Wilson was horrible.
And Lincoln was worse.

That's not really the issue.

The issue is that you can't disallow the commerce one period, then allow it the next and claim that GDP "increased". It's like removing fuel and food from the computation of inflation. Hey! Food's up 400% and fuel's up 300%, but there's no inflation, right?

Well, I take it as a given that a balanced budget gets there by "honest" means - as I said, without mechanisms to prevent it, this can be achieved by increasing taxes and borrowing from the future. I assume that borrowing from the future (deficit spending) would be prohibited, in addition there would need to be mechanisms to ensure that taxation and overall gov't spending is held in check.

Ah, yes. One of the great non-Milwaukians - even though there's a statue of him in downtown MKE.

Much longer than that - goes back at least to Teddy Roosevelt.

The fall began at the beginning. It has merely accelerated more and more over time. I firmly believe that freedom is not the natural state of mankind, even those handed a free society. They seem to want to be enslaved and will either willingly accede to a ruler, or they will bring about the mechanisms to enslave themselves.

Ah, but the gov't can keep taking until there is nothing left. We have a loooong way to go 'til then.

An honest budget would have to include a line item to pay off existing debt.

Like I said, the means of calculating would need to be honest. And as far as I'm concerned, commerce is commerce, legal or illegal (and shouldn't it all be legal in any case?).

O.A. Thanks for making me learn something new (actually, a couple of things). I assume you mean the more contemporary meaning for myrmidon, not the ancient Greek. I see nothing warrior like in most of these minions. ;-)

You can't fight the government by rules established by the government. The government is way past behaving Constitutionally. It routinely violates the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and with less frequency, the Sixth and Eighth Amendments. (Not aware of any violations of the Third Amendment lately - but I'd not be surprised to learn of them.)

In short, the government has repudiated its agreement with the People. The Constitution is, as much as anything, a contract between the States, the People and the Federal Government. The Federal Government has not honored its commitments under the contract. The States and the People should no longer feel bound to obey ANYTHING Federal in nature. No Federal laws. No Federal taxes. No Federal institutions.

The states should coin their own money, tell the Feds to stay our of their states, close down any Federal authorities in the states and tell the Feds to piss up a rope.

Of course, this would be buggered the same way that Social Security is. Note that the current index of inflation does NOT include food or fuel! So who computes the GDP? People who include prostitution and marijuana sales? (Did you catch those recent stories?)

I think a fundamental problem with the current government is that voters have abdicated their role as watchdogs. Instead, they somehow think that making a new "rule" will fix things. This is the wrong approach. To rein in government requires the People to look for dishonesty and irresponsibility, and vote it out of office.

There seems to be very little that's moral about government for at least the past 16 years.

Well even the Founders said that the form of government they'd created was suitable only for a moral people.

Bad men cannot make good citizens. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience are incompatible with freedom. - Patrick Henry

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. - John Adams

Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature…. If the next centennial does not find us a great nation … it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces. - James Garfield

So when and how did the depravity begin? Was it with the women's vote, when governments suddenly began spending more money than they had as a matter of course? Was it with the women's movement in the 1960s? Where we fostered the lie that women were equal to men? (I grant they're similar. Not equal.) Was it with Roe v. Wade? Wickard v. Filburn? The Vietnam War? The establishment of the Federal Reserve? Feel free to offer your own start points for the fall of America.

Shipping females to Guatemala. Hmmm. Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Harry Reid, Biden, Obama, Eric Holder... Shipping those bitches to Guatemala might be a good start. For us. Not for Guatemala.

In all likelihood, such a convention would be the mechanism for removing the last "legal" impediment to authoritarian socialism. At this point, if someone started shooting people who had disgraced their oath to preserve and defend the Constitution, there would be those who would cheer and support them. But once the criminality is codified in the Constitution itself, then you are talking about legitimizing what they're already doing.

Your Maginot Line metaphor should include the resistance of the French to the Nazi invasion. What resistance? EXACTLY!

You're probably right. But that won't do them any good because the government has no resources. Everything the government has is taken from the people. When the People have nothing left to give… game over.

No, the problem is with the moral code in this nation. It was once a veil of shame that people were on welfare. Today it is a multi-generational way of life. Pregnant teenagers used to go to "visit aunt Sally" where they bore their child, gave it up for adoption, and returned home. Today, we put them on TV and glamorize them. In the past, opium dens were in the poor parts of town, now you can buy it on most street corners, and we've essentially legalized marijuana.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for liberty and don't believe that those things should be illegal, but there should be a morality that makes them undesirable for most people. Today, there is no moral condemnation of those making poor choices. If anything, society supports their decisions by reducing the consequences.

We essentially have a unicameral leg now. The house passes bills and the senate doesn't vote on them. One house rules. We have lost our rule of gov't and taken on the rule of party. Whichever party holds power rules, regardless of where that power resides.

I think that those machines still optically scan the votes (even though a hard copy is maintained). So it could still be manipulated. And I can't remember hearing of votes being tossed out after the fact because a hand-count and an electronic count didn't match. They just use that info to "improve" the next cycle.