Just how deep does the rabbit hole go?
Posts tagged Socialism
Obama to Top Brass: Will you fire on American Citizens?
13 months ago
Obama to Top Brass: Will you fire on American Citizens?
The Obama administration is openly escalating its campaign against private gun ownership, and shaking up the top ranks of the military command structure — but is it also preparing to make war on the American population? According to a person identified as a former senior military official, the answer to that shocking question is yes.
World-renowned educator and human rights activist Jim Garrow says that the source, man regarded as “one of America’s foremost military heroes,” told him that President Obama is using a new litmus test for “determining who will stay and who must go” among top-ranked military leaders. That test is whether they will fire on US citizens or not. Garrow says that his source made the disclosure in order to “sound the alarm” over the administration’s plans.
While Garrow will not yet reveal the identity of the source, it’s important to note that Garrow himself is a man of considerable accomplishment. He is the founder of the Bethune Institute, which has established hundreds of schools throughout China. Three years ago, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work though a group called Pink Pagoda, which combat “gendercide” in China — that is, the practice of rescuing baby girls who had been abandoned or targeted for infanticide because of the government’s one-child policy. He was personally involved in helping to save the lives of more than 50,000 Chinese girls. He joins Gary Franchi on WHDT World News to discuss this new “Litmus Test.”
Watch now on RTR: http://rtr.org/vid/8341
Watch now on YouTube: http://youtu.be/
Next News Network’s WHDT World News Program airs daily at 6pm and 11pm Eastern on Comcast, DirecTV and Over-the-Air and Online at http://usmediavault.com/
Regime Uncertainty: Some Clarifications
05 months ago
in Finance, Free Market
Source: http://lewrockwell.com
By Robert Higgs
Private investment is the most important driver of economic progress. Entrepreneurs need new structures, equipment, and software to produce new products, to produce existing products at lower cost, and to make use of new technology that requires embodiment in machinery, plant layouts, and other aspects of the existing capital stock. When the rate of private investment declines, the rate of growth of real income per capita slackens, and if private investment drops quickly and substantially, a recession or depression occurs.
Such recession or depression is likely to persist until private investment makes a fairly full recovery. In US history, such recovery usually has occurred within a year or two after the trough. Only twice in the past century has a fairly prompt and full recovery of private investment failed to occur – during the Great Depression and during the past five years.
In analyzing data on investment, we must distinguish gross and net investment: the former includes all spending for new structures, equipment, software, and inventory, including the large part aimed at compensating for the wear, tear, and obsolescence of the existing capital stock; the latter includes the gross expenditure in excess of that required simply to maintain the existing stock. Therefore, net investment is the best measure of the private investment expenditure that contributes to economic growth.
As the figure shows, net private domestic fixed investment (a measure that excludes investment in inventories) reached a peak in 2006–2007, declined somewhat in 2008, then plunged in 2009 before reaching a trough in 2010. Although it recovered slightly in 2011, it remained 20 percent below the previous peak, and the pace of its recovery to date implies that another three or four years will be required merely to bring it back to where it was in 2007. With adjustments for changes in the price level, the projected recovery period would be slightly longer. (Using the price index for gross private domestic investment to obtain real values, we find that real net private domestic fixed investment is now at approximately the same level it had attained in the late 1990s.) To understand why the current overall economic recovery has been so anemic, we must understand why net private investment has not recovered more quickly.
Romney needs more Goldman Sachs help?
011 months ago
When arriving home this evening I was overjoyed to find literature from the Mitt(ens) Romney campaign waiting for me. My mind was thrilled at the possible ways that I, a personal freedom loving and Constitutional supporting American could contribute to the cause!
Upon opening the information I find it nicely wrapped in a folded poster promoting Mitt(ens) Romney for us to proudly display. Also was the contribution form, as all candidates supply. I went to work rapidly with the contribution documentation, hoping to hurry and get it in the mail for it’s return trip.
After filling all the required information out, plus a few additions of my own, I find that the enclosed envelope was only wide enough to hold a personal check. Funny how things work out sometimes. Not to be discouraged I fold the paperwork and move to the fold-out sign provided. Quite the slick little sign, but very low budget artwork and design. Romney flew to the EU to gather contributions but no evidence based on the simple sign, oh well.
All documentation is prepared for the travel back to some Romney campaign headquarters located at, oh really, who cares. So I take the “doctored” campaign paperwork, well folded, along the the cut up sign, custom cut to fit the envelope (adding weight) and I begin to stuffing the envelope. Mind you, this IS legal and not related to state GOP leaders helping to stuff ballot boxes!
Ben Bernanke: Supreme Socialist
01 year ago
Source: http://www.forbes.com
By Steve Forbes
This article originally appeared int he Feb. 27, 2012 issue of Forbes magazine.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
You thought socialism was dead, other than in miserable countries such as North Korea and Cuba? Think again. It’s alive and well at the Federal Reserve, and we and the world are paying a price for it.
Our central bank tries to manipulate our economy in ways befitting a Soviet commissar. Take interest rates. Fixing the price of money is a form of price control, pure and simple. Until Ben Bernanke our central bank was content to fix short-term interest rates, which he announced would be kept at virtually zero through 2014. But in the aftermath of the financial crisis Bernanke is, in effect, dictating the price of all money, regardless of duration.
By owning so many long-term government bonds, Bernanke has created an artificial shortage of these financial instruments. Like a good central planner, Bernanke is using his policies to subsidize the still rapidly growing, gargantuan debt of the U.S. government. He also holds a huge stash of mortgages so that mortgage rates can be kept low in order to revive the battered housing industry. Big companies also find credit abnormally easy to get.
All of this means the government is picking winners and losers. And in this case the losers are savers. Bernanke & Co. want to effectively force Americans to put their cash in riskier assets, such as stocks.
Another category that’s hurting is small business. Bernanke pays a nominal interest rate on reserves that banks leave at the Fed—a totally risk-free return. On paper an institution would do well lending to a local restaurant or dry cleaner, where rates are significantly higher. But if it does, it had best be prepared to undergo a regulatory third degree.
Ben and his apologists say that one of the Fed’s mandates is to bring about full employment; therefore, it must engage in these statist actions. History, however, shows us that the best thing a central bank can do to create prosperity is to keep the currency stable in value. Whenever the dollar veers in value, as it’s done chronically since the link to gold was severed 40 years ago, market distortions result and capital is misallocated.
The Fed’s socialist tendencies, as one would expect, ride roughshod over property rights. If you sold a bottle of wine for five loaves of bread and Washington came along and confiscated two of those loaves, that would be “takings.” The Constitution guarantees that the government would have to pay you for that seized property. Yet the Federal Reserve routinely confiscates people’s property when it undermines the value of the dollar.
One inconvenient fact Bernanke and his acolytes ignore is that before the creation of the Fed the U.S. economy grew at an average rate of 4%. Since then the average is just about 3%. But in this hyperactive Bernanke era we’ll be lucky to get a long-term average of 2%.
G. Edward Griffin, “The Federal Reserve is a Private Banking Cartel”
01 year ago
You have probably seen the images by now. Athens on fire, the city literally burning as politicians within parliament voted to pass tough austerity measures to meet the demands of the EU and IMF, Greece’s international lenders. This story is about more than just austerity and riots – it’s wealth-extraction amidst economic collapse at work. The Greek economy is in the 5th year of a recession, which is a nice way of saying that it is in a depression. Money supply continues to contract, deposits are being drained and liquidity has dried up. The economy is in a free fall, and there is no bottom in sight. The proposals for recovery through “austerity” are just another way to keep the political system in place for as long as possible with the hope that the elites will be able to ride this storm out and come out the other end richer and more powerful than every before. We break down how exactly that works with Capital Account producer Demetri Kofinas.
And while we’re on the issue of debt, let’s take a look at how the US is dealing with it. US President Barack Obama released his 2013 budget today. While it will be analyzed, touted, and attacked, why should you care, or rather, why should you not care? We’ll tell you. And more economists come out saying the Federal Reserve is making a big mistake if it sticks to keeping interest rates near zero for the next three years. We look at how the Fed got here – it’s evolution into central planner, buyer of junk, war enabler, and firefighter of the economic fires it creates itself. We speak to G. Edward Griffin whose been opposing the Fed since at least the 1960s. G. Edward Griffin is author the bestselling book The Creature from Jekyll Island, which has been recommended by Republican Presidential hopeful Ron Paul on his reading list and which reportedly informed Dr. Paul’s writing on the Fed in his own books on the subject.
Griffin also takes us back in time, and reminds us how the Fed even came to be — the money trust meeting in secret on Jekyll Island in order to draft a cartel agreement that would eventually be known as the “Federal Reserve Act.”
The Man Who Should Be President
01 year ago
Source: http://chuckbaldwinlive.com
Today, I am going to do something that I have never done: I am going to devote virtually my entire column to posting another man’s words. That man is the man who should be President of the United States: Congressman Ron Paul of Texas. The following is a written transcript of a speech Dr. Paul gave on the floor of the US House of Representatives back in 2007. Had Congressman Paul been elected President in 2008, the country would be four years into the greatest economic, political, and, yes, spiritual recovery in the history of America. As it is, the US is on the brink of totalitarianism and economic ruin. And you can mark it down, four years from now it won’t matter to a tinker’s dam whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney was elected President this November. Neither man has the remotest understanding of America’s real problems nor the courage and backbone to do anything about it if they did understand.
Read the following. This is a man who understands the Constitution. This is a man who understands sound economic principles. This is a man who understands liberty and freedom. This is a man who has the guts to tell the truth. This is a man who has put his life and career on the line for the principles of liberty for more than two decades. This is a man who has returned every dollar that he has been paid as a US congressman to the taxpayers. This is the man who should be President of the United States.
[Ron Paul’s speech begins here] For some, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. For others, it means dissent against a government’s abuse of the people’s rights.
I have never met a politician in Washington or any American, for that matter, who chose to be called unpatriotic. Nor have I met anyone who did not believe he wholeheartedly supported our troops, wherever they may be.
[CIM]
I hope all take the opportunity to read the full story above!
Please visit Ron Paul’s official campaign site by following the link below and donate today!
Non-Aggression Is Not Pacifism (Libertarians Hit Back)
01 year ago
Source: http://www.dailypaul.com
By Tom Mullen on Mon, 03/05/2012
Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.
Non-Aggression Is Not Pacifism (Libertarians Hit Back)
Heading into “Super Tuesday,” many conservatives lament that they do not like any of the remaining Republican candidates for president. Romney is too moderate, Gingrich too much a “Washington insider,” and Santorum both an insider and a guaranteed loser against Obama thanks to his willingness to bare his soul about some of his more outlandish socially conservative views.
That leaves Ron Paul, who would seem to be the ideal conservative candidate. Paul’s Plan to Restore America actually cuts $1 trillion from the federal budget in his first year as president, including eliminating the Department of Education that Ronald Reagan promised to abolish.
Paul is the only candidate that actually disagrees with President Obama in principle on “spreading the wealth around.” Paul doesn’t just nibble a few pennies away from financially insignificant welfare programs. He actually has a funded plan to let young people opt out of Medicare and Social Security. This is really a plan to responsibly end these programs. Government-mandated programs only survive because people are forced to participate. If conservatives really do oppose socialism, they should agree with Paul on this. Where do they think Social Security got its name?
For a large group of conservatives, they are with Paul right up until he explains his foreign policy. Suddenly, not only does the courtship end, they stop taking calls and change their phone numbers. That’s unfortunate because most conservatives make this decision upon a completely distorted view of Paul’s foreign policy.
All of Ron Paul’s policy decisions are based upon the same underlying principle: the libertarian principle of non-aggression. As he stated during my own interview with him last year (about the 7:30 mark here), “That’s the moral principle. The legislative principle is really in the Constitution.” Based upon this principle, the government is never allowed to initiate force against the innocent. That means that it cannot redistribute wealth, it cannot stop you from harming yourself with drugs or other vices, and it cannot start a war with another nation.
This is not some new age idea from the early libertarian movement of the 1970’s. This is the foundation of the founders’ philosophy of government. Thomas Jefferson made it explicit when he said, “No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.”[1]
Jefferson’s first order of business upon reaching the White House was to cut military spending dramatically. His goal was a military establishment adequate to defend the nation but inadequate to the imperial designs of Federalists like Alexander Hamilton. However, when the Pasha of Tripoli declared war upon the United States, Jefferson did not hesitate to send in the Marines for a quick and decisive win.
The confusion starts when Paul’s policies are described as “dovish” or “soft” on Iran or other supposedly belligerent nations. People unfamiliar with libertarian ideas may honestly misunderstand them. Others deliberately distort them. Let there be no confusion. Non-aggression is not pacifism. Libertarians hit back.
Indeed, Paul has said that if the people really do want to go to war, then he would ask the Congress for a declaration of war. He rarely gets time to explain why this is important. The declaration of war involves a debate about whether a state of war already exists. That’s why it’s so important. The declaration of war power doesn’t authorize Congress to start a war. It allows them to direct the president to end it. Check the language of every declaration of war that Congress has ever made. They all support this interpretation.
Active duty military seem to understand this implicitly, which is why they overwhelmingly support Ron Paul. They are ready to risk their lives for their country, but only when their country is truly in danger. Why don’t most conservative voters agree with them? They decorate their vehicles with stickers saying “Support Our Troops” but do not support the candidate that the troops want to be president.
It is no accident that the United States has never really won a war since Congress stopped declaring them. Instead, we send our troops into some far-off land for decades at a time with no clear definition of victory. Their hands are tied with confusing rules of engagement that keep them from winning and prolong the war. This is good for those who profit from war but bad for the troops who risk or lose their lives.
None of this happens in a Ron Paul presidency. Instead, war is far less likely to come at all, which is a good thing. If it is forced upon us, Ron Paul will have it properly declared by the Congress and then will fight it to win. Make no mistake. Of all of the Republican candidates for president, only Ron Paul will win the next war.
[1] Jefferson, Thomas Letter to Francis Walker Gilmer June 7, 1816 from The Works of Thomas Jefferson edited by Paul Leicester Ford G.P. Putnam’s Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press 1905 pg. 533-34
NDAA Is Now Law, and Libertarians Are Now Anti-Government Extremists!
0Source: http://lewrockwell.com
Democracy, which I consider to be the first step or beginning of socialism, thrives on propaganda, and uses this propaganda to indoctrinate the people. Once this indoctrination is complete, totalitarianism is the end result, and then propaganda is replaced by the razor’s edge of the state’s sword. This is our lot today. Propaganda has labeled those of us who desire to protect freedom as dissenters, and as enemies of the State. Given the now “legal” ability of the State to imprison indefinitely or murder any it chooses to, the sword has become the state’s weapon of choice. The circle is nearly complete!
According to a Reuter’s article published recently, the “FBI warns of threat from anti-government extremists.” “Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday.” The article went on to say that: “These extremists, sometimes known as “sovereign citizens,” believe they can live outside any type of government authority.
Pay careful attention to who is now considered to be an extremist according to the FBI. Those who refuse to pay or even those who oppose taxation, those who defy government environmental regulations, and those who believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard, are now all considered to be extremists!
To expand on this matter, it is a point of fact that any real libertarian is opposed to forced government taxation, is opposed to government mandated environmental regulations, and all real libertarians fully understand that the creation of the Federal Reserve and the destruction of the gold standard have bankrupted this country. Or is losing 97% of the value on our money not considered bankruptcy?
One thing that was correct in this article was this statement: “Routine encounters with police can turn violent “at the drop of a hat,” said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI’s counterterrorism division.” Yes, any wrong look or posture by any citizen can result in extreme violence against that innocent citizen by police. This is proven every single day around this country, but I should mention that McArthur was mistakenly referring to violence by the citizen against police. What a queer position to take!
State and local police departments are inundating the FBI with requests for training to protect themselves from sovereign citizens. This statement has obviously been reversed, as I always thought that the sovereign citizen was to be protected by local and state police, not the other way around. It seems the idea of sovereignty is now reserved only to the nation state and its agents of force. This of course is backward, but then again, what in this country remains proper, and in the interest of liberty? Little or nothing remains, as the U.S. has become nothing more than a tyrannical, fascist oligarchy!
We are very close to the bottom of the sleigh run on our way down that slippery slope toward a total police state. Most of the pieces of the puzzle are now in place, and all that is left for the government authorities to do is to round up those “extremist sovereigns” still practicing their anti-government ways. With the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA), and the now new expanded FBI definition of an extremist, all that remains to be done is to actually capture and incarcerate all those who believe themselves to be sovereign individuals.
Consider that being anti-government, or even speaking out against the government, or wanting to protect your hard earned property by insisting on real money, or not agreeing with government regulations, can now literally lead to indefinite military detention without any due process or trial. Consider that any who believe in individual sovereignty can now be sent away to black sites around the world, tortured, or worse, via the rendition process. Consider that any resistance to the State can now lead to arrest, imprisonment, beatings, or death. Consider that this once (so-called) free country is now a total police state bent on the destruction of all natural rights of individuals, and the U.S. government is desirous of total power and control over the entire population.
In reality these things do not have to be considered, because they are already happening! Some of the state’s indiscretions are still partially isolated at this time, but the fact of the matter is that legally, nothing stands in the way of this government’s desire to reach a dictatorial pinnacle.
The NDAA gives the government, mainly the executive branch, Carte blanche power in its march toward rounding up any American that it deems as a threat to its false sovereignty. This power not only extends to the capture and detention of citizens, but the president also claims the power to assassinate any he chooses to on his say so alone. He claims this power without fear of law, and without fear of judicial scrutiny. The powerful in government you see, are now in a position that puts them “legally” above the law, and therefore they answer to no one. This situation is a travesty beyond imagination, but it is real, and it is firmly in place.
Given the horrible USA PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, the NDAA, and all the other rights destroying legislation passed since September 11th, 2001, what chance do we have to regain freedom? Given the massive power now evident in the Department of Homeland Security, the military, the TSA, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, does liberty have a chance? Can freedom be regained in an environment tainted by the malignancy of this monster we call the U.S. government?
Who among us could be considered by this government’s definition to be an enemy belligerent, an enemy combatant, an unlawful combatant, a terrorist, an extremist, a believer in gold as money, a survivalist, or a libertarian? If you answered yes to any of these things, you could be subject to arrest, prosecution, incarceration, indefinite detention, citizenship loss, torture, or assassination. This is the country that has been built by all those who support this flawed system of government, and who continue to allow its aggressive march toward totalitarianism by their implied consent and apathetic behavior. Those I speak of have no understanding of freedom or liberty, and have not the courage to fight for right. They either worship authority, or fear it, but either way brings a deserved slavery.
Those of us who fight for freedom will never accept slavery. Those of us who believe in the sovereignty of the individual will never bow to the state apparatus. Those of us who seek the truth will never hide from it. Those of us who believe in the sanctity of life and liberty will continue to fight.
The State understands this courage and commitment, and will take every step to stop it. But if those who are willing to fight for the liberty of all are no longer present due to government mandate, what will become of the rest of society? What will become of freedom?
February 10, 2012
Gary D. Barnett [send him mail] is president of Barnett Financial Services, Inc., in Lewistown, Montana. Visit his website.
How your community is implementing AGENDA 21
01 year ago
You only need to look in your own back yard.
This is a work in progess, a self learning tool and fun little project. Please excuse the slow development as it seems the needed proper time is always lacking. It is my hope that the combination of content and links to other sources of information in this simple blog may help awaken a few of the sleeping masses and encourage and inspire others to initiate their own research, ultimately for each person to be a light to help awaken others. Opinions expressed belong to me, myself and I. Also, a big thank you to all that take the time to visit, it is appreciated :)
