About the Book: An Abstracted Version of the Book
A Manual On How To Create A 2nd American Revolution
A 700 page book By Frank Villani
General outline of the book
- Chapter 1: Introduction and author's qualifications
- Chapter 2: A success story on reduced government
- Chapters 3 & 4: Economic and social myths that are propagated by politicians to give themselves power and riches
- Chapter 5: Philosophy and structure of good government
- Chapter 6: Mechanics of reducing the necessary parts of government and mending and ending what's left
- Chapter 7: An examination: if and why government is too big and too costly
- Chapter 8: What YOU must do to reduce the size and power of government
Critical Realities To Recognize Prior To Beginning Our 2nd American Revolution
Our current level of government spending and its intrusive involvement in our lives cannot be sustained.
Unless we deliberately change our government, change will be forced upon us.
Our decisions and actions to select the means of change are but two:
- Do nothing and have a tumultuous upheaval forced upon us, caused by our debt and unwillingness to confront our enemies.
or - Begin a deliberate but peaceful revolution to create a sanely sized government.
Governments at all levels must limit themselves to the essential purposes of governments. They must resist their propensity to criminalize every undesired conduct and compel all that is desirable.
Government has but two essential purposes:
- Protect us from those who would do us harm, foreign or domestic.
- Be the ultimate resolutors of our disputes.
If we divide our governments (at all levels) into two parts, the essential tasks and the non essential, discretionary ones, we see the following.
The Essential Tasks Of Government
The essential tasks of governments, protection and conflict resolution, can be accomplished by an Executive Department, assisted by:
At the federal level
- A state department to deal with the outside world
- A defense department – when words fail
- A justice department to protect us and resolve conflict.
- A treasury department to collect and disburse money.
At the state and local level
- A police function and national guard to maintain order
- A justice department to protect and resolve
- A treasury department
The Discretionary Tasks
At all government levels, the nonessential, these discretionary tasks, can and must be privatized, so we can purchase only those services we want. These services currently can be categorized as follows:
- Actual businesses: post office – schools – trash collection
- Noble businesses: libraries – museums – art institutions
- Services to regional needs: Tennessee Valley Authority – Great Lakes Watershed
- Regulation: health – safety – fiscal – environmental
- Welfare: in its thousands of permutations
To accomplish this necessary transformation, we must:
- Completely revise our taxation system
- Eliminate our debt
- Privatize the non-essential tasks of governments
- Diminish and curtail our legislative and executive bodies – but not our judicial bodies
The following pages very, very briefly describe how this transformation to a 2nd American Revolution can be done peacefully and without too much tumult.
How to privatize the non essential/discretionary functions of government
All the non-essential functions of government must be de-governmentalized – privatizing them by giving them to their employees and to the individual citizens at each political level
- At every government level – local, state, and federal – true trust funds must be established:
- Citizens of Detroit Trust Fund (or any other city in Metro Detroit)
- Citizens of Wayne County Trust Fund (where Detroit and it's politicians are located)
- Citizens of the state of Michigan Trust Fund
- Citizens of the United States Trust Fund
- All citizens (but definitely not government bodies) are to receive equal shares of stock in the trust fund. Initially, the proceeds in the funds must go to pay off debt. After our debt is repaid, the trusts will be a second source of income for all Americans.
- All business run by government must be set up as independent corporations whose stock is distributed 51% to the employees and 49% to the trust funds. Where the business has a huge asset base (an art museum, for instance), set up a second corporation whose stock is owned 5% by the employees and 95% by the trust fund.
- Regional services can be defederalized by giving the service to a regional body such as the Great Lakes Watershed, Inc., or the Tennessee Valley Authority, Inc.
- Regulation after the fact is most effectively done be a competitive free market, but many critical aspects of life must be regulated before the fact. Set these regulators up as independent corporations with stock divided 51% – 49% and then add an insurance component to compensate those adversely affected by regulatory failure.
- Welfare at every level must be privatized by converting these agencies into corporations such as the Red Cross or regional associations, who will set up their own criteria of relief and become fiscally independent.
Once these former bureaucracies are set up as independent endeavors – managed by their employees and owned by the employees and the appropriate trust funds – a transition can begin. In the first year of the transition no changes in their funding (or our taxation) would be made as they begin on their path to self sufficiency. In subsequent years, the funds and the expenditures are diminished until they reach zero.
The essential functions of government must be changed as follows:
Changing the essential tasks
Currently our federal government spends $3 trillion annually, now close to $4 trillion (4,000,000,000,000), and state and local governments spend $2 trillion or more annually. Of this likely $7 trillion, only 20% of it is spent on the essentials of government. In order to reduce the cost of these essential responsibilities, we have to make these changes. There are 300 million people in our country and 100 million households. If one divides 100 million households into the 7 trillion dollars annual government spending, it equals $70,000 per household – annually.
Judicial
We must diminish the role of the federal government in criminal and civil justice and return these to the state and local governments as our Constitution requires.
Our current system of electing or appointing judges is flawed and must be changed into one where:
- An executive nominates
- A legislature confirms
- The citizens periodically concur in the judges' continuance by a simple yes or no confirmation vote.
Legislative
Legislators now enact an infinite number of laws. This ability must be curtailed:
- No legislator may vote on a pending law unless he or she has read the proposed law and demonstrates such reading by initializing each page of the proposed law.
- The number of laws enacted in any legislature must be limited to one, or at most two dozen annually.
- Legislators must be limited in the time they may be in session to no more than two weeks in any calendar quarter.
- The pay and benefits of legislators must be reduced to those of part time workers.
- Legislative staffs must be mammothly reduced to no more than two or three staff members per legislator.
- Legislators must transform themselves into "Boards of Directors" rather than onlookers and critics "after the catastrophe", as they currently do.
Executive
The executive branch must be limited to enforcing only the essential purposes of government (currently 20% of government's cost). All other endeavors of government are non-essential to the prime purpose of government and must be either mended or ended (currently 80% of government's cost).
The executive: (at all levels) requires a justice and police function as well as a treasury function to collect and disburse funds. At the federal level a State department is required to maintain relations with other nations.
Uncriminalizing our taxation system
We currently have a Willie Sutton ('cause that's where the money is) taxation system, i.e., you got it – we're going to take it.
In spite of efforts to put lipstick on this pig, it should be obvious that our Sutton system conceals the criminality of this right to steal from the "rich."
Quite obviously, if I steal from my very rich neighbor and use as my defense, "he has plenty – so I'm entitled to take some", I'd be tossed in the clink. But when the government steals it for me, I think it's quite justified because we've come to believe that progressive taxation is "fair."
Our current system has 50 million American citizens paying almost all of the taxes for the entire country. These 50 million taxpayers pay almost 80% of our taxes (federal, state, and local), while 250 million of us pay only 20%. This conduct is not only morally corrupt, it cannot be sustained!
It must be replaced by a system where 100% of all able-bodied citizens must pay 100% of the tax burden. Our government must be the responsibility of all its citizens.
We must, therefore, eliminate all taxes, each and every one, and replace them with a single, flat amount tax to be collected only at the local level from all able-bodied citizens.
The federal government will bill the state government with 50 separate invoices, and the state government will bill local governments who will then in turn bill you – no more withholding of taxes.
A flat tax, imposed on all (some 200 million) able-bodied citizens, of $4000 to $5000 annually will produce between 800 billion and 1 trillion dollars. This is an amount sufficient to fully pay for all the essential functions of government at all levels as the book thoroughly demonstrates.
How can such a grandiose plan be implemented?
By a 5 or 10 or 20 year implementation;
- Freeze all tax collections at their current status.
- Freeze all government expenditures at their current level.
- Create a new, flat amount tax to cover the costs of a massively reduced government.
- Implement these changes – for say a 5 year program – as follows:
Year 1 Citizens pay 100% of existing tax Bureaucracies spend 100% of current expenditures Impose new flat tax at $0.00 Year 2 Citizens pay 80% of existing tax Bureaucracies spend 80% of prior expenditures Impose new flat tax of $1000.00 Year 3 Citizens pay 60% of current taxes Bureaucracies spend 60% of prior expenditures Impose new flat tax of $2000.00 Year 4 Pay 40% – spend 40% – flat tax of $3000.00 Year 5 Pay 20% – spend 20% – flat tax of $4000.00
Thereafter No taxes but one single flat amount tax. You can now select what former government services you want to utilize, or you can find other providers who better and less costly, meet your needs
During this 5-year period, all the old taxes will have declined to $0.00, and the locally collected flat tax amount tax will increase to cover 100% of all now-reduced government expenditures.
During this transition time, all non-essential government bureaucracies will be privatized, relieving the government of 80% of its current expenditures. These new ventures will be able to demonstrate their desirability and usefulness during this time as they transition into private businesses with all the rewards and consequences of any private endeavors.
The methodology is the same if you chose a 10 or 20 year transition.
Now go and do it - yell at YOUR politician - it's your life, your money!