken by Senators Cruz, Lee, and Paul is more about what the ACA will do to these mind-numbing numbers in the long run. Now, we are at the point where even the minor cuts to the growth of spending achieved - somewhat unintentionally I might add - by the "Sequester Legislation" is being challenged by the spenders-in-chief not only in the Executive Branch but also in the leadership of both congressional chambers.

I ask, when will the majority of Americans realize that nearly every government run program that was designed to solve some popularized perceived problem has itself become an even bigger one? Was Social Security a designed as a Ponzi scheme? Was the so-called "lockbox" emptied since the 1960's to fund general government operations designed to buy some people's votes with other people's money? Is all of the $.184/gallon of Federal Taxes collected on each gallon of gas and each gallon of diesel fuel purchased by you or the truckers who deliver every good you buy used to fill up the Federal Highway Trust Fund which builds and maintains interstates and bridges, or is much of that money diverted to corrupt patronage staffed city mass transit agencies to subsidize them with funds not from their riders' fares?

It was estimated that the costs of constructing the software necessary to enroll folks in the Obamacare exchanges would cost about $93 million. So far though, the Canadian company (CGI) who created it has spent upwards of $500 million employing Indian subcontractors to write a program - that according to John Mcafee, the founder of anti-virus company that bears his name - that is highly error prone and very vulnerable to attacks by hackers that will be able to steal the identities, tax information, and complete medical records of the enrollees quite easily. Is this your tax dollars working efficiently? Is that why in the past two weeks according to one report by the UK Daily Mail that out of 310 Million Americans, only slightly over 50,000 have successfully "logged on" and enrolled across the country? Seems the roll-out of the ACA is a colossal failure. Why not delay it for a year for everyone if only to get the bugs out? Why is there no requirement that human enrollers employed to assist and answer insurance questions be licensed in insurance or given the same criminal background checks required of child-care workers or teachers?

How can an Executive Branch which is charged under Article, Section 3 of the Constitution to "...take Care that the Laws by faithfully executed..." unilaterally waive whole sections of the ACA for big businesses, unions, political contributors, other supporters, and the Legislature and its staffers, yet choose to enforce just the mandate on individual enrollees and small businesses? Is that equal protection under the law?

When the annual median household income across the US is only $52,000, why are Congressmen, Senators, their staffs, and the President whose taxpayer funded salaries are substantially higher and in many cases get lifetime pensions equal to their salaries, either exempted from or subsidized by the taxpayers for 72% of their health insurance costs when the average individual is seeing 200% - 300% premium increases depending on age or State of residence, and in SE PA the small business owner with just 40 or 50 employees is seeing 25% - 35% premium increases even when they increase physician "co-pays" and double individual and/or family "out-of-pocket annual maximums?" For small businesses, fewer health insurance carriers are even willing to provide a quote! So competition has not gone up as was promised three years ago, it has gone down. Costs have not gone down as promised, they have gone up!

I, like most Americans was told in 2009, that there were 30 Million uninsured in this country. No one seemed to make an effort to research how many of these folks freely chose to be due to their personal health, youthfulness, or economic reasons. Neither did anyone investigate how many of these people were uninsured only briefly, say three months or less, due to transitions between one employer provided health plan and another. Few spoke about how many of the uninsured were really illegal aliens living in the shadowy world of a "cash only" economy, enjoying many of the benefits of taxpayer funded programs but without any of the responsibilities of  citizenship to support them. Undoubtedly, to have mentioned this last factoid would only have engendered the typical leftist accusations of racism, rather than the rational debate it deserved.

We were told that if the ACA were passed, all Americans would be insured, but the inconvenient truth seems to be that even after January 1st, 2014, some 30 million will still be uninsured. Many of the young will flaunt the minimal initial tax penalty for it is far less costly to do so than buy the coverage. This is all thanks to the language in the bill, unread by the party in Congress who passed it, the President who signed it, and apparently by the Judiciary Branch who amended it from the bench - unconstitutionally - I might add. For the Supreme Court to have itself acted lawfully, it would have had to send the bill back to the Congress to be re-written so that the penalty or fine for non-compliance be recharacterized as the tax that it was. However, after a year of congressional and administration claims that the mandate wasn't a tax on a service an individual or business freely chose not to purchase, the entire fate of 1/6th of the American economy and the private property rights of 310 million Americans was ultimately decided by the power of one unelected person in black robes. Where is our Constitutional Republic that is intended to be  majority rule only with the consent of the minority?

None of these actions by any of our three branches has any basis in law if you consider the "Equal Protection Clause" (14th Amendment, Section 1).

Perhaps it is incumbent upon the Congresswoman who told us :...we have to pass the bill to see what's in it...," to take an hour to read the Constitution, along with the other members of her party, many in the other party, most in the Executive Branch, and even five of the Supreme Court Justices, for they all swore an Oath of Office to uphold, protect, and defend it. My pocket copy is only 17 pages long, so it is far less troublesome to read than the ACA which is over 1,000 pages and has so far generated over 15,000 additional pages of regulations with the power of law -  courtesy of unelected bureaucrats from the Department of Health and Human Services headed by Kathleen Sebelius, a leftist of the highest order by any objective measure.

The forgoing leads me finally back to recent events within the past two weeks of the "17% government shutdown."

How can "open air" so-called Federal lands, parks, and monuments and memorials be "closed" to the people of the United States who together own and pay for them? Many stand as a testament to the millions who have died to establish and preserve our rights as a free people. The parks and battlefields now closed are often the final resting places of thousands of "unknown soldiers." The families, friends, descendents, and casual visitors with an amateur interest in our history have an unalienable right to travel to and peaceably assemble or recreate at any of these places without government interference. The idea that they were "closed for public safety reasons" is ludicrous and is a sham propagated by the MSM in support of their hand-picked politician publicity hounds in the party establishments on both sides of the "political divide."

So proudly, last Sunday, I gathered with between 500 and 1,000 other like-minded people in one of these "closed" parks, namely: Valley Forge National Historic Park, across from the Memorial Chapel. We peaceably assembled to assert our 1st Amendment right to do so. Further, we engaged in free speech, obtained some local minor and mostly inaccurate on "head count" coverage by the free press, and petitioned our government - via our remarks - for a redress of grievances.

Lastly, thanks go out to "Citizens for Liberty," "Valley Forge Patriots (in Phoenixville)," the "Oath Keepers" (Clinton County, PA), the PA Sons of Liberty Riders, equestrians from as far away as MD, veterans from the Korean conflict to the present day, Tea Party chapters from all over southeastern Pennsylvania, Libertarians, and just the rest of us plain concerned citizens who organized, spoke, and otherwise contributed, marched and showed up in solidarity to support America's founding principles of individual liberty and government "Of, By, and For the People."

On a beautiful Fall day, we had the honor and privilege to walk, barefoot in many cases, in the footsteps of the between 10 and 12 thousand continental soldiers who arrived in Valley Forge for a six month encampment in December of 1777. Patriots far greater than we, they too fought against tyranny. They left their homes, families, businesses, and farms to take up arms against the superpower of their day and resist imperial rule, over taxation, and warrantless searches and seizures by the "King's men." Sound familiar? In memory of America's original patriot revolutionaries, and the millions of veterans who have followed them - writing a blank check to their country, for up to and including their very lives in service to the cause of freedom in most cases to protect total strangers on domestic and in foreign lands, we humbly participated and gathered.

May God Bless all these average ordinary American people who are law-abiding, tax-paying, and even respectful of lawful government authority. We are, however, intolerant of the very anarchy we are often accused of. The only anarchists are those elected officials in Washington and elsewhere who do NOT respect their oaths of office. Look no further for the truly treasonous and criminal. If equal protection under the law means anything today, it is our government representatives who should be held responsible to the people for their official acts of omission and commission while holding public office. Only "We the People" have the power to hold them accountable at the ballot box, and so we shall.