Some Country for Old Men

By now you’ve probably heard that the teabaggers – you know, those people who want you to put your balls in their faces who are largely wealthy, educated white people – want you to sign their contract from America.

First: We’ve seen their signs and heard them speak and wonder just what degrees they could possibly hold.

Second: Go fuck yourselves, teabaggers.

But just for shits and giggles, let’s discuss their corporate sponsored document!

We, the undersigned, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items, work to bring each agenda item to a vote during the first year, and pledge to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.

Know what? There’s nothing inherently insane in that paragraph. Unless you count the fact that most of the things they’re asking for are fucking stupid.

Individual Liberty

Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.

A gripe against the health care purchase mandate, though veiled here. No surprise.

Limited Government

The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.

You’ll find lots of people with lots of different ideas about what government is or is not. Exactly how the government is increasing its power in the marketplace, we’re not sure, and of course the teabaggers are not specific here.

Economic Freedom

The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.

The free market also has the power to destroy the lives of many of its country’s citizens, but why let a little thing like regulating derivatives stop the free market? Just how many teabaggers are actually voting against their own self interests? Let’s start with Joe the Plumber.

1. Protect the Constitution

Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)

Grow up.

2. Reject Cap & Trade

Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. (72.20%)

Prove that Cap & Trade does any of those things, and we’re on board.

3. Demand a Balanced Budget

Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69%)

Really? You want Medicare and Social Security but you don’t want to pay for them? Is that what we’re hearing? Check out this Boston Globe article if you think we’re being reductive.

While we’re at it, since teabaggers didn’t voice gripes when we went to war in Iraq – which we couldn’t pay for, by the way – we can only assume that you’ll be approving the tax hike to pay for it. Right?

4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform

Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution. (64.90%)

Syntax alert! The word “original” before the word “Constitution” is totally unnecessary because there’s only one Constitution. In fact, that’s why we capitalize it! The Articles of Confederation were a constitution, but since they didn’t work and there’s no one claiming that we would have been better with the Articles, there’s no reason to call the Constitution “original.” It’s just the Constitution.

Further: Teabaggers are idiots. Say we cap federal income tax at 13%. Person A makes $27,000 and therefore must pay $3,510 in federal income tax. Person B makes $1,270,000 a year. That person would owe $165,100 in income tax. Call me crazy, but I think Person A needs his $3,510 more than Person B needs his $165,100. Not saying Person A should be off the hook entirely. Just sayin’

Oh, just saying teabaggers are heartless assholes.

5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington

Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning. (63.37%)

We’re all for reducing the size of government. Thanks for enlarging it, George W. Bush! If someone can find a way to govern 307,000,000 people while reducing the size of the government and making it more efficient, rock ‘n’ roll. Our suggestion: Hire Jack Welch to do the audit. Of course, his fee and the fees of the people performing the audit will raise the debt by millions and perhaps billions of dollars, but you have to spend to cut sometimes.

6. End Runaway Government Spending

Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)

Also, demand the president have Congress declare war before, say, invading Iraq with no plan to contain costs or abruptly end soldiers’ lives needlessly.

Define “growth.” Also, look into the future and see when the next financial crisis is going to happen so that no one can authorize a TARP-like bill that dishes out taxpayer money that hasn’t been collected.

7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care

Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries. (56.39%)

“Defund” isn’t a word. This idea would be great, by the way, if there were government-run health care. Unless the teabaggers are talking about Medicare and Medicaid, which we assume they now want repealed.

8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy

Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. (55.51%)

Vague. So, so, so vague. Explain, please.

9. Stop the Pork

Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)

Since earmarks make up about 1% of the budget, they really aren’t a big problem. They’re more of a political problem than a fiscal problem. But since teabaggers seem to focus on the money that goes into them – and 1% of trillions of dollars is nothing to sneeze at – we can really focus attention elsewhere.

10. Stop the Tax Hikes

Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011. (53.38%)

How can you permanently repeal a tax hike if you also want to approve tax hikes with a two-thirds vote? (See #3.) THINK.

Ninety-five percent of American got a tax cut in 2009. That’s more Americans than Bush’s tax cuts ever benefited. And since the tax hikes the teabaggers are referring to will happen when Bush’s tax cuts expire, they can’t really blame Obama for that. But they will.

So that’s what we think of the Contract from America. But here’s what we dislike most: The fake signature at the bottom of it is from the America People.

We at SCFOM are Americans. Born and raised. We work. We pay taxes. We put up with teabaggers and their John Galt nonsense every day. They’ve gone too far this time. Kindly remove “The American People” from the signature line, or at least amend it to “The American People, except for Dave and Josh.”

We can’t speak for the rest of the country.