SELF-EVIDENT TRUTHS | FROM OUR GENERATION #63

Graham Platner won the Maine Democratic primary with 72% of the vote. Twelve days later, his own party is pushing him out. The reason has nothing to do with the Nazi tattoo, the abuse allegations, or the sexting claims. All of that was known before the primary. What changed is that he fell behind Susan Collins in the polls. The same party that threw Joe Biden overboard after he won every single delegate is doing it again: invoking democracy as sacred while overriding it whenever the math stops working. Platner has paused his campaign but has not signed the withdrawal paperwork. The delay is almost certainly about money. A multimillion-dollar book deal, structured the same way Anita Hill's was, would explain why his signature hasn't appeared yet.

The Declaration of Independence asserts three self-evident truths: that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Government exists to secure those rights, deriving its authority from the consent of the governed. Either those assertions are valid or they are not. If they are, then every policy that violates them will produce bad outcomes, not immediately, but inevitably.

The U.S. public equity market is worth roughly $80 trillion. Russia's is $800 billion, about 1% of ours. Putin's personal net worth is estimated at $200 billion, roughly a quarter of Russia's entire equity market. That is what happens when a system allows rulers to acquire wealth through power rather than production. The pattern repeats in Uganda, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and across most of the developing world. It was, in fact, the default condition of human civilization until the American experiment changed it. 62% of Americans own equities. When socialists claim only the rich benefit from capitalism, the numbers say otherwise.

The Supreme Court overturned a 91-year-old precedent and ruled that every executive branch employee ultimately reports to the president. The previous framework created effectively a fourth branch of government: agencies staffed by unelected regulators writing rules with the force of law, accountable to no voter. That framework is now dismantled. The birthright citizenship ruling, by contrast, may be the worst Supreme Court decision in terms of long-term impact. Hospitals in Texas are already advertising in Central and South America: deliver your baby here for $3,000 and your child is a U.S. citizen. The majority opinion ignored the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" without explanation. Trump has requested expedited review.

The difference between a government and a business is simple. A business must take resources worth X and produce something worth more than X, or it ceases to exist. A government takes in 100% of what it collects, consumes 10 to 40% administering itself, and distributes the rest. It is inherently consumptive. The bigger it grows, the more it consumes, and the greater the burden on the productive sector that funds it. A Minority Business Development Agency audit found that $15.4 billion of $16 billion in transactions were duplicate, undocumented, or should never have been approved.

California has a ballot measure for November: a one-time 5% tax on net worth above a billion dollars. One-time taxes never stay one-time. The threshold will drop. The exodus will accelerate. And the revenue will never arrive.

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