Socialism and the End of the American Dream

Incredible.  This one will require a few reads.

Lengthy blog post discussing the Draft Sarah Palin post.

Must read stuff.  Very lengthy Bankster expose, this time involving Bankster connections to Obama, the political establishment, and the corruption of the DOJ, SEC and other regulatory agencies.  Very lengthy.  Includes stories about the misfortunes of those few honest individuals who tried to do the right thing in a sea of thieves, liars and crooks. excerpt: Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth - and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people. This article appears in the March 3, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive February 18. The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom - an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities - has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions - from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months before hi

Billions from the Drug trade needing to be laundered and recycled back into legitimate property, manufacturing and services industries. With a cut to pay off the monthly fig for political protection. A thriving Arms trade needing incredibly profitable financing coupled with increasingly reprehensible efforts to increase "demand" and political support. These are the pillars of modern day banksterism according to this ClusterStock article written by Ashvin Pandurangi. Awful stuff. Damn reptiles.

.. Restore Economic Freedom .... Rediscover your constitutional rights ..... Unwind the Income Tax behemoth  In 2006, Attorney Tommy Cryer was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for two counts of tax evasion. In July of 2007, the IRS reduced the charges to willful failure to file income tax returns. He went to trial and was unanimously acquitted by the jury. This issue is NOT about "paying your fair" share on April 15th. This is a legal issue that involves more lies by "our" government. excerpt: Dare to look behind the Wizard's curtain and you'll discover the "Great and Powerful Income Tax" is a monumental fraud. Cleverly built over decades amid the swamp of a single misunderstood word ("income") not to mention boxcars of false data heaped on school children, what your "income" actually IS -- as guaranteed by the US Constitution -- and what you think it is, are two separate things. Read on as Attorney Tom Cryer delivers you out of the IRS catecombs, toward a deeper appreciation of your own cherished freedoms and economic rights. The US Constitution prohibits any direct tax upon your labor or property. When federal agencies are allowed to operate above the law only then can you be ruled by fear, intimidation and force.  The Fed uses money stolen through income tax to buy legislators and bring states in line. Thus the Fed, not you nor your state representatives, rules. Your state has  been reduced, once again, to a colony of a distant and indifferent  government, and YOU ARE NOT FREE! Finally, third, and perhaps even more importantly, the power to tax  is the power to destroy. If the federal government can tax one freedom, it can tax all of our freedoms. If we permit them to tax our most precious and  fragile assets, if all we have is kept only by the consent of the  government-then we are at its mercy and YOU ARE NOT FREE!

When You're Holding a Hammer (Everything Looks Like a Nail).  Fun stuff!!!!

Enough said.  Beautifully done Charlie! intro: Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes? You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does. One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 235 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

Bay Area Patriot Group post

Judge Napalatano The Campaign for Liberty Tea Party Group is holding patriotic meetings throughout the USA. Libertarian icon Judge Andrew Napolitano is a frequent and much requested speaker at these meetings. In this speech, the third part of a three part series, the Judge calls out to this generation of patriots to stand up for freedom; to defend liberty. Excellent speech. A fitting conclusion to parts one and two. Many thanks to Frank for this find!

My experience with Napolitano, as a retired lawyer, is that his present role is as a propagandist, willing to lie to make his central point. I've often caught him saying things about the law that he either knows are false or knows that he lacks sufficient knowledge to claim that one of his legal conclusions is true. (He is, however, a very effective orator.) This speech is no different. His premise is false, that there is no language in the Constitution authorizing a host of general welfare laws. First, we find in the Constitution's Preamble it's statement of purpose: "We the People of the United States, *in Order to* form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, *promote the general Welfare,* and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Note the distinction made between "promote the general Welfare" and the securing of Liberties. So the Constitution has a purpose beyond securing liberties that falls in the category of promoting the general welfare. Next we move on to Article 1 section 8, which itemizes the Powers of the Congress. In that section's first clause we find: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and *provide for the* common Defence and *general Welfare* of the United States;" But Napolitano's speech mistakenly brands a host of general welfare laws as abuses of the Commerce Clause, which only supplements the General Welfare Clause in relevant regard. His discussion of the meaning of "regulate" at the time of the Constitution's adoption is irrelevant. The far more pertinent question is what was meant at that time by the term "general Welfare." Napolitano simply ducks that question by ignoring the General Welfare Clause and pretending that it does not exist. That is not principled argument, in my humble opinion. Moral o

Excellent essay by John Marini of the Libertarian Claremont Institute. The "brutal good" of both Batman and Tom Doniphon, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" are once again on display. Awesome stuff! John first discusses Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive movement; emphasising how progressives, and particularly social scientists, dismissed the past as inferior to the glorious future their progressive thinking would usher in. Yeah, "those" progressive's whose legacy might well be the collapse of civilization! "For progressive historians, the past was not intelligible in its own right, but only with reference to the future, that is, to some form of the idea of progress which, although "almost synonymous with life itself," was wholly unknown to past generations. What had seemed to Abraham Lincoln, for example, to be the American Founders' heroic virtues and tragic limitations appeared to the sophisticated historian as mere reflections of outdated attitudes and beliefs-prejudices of a less enlightened time." Then John goes on to contrast the poetry and truth portrayed in the genre of the American Western Movie. He choses John Ford's classic, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" to make his point. And beautifully so. excerpt: "The old West was situated in the Godforsaken wilds of the desert or wilderness, without community, without law, without civilization. It was a place where simple survival was difficult, a place where nature was uncompromising, just as society had been in the places left behind. The West offered the possibility of a new beginning, of re-founding, of establishing governments form reflection and choice, rather than mishaps of birth and tradition. In the West, men seemed to have it in their power to make the world over again, and this made it necessary or possible to think again about the conditions, purposes, and limits of human community. But the western movie showed that even in a new land with a fresh start, the law was not easily

Excellent read.  The financial crisis is examined in an informative but breezy way.  The conclusion however isn't good.  We're out of options, and there doesn't seem to be anyway of stopping the explosion of government debt that will, sooner or later, crush us.   Great read!

WOW!  Everyday brings new revelations.  We've been robbed! excerpt:  Now we know: Geithner and Friedman interceded on behalf of Goldman and Wall Street (Merrill received $6.2 billion, Societe General - a whopping $16.5 billion) to deliver a stealth bailout, one that wouldn't need Congressional approval, and even better wouldn't require the counterparties to pay any of it back NOR would it require that they issue shares, warrants or any other instrument to AIG (taxpayers) in return for more than $32 billion in free money. In any other time, a sitting Treasury Secretary who interceded on behalf of Wall Street to screw taxpayers out of tens of billions, would not be sitting long.  But Democrats control both the House and Senate, so there are no investiagtions (Issa's letter aside).  Traditional media is content not to rock the boat for President Banks Obama lest they be shunned by their peers, and ultimately, 99% of TV and print journalists don't understand the issues well enough to complain with any conviciton, especially against the merry backdrop of the Dow rising and their deflated 401ks beginning to show life. They fall prey to fear and weakly submit to duplicitous hyperbole (Paulson threatening martial law and blood in the streets), when they should instead be consulting with the objective, critical voices who foresaw the crisis and were prepared with alternative solutions when it finally came (Stiglitz said instead of TARP, create new banks). A pox on Congress, President Banks Obama, Bush, Paulson, Friedman, Bernanke and Geithner (plus Greenspan and Rubin).  You may have gotten away with it for now, but I would wager there are a few million of us, roughly, who do understand everything that went down last Fall, and we're not amused.  We're not just going to let this one pass, and we will not stop filling the vast interweb with the truth (and our distaste and vitriol for your wretched souls) day after day, week after week, all over message boards and fin

Goldman Sachs reputation with its clients-who must have at least $10 million to open an account-has never been better. Among the general public, however, the perception is that Goldman is the toxic epicenter of everything wrong with Wall Street. The firm's 32,000 employees are seen as an army of Gordon Gekkos, greedy manipulators who pumped up the housing bubble, then bet opportunistically on its implosion as American International Group (AIG), its trading partner, buckled under massive debts. It is widely alleged-though unproven-that Goldman called on its close friends in government to arrange for an AIG bailout, effectively pocketing billions of taxpayer dollars. "Every game has a sucker," says William K. Black, a professor of law and economics at the University of Missouri at Kansas City who was deputy director of the Federal Savings & Loan Insurance Corp., "and in this case, the sucker was not so much AIG as it was the U.S. government and taxpayer." Heads Goldman wins, tails you lose, America.

When radical leaders over the last 2,500 years have sought to enforce equality of results, their prescriptions were usually predictable: redistribution of property; cancellation of debts; incentives to bring out the vote and increase political participation among the poor; stigmatizing of the wealthy, whether through the extreme measure of ostracism or the more mundane forced liturgies; use of the court system to even the playing field by targeting the more prominent citizens; radical growth in government and government employment; the use of state employees as defenders of the egalitarian faith; bread-and-circus entitlements; inflation of the currency and greater national debt to lessen the power of accumulated capital; and radical sloganeering about reactionary enemies of the new state. The modern versions of much of the above already seem to be guiding the Obama administration - evident each time we hear of another proposal to make it easier to renounce personal debt; federal action to curtail property or water rights; efforts to make voter registration and vote casting easier; radically higher taxes on the top 5 percent; takeover of private business; expansion of the federal government and an increase in government employees; or massive inflationary borrowing. The current class-warfare "them/us" rhetoric was predictable. Usually such ideologies do not take hold in America, given its tradition of liberty, frontier self-reliance, and emphasis on personal freedom rather than mandated fraternity and egalitarianism. At times, however, the stars line up, when a national catastrophe, like war or depression, coincides with the appearance of an unusually gifted, highly polished, and eloquent populist. But the anointed one must be savvy enough to run first as a centrist in order later to govern as a statist.

The video, "The Beholden State", has become a sensation among California taxpayer groups for its vivid depiction of the audacious power that public-sector unions wield in their state. The unions' political triumphs have molded a California in which government workers thrive at the expense of a struggling private sector. The state's public school teachers are the highest-paid in the nation. Its prison guards can easily earn six-figure salaries. State workers routinely retire at 55 with pensions higher than their base pay for most of their working life. Meanwhile, what was once the most prosperous state now suffers from an unemployment rate far steeper than the nation's and a flood of firms and jobs escaping high taxes and stifling regulations. This toxic combination-high public-sector employee costs and sagging economic fortunes-has produced recurring budget crises in Sacramento and in virtually every municipality in the state. How public employees became members of the elite class in a declining California offers a cautionary tale to the rest of the country, where the same process is happening in slower motion. The story starts half a century ago, when California public workers won bargaining rights and quickly learned how to elect their own bosses-that is, sympathetic politicians who would grant them outsize pay and benefits in exchange for their support. Over time, the unions have turned the state's politics completely in their favor. The result: unaffordable benefits for civil servants; fiscal chaos in Sacramento and in cities and towns across the state; and angry taxpayers finally confronting the unionized masters of California's unsustainable government.

1. This is a Weak Case:  Actually, no - its a very strong case. Based upon what is in the SEC complaint, parts of the case are a slam dunk. The claim Paulson & Co. were long $200 million dollars when they were actually short is a material misrepresentation - that's Rule 10b-5, and its a no brainer. The rest is gravy. 2. Robert Khuzami is a bad ass, no-nonsense, thorough, award winning Prosecutor:  This guy is the real deal - he busted terrorist rings, broke up the mob, took down security frauds. He is now the director of SEC enforcement. He is fearless, and was awarded the Attorney General's Exceptional Service Award (1996), for "extraordinary courage and voluntary risk of life in performing an act resulting in direct benefits to the Department of Justice or the nation." When you prosecute mass murderers who use guns and bombs and threaten your life, and you kick their asses anyway, you ain't afraid of a group of billionaire bankers and their spreadsheets. He is the shit. My advice to anyone on Wall Street in his crosshairs: If you are indicted in a case by Khuzami, do yourself a big favor: Settle. 3. Goldman lost $90 million dollars, hence, they are innocent:  This is a civil, not a criminal case. Hence, any mens rea - guilty mind - does not matter. Did they or did they not violate the letter of the law? That is all that matters, regardless of what they were thinking - or their P&L. 4. ACA is a victim in this case: Not exactly, they were an active participant in ratings gaming. Look at the back and forth between Paulson's selection and ACAs management. 55 items in the synthetic CDO were added and removed. Why? What ACA was doing was gaming the ratings agencies for their investment grade, Triple AAA ratings approval. Their expertise (if you can call it that) was knowing exactly how much junk they could include in the CDO to raise yield, yet still get investment grade from Moody's or S&P. They are hardly an innocent party in this. 5

the gold standard is the foundation of any economy desirous of being a Camelot.  In that sense, then, Gold is a plea for a return to sanity - the gold standard. The book is presented in three parts.  Part One takes a look at the history of money, what it is and how it works.  Part Two examines the history of America's money, from Colonial silver through the 1930s and into the Reagan administration and the Greenspan years.  The third part of Gold discusses recent currency crises around the world, including Japan, the Asian crisis of the 1990s, Russia, China, Mexico and Yugoslavia.

People can change the volume, the location and the composition of their income, and they can do so in response to changes in government policies. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the nine states without an income tax are growing far faster and attracting more people than are the nine states with the highest income tax rates. People and businesses change the location of income based on incentives.

Wow.  Maybe the best analysis of the growing awareness of the vast differential between the patriot citizens of America and the Obammunist now in charge of our country. excerpt:  The deepening notes of disenchantment with Barack Obama now issuing from commentators across the political spectrum were predictable. So, too, were the charges from some of the president's earliest enthusiasts about his failure to reflect a powerful sense of urgency about the oil spill. There should have been nothing puzzling about his response to anyone who has paid even modest critical attention to Mr. Obama's pronouncements. For it was clear from the first that this president-single-minded, ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from darkness by his arrival-was wanting in certain qualities citizens have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and presence that said: This is the Americans' leader, a man of them, for them, the nation's voice and champion. Mr. Obama wasn't lacking in concern about the oil spill. What he lacked was that voice-and for good reason. Those qualities to be expected in a president were never about rhetoric; Mr. Obama had proved himself a dab hand at that on the campaign trail. They were a matter of identification with the nation and to all that binds its people together in pride and allegiance. These are feelings held deep in American hearts, unvoiced mostly, but unmistakably there and not only on the Fourth of July. A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.