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Gary Edwards

Give Me Liberty! by Karen Kwiatkowski - 1 views

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    Great speech Great speech!  Wonderful connection with today's events and the history of liberty.  Worth reading!   excerpt: "If tyranny might have been predicted, history also tells us that the ideas of liberty remain steadfast and pure, and repeatedly these ideas take form and flight, and agitate the status quo. Periodically in our own history, we have seen a resurgence of the ideas of Freeborn John. We are seeing them in the Republican Party, most specifically in the person and message of Dr. Ron Paul. We've seen them in the relatively young Libertarian Party. These ideas - of self-ownership, of religious toleration, of the right of free association, and of equality under the law, and ideas that oppose government influenced, government created, and government subsidized monopolies - these are old ideas, and they are right ideas. Today, we live under a constitution that in words, embraces liberty. And yet what we have in terms of a government, a president, a Congress, and a judiciary is arrogant and unrestrained. Just this week, we witnessed a mild example of actual constitutional process. A federal judge permanently blocked the detention of Americans by the executive branch. Section 1021 of the NDAA provides for the detention of any American indefinitely without habeas corpus or trial on executive order. It clearly contradicts the Constitution. Yet, when a federal judge explained this and blocked the practice, within hours of the ruling, the Obama administration filed an extensive and panicked appeal. Judge Napolitano wrote a scathing article this week, wondering what our choices were in terms of a change of national leadership. He basically asked, "What if the principal parties' candidates for president really agree more than they disagree?" He concluded with another question: "If elections change nothing, what do we do about it?"
Gary Edwards

A Victory for All of Us - Liberty in the Breach - 0 views

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    Details of how a federal Judge came to rule that the insideous NDAA law is un Constitutional. excerpt: Posted on May 18, 2012 By Chris Hedges In January, attorneys Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran asked me to be the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that challenged the harsh provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We filed the lawsuit, worked for hours on the affidavits, carried out the tedious depositions, prepared the case and went to trial because we did not want to be passive in the face of another egregious assault on basic civil liberties, because resistance is a moral imperative, and because, at the very least, we hoped we could draw attention to the injustice of the law. None of us thought we would win. But every once in a while the gods smile on the damned. U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, in a 68-page opinion, ruled Wednesday that Section 1021 of the NDAA was unconstitutional. It was a stunning and monumental victory. With her ruling she returned us to a country where-as it was before Obama signed this act into law Dec. 31-the government cannot strip a U.S. citizen of due process or use the military to arrest him or her and then hold him or her in military prison indefinitely. She categorically rejected the government's claims that the plaintiffs did not have the standing to bring the case to trial because none of us had been indefinitely detained, that lack of imminent enforcement against us meant there was no need for an injunction and that the NDAA simply codified what had previously been set down in the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act. The ruling was a huge victory for the protection of free speech. Judge Forrest struck down language in the law that she said gave the government the ability to incarcerate people based on what they said or wrote. Maybe the ruling won't last. Maybe it will be overturned. But we and other Americans are
Gary Edwards

Newt Gingrich: 15 Things You Don't Know About Him - 1 views

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    Good article on Newt; covers the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Personally i don't trust Newt.  As former repubican senator Jim Talent of Missouri says, "He's not a reliable and trusted conservative leader".  Strangely, Talent supports Romney. And there is nothing conservative about Romney.   The one thing i do like about Newt is that he is a bomb thrower extraordinaire.  There isn't a Libertarian (moi), conservative, or Constitutional conservative anywhere that wouldn't love to see Newt in the ring with Obama, hammering his Marxist ass without mercy.  But i'm not so sure that that desire is enough to overcome the serious character flaws and self centered egotistical baggage Newt hauls around.  He proves time and again that he lacks the core values of a true conservative, including dedication to the upholding the Constitution and Rule of Law. Funny though that a valueless establishment repubican "we can manage big government more efficiently and make it work" guy like Romney is attacking Newt as not being a true conservative?  What does that make Romney?  At least Newt can point to the awesome Contract with America repubican take over of Congress - after 40 years in the wilderness. Even though Ron Paul has lost it on foreign policy, i continue to send money.  My switch from Reagan Constitutional Conservative to Libertarian has "nearly" everything to do with the 2008 financial collapse, and the years of research and study that followed.   I say "nearly" because i just couldn't pull the trigger until unexpectedly i found myself in a Bloomberg discussion questioning my support for Herman Cain.  Sadly, Herman supports the Federal Reserve, including full approval of both Greenspan and Bernacke policies that have destroyed the US dollar and enabled the Banksters to run off with over $29 Trillion of our money.  Of course, this is an indefensible and inexcusable position.  The Libertarian's in the discussion pointed out that the problems this country faces cann
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    disclosure: I met Cokie and Steve Roberts at an intimate house party in NH. Probably in 1991. Very nice people but they are full blown unionist-socialist-progressives iron bent on the European Socialism model. Not Constitutionalist in any way shape of form. Certainly not Constitutional Capitalist or free market types either.
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Richard Ebeling on Higher Interest Rates, Collectivism and the Coming ... - 0 views

  • The "larger dysfunction," as you express it, arises out of a number of factors. The primary one, in my view, is a philosophical and psychological schizophrenia among the American people.
  • While many on "the left" ridicule the idea, there is a strong case for the idea of "American exceptionalism," meaning that the United States stands out as something unique, different and special among the nations of the world.
  • the American Founding Fathers constructed a political system in the United States based on a concept on which no other country was consciously founded:
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  • But the American Revolution and the US Constitution hailed a different conception of man, society and government.
  • n the rest of the world, and for all of human history, the presumption has been that the individual was a slave or a subject to a higher authority. It might be the tribal chief; or the "divinely ordained" monarch who presumed to rule over and control people in the name of God; or, especially after the French Revolution and the rise of modern socialism, "the nation" or "the people" who laid claim to the life and work of the individual.
  • the idea of individual rights.
  • That is, as long as the individual did not violate the equal rights of others to their life, liberty and property, each person was free to shape and guide his own future, and give meaning and value to his own life as he considered best in the pursuit of that happiness that was considered the purpose and goal of each man during his sojourn on this Earth.
  • Governments did not exist to give or bestow "rights" or "privileges" at its own discretion.
  • Governments were to secure and protect each individual's rights, which he possessed by "the nature of things."
  • The individual was presumed to own himself. He was "sovereign."
  • The real and fundamental notion of "self-government" referred to the right of each individual to rule over himself.
  • Each individual, by his nature and his reason, had a right to his life, his liberty and his honestly acquired property.
  • during the first 150 years of America's history there was virtually no Welfare State and relatively few government regulations, controls and restrictions on the choices and actions of the free citizen.
  • But for more than a century, now, an opposing conception of man, society and government has increasingly gained a hold over the ideas and attitudes of people in the US.
  • It was "imported" from Europe in the form of modern collectivism.
  • The individual was expected to see himself as belonging to something "greater" than himself. He was to sacrifice for "great national causes."
  • He was told that if life had not provided all that he desired or hoped for, it was because others had "exploited" him in some economic or social manner, and that government would redress the "injustice" through redistribution of wealth or regulation of the marketplace.
  • If he had had financial and material success, the individual should feel guilty and embarrassed by it, because, surely, if some had noticeably more, it could only be because others had been forced to live with noticeably less.
  • left on its own, free competition tends to evolve into harmful monopolies and oligopolies, with the wealthy "few" benefiting at the expense of the "many."
  • They are the crises of the Interventionist-Welfare State: the attempt to impose reactionary collectivist policies of political paternalism and redistributive plunder on a society still possessing parts of its original individualist and rights-based roots.
  • it is in the form of communism's and socialism's critique of capitalism.
  • Unregulated capitalism leads to "unearned" and "excessive" profits; unbridled markets generate the business cycle and the hardships of recessions and depressions;
  • These two conflicting conceptions of man, society and government have been and are at war here in the United States.
  • And if it cannot be gotten and guaranteed through the redistributive mechanisms of the European Union and the euro, well, maybe we should return power to our own nation-states to provide the jobs, the social "safety nets" and the financial means to pay for it through, once again, printing our own national paper currencies.
  • This is the political-philosophical bankruptcy of the West and the dead ends of the collectivist promises of the last 100 years.
  • Ludwig von Mises's book, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, originally published in 1922, demonstrated how and why a socialist, centrally planned system was inherently unworkable.
  • The nationalization of productive property, the abolition of markets and the prohibition of all competitive exchange among the members of society would prevent the emergence and operation of a price system, without which it is impossible to know people's demands for desired goods and the relative value they place on them.
  • It also prevents the emergence of prices for the factors of production (land, labor, capital) and makes it impossible to know their opportunity costs – the value of those factors of production in alternative competing uses among entrepreneurs desiring to employ them.
  • Without such a price system the central planners are flying blind, unable to rationally know or decide how best to utilize labor, capital and resources in productively efficient ways to make the goods and services most highly valued by the consuming public.
  • Thus, Mises concluded, comprehensive socialist central planning would lead to "planned chaos."
  • And, therefore, there is no guarantee that the amount of investments undertaken and their time horizons are compatible with the available resources not also being demanded and used for more immediate consumer goods production in the society.
  • As a consequence, financial markets do not work like real markets.
  • Thus, the interventionist state leads to waste, inefficiency and misuses of resources that lower the standards of living that we all, otherwise, could have enjoyed.
  • We cannot be sure what the amount of real savings may be in the society to support real and sustainable investment and capital formation.
  • Government intervention prevents prices from "telling the truth" about the real supply and demand conditions thus leading to imbalances and distortions in the market.
  • We cannot know what the "real cost" of borrowing should be, since interest rates are not determined by actual, private sector savings and investment decisions.
  • Government production regulations, controls, restrictions and prohibitions prevent entrepreneurs from using their knowledge, ability and capital in ways that most effectively produce the goods consumers actually want and at the most cost-competitive prices possible.
  • This is why countries around the world periodically experience booms and busts, inflations and recessions − not because of some inherent instabilities or "irrationalities" in financial markets, but because of monetary central planning through central banking that does not allow market-based financial intermediation to develop and work as it could and would in a real free-market setting.
  • But in the United States and especially in Europe, government "austerity" means merely temporarily reducing the rate of increase in government spending, slowing down the rate at which new debt is accumulating and significantly raising taxes in an attempt to close the deficit gap.
  • The fundamental problem is that over the decades, the size and scope of governments in the Western world have been growing far more than the rates at which their economies have been expanding, so that the "slice" of the national economic "pie" eaten by government has been growing larger and larger, even when the "pie" in absolute terms is bigger than it was, say, 30 or 40 years ago.
  • European governments, in general, take the view that "austerity" means squeezing the private sector more through taxes and other revenue sources to avoid any noticeable and significant cuts in what government does and spends.
  • So there is "austerity" for the private sector and a mad rush for financial "safety nets" for the government and those who live off the State.
  • In reality, of course, it is the burdens of government regulation, taxation and impediments to more flexible labor and related markets that have generated the high unemployment rates and the retarded recovery from the recession.
  • Instead, the "common market" ideal has been transformed into the goal of a European Union "Super-State" to which the individual countries and their citizens would be subservient and obedient.
  • Keynesian policies offer people and politicians what they want to hear. Claiming that any sluggish business or lost jobs are due to a lack of "aggregate demand," Keynes argued that full employment and profitable business could only be reestablished and maintained through "activist" government monetary and fiscal policy – print money and run budget deficits.
  • What Britain and Europe should have as its goal is the ideal of the classical liberal free traders of the 19th century – non-intervention by governments in people's lives, at home and abroad. That is, a de-politicization of society, so people may freely work, trade and travel as they peacefully wish, with government merely the protector of people's individual rights.
  • Take the benefits away and tell people they are free to come and work to support themselves and their families. Restore more flexibility and competitiveness to labor markets and reduce taxes and business regulations.
  • Then those who come to Britain's shores will be those wanting freedom and opportunity without being a burden upon others.
  • What was needed was a change in ideas from the statist mentality to one of individual freedom and unhampered free markets.
  • In an epoch of collectivist ideas, don't be surprised if governments regulate, control, intervene and redistribute wealth.
  • The tentacle of regulations, restrictions and politically-correct social controls are spreading out in every direction from Brussels and its European-wide manipulating and mismanaging bureaucracy.
  • In the name of assuring "national prosperity," politicians could spend money to buy the votes that get them elected and reelected to government offices.
  • And every special interest group could make the case that government-spending programs that benefitted them were all reasonable and necessary to assure a fully employed and growing economy.
  • Furthermore, the Keynesian rationale for government deficit spending enabled politicians to seem to be able to offer something for nothing. They could offer, say, $100 of government spending to voters and special interest groups but the tax burden imposed in the present might only be $75, since the remainder of the money to pay for that government spending was borrowed. And that borrowed money would not have to be repaid until some indefinite time in the future by unspecific taxpayers when that "tomorrow" finally arrived.
  • instability
  • Keynes argued that the market economy's inherent
  • arose from the
  • who were subject to irrational and unpredictable waves of "optimism" and "pessimism."
  • animal spirits" of businessmen
  • Mises argued that there was nothing inherent in the market economy to bring about these swings of economic booms followed by periods of depression and unemployment.
  • If markets got out of balance with the necessity of an eventual correction in the economy to, once again, set things right, the source of this instability was government monetary policy.
  • Central banks too often followed a policy of trying to create "good times" in the economy by expanding the money supply through the banking system.
  • With new, excess funds created by the central bank available for lending, banks lower rates of interest to attract borrowers.
  • But this throws savings and investment out of balance, since the rate of interest no longer serves as a reliable indicator and signal concerning the availability of real savings in the economy in relation to those wanting to borrow funds for various investment purposes.
  • The economic crisis comes when it is discovered that all the claims on resources, capital and labor for all the attempted consumption and investment activities in the economy are greater than the actual and available amounts of such scarce resources.
  • The recession period, in Mises's view, is the necessary "correction" period when in the post-boom era, people must adapt and adjust to the newly discovered "real" supply and demand conditions in the market.
  • Any interference with the "rebalancing" of the economy by government raising taxes, imposing more regulations, or new artificial government "stimulus" activities merely makes it more difficult and time-consuming for people in the private sector to get the economy back on an even keel.
  • Friedrich A. Hayek, once observed, unemployment is not "caused" by stopping an inflation, but rather inflation induces the artificial employments that cannot be sustained and which inevitably disappear once the inflation is reined in.
  • The recession of 2008-2009 was the result of several years of central bank stimulus.
  • From 2003 to 2008, the Federal Reserve increased the money supply by about 50 percent.
  • Interest rates for much of this time, when adjusted for inflation, were either zero or negative.
  • Awash in cash, banks extended loans to virtually anyone, with no serious and usual concern about the borrower's credit-worthiness.
  • This was most notably true in the housing market, where government agencies like Fannie May and Freddie Mac were pressuring banks to make mortgage loans by promising a guarantee that they would make good on any bad home loans.
  • Since 2008-2009, the Federal Reserve has, again, turned on the monetary spigot, increasing its own portfolio by almost $3 trillion, by buying US Treasuries, US mortgages and other assets.
  • So why has there not been a complementary explosion of price inflation?
  • In some areas there has been, most clearly in the stock market and the bond market, But the reason why all that newly created money has not brought about a higher price inflation is due to the fact that a large part of all newly created money is sitting as unlent reserves in banks.
  • This is because the Federal Reserve has been paying banks a rate of interest slightly above the market interest rates to induce banks not to lend.
  • (a) general "regime uncertainty," that is, no one knows what government policy will be tomorrow; will ObamaCare be fully implemented after January 2014?;
  • Among the reasons for the sluggish jobs growth in the US are:
  • (b) what will taxes be for the rest of the current president's term in the White House
  • (c) what will the regulatory environment be like for the next three years – in 2012, the government implemented around 80,000 pages of regulations as printed in the Federal Registry;
  • (d) how will the deficit and debt problems play out between Congress and the White House and will it threaten the general financial situation in the country; an
  • (e) what wars, if any, will the government find itself involved in, in places like the Middle East?
  • China
  • is still a controlled and commanded society, with a government that works hard to try to determine what people read, see and think.
  • All these building projects have been brought into existence by a government that not only controls the money supply and manipulates interest rates but also heavy-handedly tells banks whom to specifically loan to and for what investment activities.
  • Central planning is alive and well in China, with the motives being both power and profits for those inside and outside the Communist Party having the most influence and connections in "high" places.
  • In my opinion, China is heading for a great economic crisis, resulting from a highly imbalanced and distorted economic system still guided far more by politics than sound market decision-making.
  • global financial markets in any foreseeable future. It is a money that still primarily exists to serve the political purposes of those who sit in the "inner circles" of power in Beijing.
  • One hundred years ago, in 1913, how many could have predicted that a year later a European-wide war would break out that would lead to the destruction of great European empires and set the stage for the rise of totalitarian collectivism that resulted in an even worse global war two decades later?
  • Thus, whether, at the end of the day, freedom triumphs and the future is one of liberty and prosperity is partly on each one of us.
  • Near the end of his great book, Socialism, Ludwig von Mises said:
  • "Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interest, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us . . . Whether society shall continue to evolve or where it shall decay lies . . . in the hands of man."
  • In my view, the idea of a "soft landing" is an illusion based on the idea held by central bankers, themselves, that they have the wisdom and ability to know how to "micro-manage" the all the changes and adjustments resulting from their own manipulations of the monetary aggregates. They do not have this wisdom and ability. So hold on for what is most likely to be another rocky road.
  • It was Mises's clear vision that once society has broken the relationship between value and payment, sooner or later people would not know the price of anything.
  • At this point, investment ceases and business becomes furtive and transactional.
  • People cannot plan for the future because they do not understand the reality of the present.
  • Society begins to sink.
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    Incredible.  A simple explanation that explains everything.  Rchard Ebeling's "Unified Theory of Everything" is something every American can understand.  If only they would take a break from "Dancing with the Stars" and pay attention to the future of their country and the world.  It's a future where either "individual freedom", as defined by our Constitution and Declaration of Independence, will win out; or, the forces of fascist socialism / marxism will continue to roll and rule.  Incredible read!!!!
Gary Edwards

The Red Pill Radio | Liberty, Tyranny & Banksters! - 0 views

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    Good web site arguing for Liberty and the Tyranny of Big Government Banksters.  Good Quotes to: "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." -Thomas Jefferson
Gary Edwards

Liberty Defined: The Ten Principles of a Free Society by Ron Paul - 0 views

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    excerpt: This is the Appendix to Ron Paul's new book, Liberty Defined. Rights belong to individuals, not groups; they derive from our nature and can neither be granted nor taken away by government. All peaceful, voluntary economic and social associations are permitted; consent is the basis of the social and economic order. Justly acquired property is privately owned by individuals and voluntary groups, and this ownership cannot be arbitrarily voided by governments. Government may not redistribute private wealth or grant special privileges to any individual or group. Individuals are responsible for their own actions; government cannot and should not protect us from ourselves. Government may not claim the monopoly over a people's money and governments must never engage in official counterfeiting, even in the name of macroeconomic stability. Aggressive wars, even when called preventative, and even when they pertain only to trade relations, are forbidden. Jury nullification, that is, the right of jurors to judge the law as well as the facts, is a right of the people and the courtroom norm. All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution. Government must obey the law that it expects other people to obey and thereby must never use force to mold behavior, manipulate social outcomes, manage the economy, or tell other countries how to behave.
Gary Edwards

Obama Rex: The Presidency is Dead, All Hail the King - Godfather Politics - 1 views

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    Excellent piece of research by the godfather of politics.  He lists the Obama Executive Orders that effectively overturn the Constitution and suspend fully the Bill of Rights.  The framework is now in place, waiting for an incident to happen that will trigger the occasion for Obama to declare a national emergency.  At that point, the full force and reach of the executive orders kicks in, and this great experiment of individual liberty and freedom based on Constitutional rule of law and self governance comes to a sudden end.  It's wake up time America!!!!!!! excerpt: If one man is allowed to singlehandedly change the law for 800,000 people in a way that he never could have achieved through the constitutional legal process, and he remains unchallenged, we are no longer living in a constitutional republic. With President Obama's granting of de facto amnesty to young illegal immigrants through executive order, he has completely thrown out the Constitution and for all intents and purposes made himself a king in all but name. Not only that, but he has made himself the worst kind of king - a tyrant. Tyrants are those rulers who place themselves above the law. For even kings in most of Western history were subject to the law. Obama has made it obvious he feels no such restraint. This has been in the works for some time. Many of us saw the train coming down the tracks long ago, but many Americans are just waking up this morning to the idea that their country is fundamentally changed. Many more amazingly remain asleep. Change is what Obama promised and what he's delivering. Is it really what Americans thought they were voting for? This president has been ruling by decree for the past several years, and his executive orders, when studied as a whole, have a clear (to some of us) and alarming direction:  (List of Executive Tyranny Orders with a brief desc follows)
Gary Edwards

10 Reasons The U.S. Is No Longer The Land Of The Free « JONATHAN TURLEY - 1 views

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    Constitutional legal scholar Jonathan Turley examines the unconstitutional changes the Federal government has instituted since 911.  Chilling stuff.  Here is the short list: .. Assassination of US Citizens .. Arbitrary Justice .. Warrantless Searches .. Secret evidence .. Secret courts .. War crimes (violations of the Nuremberg principles of International Law) .. Immunity from judicial review ..Continual (and warrantless) monitoring of citizens .. Extraordinary renditions Turley asks how can we continue to consider America the land of the free when the Federal government continues to compromise our freedoms on a scale only seen in despotic military tyrannies?  Like China, Cuba and Pakistan?   I've been following the post and comments of the Bay Area Patriot group, a local Tea Party offshoot.  It's incredible how so many members continue to be swept up in 911 mania, demanding more military actions in more places.  As if the ten years of war in Afghansitan and Iraq have left our country safe in our way of life and secure in our freedoms.  Just the opposite is happening, as Professor Turley so thoroughly details.  Yet, they cry for more war.  Then proudly claim their status as Tea Party Patriots taking action to restore America and USA Constitution.   What was Einstein's definition of insanity?  :) excerpt: The column addresses how the continued rollbacks on civil liberties in the United States conflicts with the view of the country as the land of the free.  If we are going to adopt Chinese legal principles, we should at least have the integrity to adopt one Chinese proverb: "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names."  We seem as a country to be in denial as to the implications of these laws and policies.  Whether we are viewed as a free country with authoritarian inclinations or an authoritarian nation with free aspirations (or some other hybrid definition), we are clearly not what we once were.
Gary Edwards

Obama's Plan To Destroy America Hatched at Columbia University, Says Classmat... - 0 views

  • The plan was revolting, but brilliant. Cloward and Piven taught that America could be destroyed only from within. Only by overwhelming the system with debt, welfare and entitlements could capitalism and the American economy be destroyed. So the plan was to make a majority of Americans dependent on welfare, food stamps, disability, unemployment and entitlements of all kinds. Then, under the weight of the debt, the system would implode and the economy collapse, bankrupting business owners (i.e., conservative donors). Americans would be brought to their knees, begging for big government to save them. Voilà! You’d have a new system: a system based on fairness, equality and social justice. It’s called socialism.
  • Under Obama, 660,000 Americans dropped off the job rolls… just last month. Ninety million working-age, able-bodied Americans are no longer in the workforce. Almost 50 million Americans are on food stamps (20 percent of all eligible adults). Fourteen million are on disability. Millions more are on welfare, unemployment and so many different categories of entitlements that my head is spinning. Now, add in free healthcare, plus 22 million government employees. Record-setting numbers of Americans are emptying their retirement accounts to survive. Student loan debt is a national disaster — with defaults up 36 percent from a year ago. Some 16.4 million Americans live in poverty… in the suburbs.
  • Obama promised to cut the deficit in half; instead, he gave us five consecutive trillion-dollar deficits. He promised to spend responsibly; instead, he now owns the title of “biggest spender in world history.” He called Bush’s $4 trillion in debt over eight years reckless, then proceeded to pile on $6 trillion in only four years. He added 6,118 new rules, regulations and mandates in just the past 90 days. He claimed taxes are low, yet he just raised taxes to the same level as bankrupt EU countries like Greece, Spain, Italy and France. Our Federal income taxes are now far higher than the former Soviet Republics’.
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  • Overwhelm the system with debt.
  • use it to bring down the U.S. economy and destroy capitalism to create what they consider to be “equality, fairness and social justice.”
Gary Edwards

If this passes, there will be civil war - Google Docs - 0 views

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    Nice article from Lou Chow responding to the Reuters News Report that the Obama State Department has reversed USA position on the primacy of international agreements and the USA Constitution. Buckle up Patriots, the Globalist are making their move.
Gary Edwards

$29,000,000,000,000: A Detailed Look at the Fed's Bailout by Funding Facility and Recip... - 0 views

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    Stunning stuff.  No need to bailout the European Banks because the Federal Reserve has already done that!!! The Levi Institute of Economics has published the details of the Federal Reserve's International Bankster bailout from late 2007 to 2009.  It's far more than the $16.2 Trillion the GAO audit uncovered in July of 2010.  It's far more than the $7.77 Trillion Bloomberg discovered in their Freedom of Information action against the Federal Reserve.  Researching the "recipients" of the USA Federal reserve Bankster largess, the Levi Institute documents a whopping $29 Trillion has been distributed to Bankster coffers at near zero percent interest.   Note that no debt, and no loans of any kind has been purchased, retired, restructured or otherwise dealt with.  The bad loans remain on the books, including crushing interest payments that continue to escalate and accrue.  Debtors continue to fall deeper into debt.  Foreclosure and default loom over public, private and sovereign debtors.  So where did the money go?  $29 Trill is more than enough to retire the entire USA national debt, with interest, and, every mortgage both public and private in the USA. abstract: There have been a number of estimates of the total amount of funding provided by the Federal Reserve to bail out the financial system. For example, Bloomberg recently claimed that the cumulative commitment by the Fed (this includes asset purchases plus lending) was $7.77 trillion. As part of the Ford Foundation project "A Research and Policy Dialogue Project on Improving Governance of the Government Safety Net in Financial Crisis," Nicola Matthews and James Felkerson have undertaken an examination of the data on the Fed's bailout of the financial system-the most comprehensive investigation of the raw data to date. This working paper is the first in a series that will report the results of this investigation. The extraordinary scope and magnitude of the recent financial crisis of 2007-09 required an
Gary Edwards

History's Path To Tyranny - Google Docs - 0 views

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    Nice article written by Ron Kilmartin and published to the Bay Area Patriots Group listmail.  Republished here for the purposes of Diigo bookmarking. Ron compares the Obama tyranny methods to those used by Hitler to subjugate the German people and take over the German Republic.  His observations are based on the historical work of William L. Shirer, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". excerpt: Over the past year I have been reading a few pages a day of William L. Shirer's history of Nazism, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" - Nearly 1200 pages and I have finally finished. It is a masterpiece of journalism history based on Shirer's own observations beginning in the 1920s. It is centered of course on Adolf Hitler, his cronies, and his generals. As I read this I began mentally comparing it with our current leader and our current administration's edicts  from the EPA and other agencies. I found that there are many similarities between Hitler's rise to power and Obama's, as well as the tyranny of the Nazi administration. So I decided to write up my comparative observations, as given below. It is not that Obama is following a path to Nazism, but that he seems to be following a path to a tyranny that is all his own: racist, anti-rich,  pro-socialist, anti-industry, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, , anti-Israel,  pro-Islam, anti-Constitution, anti-First Amendment anti-Second Amendment, anti-Fourth Amendment, anti-Tenth Amendment and anti-America, to name a few of the tyrannical tenants of Obamunism. There are many other historical examples of tyrannical leaders besides Hitler, but for now he will do just fine as a model tyrant, and Shirir's tomb provides a ready means of comparison. ...........
Gary Edwards

The Manifesto : Porter Stansberry and the Project to Restore America - 1 views

  • First, we should have a balanced budget amendment.
  • Next, we need a constitutional amendment that ensures sound money.
  • Finally... we need a logical way to put a stop to the narrowing of the tax base.
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  • a constitutional amendment that limits state and federal taxation to 20% of income (from whatever the source) and abolishes all other forms of taxation at the state and local level. Give each household a $24,000 annual exemption.
  • We could eliminate the IRS.
  • How much did you make? Send the government 20% of it.
  • we should word the constitutional amendment to make clear our intentions:
  • Every U.S. citizen has the right to keep 80% of his income.
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    I've been following and reading Porter's publications since September of 2008, when the mighty Marbux pointed me to Porter and the libertarian economists as a first step to understanding the financial collapse of 2008, and the incredible role the Federal government / Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel played. Porter started the Project to Restore Americqa, and wrote this very concise and well thought out manifesto explaining a new direction for America to consider.  If you love your country, please take a few minutes to read this.  Rarely has the truth been so clearly stated, and a solution so precisely, yet simply, presented.  Good stuff.  +1 "We have to stop giving our citizens improper incentives. We have to increase the "skin" voters have in the game by spreading the burden of government more equally. And we have to ensure the government doesn't have the power to destroy our currency. Americans now owe $56 trillion in total debt, much of it held by foreign investors. We must spend $3.5 trillion each year on interest. That is already more than the federal government spends, in total. We will never be able to repay these debts - already equal to roughly four times our country's GDP. The largest components of the debts we owe are government debts... and they are growing rapidly and show no signs of stopping. Do you think it's more likely we'll find a way to actually pay down these debts... or simply choose to print more money to pay these debts? That's what we're doing right now. So far, the Federal Reserve has printed more than $2 trillion of new money and used it to finance our government's borrowing binge. So the question is, what can we do to change the direction in which we are headed? We have to fundamentally restructure our system. There must be more balance between rights and responsibilities. There must be some fundamental limit on spending and on taxes. And we need sound money to prohibit the government from taxing us silently via inflation an
Gary Edwards

NSA Spying On - and Blackmailing - Top Government Officials and Military Officers Alex ... - 1 views

  • During the raid, Binney attempted to report to FBI officials the crimes he had witnessed at NSA, in particular the NSA’s violation of the constitutional rights of all Americans.
  • Other NSA whistleblowers have also been subjected to armed raids and criminal prosecution.
  • Even the head of the CIA was targeted with extra-constitutional spying and driven out of office. 
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  • Indeed, Binney makes it very clear that the government will use information gained from its all-pervasive spying program to frame anyone it doesn’t like.
  • In a speech on March 21, second-term Obama gave us a big clue regarding his concept of leadership – one that is marked primarily by political risk-avoidance and a penchant for “leading from behind”:
  • “Speaking as a politician, I can promise you this: political leaders will not take risks if the people do not demand that they do. You must create the change that you want to see.”
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    A handful of NSA Whistleblowers continue to talk, pointing out that the NSA and CIA are using the global dragnet to BLACKMAIL the most powerful and influential people in the world.   That list would include Obama, Chief Justice John Roberts, General David Patraeus, members of the FiSA Court; so many people in fact that it would be easier to guess at the few who are not acting like they are being blackmailed.   Like Ted Cruz, Jim DeMint, and Ron Paul.  Right.  It's a very short list.  Oh wait, Senator DeMint resigned his position.  And so it goes. excerpt: "NSA whistleblower Russel Tice - a key source in the 2005 New York Times report that blew the lid off the Bush administration's use of warrantless wiretapping - told Peter B. Collins on Boiling Frogs Post (the website of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds): Tice: Okay. They went after-and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things-they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the-and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of-heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Courtthat I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in theexecutive service that were part of the White House-their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after U.S. international-U.S. companies that that do international business, you know, business around the world. They went after U.S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs that-like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civi
Gary Edwards

When Governments Go Rogue - 0 views

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    Brandon Smith of Alt-Market.com delivers yet another powerful missive as he outlines the transgressions of a government that has gone completely rogue and counter to the founding principles of our Constitution. This one is a must read to the very last line. Wow!
Gary Edwards

The Libertarianism FAQ - 0 views

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    Ever wonder about the difference between Libertarians and Conservatives?  How about Libertarians and Liberal Socialist?  This quick Libertarian FAQ does an excellent job describing Libertarianism and contrasting it with other political-moral-econmomic belief systems.
Gary Edwards

The US government has betrayed the internet. We need to take it back | Bruce Schneier |... - 0 views

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    "The USA Government has betrayed the Internet. We need to take it back. The NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. We engineers built the Internet - and now we have to fix it and take it back." "Government and industry have betrayed the internet, and us. By subverting the internet at every level to make it a vast, multi-layered and robust surveillance platform, the NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. The companies that build and manage our internet infrastructure, the companies that create and sell us our hardware and software, or the companies that host our data: we can no longer trust them to be ethical internet stewards. This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back. And by we, I mean the engineering community. Yes, this is primarily a political problem, a policy matter that requires political intervention. But this is also an engineering problem, and there are several things engineers can - and should - do."
Gary Edwards

The Economic Philosopher's Outcast: Mises | Steve Mariotti - 1 views

  • Mises, the modern day creator of the Classical Liberal movement (today also called libertarianism) destroyed the intellectual arguments of socialism by proving that it was impossible to allocate scarce resources effectively without private property and free-market prices. He showed that the more the state limited economic incentives to individuals, the greater the harm to low-income people and the general population.
  • Centralized planning, something that was characteristic of all three types of socialism: the Nazis, the Fascists and the Communists, led to the ruin of an economy, and resulted in more and more tyranny and the rise of the totalitarian state.
  • What economists failed to understand was that massive government spending and a authoritative centralized government would bring economic ruin to Germany, Russia, and many other countries.
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  • Sooner or later government debt has to be repaid out of tax receipts. Our current revenue base is not strong enough to sustain a viable repayment program to service the debt. Today we create money -- billions a month -- to meet the debt repayments. As new money floods the market its value declines. The country experiences inflation destroying the savings, and pensions of its citizens.
  • Similar conditions led to the downfall of the Weimar Republic. The rampant inflation of the 1920s in Germany was a contributing factor to the rise of Hitler, Himmler and the centralized planning of the ultimate socialist organization the National Socialist Workers Party (Nazis).
  • The anticipation of future consumer demand impacts the output of entrepreneurs intent on meeting that demand in the future and thereby make a profit
  • Author of dozens of seminal books and hundreds of articles, Mises works were studied by the Nazis in the 1930s as part of their assault on pro-democracy individuals, particularly those who were Jewish. Mises' unparalleled contributions to economic theory, which upheld a free market over one controlled by a coercive government, later fostered a world-wide movement. His books were significant for their discussions of money, credit, Socialism, central planning, and human action.
  • Mises' most remarkable argument for the free market came in his 1922 piece, "Socialism: an Economic and Sociological Analysis." In a Socialist state, there were no prices, essential to allocating resources. Prices signaled information simultaneously to both entrepreneurs and consumers.
  • The centralized decision making over both production and consumption is impossible because of the complexity of an economy composed of hundreds millions of people and trillions of decisions every second. This insight gave Mises a greater appreciation of the value of a market economy, one that allows for the change of prices based on changes in supply and demand.
  • The recent bankruptcy of the City of Detroit is a harbinger of serious problems for the $2.9 trillion municipal bond market. Mises witnessed firsthand rampant government spending, overwhelming debt, and inflation in both Germany and Austria. The results of similar economic policies are threatening major urban centers around our country.
  • This defense of limited government and the rights of all citizens made Professor Mises a threat to the ultimate central planners and explains why the Gestapo had sped to his home to arrest him.
  • Mises, leader of the Austrian School of Economics, mentored the great Nobel Prize winner Friederich Hayek, who I studied with in 1979 at the Institute for Humane Studies. They influenced noted economists such as Israel Kirzner, Robert Higgs, Lawrence White, Peter G. Klein, Roger Garrison, Edward Stringham, Peter Boettke, and the novelist Ayn Rand who later made popular classical liberal economic policies. Mises disciples today see the threat of government intervention in our nation's economy as seriously undermining economic productivity and self-starting growth.
  • People are increasingly disenchanted with mainstream Keynesian views of the economy. Keynesians were blindsided by the housing bubble and the financial crisis. Their response was to pump the economy with cheap credit and huge government spending which has only prolonged the agony. The Austrians led by Mises offer a compelling alternative explanation in which booms and busts are caused by central-bank manipulation of interest rates in vain attempts to stimulate or stabilize the economy.
  • Klein further points out that monetary central planning, combined with misguided housing regulation led the economy to produce the wrong kinds of goods and services. For Klein recovery means getting the government out of the way and letting entrepreneurs fix the mistakes.
  • According to Paul Wisenthal, the country's leading journalist authority on entrepreneurship education for young people, America was built on new small business development, led by its forefathers who were primarly entrepreneurs. He believes the U.S. may continue to diminish small business incentives as government expands on taxpayer dollars that don't exist.
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    I've said for more than 40 years that "inflation is the cruelest tax of all." In a fiat currency economy, it is robbery, pure and simple; and the poor are hardest hit because they lack the capital to make investments that can outpace inflation. The net effect is to transfer wealth from the lower economic classes to the wealthy, most of all the investment banksters and "old wealth".
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