Preface

Martha Stewart periodically emails her fans to thank them for their support. The following two exhibits contain actual email messages from Martha Stewart.

Exhibit #1

From: martha@marthatalks.com
To: private@private.com
Subject: News From Martha
Date: FRI, 7 NOV 2003 11:01:53

Dear Friend,

Thank you so much for writing to me in the past. Your messages have meant a great deal to me and I welcome your thoughts, your support and your display of good will and friendship… Through all of this, keeping in touch with friends and supporters remains a priority that always gives me a lift. Thank you for allowing me to do so. I hope you will continue to do the same.

Sincerely,

Martha Stewart

Exhibit #2

From: martha@marthatalks.com
To: private@private.com
Subject: Holiday Wishes
Date: WED, 24 DEC 2003 15:18:42

Dear Friend,

During this special time of year, I am writing to you again as well as to all those who have written to me in the past six months to extend my deepest thanks for your support and good will, and to offer my sincere best wishes to you and your loved ones for a warm and wonderful holiday season. May the new year bring you peace, happiness, and fulfillment in all your endeavors.

Sincerely,

Martha Stewart

Unfortunately Martha Stewart will stop sending these email messages when she enters federal prison. What went wrong with Martha Stewart? Why was she politically destroyed at the hands of government?

A Supreme Subversion

To answer the above questions you need to understand the subversion of law that occurred in the United States Supreme Court. Natural law has been evolving for the past 2500 years from ancient Greece to modern America. However, during the early part of the twentieth century America’s federal judiciary began replacing natural rights that are rooted in reality with legal positivism that is rooted in politicized agendas.

Led by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the early 1900s, the Supreme Court began abandoning natural rights as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Since that time the American legal system increasingly violated the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution. The fourteenth amendment protects each citizen’s liberty by stating that liberty cannot be deprived without due process of law.

The first realm of liberty that came under assault in the early 1900s was the economic realm. Citizens gradually lost the liberty to engage in free and voluntary trade among each other. Using the philosophy of legal positivism, the government enacted laws that took away each citizen’s economic liberty without due process of law. This assault on economic liberty gained momentum during the twentieth century. By the 1970s there were a plethora of liberty-restricting laws that hampered American commerce.

It was during this era that America transformed from a constitutional republic to a quasi-fascist state. According to Webster’s dictionary, fascism is a social organization whereby private economic enterprise is under centralized governmental control. Starting in the early 1900s in America, the means of production have been privately owned in name only. The government has controlled the means of production through minimum wage laws, price control laws, labor laws, workplace safety laws, unemployment insurance laws, social security laws, graduated income tax laws, antitrust laws, insider trading laws and central banking laws.

There are several harmful consequences of fascism. One consequence is the increased cost of production caused by government intervention. These increased production costs are transferred to consumers in the form of higher retail prices. Plus the combination of federal, state and local taxes require Americans to pay 50% of their income to the government. Higher retail prices combined with decreased disposable income results in a lower standard of living for citizens. Also fascism deprives citizens of their natural right to engage in voluntary trade among each other.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” This explains why most people tolerate losses of liberty and a declining standard of living caused by an overreaching government.

Upon replacing natural law jurisprudence with legal positivism in the Supreme Court, the government was able to override its constitutional limitations. During and after that transitional period the government was able to undercut natural rights with impunity. The government wielded non-objective laws to prosecute numerous competitive businesses. For example, the government used non-objective antitrust laws to prosecute Standard Oil, US Steel, ALCOA, Kodak, GM, Ford, GE, DuPont, IBM, AT&T, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Visa, MasterCard and several other businesses.

None of these businesses violated any natural laws or anyone’s individual rights. However each business innovated to increase production and decrease prices, which put pressure on competitors. With its fascist power, the government urged uncompetitive losers to attack the innovative winners using non-objective antitrust laws. This resulted in the penalizing of successful innovators while financially rewarding the stagnant losers.

Being freed from natural law jurisprudence enabled the government to go after not only competitive businesses but also competitive individuals. Using non-objective laws such as tax laws and insider trading laws, the government prosecuted competitive individuals including Martha Stewart, Sam Waksal, Reuben Sturman, Leona Helmsley, Michael Milken, Irwin Schiff, Dennis Levine and Stew Leonard.

The US tax code consists of 20,000 pages of non-objective rules, regulations and laws. That tax code is a Hegelian nightmare of contradictions that baffle even tax professionals. Yet Beardsley Ruml, who was Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said to the American Bar Association in 1945 that taxes as a means of revenue are obsolete. Ruml said taxes should be used as means of controlling citizens, society and the economy. Ruml declared that with central banking and fiat money, the government can get an endless supply of money by converting debt into money through the Federal Reserve System. This is called monetizing the debt.

As an important side note, this is what Andrew Fastow of Enron did. He monetized the debt. He made debt look like income in an attempt to keep Enron financially afloat. Paradoxically, government authorities indicted Fastow and he probably will spend his life in prison for mimicking the actions of the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve.

Violating Natural Rights

Tax laws are illicit because they violate the natural rights of citizens by forcibly depriving citizens of their earned income. Insider trading laws also are illicit. Insider trading laws have their origin in the economic writings of Frank H. Knight and Milton Freidman of the Chicago School of Economics. Those economists uphold omniscience as the epistemological standard for man, saying in effect that everyone should have perfect information about financial markets so no one can have an unfair advantage. But since man is not omniscient nor does man have perfect information about financial markets, laws must be formulated to protect the “little guy” who lacks the same information as competent professionals. This is the basis of insider trading laws.

Insider trading laws arise from the gross epistemological error of Knight and Freidman. Man never can be omniscient nor can people ever have the ability to acquire all the same financial information simultaneously. In fact, a key method of profiting in financial markets consists of gaining a knowledge advantage over other traders in order to buy undervalued securities and sell overvalued securities. This is called arbitrage and it is good because it eliminates irregularities in the market. Astute investors profit by correcting the errors of ignorant investors.

With the government’s abandonment of natural rights and subsequent intervention in financial markets, the “little guy” believes he is safe. But in reality there is no such thing as safety in financial markets and financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, futures and precious metals. Government intervention in financial markets merely shackles the best traders, stifles innovation and inhibits growth, thereby depriving investors of capital gains that would result in unregulated financial markets.

The concept of safety in financial markets is a contradiction. Risk and reward are on opposite ends of the same axis. If the government removes risk from financial markets, there will be no reward for entering those markets. Financial markets would transform into fossilized artifacts.

Bad philosophy has putrefied America’s legal system and citizens’ minds. Hence Americans believe government intervention in financial markets is appropriate. This public sanction provides government with the moral support for prosecuting the best financial traders. The government’s ability to violate natural rights with impunity gives prosecutors an intoxicating incentive to prosecute the brightest financiers and investors. This enables government prosecutors to gain public recognition, which is parlayed into high-profile jobs, million-dollar book contracts and national fame.

In reality, government prosecutors including Rudy Giuliani, his protégé James Comey, Comey’s Deputy Attorney David Kelley and NYS Attorney General Eliot Spitzer have violated the natural rights of competitive producers, financiers and investors. Those prosecutors rely on legal positivism and a benighted populace to prosecute honest producers, confiscate earned wealth and cripple or destroy competitive businesses such as Drexel Burnham Lambert, ImClone, Martha Stewart Living, Merrill Lynch and other cornerstones of the economy. In an environment of legal positivism, those prosecutors advance their political careers by destroying established businesses that have made America more competitive, provided thousands of jobs, delivered valued products and services, and would have cured cancer.

A Political Obituary for Martha Stewart

The latest saga of government overreach involves Martha Stewart. Government prosecutors have been pursuing her since she sold her shares of ImClone stock in 2001. They have been trying to nail her on charges of insider trading for years. She is the kind of high-profile target that appeals to government prosecutors. Yet because insider trading laws are non-objective, prosecutors have not been able to get those arbitrary laws to stick. So they altered their case against Martha Stewart to one of lying and obstruction of justice.

James Comey and David Kelley were intent on sending Martha Stewart to prison—natural rights be damned. The government haunted Martha Stewart for years using non-objective laws. This is a similar tactic Stalin used in the twentieth century. Martha Stewart probably was scared and thus fudged her version of what happened regarding the sale of her ImClone shares. She most likely did this to protect herself from being prosecuted by a crime that has no basis in reality. Government authorities then dropped the insider trading charges and prosecuted her for lying and obstruction of justice. She was found guilty and the judge said Martha Stewart will serve a term of sixteen months to twenty years in a federal prison camp.

Will Martha Stewart die in federal prison like Reuben Sturman? If she does, the hoodwinked public will think justice was served. The tragic irony is that the government’s arbitrary power to incarcerate Martha Stewart means the government has the arbitrary power to incarcerate anyone it wants. Once natural law and individual rights are abandoned, everyone is in danger of the government. The difference between German concentration camps and American federal prison camps is nominal. Both contain political prisoners who did not violate any natural laws or individual rights.

Closing Notes

1. By the sound of the email messages contained in exhibits #1 and #2, Martha Stewart benefits from the support she receives from her fans. However, she needs more than moral support to save her. She needs natural law judicial review to save her. This means natural rights need to be incorporated into the US Supreme Court to restrain government. That can happen if the populace elects a principled President who upholds natural law as did Cicero, Aquinas, Locke and Jefferson.

2. Thomas A. Bowden identified the transition from natural law jurisprudence to legal positivism in the Supreme Court in his 1994 lecture titled Rights and the Courts. He is a practicing attorney who has produced valuable lectures on law and jurisprudence that help the layperson understand these complex subjects.

3. What is the difference between legal positivism and natural law? Legal positivism asserts that law is a social construction with no connection to morality or justice; law is a matter of decree by legislators. This is a concrete-bound approach to jurisprudence with no reference to legal principles. The unanchored nature of legal positivism enables law to change according to changing philosophical trends. Natural law by contrast asserts that laws are inherent in nature and can be discovered by a process of reason. Natural laws are applicable to all citizens at all times and are instrumental in the development of common law. This is a conceptual approach to jurisprudence that refers to legal principles, which are applied to individual court cases.

4. Richard Salsman enumerated the federal laws that enable government to control private enterprise; he also enumerated the companies that were prosecuted for antitrust. He is a former Wall Street banker, a financial forecaster and has encyclopedic knowledge of economics. His economic lectures including Antitrust: The Path to Abolition and Wall Street Under Siege are recommended for laypeople who want to understand laissez-faire economics.

5. Beardsley Ruml originated the withholding tax program whereby government takes a portion of workers’ earnings directly from their paychecks. Thus Ruml believes the government owns the fruits of each citizen’s labor. His 1946 article titled Taxes For Revenue Are Obsolete reveals his disdain for sound money, private banking, natural rights and the basic tenets upon which America was founded. Ruml epitomizes the criminal mind.

6. Did Enron CFO Andrew Fastow commit fraud? Yes he did along with his enabler Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay. Andrew Fastow’s monetizing the debt kept a bankrupt Enron in business by deceiving everyone about its actual financial condition. Fines or jail time would be appropriate punishment for the monetary manipulations committed by Fastow and Lay. Why? Their actions directly harmed the financial well-being of unsuspecting Enron employees and investors. Now what about the monetary manipulations committed by Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan? Their actions directly harmed the financial well-being of unsuspecting American citizens and investors as seen in the March 2000 market-bubble collapse. Shall their fiduciary manipulations that caused harm on a vastly greater scale go unpunished?

7. Has bad philosophy really putrefied America’s legal system and citizens’ minds? Yes it has as demonstrated by the fact that not one person in the media even questioned the validity of insider trading laws. Celebrities, pundits, journalists, attorneys, academics, politicos—none of them ever mentioned a word about the spurious nature of insider trading laws that were the crux of the government’s case against Martha Stewart. Even Martha Stewart’s own lawyer Robert Morvillo was useless. Rather than discrediting spurious insider trading laws, Morvillo attempted to defend Martha by saying she is good for the community. Thus he argued that she should be left free to serve society like a sacrificial animal without rights to her own person. Eighteenth and nineteenth century German idealist philosophy swept America and corrupted America’s legal system and citizens’ ability to think rationally. The sound philosophy and clear thinking epitomized by America’s Founding Fathers took a hiatus in the twentieth century. Will it return in the twenty-first century? Will a better philosophy and better method of thinking arise?

8. Government prosecutors are needed to punish crimes of compulsion and fraud. Yet they must be restrained by the US Constitution and natural law judicial review that allows only objective laws to remain on the law books. When prosecutors are limited to indicting citizens who violate individual rights and objective laws, Americans will be safe from criminals and the government.

9. Lying to government investigators is wrong. However, the government never should have started a case against Martha Stewart because insider trading laws are non-objective. In reality, she had every right to sell her shares of ImClone stock regardless if her stockbroker suggested this. The real crime consisted of government interference on the part of the Food and Drug Administration, which rejected ImClone’s cancer-curing drug Erbitux. That action killed ImClone’s financial prospects and prompted ImClone founder Sam Waksal along with Martha Stewart to sell their shares. Now Waksal and Stewart will spend their time in federal prison camps while thousands of cancer patients suffer and die. What is the root cause of that wrongful imprisonment, suffering and death? Interventionist policies based on German idealist philosophy is the root cause of that needless imprisonment, suffering and death.

10. Who is Reuben Sturman? He was a highly successful entrepreneur who sold adult books, magazines and videos. The government pursued him for decades in an attempt to stop him from selling “obscene” books and videos. His properties were raided, his business records were confiscated and eventually he was convicted for tax “crimes.” He was stripped of his property and sentenced to a federal prison camp where he perished. Now Waksal and Stewart are joining the ranks of Reuben Sturman. What is needed is a principled American President who will abolish interventionist bureaucracies, restore natural law jurisprudence to the US legal system and pardon all political prisoners including Sam Waksal and Martha Stewart.

11. Who has the unique ability to start a business from scratch and expand it into a billion dollar success story that serves millions of people? Does Jack Welch of GE or Lou Gerstner of IBM? No, they do not. While those CEOs performed admirably to increase shareholder wealth, they inherited legacy systems and assets. Bill Gates, Martha Stewart and Michael Dell have the unique ability to start a business from scratch and serve millions of people. Yet Bill Gates was targeted by the government for his outstanding success. Martha Stewart also was targeted for her success; now she might spend years in a federal prison camp. Michael Dell recently stepped down from his position as CEO of his company before the government could target him for his outstanding success. A civilization that attacks and destroys its best producers will decline and perish. But a civilization that leaves all of its producers alone will grow and flourish. Choose your civilization wisely.

Local Group Home Page