Declaring National P.O.O.P. Day
October 4, 2008 by Stephen Palmer
My three year-old daughter Liberty is in the “potty talk” stage, where she finds every excuse to relate everything she says to feces and/or flatulation, including the Pledge of Allegiance.
She recently recited the Pledge and ended it with, “…with liberty and justice for poop.”
At first I laughed. Then, as I realized how relevant her words were, it wasn’t funny anymore.
The “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” passed by Congress and signed by King George on October 3, 2008, was Washington taking a $700 billion dump on the head of every American.
I found another meaning in Libby’s innocent words: In a gross act of injustice to ordinary American’s, Washington thought it expedient to dole out “justice” to the poop perpetrated by the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, and idiotic corporations. America is now the land where stupid crap pulled by the big guys gets tossed to the little guys; the aristocracy get the protection of the government at the expense of common Americans.
And to think that they pulled it off in the name of the little guy — you know, “Main Street.”
My little carefree Libby, innocent and precious beyond words, has no idea what landed on her, her children, her grandchildren and beyond that Friday of infamy, the day where America sold the last remnants of her soul to the devil of expediency.
National P.O.O.P. Day
In honor of my daughter Liberty and every other innocent American who will be scraping Washington’s and Wall Street’s poop off their lives for generations, I hereby declare October 3rd to be National P.O.O.P. Day. The acronym P.O.O.P. stands for:
- P: Punish at the Polls
- O: Ownership
- O: One American
- P: Prepare
Punish at the Polls
Break free from the tyranny of two-party mediocrity, monopolization, and rationalization. Throw off the shackles of “the lesser of two evils” thinking. Stop compromising with your vote. Vote your conscience. Vote on principle.
The Founders viewed elections as “mini-revolutions,” and it’s time for a revolution. Punish every Senator and Congressman who voted in favor of the bailout bill by booting them out of office. (See how your representative voted here.) Show them who is in charge. And in case you haven’t heard, there are more than two presidential candidates in the current election.
Ownership
With the advent of National P.O.O.P Day, it’s time for every American to stop the insanity of irresponsibility and apathy. Take ownership for your life and your results. Take ownership for your education, your career, your income, your financial health, your spiritual moorings. Stop selling out to false security and accept the responsibility of freedom.
“That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.” -Thomas Jefferson
One American
It’s time to cast off our feelings and attitudes of futility, helplessness, and hopelessness. You can’t do everything, but you can do something. Do it. Stop waiting for social validation — act. Never underestimate the power of one individual acting from conscience.
Do something good, anything. Every day. Get out of debt. Write a book. Write to your Congressman. Read to a child. Love your spouse. Forgive your brother. Turn off the blasted TV and read the Federalist Papers instead.
You are One American, and America is nothing but the aggregate of all its Ones. Be the change. Make a difference.
“Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he who would be a great soul in the future must be a great soul now.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Prepare
There’s no easy fix to the problems that have been amassing for longer than a Century. Make no mistake — we are in for hard times.
Prepare.
- Spiritually: Deepen your relationship with God. Develop faith and overcome fear. Pray and meditate daily. Find that “connection in the stillness” and hold onto it like your life depends on it, as it indeed does.
- Financially: Get out of debt. Spend less than you earn. Produce more than you consume. Build cash reserves. Invest in hard, collateralized assets.
- Temporally: Build a year’s supply of food and water. Learn how to grow a garden. Become an emergency preparedness expert.
- Mentally: Turn off the TV and devour the classics. Become a constitutional scholar. Understand what you’re fighting for.
- Socially: Expand and strengthen your relationships and networks. This will both extend your sphere of influence as well as give you resources in difficult times. Associate with like-minded people. Discuss the classics with your family and friends.
“Giving up the illusion that you can predict the future is a very liberating moment. All you can do is give yourself the capacity to respond — the creation of that capacity is the purpose of strategy.” -Lord John Browne of Madingley
Throw the Poop Back
The poop has hit the fan. And it’s time for us to start flinging it back. In a good, productive way.
The principles within National P.O.O.P. Day represent the People taking back their power by assuming their responsibility. This new National Poopyday (as opposed to “Holiday”) represents us throwing back the crap that has been thrown on us against our will and in violation of our beloved Constitution.
The early American colonists had the Boston Tea Party. Our generation has National P.O.O.P. Day. Support National P.O.O.P. Day by emailing this to everyone you know and publishing it in full in every possible venue. When the air finally clears — however long it takes — we’re going to have our Republic back.
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I seemed to have missed the point of the bailout commentary. It seemed to focus on a great rallying cry, but without any specific alternatives to the crisis at hand. What I find most interesting about the post is that it does not seem to concern itself with the facts in the crisis, but rather goes immediately to a call to arms of sorts.
Some thoughts:
Are we for free capital markets? Or regulated economies? It was a free market with limited regulations in which this occured.
Are we for more government regulations? A lack of self-policing by the industry is one of the culprits here. Expect more regulations.
Are we for allowing the full weight of consequences to follow? Then tens of thousands of homeowners would be unable to get mortgages, many more banks would fail, retirement account and home values would continue to be destroyed… not to mention all of the employees joining the unemployed.
The challenge with this crisis is that in our time, information and finance are global in nature and transactions move rapidly among institutions. Yes, the root causes will point to investment banks, insurance/finance conglomerates, federal regulatory agencies, etc. and then on to the managers, who continued their ways at the encouragement of investors, who continued there ways at the encouragement of their clients, the people buying houses on credit and folks adding to retirement savings - taxpaying citizens.
Sometimes the damage to an organization is such that simply letting it crumble (ie Lehman Brothers) is acceptable, but sometimes someone must step in to salvage what they can within an industry.
The investment banks that have now disappeared were created as a result of the Great Depression in hopes of avoiding another economic melt down. The model worked for a while… but the quest for profits eventually pushed investment banks to take more risks. Interestingly, we now are moving back towards a banking structure that was in place before the depression… except that now more foreign governments and institutions own more equity in the US financial system than before.
The bailout certainly is not a desirable political approach as it expands government, raises the spectre of more regulation and saddles the taxpayer with more liabilities. And yet, is it not similar to the Savings and Loan bailouts of the Reagan years?
Where we need to focus our energies is in ensuring that the purposes of the bailout are met in stabilizing the financial sector sufficiently until markets can do their own balancing. We must make sure that our politicians act reasonably and responsibly to return the bailed out entities back to market in a healthier condition without undue hardship upon taxpayers. And then ensure that the regulations are appropriate to avert another disaster in the future without hobbling an industry.
The four parts you recommend are appropriate long term approaches for individuals. But few citizens follow these…
Scott
This in response to Scott Dean, above:
You asked, “Are we for allowing the full weight of consequences to follow?” The answer is YES we are.
The proper role of government is to protect our life, liberty and property. No where does the constitution grant the government the role of parent or babysitter.
There are people who worked hard and invested in stock, such as Lehman Brothers, to carry them through retirement. Their choice. Every soul who buys stock understands clearly at the onset that sometimes the value of stock goes up, sometimes it goes down. They knowingly assume that risk. We have a huge number of people in this country who live day to day…. they work and are just able to meet their needs, using not one cent of welfare, medicaid, or any other government assistance. When they hit retirement age, they work as greeters at wal-mart and other such jobs. Their lifetime is spent working to care of themselves and their families. So you think it is right that THOSE people… that GREAT BIG group of working poor who just make it from day to day, going without health care because they have no insurance… these people should carry the burden of those who decided to knowingly take a risk and play the stock market? And these people, many of whom have never and will never own their own home, they should pay for the greedy homeowners and mortgage companies who unwisely engaged in business together without wisely looking at the full picture?
I think it is unwise to place this burden on the backs of those who did not enter into such business themselves…. it will burden us and our children and our grandchildren.
It is unconstitutional. Read the constitution. Nowhere does it grant the government the right to tax the people and give that tax money to bail out private businesses, or even to bail out individuals. Since it is unconsititutional, it is usurpation and oppression for the government to do so.
Seek out the highest law of the land, the US Constitution, and see what is the basis that Americans are to be governed under.
Kathy
Kathy, I love and share your passion. Thanks for taking the time to voice your thoughts and I encourage you to continue doing so. I would like our conversations to be respectful here. I have edited the last part of your comments to tone it down and to reflect that.
Scott, I thank you as well. You bring up valid points and I respect you and your perspective. I want to respond thoroughly, but to do so will take far more time than I choose to take at the moment.
Here are a few brief points:
1. I have not called anyone to arms. Rather, I have called on people to vote wisely, take personal responsibility, be the change they would like to see in the world, and to prepare for hard economic times.
2. The principles I have outlined ARE the alternative to the short-term expediency that this bill represents.
3. This was NOT a case of an unregulated free market going sour; it was the case of the Federal Reserve injecting artificial credit in the market many years prior to the crisis, effectively distorting the natural market indicators used by entrepreneurs to predict.
This crisis mirrors the blunders of the Great Depression, as well as what caused the artificial Roaring ’20’s. And your sentiment is precisely what people have been saying about the Great Depression since it hit.
It is empirically false, which I will be showing in future articles. The Great Depression was caused by government intervention, as was our current crisis.
4. The full consequences you speak of are going to happen anyway; all this bill does is exacerbate and prolong the problem, just as New Deal policies did for the Great Depression. Negative consequences caused by government intervention aren’t solved by further government intervention.
5. It’s not the “quest for profits” that pushes banks to take foolish risks; it’s artificial demand created by the Federal Reserve injecting cheap money into the marketplace that causes such risks. In a truly free market, entrepreneurs have zero incentive to do what has happened in this case. Again, this will be explained in detail in subsequent articles.
6. Any stabilizing that occurs from the bailout will be temporary at best. The market is going to crash and it’s going to crash hard. All we’ve done is prop up a rotting building. Mind you, the “building” isn’t free market institutions; it’s the quasi-socialist institutions formed by the marriage between government and business and it’s unsustainable.
7. Regulations aren’t the answer; keeping the government in its proper role and eliminating the Federal Reserve are the answers.
8. You say, “The four parts you recommend are appropriate long term approaches for individuals. But few citizens follow these…”
Yeah, that’s the point. Now is a great time to capitalize on the fear and anger and turn them to productive use. Problems that have been building for longer than a century aren’t going to be solved in a few years or with a Band-aid bailout.
I’m in the trenches of liberty for the long haul. Anyone looking for short-term political activism and quick fixes isn’t going to find them on this site.
Scott and Kathy, thanks again for your valuable input. Stay tuned for future articles discussing the causes and consequences of recessions/depressions and what ordinary citizens can do about them.