Our state governments and we the people have all the power not expressly granted to the federal government by our Constitution. The federal government has been grabbing power for a long time. Much of the time with our consent. Often because we said nothing and did nothing. Sometimes we stop them. Over 75% of what my government does is based on seven words in Article 1 of my U.S. Constitution.

The Sixteenth Amendment expanded the government's power to act and to protect us but it has also given the government the power to control us. Maybe even the power to turn us into subjects, serfs or slaves instead of the citizens as was intended by the founding fathers of our country. The Sixteenth Amendment which created the income tax can be manipulated by campaign contributions and has the potential to make some of us masters and some of us slaves. The power to tax is what gave kings and tyrants their ability to dominate their subjects. By keeping their subjects poor through taxation, they kept their subjects working. No time or energy to dream and plan for a better future. The taxes collected were used to pay for standing armies which protected their country. But those standing armies were also used to keep their own subjects afraid and under control.

There are people around the World who would like to take our individual rights away.

Unfortunately, there are too many of our own politicians and bureaucrats in all branches of government that are working diligently every day trying to eliminate some portion of our Bill of Rights.

I am concerned and hereby ask my fellow Americans to elect representatives who will ask the question, "Am I representing my constituents according the U.S. Constitution? Am I paying particular attention to the Bill of Rights and our other Amendments." Yes, their oath of office requires this of every public official. In reality we have little idea what most of our public officials are doing most of the time. (Is it any wonder we like our representatives to take their oath to a higher authority. To their own god.) Because we can't closely watch the people we hire to rule us it is important to find candidates with integrity before we vote for them. Finding good candidates needs to be one of our prime public duties. Candidates who raise large amounts of money to run their campaigns are on what I call "the slippery slope". If you require a candidate to run TV commercials, other ads and also to send you lots of campaign mailers before you will vote for them you have joined the news media in only pronouncing a candidate as viable because of the amount of money he or she has raised and the tacit agreements they must make to get that money that fills their campaign coffers. It is illegal to make a promise because of a campaign contribution. (Can you feel the "slippery slope" every politician must face when he takes a campaign contribution. The bigger the contribution the steeper the slope.) When there is a conflict between the best interest of a campaign contributor and his or her constituents a politician must break faith with one of them. Constituents rarely are aware of these conflicts while the decisions are being made. A human being with good sense and lots of integrity will back away from that "slippery slope". We are losing a lot of good people who could be our representatives because of the way we require candidates to finance their campaigns. An underfunded candidate could be the best candidate with good character and integrity. But a well funded unscrupulous candidate will "talk trash" about him or her and can destroy that person's reputation. Without money to respond, the underfunded candidate may never recover his good name and reputation whether the allegations and inuendos are true or false or just mischaracterized. We are corrupting some good people who are sliding down the "slippery slope" because they get caught up in the whirlwind of money and power and the recognition brought on by being a representative of many people.

There are people in every corner of the earth who love to dominate and control their fellow human beings with force and fear. You may know one or two. We recently removed a Man and his two sons from power who thrived on depriving others of their individual right to live free. Three men who were allowed to gain the power to give many of their fellow citizens lives of fear and in many cases brought them death. Strict adherence to our Constitution and its Amendments prevents these types of individuals from turning us into slaves or scared sheep. A Hitler, a Stalin or a Napolean may seem rare. But it only takes one tyrant and a sleeping citizenry not exercising their rights to give us all a bad day. (How about many bad days).

Our government is our responsiblity. We can blame no one else. Well, we can blame someone else if we are in denial. Freedom and liberty is a state of mind that we must fight for everyday. May we pass on those freedoms to the next generation fully intact.

We depend on each other for our sense of security, our sense of freedom, our sense of justice. We cannot be safe and free if our fellow citizens are not safe and free. We will not be free from wars and terrorism until all the peoples of the world walk as free men with the right to determine their own individual destinies according to their own individual dreams, abilities, integrity and ambition.

Lincoln Pickard places a high value on the words contained in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. The other amendments are no less important. Except maybe Amendment XVI which some claim was not ratified by 3/4 of the several states' legislatures as required by Article V of our Constitution. That fairly innocuous looking amendment which created the income tax has turned into an instrument that invades the privacy of every law abiding citizen, it turns some otherwise law abiding citizens into criminals, it has people doing things that without the tax code would be considered bad economic decisions, it corrupts the political process because people give money to political candidates to influence how the tax code takes or doesn't take money from their business and/or personal wealth and creeps in and disturbs the tranquility of even the most honest of citizens. A better method of taxation needs to be found. At election time almost every politician will tell you the tax code is a burden on the people and needs to be modified. Every time it is modified it grows larger and more cumbersome and every citizen becomes more confused as to what is required. Even the IRS itself often errs while interpreting the tax code. An overbearing government can use unclear laws to create fear in its citizens and use those laws to harass and intimidate its citizenry.

A value added consumption tax (replacing the income tax) would make American made products more saleable here and in the rest of the world (an explanation is coming). A real job creator. Imagine an enforcement agency like the IRS checking into and taxing all products that enter our country. Drug Kingpins and terrorists would find it difficult to get anything into this country without it being discovered by a tough enforcement agency similar to the IRS. We would have an enforcement agency that would be helping this country, not one that often tramples on the rest of the Constitution that created it. The energy sapping, time consuming, invasive income tax code could be eliminated. It would need to be done in gradual steps. The first step would be an amendment repealing Amendment XVI as of a date six years after the new amendment is ratified. Laws would need to be passed that would phase out the income tax and institute the value added tax.

Why would a value added consumption tax be good for job creation? Currently the cost of the income tax is built into every product sold that is made by American workers. We don't even think about it. If we eliminated the income tax those costs would no longer be part of every product made. Products for export could be sold for less if the income tax was not an inherent part of the cost of producing that item. Our products would be more competitive on World markets and we would be selling more products to the rest of the world. That sounds like more jobs right here in the good old USA to me. If all products made outside the USA faced a value added consumption tax, those products would be facing the same tax that products made in the USA would face. Currently USA made products have the income tax built into them and foreign products get a free ride. Leveling the playing field would make USA made products more competitve right here in the good old USA. We would be more likely to be buying USA made products because they no longer would face the tax advantage given to foreign made products and services. More jobs for Americans. Since the overall tax collected by the US Government would be about the same, the cost of living would remain about the same. No tax on food and no federal tax on housing. A value added consumption tax would encourage saving and investment. Always good for the long term health of any economy.

Lincoln Pickard is an American who believes we the people choose our own destiny. We create our own fate with our words, our actions and our attitudes. Throw in a lot of hard work and you have a formula for what creates happiness on this small planet.

I hope that is a good start in explaining and demonstrating what it means to me to be an American.

Ben Franklin: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."