They Think You're Stupid (20 page)

Your vocal, interconnected, and persistent involvement in influencing public policy is the key to growing
A New Voice
, expanding your own VIP network, and saving our economic infrastructure. As a self-motivated new voice, there are no limits to your ability to influence others on the urgency for aggressive policy solutions!

You can begin your own involvement in saving our economic infrastructure by first contacting those in your existing networks of influence. This includes your friends and family members, people in your e-mail distribution list, members of your place of worship, members of your neighborhood association, loved ones on your holiday card list, and members of your community, civic, or service organization. These are the people who know, respect, and trust you.

Send an issue awareness or issue endorsement letter or e-mail to members of your networks. The letter introduces those in your networks to the issue, urges them to support it and provides supporting reasons, and urges them to contact their own networks of influence.

Contact your U.S. representative and senators and ask them to support replacing the tax code, restructuring Social Security, and removing government interference in Medicare and our health care system. Urge your legislators to become leaders in Congress in passing legislation related to each issue.

You can also spread the message of economic freedom through local and national media outlets. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper that states your support for a particular issue. Call local and nationally syndicated talk radio programs and discuss the issues and the urgent need to enact aggressive policy solutions. Share your views on the issues on Internet discussion groups and blogs.

Solutions to our big issues are lost in denial, empty rhetoric, misrepresentations, bureaucracy, and personal agendas. In order for real solutions to rise to the top of the public's mind-set and the forefront of congressional action, we must consistently challenge the status quo and elect senators and representatives who share our passion for change. Take every opportunity available to volunteer your time for candidates who are truly committed to challenging the status quo in Congress. The following table illustrates the many opportunities you have to become
A New Voice
and influence public policy decisions.

Maximizing Media Exposure

There's an old saying, "Fight fire with fire." The often incomplete reporting and liberal bias of mainstream media is well documented. Although Brent Bozell and the MRC do a great job of keeping many media outlets' and producers' feet to the fire, it is a never-ending battle. There are newspapers, magazines, newsletters, television and radio programs, and Internet sites that regularly present the conservative side of many issues, but the daily battle against the liberal media establishment is similar to David's fight against Goliath. The good news is that the conservative David is growing, and he did defeat Goliath in the end.

A New Voice
will capitalize on numerous media opportunities to promote its messages of aggressive solutions and economic liberation of working people. My 2004 U.S. Senate campaign demonstrated that there are hundreds of thousands of people who have an appetite for challenging the status quo in order to fix the big problems. Members of Congress and the media will pay attention when millions of politically homeless across the country begin to make their voices heard.

A New Voice
has a unique personality with a multidimensional background to lead this unique endeavor: "The Hermanator." Here's how Larry McCarthy of Gannon, McCarthy & Mason, Ltd., describes the origin of "The Hermanator":

Around the time we were working with Herman Cain on health care reform and other National Restaurant Association issues in 1994, I stumbled across the movie
The Terminator
while cable grazing.

One of my favorite lines from the movie is Arnold Schwarzenegger's guttural catch phrase "I'll be back," an especially appropriate line for a character who was impossible to stop and kept popping up everywhere.

At the time, Herman was receiving very heavy press coverage for his "debate" with President Clinton on health care and appearing all over the country on a variety of issues. Herman was impossible to stop and kept popping up everywhere. Hence, "The Hermanator."

The new voices will not go it alone on our mission to save our economic foundations. There are dozens of organizations that are our strategic partners in this new vision, and many have been fighting the good fight for many years.

The mission of
A New Voice
is to leverage its members and those of its strategic alliances into a more focused and inspired VIP network. It is not the intent of
A New Voice
to reinvent the wheel; our objective is to connect the spokes of the wheel so common sense can conquer insanity.

The need for
A New Voice
that utilizes cutting edge technology and a VIP network to influence public policy and tell the truth about issues and the best solutions
is long overdue. Major media outlets do not help us. Our elected officials get timid about aggressive policy solutions. And most of the general public is apathetic and absent. Granted, there are many associations and organizations working to protect the issues of their respective constituencies, but the issues of
A New Voice
transcend industry, political party, race, sex, or income level.

Our collective task is to create a VIP network of voices capable of dramatically influencing what goes on in Washington, D.C. between elections. Congress has repeatedly demonstrated that it does not act without public pressure applied heavily and frequently.

Fortunately, President Bush has demonstrated that he is not afraid to lead. In fact, during his Economic Summit in December 2004, he stated, "I came to Washington to solve problems." With majorities of Republicans in both the House and the Senate, I believe he will do just that, if Congress will follow. Our job is to make sure that they do indeed follow. Otherwise, in the next election our job will be to make sure they get out of the way.

Most people do not object to providing assistance to their fellow citizens either directly or by way of efficient government assistance programs, but no one is entitled to the fruits of another man's labor. Our current methods of taxation and redistribution of income follow the foolish directive of Karl Marx:
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs
. Our so-called progressive system of taxation at the federal level is based on the premise that those who make the highest incomes should pay proportionately the most for the government services that benefit all citizens.

Those at the lowest income levels are in fact hit the hardest by our system of taxation. One hundred percent of their wages are subject to the Social Security and Medicare taxes, which are of course automatically withheld from their paychecks. When they retire and begin receiving their monthly Social Security benefits, they are taxed again because our government considers your Social Security benefits income--
even though you already earned the money decades ago
!

Contrary to the thinking of many members of Congress, our systems of taxation and income redistribution are inherently unfair to every citizen because they do not treat every citizen equally. Additionally, the "more you earn the more you pay" principle is a bigger disincentive to the low wage earner than to the high wage earner. Why? Because just as it takes more fuel to accelerate a car to cruising speed than it does to maintain cruising speed, a worker has to work harder and earn more proportionately to get into economic cruise control. As a result, many people never get there.

Our current economic infrastructure, the tax code and Social Security system, punishes everybody because of progressive tax rates on what people earn and massive government inefficiency.

Our elected leaders in Congress insult our intelligence every day. They simply do not think we are capable of managing our own money, of saving and investing in our own futures. Many in Congress obviously have the desire to create a socialist system that adheres to Karl Marx's vision. They just have not been honest enough to say it out loud.

What would Thomas Jefferson, author of our Declaration of Independence and one of the preeminent political minds in history, think of our current taxation policies and entitlement and discretionary federal spending that exceeds the entire GDP of many nations? Listen to Jefferson's words on these issues.

Thomas Jefferson on taxation:

The taxes with which we are familiar class [classify)] themselves readily according to the basis on which they rest: 1. Capital. 2. Income. 3. Consumption . . . . A government may select either of these bases for the establishment of its system of taxation, and so frame it as to reach the faculties of every member of the society, and to draw from him his equal proportion of the public contributions . . . . But when once a government has assumed its basis, to select and tax special articles from either of the other classes, is double taxation . . . . For that portion of Income with which these articles are purchased, having already paid its tax as Income, to pay another tax on the thing it purchased, is paying twice for the same thing; it is an aggrievance on the citizens who use these articles in exoneration of those who do not, contrary to the most sacred of the duties of a government, to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.

Our government is clearly not providing "equal and impartial justice to all its citizens." Every citizen who earns a wage is taxed on his or her income, but we are also taxed again when that income is invested and grows--what the tax code calls a "capital gain." We are also all subject to local taxes on consumption--sales taxes--when we purchase retail goods. Our money, therefore, is "triple-taxed." And when we die, we are taxed again!

Thomas Jefferson on excessive federal spending:

I do not know on what principles of reasoning it is that good men think the public ought to pay more for a thing than they would themselves if they wanted it. (1808)

To preserve the faith of the nation by an exact discharge of its debts and contracts, expend the public money with the same care and economy we would practice with our own, and impose on our citizens no unnecessary burden . . . are the landmarks by which we are to guide ourselves in all our proceedings. (1802)

Congress is losing the faith of the nation because it does not adhere to our Founders' warnings to spend within our means, and it unnecessarily burdens current and future generations with needless debt. There are certainly times in our history when it is necessary to incur budget deficits. For example, we are currently engaged in a war against terrorists to protect our borders and our freedoms. Congress is justified in spending the amounts needed to equip our military personnel and secure our borders.

The public loses faith in the ability of Congress to sensibly and honestly control the nation's purse strings, however, when it approves 50 million dollars to construct an indoor rainforest in Iowa, 15 million for dairy development programs overseas through the U.S. Agency for International Development, and 13 million
for
United Nations programs. These are just three of the thousands of pork barrel spending projects that cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars each year.

Surely Thomas Jefferson had in mind greater ideals for Congress and a greater vision of freedom for American citizens when he stated, in 1826,

May [our Declaration of Independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government . . . . All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.

We must demand that Congress end the usurpation of our rights and freedoms. If we do not urgently demand greater accountability from Congress, our children and grandchildren will live under a system of government more oppressive than that from which Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers declared their independence.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. showed millions of people of all races that it is possible to achieve equal rights and opportunities through nonviolent protest. Dr. King reminded this nation that all our citizens must be allowed access to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and that we are all God's children, regardless of our skin color. What would Dr. King think of today's Democratic Party, the party that fought so hard against his mission but eventually became the political home to the vast majority of Black voters?

Since his death in 1968, the Democratic Party and some of Dr. King's followers have used the King name to create their own legacies through hateful rhetoric, divisive political policies, and even corruption and scandal. Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, and Joseph Lowery all stood behind Dr. King throughout his struggle to achieve the great civil rights victories of the 1950s and 1960s, but since his death they have abandoned his dreams and the principles he expressed. In their own struggles to remain relevant participants in the national political process, these so-called Black leaders have worked hard to convince generations of Blacks that it is because of their race that they cannot achieve in school and business, and that the days of suffering and segregation are still upon us but in slightly different forms.