Saturday, May 31, 2014
"Gold and silver are the exact opposite of debt. When you own gold and silver, you own it outright. It is substance without any third-party obligation[s]."
Gold And Silver – Debt Is Trouncing Precious Metals, For Now.
by Michael Noonan
Animal Farm and 1984, meet 2014. The Western world no longer makes any sense, and
common sense has been sidelined for decades. It is lies, deceit, and debt ruling supreme.
The “American Way” [which once was a standard for emulation] is now a source of
embarrassment, advanced by the bankrupt federal government doing the bidding of the
moneychangers, those who adhere to and hide behind the Rothschild formula. What is
that formula? It has been expressed here on several occasions:
Give me control of a nation’s money, and I care not who makes the laws.”
Mayer Amschel Rothschild.
Whether Rothschild actually said it or not, this is the most profound statement, and its
reality has seized the entire wealth of the Western world. Rothschild learned early on how
incredibly profitable it was to lend to nations instead of individuals, and at times of war,
profits soared even more. Wars were expensive. Troops had to be paid, munitions bought,
and over a period of time, the expense of war drained a nation’s treasury.
Being recognized as the source for available funding, kings and rulers readily turned to
the Rothschild family for money. The Rothschilds always demanded gold and silver in
repayment, and when that ran out, control over the issuance of a nation’s money was
then demanded. Long story short, with its unparalleled, and unfathomable by most to
the extent of its accumulation, the Rothschild banking clan became almost the only
source of money to run a country.
While this may seem repetitive and, to some degree accepted as true, the review is
presented as context for what follows.
What may not be as widely known is that the English Rothschild bank funded the North
in America’s Civil War, while the French Rothschild bank funded the South. It did not
matter who would win, the Rothschild’s were going to increase both their wealth and,
more importantly for them, their influence in US politics. That had always been their
primary objective.
Lincoln did not want to pay the bankers up to 36% interest for loans to fund the war.
He decided to issue Greenbacks by the US government, interest free so that the country
was not burdened with any interest costs, a very big deal. Lincoln was assassinated, [draw
your own conclusions], and after his death, Congress immediately repealed the Greenback
law. It should be known that when Lincoln announced his use of interest-free money as a
source of funding, bankers stormed to Washington D C t o complain bitterly.
Message: Never mess with bankers.
Prior to the Civil War, the individual states that comprised the United States were the
primary source of power. After the Civil War, the Federal government started to take
control of power from the states and placed them under its umbrella. The bankers,
under the control of the Rothschilds, were gaining the influence for which they had
been scheming.
A few decades later, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was [illegally] passed, and control
of this nation’s money supply was now in the banker’s hands. It took 2 more decades
to officially bankrupt the United States and cause the nation to cease printing any of
its own U S Treasury Notes, which were backed by silver and gold, at the time. It was
then that Roosevelt declared a “banking holiday.” The banking system was shut down
for a few days, and when banks reopened, there were then under control of the Federal
Reserve and a few Wall Street banks. [JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Chase]
For clarity: The Federal Reserve is a privately owned corporation. It is not federal,
there are no reserves, and what it issues are not Notes. The third sentence of this
article states, It is lies, deceit, and debt ruling supreme. Congress is mandated
by Article 1 section 8 clause 5 of the original Constitution “To coin Money, regulate the
Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;”
Nowhere in the original constitution does it allow for a private corporation to control
and issue this nation’s currency. Here you see the power of the bankers to come in and
take control of the policies, laws, and banking functions. The government, as most
people believe exists, in fact does not. The government is under total control of the
central banking system, the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve does not issue money. To be clear, the Federal Reserve does
not issue money! It issues debt. Each and every Federal Reserve Note, [FRN] is a debt
instrument. The United States does not issue it own currency. When the US needs
money, it is borrowed from the Federal Reserve, and interest is paid on each and every
dollar and cent issued by that private banking cartel. When a nation no longer issues its
own currency, it is no longer sovereign. Guess who has to pay the interest on the nation’s
debt?
Read Article 14, first sentence of section 4 of the now Federal Constitution:
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law,
including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in
suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.
This will come as a surprise to most Americans, but it was the Rothschild faction,
the money controllers, the elites, who had that section written into the federal
constitution. No one is allowed to question the validity of the public debt, no
matter how invalid it may be! Theft had become legalized with the passage of that
Article 14 of the federal constitution.
It is your debt, Americans, and to make matters worse, you have to pay interest on
every single dollar and cent loaned into circulation. Forget about what happens to
how FRNs are treated once in circulation, their very existence is debt. There is no
money in circulation. This country, the world, has been deceived into believing
that a FRN is a “dollar,” just because the word appears on each debt instrument.
It was no accident that Roosevelt passed his useless but effective Executive Order
that mandated all “persons” turn in their gold in 1933. In law, a “person” is a
corporation. Unless one worked for the federal government as an officer or was a
corporation, the deceit of the Executive Order was a pure ruse, as is the entire de
facto bankrupt federal government.
The reason for it was that the elites wanted to eliminate competition for its fiat
FRN. We cannot say it is backed by nothing, for it is backed by the birth of every
14th Amendment “US citizen,” a status which never existed prior to the elite mandated
passage of the 14th, another ruse to enslave American citizens within their own country
by a handful of elites who controlled the money which controls the government. If
anyone should doubt that, where does the US government turn when it wants money?
To the Fed banking cartel, and that same cartel issues debt that earns them interest.
[The point of the birth certificate is that it is used as security for loans based on the
premise that each birth will live for so many years, earn money and pay taxes back
to the elites. The bith certificate is a form of security.]
The debt, by the way, can never be repaid. It is a mathematical impossibility
because the interest owed is never loaned into existance.
This is a brief overview of how the US government has come to be usurped by a banking
cartel that controls everything: government, media, corporations, food supply, etc, etc,
all because of their control over the money supply in the Western world. We may
continue this theme in another article, for it is incredibly complex and rife with plausible
deniability by [puppet]governments acting at the behest of the totally in control elites.
Gold and silver are the exact opposite of debt. When you own gold and silver, you own
it outright. It is substance without any third-party obligation[s]. You know by the
unrelenting manipulation of the price for both by the central bankers how desperate
they are to keep it from challenging their grand fiat scheme. Many thought the Ponzi
scheme was unraveling last year, and many still believe fiat will be jettisoned in favor of
gold and silver this year, sooner rather than later. That does not appear to be the case.
We are adherents of letting the market interaction of price and volume, as found in the
charts, speak loudest and silence a great many “opinions” offered from a variety of
sources.
The explanation on the monthly chart is a sufficient summation. Gold has been moving
lower the past few months, but guardedly when it would be expected otherwise.
Read the rest here:
http://investmentwatchblog.com/gold-and-silver-debt-is-trouncing-precious-metals-for-now/
by Michael Noonan
Animal Farm and 1984, meet 2014. The Western world no longer makes any sense, and
common sense has been sidelined for decades. It is lies, deceit, and debt ruling supreme.
The “American Way” [which once was a standard for emulation] is now a source of
embarrassment, advanced by the bankrupt federal government doing the bidding of the
moneychangers, those who adhere to and hide behind the Rothschild formula. What is
that formula? It has been expressed here on several occasions:
Give me control of a nation’s money, and I care not who makes the laws.”
Mayer Amschel Rothschild.
Whether Rothschild actually said it or not, this is the most profound statement, and its
reality has seized the entire wealth of the Western world. Rothschild learned early on how
incredibly profitable it was to lend to nations instead of individuals, and at times of war,
profits soared even more. Wars were expensive. Troops had to be paid, munitions bought,
and over a period of time, the expense of war drained a nation’s treasury.
Being recognized as the source for available funding, kings and rulers readily turned to
the Rothschild family for money. The Rothschilds always demanded gold and silver in
repayment, and when that ran out, control over the issuance of a nation’s money was
then demanded. Long story short, with its unparalleled, and unfathomable by most to
the extent of its accumulation, the Rothschild banking clan became almost the only
source of money to run a country.
While this may seem repetitive and, to some degree accepted as true, the review is
presented as context for what follows.
What may not be as widely known is that the English Rothschild bank funded the North
in America’s Civil War, while the French Rothschild bank funded the South. It did not
matter who would win, the Rothschild’s were going to increase both their wealth and,
more importantly for them, their influence in US politics. That had always been their
primary objective.
Lincoln did not want to pay the bankers up to 36% interest for loans to fund the war.
He decided to issue Greenbacks by the US government, interest free so that the country
was not burdened with any interest costs, a very big deal. Lincoln was assassinated, [draw
your own conclusions], and after his death, Congress immediately repealed the Greenback
law. It should be known that when Lincoln announced his use of interest-free money as a
source of funding, bankers stormed to Washington D C t o complain bitterly.
Message: Never mess with bankers.
Prior to the Civil War, the individual states that comprised the United States were the
primary source of power. After the Civil War, the Federal government started to take
control of power from the states and placed them under its umbrella. The bankers,
under the control of the Rothschilds, were gaining the influence for which they had
been scheming.
A few decades later, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was [illegally] passed, and control
of this nation’s money supply was now in the banker’s hands. It took 2 more decades
to officially bankrupt the United States and cause the nation to cease printing any of
its own U S Treasury Notes, which were backed by silver and gold, at the time. It was
then that Roosevelt declared a “banking holiday.” The banking system was shut down
for a few days, and when banks reopened, there were then under control of the Federal
Reserve and a few Wall Street banks. [JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Chase]
For clarity: The Federal Reserve is a privately owned corporation. It is not federal,
there are no reserves, and what it issues are not Notes. The third sentence of this
article states, It is lies, deceit, and debt ruling supreme. Congress is mandated
by Article 1 section 8 clause 5 of the original Constitution “To coin Money, regulate the
Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;”
Nowhere in the original constitution does it allow for a private corporation to control
and issue this nation’s currency. Here you see the power of the bankers to come in and
take control of the policies, laws, and banking functions. The government, as most
people believe exists, in fact does not. The government is under total control of the
central banking system, the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve does not issue money. To be clear, the Federal Reserve does
not issue money! It issues debt. Each and every Federal Reserve Note, [FRN] is a debt
instrument. The United States does not issue it own currency. When the US needs
money, it is borrowed from the Federal Reserve, and interest is paid on each and every
dollar and cent issued by that private banking cartel. When a nation no longer issues its
own currency, it is no longer sovereign. Guess who has to pay the interest on the nation’s
debt?
Read Article 14, first sentence of section 4 of the now Federal Constitution:
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law,
including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in
suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.
This will come as a surprise to most Americans, but it was the Rothschild faction,
the money controllers, the elites, who had that section written into the federal
constitution. No one is allowed to question the validity of the public debt, no
matter how invalid it may be! Theft had become legalized with the passage of that
Article 14 of the federal constitution.
It is your debt, Americans, and to make matters worse, you have to pay interest on
every single dollar and cent loaned into circulation. Forget about what happens to
how FRNs are treated once in circulation, their very existence is debt. There is no
money in circulation. This country, the world, has been deceived into believing
that a FRN is a “dollar,” just because the word appears on each debt instrument.
It was no accident that Roosevelt passed his useless but effective Executive Order
that mandated all “persons” turn in their gold in 1933. In law, a “person” is a
corporation. Unless one worked for the federal government as an officer or was a
corporation, the deceit of the Executive Order was a pure ruse, as is the entire de
facto bankrupt federal government.
The reason for it was that the elites wanted to eliminate competition for its fiat
FRN. We cannot say it is backed by nothing, for it is backed by the birth of every
14th Amendment “US citizen,” a status which never existed prior to the elite mandated
passage of the 14th, another ruse to enslave American citizens within their own country
by a handful of elites who controlled the money which controls the government. If
anyone should doubt that, where does the US government turn when it wants money?
To the Fed banking cartel, and that same cartel issues debt that earns them interest.
[The point of the birth certificate is that it is used as security for loans based on the
premise that each birth will live for so many years, earn money and pay taxes back
to the elites. The bith certificate is a form of security.]
The debt, by the way, can never be repaid. It is a mathematical impossibility
because the interest owed is never loaned into existance.
This is a brief overview of how the US government has come to be usurped by a banking
cartel that controls everything: government, media, corporations, food supply, etc, etc,
all because of their control over the money supply in the Western world. We may
continue this theme in another article, for it is incredibly complex and rife with plausible
deniability by [puppet]governments acting at the behest of the totally in control elites.
Gold and silver are the exact opposite of debt. When you own gold and silver, you own
it outright. It is substance without any third-party obligation[s]. You know by the
unrelenting manipulation of the price for both by the central bankers how desperate
they are to keep it from challenging their grand fiat scheme. Many thought the Ponzi
scheme was unraveling last year, and many still believe fiat will be jettisoned in favor of
gold and silver this year, sooner rather than later. That does not appear to be the case.
We are adherents of letting the market interaction of price and volume, as found in the
charts, speak loudest and silence a great many “opinions” offered from a variety of
sources.
The explanation on the monthly chart is a sufficient summation. Gold has been moving
lower the past few months, but guardedly when it would be expected otherwise.
Read the rest here:
http://investmentwatchblog.com/gold-and-silver-debt-is-trouncing-precious-metals-for-now/
It's all part of the plan, folks...
The Theft of Your Retirement Accounts Will Accompany the Seizure of Bank Accounts
Dave Hodges
A couple of readers recently wrote to me and asked me when will the collective theft of our bank accounts commence? I answered, 1913, as that is when the Federal Reserve was created. Today, a dollar purchases 3% of what it did just over a century ago. The 97% went into the pockets of the banksters. The banksters have been working diligently for quite some time to separate you from your money.
As I have detailed in the past two articles, there are very ominous signs that a bank holiday is on the horizon and is rapidly approaching. The good news would be that if that were all the banksters were after, we would be fortunate. There are now clear and definitive signs that the banksters are going to take every financial aspect of our collective lives. In this article, we move beyond the intended and coming theft of our bank accounts and first review the beta tests that have been performed by the banksters with regard to the bailouts ,MF Global, printing money to buy $40 billion dollars in mortgage backed securities every month and the latest ruse, the intended seizure of retirement accounts. I will also mix in a “Putin” surprise as well.
The Bail Outs: Beta Test #1
I am still haunted by the image of former head of the Goldman Sachs crime syndicate and former Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, telling a closed session of Congress that if they did not grant Wall Street “bailouts” there will be martial law in the streets as a result of the economy collapsing. Ask yourself, if almost six years later and three bailouts later, are Americans better off having sacrificed the bailout money in lieu of maintaining roads, improving schools as well as running the national debt through the ceiling and destroying the financial heritage of our children? The Federal Reserve and their bankster allies can steal as much money as they need from the American people, on an ongoing process, and not so much as a whimper was recorded by our fellow sheep.
Beta Test #2: MF Global
The theft of the secured investment accounts at MF Global sets up the coming seizure of our bank accounts. Public reaction was measured and noted by the banksters at Corzine robbed his investors blind.
Who could ever forget, John “the Don” Corzine and his former company, MF Global? MF Global, a shell corporation beholding to Goldman Sachs, was led to the slaughter by the former Goldman Sachs executive and former New Jersey Governor and senator, John Corzine. Corzine’s criminal actions have directly victimized 150,000 Americans by stealing an estimated $900 million dollars of his clients’ money from their supposedly secure private account. There is also another $600 million missing dollars from MF Global. Meanwhile, Corzine avoids sharing a prison cell with Bernie Madoff by purchasing a “get-out-of-jail card” through the sponsorship of a $35,000 per plate fundraiser for that great Wall Street puppet and “Commander-In-Chief”, Barack Hussein Obama.
Beta Test #3: Cronyism and the Lack of Federal Oversight
What are the government watch dogs doing to protect our money from this new generation of robber barons? The short answer is that the feds are partners with Goldman Sachs in this monumental violation of the public trust. In fact, Goldman Sachs and friends have taken over the government.
Take Gary Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs executive partner, who like so many other Goldman Sachs gangsters, have been placed into key governmental oversight positions in order to protect the Goldman Sachs co-conspirators, from prosecution, as they continue their reign of terror upon the global economy. Gary “the gangster” Gensler is the former Undersecretary of the Treasury (1999-2001) and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (1997-1999) and the current director of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In his present position, Gensler had the authority to go after Corzine for his role in the MF Global debacle and order restitution. However, Gensler has decided to protect a fellow member of the Goldman Sachs Mafia by not looking into the massive fraud and theft by Corzine and his cronies. Your tax dollars, paying the salary of federal officials who are overseeing the most massive illegal private transfer of wealth, in the history of the planet, payable to Goldman Sachs and their criminal enterprise partners on Wall Street.
You may not be one of the 150,000 Goldman Sachs/MF Global victims. However, this Robin Hood-in-reverse-scenario, in which the criminal super rich are plundering what’s left of the middle class, will soon be visited upon your bank account , your home mortgages and your pensions. These criminal banksters are in the process of stealing it all and what are you going to do about it? Our nation of entrenched sheeple will do nothing as most have not even heard about it. And the fun is just beginning and we haven’t even mentioned the ongoing MERS mortgage fraud and the theft of millions of legitimate mortgages.
Short Term Memory Loss
I was roundly criticized when I said the Cyprus scenario is coming here. I was told there would be a revolution if this happened and the government would be to afraid to try such a thing. I marvel at people who hold to such naive beliefs. The American people have been through several beta tests related to our private wealth being confiscated and no resistance was offered.
Listening to these sheep is like listening to a country song played backwards. You know the wife does not leave, the truck still runs and the guy stops drinking. Maybe it is all the fluoride in the water that is causing such widespread ignorance and apathy.
First of all, our government is not the main enemy. This is not the government we are dealing with. We are battling organized crime in the form of corporations like Goldman Sachs who have hijacked our government. They are lining up for the last great garage sale before they collapse the economy and roll out martial law. There are forces lining up to steal everything that you and I own. It has already begun but this country is so dumbed down, we do not see that it has already started.
The Latest In Stealing From the American People
The Treasury Department once again is taking federal retirement programs to buy the government more time to increase the nation’s debt ceiling. And why does the government need to raise the debt ceiling? The debt ceiling must be raised for two reasons, (1) in order to fund the banker-inspired wars of occupation and, (2) to continue to fund the largest wealth transfer in history, the bailouts. And just who is behind this nonsense? The Banksters from Basel are pulling the strings and Goldman Sachs is executing the plan. Also, the very close friends of Goldman Sachs over at Citigroup and they have their henchman in charge of the continuing rape of America by Wall Street, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. Let me be clear, and Lew you can sue me if this not true, that it is a fact that Obama appointed one of the criminals who had a major hand in bringing down the economy to run the country’s finances.
While at Citigroup, Lew oversaw 113 tax evading accounts in Cayman Island banks. Based upon Lew’s resume, hedge funds for Citigroup where he lost almost 600 million dollars, one can only assume that is why Obama has appointed Lew to finish the job which will leave you and I with nothing.
Oh, I know there would be a revolution if the government ever dared take our retirements. At least the citizens of Greece rioted because they understand what happened. Our sheeple still hide behind the security blanket belief that “they would never do that.”
Jack’s Criminal Background
Jack Lew, from Citigroup, as I stated, was an overseer of hedge funds. You know, the hedge funds originating from the actual criminals that collapsed the economy in 2008. This is who Obama selected to run the economy. So, why does this bear repeating?
Last year, Lew announced that the government was taking the unprecedented action of avoiding governmental default through this summer by including tapping into and suspending investments into the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and halting the daily reinvestment of the government securities (G) fund, the most stable offering in the Thrift Savings Plan‘s portfolio.
We have long heard that bankers that have hijacked the government would commence stealing our private wealth through the pension funds and this is exactly what the chief bankster, Jack Lew, is implementing. The next step will be to seize bank accounts, like they did in Cyprus and then step up the MERS mortgage fraud as the Federal Reserve continues to purchase $40 billion dollars in Mortgage Backed Securities every month. And the seizure of bank account will occur incrementally as is has in other countries. Certainly, George Soros recent money movements away from the American megabanks signals a major reason for concern by American account holders.
The G Fund is invested in interest-bearing Treasury securities (i.e. bonds) that make up the public debt. The Civil Service Retirement Fund finances benefit payments under the Civil Service Retirement System and the basic retirement annuity of the Federal Employees’ Retirement System, and those investments are made up of securities also considered part of the public debt. In other words, for you people who have cushy federal government jobs, Lew is telling you that the government controls your retirement.
They own it and they own you. And you people who thought serving the New World Order was a such a good idea, are you reconsidering your loyalties now?
Military and law enforcement personnel should take note on how you will be treated for your subjugation of the American people, followed by the total obliteration of the Constitution.
Grand Theft Russia
I laugh at those who think that Putin is somehow independent of the Banksters. Putin is as controlled by the banksters as is President Obama and his intended theft of Russian retirement accounts is living proof of this statement.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told his finance ministers that the Russian government is “temporarily” seizing $7.6 billion in savings from non-state pension funds while it carries out inspections to insure that the money Russians channel to private pension funds, is safe. To do this, it will seize 244 billion rubles (i.e. $7.6 billion) from private, non-governmental pension funds and forcibly, but only “temporarily” place them into the Russian government state pension fund.
Russian authorities claim that they will only hold the retirement money for one year while they check to see that banking institutions are sound. We are coming up on a year and the Putin still have the money. It is hard not believe that this money will not be applied to invading and occupying Ukraine.
The Russian government explanation of why they need to seize retirement funds does not even constitute a good cover story. Many analysts state that the “temporary” borrowing of Russian pension funds by the government looks more like a case of government“ confiscation” of these private funds in anticipation of a coming crash.
Former Russian finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, recently stated that if the government is not intent on spending these retirement funds, then why are they booking the money?
Government controlled companies have expressed a negative reaction to the “borrowing” of Russian retirement funds. Most experts agree that the Russian government is making Russia a very unattractive place to invest given this new development. This apparent reckless action by the Russian government makes no sense unless the Russians, like the American bankers are attempting to acquire as many hard assets as possible.
Conclusion
The banksters in Russia and America are engaged in the exact same strategy. I am sure the coincidence theorists will have a field day explaining away these coincidences. Ask yourself, once a government gets their hands on a new source of revenue, such as a new tax, when have you ever gotten your money back, or has the tax been withdrawn?
How much of the bailout money has been paid back by the banks? Is MERS still stealing home mortgages and are they still in existence? Does MF Global thief, John “the Don” Corzine, occupy a cell next to Bernie Madoff? And do not forget that last year, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in Illinois, announced that once you deposit your money into the bank, the bank owns your deposit. These central banking thieves are in the midst of stealing every hard asset that they can. And they think can seize much more and that will be the topic of the part of this series
Footnote: For you people who thought serving the New World Order was such a good idea, are you reconsidering your loyalties now? You NSA guys who are spying on us right at precisely this minute, do you think your pensions are safe? To you potbellied perverts from the TSA, do you think your retirement will be there when you are done groping our wives and children on behalf of the globalists who seek to dehumanize the traveling public? How’s that Kool-Aid tasting about now?
Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-theft-of-your-retirement-accounts-will-accompany-the-seizure-of-bank-accounts/#UKd2AHbDxhWd4V6S.99
Dave Hodges
A couple of readers recently wrote to me and asked me when will the collective theft of our bank accounts commence? I answered, 1913, as that is when the Federal Reserve was created. Today, a dollar purchases 3% of what it did just over a century ago. The 97% went into the pockets of the banksters. The banksters have been working diligently for quite some time to separate you from your money.
As I have detailed in the past two articles, there are very ominous signs that a bank holiday is on the horizon and is rapidly approaching. The good news would be that if that were all the banksters were after, we would be fortunate. There are now clear and definitive signs that the banksters are going to take every financial aspect of our collective lives. In this article, we move beyond the intended and coming theft of our bank accounts and first review the beta tests that have been performed by the banksters with regard to the bailouts ,MF Global, printing money to buy $40 billion dollars in mortgage backed securities every month and the latest ruse, the intended seizure of retirement accounts. I will also mix in a “Putin” surprise as well.
The Bail Outs: Beta Test #1
I am still haunted by the image of former head of the Goldman Sachs crime syndicate and former Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, telling a closed session of Congress that if they did not grant Wall Street “bailouts” there will be martial law in the streets as a result of the economy collapsing. Ask yourself, if almost six years later and three bailouts later, are Americans better off having sacrificed the bailout money in lieu of maintaining roads, improving schools as well as running the national debt through the ceiling and destroying the financial heritage of our children? The Federal Reserve and their bankster allies can steal as much money as they need from the American people, on an ongoing process, and not so much as a whimper was recorded by our fellow sheep.
Beta Test #2: MF Global
The theft of the secured investment accounts at MF Global sets up the coming seizure of our bank accounts. Public reaction was measured and noted by the banksters at Corzine robbed his investors blind.
Who could ever forget, John “the Don” Corzine and his former company, MF Global? MF Global, a shell corporation beholding to Goldman Sachs, was led to the slaughter by the former Goldman Sachs executive and former New Jersey Governor and senator, John Corzine. Corzine’s criminal actions have directly victimized 150,000 Americans by stealing an estimated $900 million dollars of his clients’ money from their supposedly secure private account. There is also another $600 million missing dollars from MF Global. Meanwhile, Corzine avoids sharing a prison cell with Bernie Madoff by purchasing a “get-out-of-jail card” through the sponsorship of a $35,000 per plate fundraiser for that great Wall Street puppet and “Commander-In-Chief”, Barack Hussein Obama.
Beta Test #3: Cronyism and the Lack of Federal Oversight
What are the government watch dogs doing to protect our money from this new generation of robber barons? The short answer is that the feds are partners with Goldman Sachs in this monumental violation of the public trust. In fact, Goldman Sachs and friends have taken over the government.
Take Gary Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs executive partner, who like so many other Goldman Sachs gangsters, have been placed into key governmental oversight positions in order to protect the Goldman Sachs co-conspirators, from prosecution, as they continue their reign of terror upon the global economy. Gary “the gangster” Gensler is the former Undersecretary of the Treasury (1999-2001) and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (1997-1999) and the current director of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In his present position, Gensler had the authority to go after Corzine for his role in the MF Global debacle and order restitution. However, Gensler has decided to protect a fellow member of the Goldman Sachs Mafia by not looking into the massive fraud and theft by Corzine and his cronies. Your tax dollars, paying the salary of federal officials who are overseeing the most massive illegal private transfer of wealth, in the history of the planet, payable to Goldman Sachs and their criminal enterprise partners on Wall Street.
You may not be one of the 150,000 Goldman Sachs/MF Global victims. However, this Robin Hood-in-reverse-scenario, in which the criminal super rich are plundering what’s left of the middle class, will soon be visited upon your bank account , your home mortgages and your pensions. These criminal banksters are in the process of stealing it all and what are you going to do about it? Our nation of entrenched sheeple will do nothing as most have not even heard about it. And the fun is just beginning and we haven’t even mentioned the ongoing MERS mortgage fraud and the theft of millions of legitimate mortgages.
Short Term Memory Loss
I was roundly criticized when I said the Cyprus scenario is coming here. I was told there would be a revolution if this happened and the government would be to afraid to try such a thing. I marvel at people who hold to such naive beliefs. The American people have been through several beta tests related to our private wealth being confiscated and no resistance was offered.
Listening to these sheep is like listening to a country song played backwards. You know the wife does not leave, the truck still runs and the guy stops drinking. Maybe it is all the fluoride in the water that is causing such widespread ignorance and apathy.
First of all, our government is not the main enemy. This is not the government we are dealing with. We are battling organized crime in the form of corporations like Goldman Sachs who have hijacked our government. They are lining up for the last great garage sale before they collapse the economy and roll out martial law. There are forces lining up to steal everything that you and I own. It has already begun but this country is so dumbed down, we do not see that it has already started.
The Latest In Stealing From the American People
The Treasury Department once again is taking federal retirement programs to buy the government more time to increase the nation’s debt ceiling. And why does the government need to raise the debt ceiling? The debt ceiling must be raised for two reasons, (1) in order to fund the banker-inspired wars of occupation and, (2) to continue to fund the largest wealth transfer in history, the bailouts. And just who is behind this nonsense? The Banksters from Basel are pulling the strings and Goldman Sachs is executing the plan. Also, the very close friends of Goldman Sachs over at Citigroup and they have their henchman in charge of the continuing rape of America by Wall Street, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. Let me be clear, and Lew you can sue me if this not true, that it is a fact that Obama appointed one of the criminals who had a major hand in bringing down the economy to run the country’s finances.
While at Citigroup, Lew oversaw 113 tax evading accounts in Cayman Island banks. Based upon Lew’s resume, hedge funds for Citigroup where he lost almost 600 million dollars, one can only assume that is why Obama has appointed Lew to finish the job which will leave you and I with nothing.
Oh, I know there would be a revolution if the government ever dared take our retirements. At least the citizens of Greece rioted because they understand what happened. Our sheeple still hide behind the security blanket belief that “they would never do that.”
Jack’s Criminal Background
Jack Lew, from Citigroup, as I stated, was an overseer of hedge funds. You know, the hedge funds originating from the actual criminals that collapsed the economy in 2008. This is who Obama selected to run the economy. So, why does this bear repeating?
Last year, Lew announced that the government was taking the unprecedented action of avoiding governmental default through this summer by including tapping into and suspending investments into the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and halting the daily reinvestment of the government securities (G) fund, the most stable offering in the Thrift Savings Plan‘s portfolio.
We have long heard that bankers that have hijacked the government would commence stealing our private wealth through the pension funds and this is exactly what the chief bankster, Jack Lew, is implementing. The next step will be to seize bank accounts, like they did in Cyprus and then step up the MERS mortgage fraud as the Federal Reserve continues to purchase $40 billion dollars in Mortgage Backed Securities every month. And the seizure of bank account will occur incrementally as is has in other countries. Certainly, George Soros recent money movements away from the American megabanks signals a major reason for concern by American account holders.
The G Fund is invested in interest-bearing Treasury securities (i.e. bonds) that make up the public debt. The Civil Service Retirement Fund finances benefit payments under the Civil Service Retirement System and the basic retirement annuity of the Federal Employees’ Retirement System, and those investments are made up of securities also considered part of the public debt. In other words, for you people who have cushy federal government jobs, Lew is telling you that the government controls your retirement.
They own it and they own you. And you people who thought serving the New World Order was a such a good idea, are you reconsidering your loyalties now?
Military and law enforcement personnel should take note on how you will be treated for your subjugation of the American people, followed by the total obliteration of the Constitution.
Grand Theft Russia
I laugh at those who think that Putin is somehow independent of the Banksters. Putin is as controlled by the banksters as is President Obama and his intended theft of Russian retirement accounts is living proof of this statement.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told his finance ministers that the Russian government is “temporarily” seizing $7.6 billion in savings from non-state pension funds while it carries out inspections to insure that the money Russians channel to private pension funds, is safe. To do this, it will seize 244 billion rubles (i.e. $7.6 billion) from private, non-governmental pension funds and forcibly, but only “temporarily” place them into the Russian government state pension fund.
Russian authorities claim that they will only hold the retirement money for one year while they check to see that banking institutions are sound. We are coming up on a year and the Putin still have the money. It is hard not believe that this money will not be applied to invading and occupying Ukraine.
The Russian government explanation of why they need to seize retirement funds does not even constitute a good cover story. Many analysts state that the “temporary” borrowing of Russian pension funds by the government looks more like a case of government“ confiscation” of these private funds in anticipation of a coming crash.
Former Russian finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, recently stated that if the government is not intent on spending these retirement funds, then why are they booking the money?
Government controlled companies have expressed a negative reaction to the “borrowing” of Russian retirement funds. Most experts agree that the Russian government is making Russia a very unattractive place to invest given this new development. This apparent reckless action by the Russian government makes no sense unless the Russians, like the American bankers are attempting to acquire as many hard assets as possible.
Conclusion
The banksters in Russia and America are engaged in the exact same strategy. I am sure the coincidence theorists will have a field day explaining away these coincidences. Ask yourself, once a government gets their hands on a new source of revenue, such as a new tax, when have you ever gotten your money back, or has the tax been withdrawn?
How much of the bailout money has been paid back by the banks? Is MERS still stealing home mortgages and are they still in existence? Does MF Global thief, John “the Don” Corzine, occupy a cell next to Bernie Madoff? And do not forget that last year, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in Illinois, announced that once you deposit your money into the bank, the bank owns your deposit. These central banking thieves are in the midst of stealing every hard asset that they can. And they think can seize much more and that will be the topic of the part of this series
Footnote: For you people who thought serving the New World Order was such a good idea, are you reconsidering your loyalties now? You NSA guys who are spying on us right at precisely this minute, do you think your pensions are safe? To you potbellied perverts from the TSA, do you think your retirement will be there when you are done groping our wives and children on behalf of the globalists who seek to dehumanize the traveling public? How’s that Kool-Aid tasting about now?
Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-theft-of-your-retirement-accounts-will-accompany-the-seizure-of-bank-accounts/#UKd2AHbDxhWd4V6S.99
"If those conditions include fifteen-hour workdays, minimum-wage pay, no air-conditioning in the summer, and no paid sick leave, so be it. How can I say such a dastardly thing? Because an employee not only does not have to take such a job, he also has the right to quit that job at any time. He simply cannot escape the fact that he is free to choose!"
Shame on Walmart
By Robert Ringer
Forget that Walmart employs 1.4 million people in the U.S. alone. Forget that it saves consumers billions of dollars each year on retail purchases. Forget that its employees, on average, earn about double the minimum wage. The raw-meat crowd is salivating. Bring out the class-warfare script.
The word from some disgruntled employees is that Walmart doesn’t treat its employees “fairly” — whatever that’s supposed to mean. But, definitions aside, this is your lucky day. Because if you think Walmart is “unfair,” guess what? You
don’t have to shop there!
What a novel idea — shopping with your feet!
If you don’t like the fact that Walmart carries too many products made in third-world countries, shop with your feet. If you believe Walmart puts smaller retailers out of business and you’re unhappy with that, shop with your feet. Heck, you might even believe Walmart was the real cause of 9/11, which is okay. Just shop with your feet.
But let’s get back to Walmart’s employees. Just to make it easy on the witch hunters, let’s assume that there is such a thing as absolute fairness. (There isn’t, of course.) And let’s further assume that Walmart does, indeed, treat its employees unfairly. That, of course, raises the question: What in the world can be done to protect Walmart’s 1.4 million paid slaves?
More good news: In a truly free society, unfair treatment of employees would never be an issue, because workers would be free to sell their services for the highest possible wages on the open market. If someone chooses to work at Walmart, he does so because he believes, for any of an infinite number of reasons, that it affords him the best opportunity to be adequately compensated for his skills, experience, and efforts.
An employer doesn’t ask a job applicant to present a list of his job requirements when he submits his application. On the contrary, the employer lets the applicant know (or should let him know), in advance, what the company’s conditions of employment are.
If those conditions include fifteen-hour workdays, minimum-wage pay, no air-conditioning in the summer, and no paid sick leave, so be it. How can I say such a dastardly thing? Because an employee not only does not have to take such a job, he also has the right to quit that job at any time. He simply cannot escape the fact that he is free to choose!
Yep, it really is that simple. And since the unhappy employee is free, he can apply for another job anywhere he chooses. No permission needed. On the other hand, if he chooses to stay in his present job, he is making a clear statement that he believes it’s the best job he can hope to get at that particular time. If this were not true, he would have to be insane, or perhaps masochistic, to stay put.
Gee, it doesn’t take a Ludwig von Mises to explain it after all. In a truly free market, everything works smoothly because both employers and employees are free to make their own choices. It’s only when government bureaucrats or labor thugs — a.k.a. “labor unions” — enter the picture that freedoms are violated.
All government intervention between employers and employees results in infringements on the rights of one or the other — or both. The same goes with labor unions. The so-called “union shop” is a violation of the natural rights of every employee who is forced to join a union against his will. And, worse, it is a violation of the rights of an employer to hire whom he wants, when he wants, under whatever conditions he lays down.
But, unfortunately, that’s not reality in today’s America. After decades of artificially high wages and benefits, job-protection schemes, and government-mandated safety standards, spoiled American workers demand still more.
An excellent investment for Walmart would be to spend mega-millions to educate its employees about the morality and efficacy of liberty and laissez-faire economics. And a good place to start would be to put the following quote from communist-turned-libertarian Rose Wilder Lane in their pay envelopes:
Anyone who says that economic security is a human right has been too much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting diseases and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god — Society, The State, The Government, The Commune — must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is.
Educating muddled minds, however, does not begin with the worker; it begins with big business. If corporate America does not truly believe in laissez-faire capitalism, all is lost. And if it does believe but is unwilling to suffer “mortification of the flesh” in presenting the truth to the public, the case for free enterprise is still all but hopeless.
Corporate leaders must be bold and unwavering when it comes to educating their own employees, as well as the public at large, about the mechanics of the marketplace. History has clearly taught us what to expect if good men do nothing.
In the meantime, don’t wait for the government to come to your rescue. Negotiate for yourself to land the best position possible, at the highest pay possible, in the marketplace. Then, once you land the job, your focus should be on demonstrating to your employer that you’re worth a whole lot more than he’s paying you.
And while you’re at it, take every opportunity to extol the virtues of freedom — including free enterprise. It’s true that you are but one person in a sea of millions, but it is completely within your power to be part of the solution to the world’s ills rather than part of the problem.
Link:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/05/shame-on-walmart.html#more
By Robert Ringer
Forget that Walmart employs 1.4 million people in the U.S. alone. Forget that it saves consumers billions of dollars each year on retail purchases. Forget that its employees, on average, earn about double the minimum wage. The raw-meat crowd is salivating. Bring out the class-warfare script.
The word from some disgruntled employees is that Walmart doesn’t treat its employees “fairly” — whatever that’s supposed to mean. But, definitions aside, this is your lucky day. Because if you think Walmart is “unfair,” guess what? You
don’t have to shop there!
What a novel idea — shopping with your feet!
If you don’t like the fact that Walmart carries too many products made in third-world countries, shop with your feet. If you believe Walmart puts smaller retailers out of business and you’re unhappy with that, shop with your feet. Heck, you might even believe Walmart was the real cause of 9/11, which is okay. Just shop with your feet.
But let’s get back to Walmart’s employees. Just to make it easy on the witch hunters, let’s assume that there is such a thing as absolute fairness. (There isn’t, of course.) And let’s further assume that Walmart does, indeed, treat its employees unfairly. That, of course, raises the question: What in the world can be done to protect Walmart’s 1.4 million paid slaves?
More good news: In a truly free society, unfair treatment of employees would never be an issue, because workers would be free to sell their services for the highest possible wages on the open market. If someone chooses to work at Walmart, he does so because he believes, for any of an infinite number of reasons, that it affords him the best opportunity to be adequately compensated for his skills, experience, and efforts.
An employer doesn’t ask a job applicant to present a list of his job requirements when he submits his application. On the contrary, the employer lets the applicant know (or should let him know), in advance, what the company’s conditions of employment are.
If those conditions include fifteen-hour workdays, minimum-wage pay, no air-conditioning in the summer, and no paid sick leave, so be it. How can I say such a dastardly thing? Because an employee not only does not have to take such a job, he also has the right to quit that job at any time. He simply cannot escape the fact that he is free to choose!
Yep, it really is that simple. And since the unhappy employee is free, he can apply for another job anywhere he chooses. No permission needed. On the other hand, if he chooses to stay in his present job, he is making a clear statement that he believes it’s the best job he can hope to get at that particular time. If this were not true, he would have to be insane, or perhaps masochistic, to stay put.
Gee, it doesn’t take a Ludwig von Mises to explain it after all. In a truly free market, everything works smoothly because both employers and employees are free to make their own choices. It’s only when government bureaucrats or labor thugs — a.k.a. “labor unions” — enter the picture that freedoms are violated.
All government intervention between employers and employees results in infringements on the rights of one or the other — or both. The same goes with labor unions. The so-called “union shop” is a violation of the natural rights of every employee who is forced to join a union against his will. And, worse, it is a violation of the rights of an employer to hire whom he wants, when he wants, under whatever conditions he lays down.
But, unfortunately, that’s not reality in today’s America. After decades of artificially high wages and benefits, job-protection schemes, and government-mandated safety standards, spoiled American workers demand still more.
An excellent investment for Walmart would be to spend mega-millions to educate its employees about the morality and efficacy of liberty and laissez-faire economics. And a good place to start would be to put the following quote from communist-turned-libertarian Rose Wilder Lane in their pay envelopes:
Anyone who says that economic security is a human right has been too much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting diseases and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god — Society, The State, The Government, The Commune — must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is.
Educating muddled minds, however, does not begin with the worker; it begins with big business. If corporate America does not truly believe in laissez-faire capitalism, all is lost. And if it does believe but is unwilling to suffer “mortification of the flesh” in presenting the truth to the public, the case for free enterprise is still all but hopeless.
Corporate leaders must be bold and unwavering when it comes to educating their own employees, as well as the public at large, about the mechanics of the marketplace. History has clearly taught us what to expect if good men do nothing.
In the meantime, don’t wait for the government to come to your rescue. Negotiate for yourself to land the best position possible, at the highest pay possible, in the marketplace. Then, once you land the job, your focus should be on demonstrating to your employer that you’re worth a whole lot more than he’s paying you.
And while you’re at it, take every opportunity to extol the virtues of freedom — including free enterprise. It’s true that you are but one person in a sea of millions, but it is completely within your power to be part of the solution to the world’s ills rather than part of the problem.
Link:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/05/shame-on-walmart.html#more
Libertarian arrested for exercising Constitutional rights...
Economic Policy Journal
Ben Swann reports:
According to the Minnesota Libertarian Party, Candidates of minor political parties in Minnesota need to gather 2000 signatures during a two week period that ends June 3rd to be listed on the ballot for state-wide races. That was what Holbrook was attempting to do when he was approached by five local park police officers.
“We were sitting in the parking lot of the park and the five volunteers who were with me were starting to sort our literature. A park police officer came over to us and asked what we were doing. I told them that we were going to gather petition signatures and he said ‘You can’t do that here.’ We know that we can we are legally allowed.” says Holbrook.
Because Holbrook and the LP volunteers were aware of the law, they explained their right to be at the park. Within 10 minutes another four officers were on the scene. Holbrook and those with him began recording the confrontation with police.
“The officers asked for my ID which I refused because I had committed no crime. He ordered that we stop filming him with our cell phone cameras which he said was illegal. He then grabbed me, twisted my arm and smashed me against his vehicle.”
Holbrook says that his shoulder was wrenched and injured and the handcuffs actually cut through the skin and Holbrook’s arm causing it to begin bleeding.
Link:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/05/libertarian-candidate-for-governor.html
"The recent killings in Santa Barbara were performed with a mixture of weapons. Three victims were killed by gunshot, and three others were stabbed to death with a knife. The special-interest gun-control lobby was quick to exploit the situation for their ends, totally ignoring the stabbing deaths. Why? Why have there been no campaigns against the ownership of knives, or poisons, or baseball bats, or hammers, or any other tool that could be used to inflict death? Why just guns? Is there a hierarchy of methods of victimhood we are supposed to respect?"
Guns As Scapegoats
By Butler Shaffer
It is impossible for that which is free by nature to
be disturbed by anything but itself. It is a man’s own
judgments which disturb him.
- Epictetus
Following World Wars I and II, formal and informal proposals were made for the military disarmament of nation-states. The war system has been so destructive of life that many naïve souls believed that some form of dumping weapons into the seas would bring about peace by depriving political systems of the tools of warfare. This same assumption underlies modern international efforts to dismantle – or to at least prevent increased production of – nuclear weapons, whose capacities for the mass slaughter of innocents were amply demonstrated to the world by America in 1945. That nuclear disarmament treaties would be unable to undo the knowledge of how to create such weapons, or to transform the disposition to use them, reflects the intellectual and spiritual emptiness of our species.
When, in college, I was introduced to the Stoic philosophers, I became aware of the self-directed nature of our anger. Do we get upset at the thug who victimizes us in some way, or are we annoyed with ourselves for not being able to prevent his attack? A virus may cause us more pain and suffering than did the injuries inflicted by the hooligan, but we do not become enraged at the germ. Why? What is the difference? The Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, provides this insight: “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
Is it not evident that the locus of our “judgments” and “estimates” of which the Stoics speak is our mind? Is it not to the content of our thinking that we must look for an understanding of most of the difficulties we have with others; of what we have made of ourselves? Carl Jung devoted much of his writings to helping us become aware of the nature of the “dark side” of the collective unconscious, and of how we respond to its energies. By virtue of our humanity, each of us has the capacity to engage in actions of which we would consciously disapprove. If adequately provoked, we might resort to violence, acts of theft, making dishonest statements, or such lesser offenses as avoiding responsibility for our behavior, being lazy or biased against members of other races, or not properly performing our work. That these “dark side” forces – our “shadow” – reside within each of us, does not mean that we are fated to act upon them. That most of us do not hit someone over the head with a baseball bat just because we may feel like it, shows that we do not act upon such shadow dispositions.
A practice that has contributed to the mass-mobilization of these “dark side” energies is our well-conditioned habit of identifying ourselves with abstractions. Instead of looking for meaning and direction within ourselves, we look to all kinds of identities; what Frederick Perls called “ego boundaries,” or Ludwig von Bertalanffy named the “ego barrier.” By attaching ourselves to our race, gender, nationality, religion, ethnic grouping, ideology, or any of a variety of other concepts, we create a division – and, hence, conflict – between our inner self, and the external abstractions we seek to become.
The well-being of institutions depends upon people having a dualistic identity in which we individually become the personification of the abstraction. The business conference attendee who introduced himself as “I am Xerox” was a perfect example of this trait. It is this mindset that produces the soldier who will storm an enemy fortification in the belief that he is saving his “country” (i.e., the extension of himself). The idea that, in blindly following a suicidal order, he is playing out his conditioning as a robotic mechanism, a tool to be exploited by the institutional order that directed his conditioning, never invades his mind. He will continue to delude himself that he is a “free individual,” just as ordinary Germans, after World War II, believed that “they thought they were free” under years of Hitlerian despotism.
If you identify your sense of being with an institution (e.g., the nation-state) then its glorious accomplishments as well as its evil consequences become quite personal. Those who adorn their houses with American flags, or dress up in red-white-and-blue “America: Love It or Leave It” T-shirts are doing more than simply participating in limited cultural celebrations such as Halloween trick-or-treating, or dancing around a May-pole. They are making a metaphysical statement about their sense of who they are; that they correlate their sense of being with an institution that defines itself in terms of enjoying a monopoly on the use of violence; and whose modus operandi is to coerce, steal, threaten, torture, terrorize, and kill whomever it deems suitable to the accomplishment of its purposes.
It is at this point that “dark side” voices, consciously-derived thought, and the spiritual dimensions of being human, enter into conversations within our minds. The political systems with which we have been trained to identify ourselves are destructive of life. The principal indictment of the modern nation-state is that, in its varied practices and manifestations, it no longer serves any life-sustaining purpose whatsoever.
“Life” is purposeful activity, but whose purposes are to be fostered? Whose “life” is to be supported by the social systems through which we cooperate with one another for our mutual benefit? Such questions bring us to the far deeper questions now percolating within many minds, particularly young men and women. Does “life” belong to the living, to be directed by, and serving the interests of, individuals; or – like systems of slavery – does life belong to abstractions we have been conditioned to revere, and whose powers derive from the weakness of our refusal to assert our claims of self-ownership?
When the American government admits that twenty-two military veterans of both current and earlier wars commit suicide every day, one can begin to get a sense of just how anti-life the war system is, even for those who survive its horrors. When one adds to such numbers the many others whose participation in sanctified butchery has left them physically, mentally, or spiritually crippled, the human costs climb exponentially. And what of the families: the spouses, parents, children, grandparents, and siblings, whose lives will be permanently shredded by deaths arising from “service” to agencies of unrestrained violence?
Those who have not yet cut their umbilical cords to the state will continue seeking explanations for the ubiquitous violence that permeates our culture, a destructiveness they are unwilling to attribute to themselves as personifications of the system created and sustained by their thinking. When troubled young men kill students at schools (and why do so many of these multiple killings take place at schools?), those who continue their attachments to institutionalism blank out. Their intellectual vacuity allows them to plumb to no greater depth for an explanation than to blame guns. Violent movies, TV programs, and video-games will also be blamed by some, just as long coats were so accused following the Columbine school shootings a few years ago. The idea that things can have a will to action, while humans lack the will to resist their seductive powers, is to resort to primitive thinking.
If we are to move beyond simple-minded explanations for both our personal and societal problems, we must be willing to explore what J. Krishnamurti called “the movement of thought.” It is more comforting for us to share Mark Twain’s sentiment that “nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.” But if we are genuinely sincere in our purpose to help end mankind’s destructive ways, we must begin with our own contributions to collective madness. A beginning point might be found in Carl Jung’s works on “dark side” projections. When police officers or American soldiers gun down people as innocent of wrongdoing as these six victims of Elliot Rodger, few if any complaints are heard. The gun-control crowd does not offer up such killings as evidence for the need to rid the world of guns. These guns are being used on behalf of the state, an institution whose very nature is to have a monopoly on the use of violence. To even suggest that violence should be de-institutionalized in our world would be to raise the specter of a major paradigm shift in our thinking; the kind of transformation that worshipers of the nation-state would be unable to make.
And yet, as the aforesaid three-party conversation goes on amongst our conscious and unconscious voices, the energies of the life-force become increasingly vocal. Most of us are not violent and destructive people, but each of us does have a “dark side” which, as we have seen since 9/11, can be easily mobilized into a mob. Those who continue to identify themselves with the nation-state will be disinclined to see their revered system as any kind of wrongdoer, for to do would implicate themselves as wrongdoers.
Most people are decent enough to oppose the killing of others. Those who support the war system are able to rationalize the killing of innocents as “collateral damage” arising from the deadly nature of warfare. But when soldiers and police officers engage in the intentional killing of noncombatants unrelated to the conduct of war – or, in the case of police officers, of persons who pose no threat to others – most people would, at least privately, disapprove of such acts. But as such actors are doing the work of the state – which involves employing violence against others – it becomes difficult for those who identify themselves with the state to offer criticism.
At this point, “dark side” forces may get activated. Inner voices that might simultaneously condemn acts of murder when carried out by private persons, while excusing those done by agents of the state with which they identify themselves, generate a subtle confusion. How can the chaos that arises from trying to harmonize irreconcilable premises be eliminated? The method to which the unconscious mind has habitually resorted is to project the source of the conflict onto others; to find a “scapegoat” who can be punished.
I suspect that minds that are unable to withdraw from the collective mindset wherein these psychic conflicts are bred and nourished, may quite unconsciously find a convenient scapegoat in the tools of death employed by both private and governmental killers. The policeman and soldier who kill harmless persons, and the young man who indiscriminately murders strangers, all employ the same means: guns. Ahh, it must be guns that are causing all of this mayhem; getting rid of guns will restore peace to society, just as earlier hucksters of wishful thinking thought that sinking battleships, tanks, and bombers would end wars.
The recent killings in Santa Barbara were performed with a mixture of weapons. Three victims were killed by gunshot, and three others were stabbed to death with a knife. The special-interest gun-control lobby was quick to exploit the situation for their ends, totally ignoring the stabbing deaths. Why? Why have there been no campaigns against the ownership of knives, or poisons, or baseball bats, or hammers, or any other tool that could be used to inflict death? Why just guns? Is there a hierarchy of methods of victimhood we are supposed to respect?
Might the answer to this question lie in the fact that the state’s weapon-of-choice has long been the gun, whether in the hands of a soldier or police officer? As the state does not use swords, blunt instruments, or even stones in its violence against people, those who identify themselves with the state would be unlikely to find any inner conflicts over the private killings carried out with the use of weapons that are not used by the state.
“Stop the madness!,” screamed the parent of one of victims of these killings. I agree with this man, but suggest that the source of the insanity that plagues the world is not to be found in physical objects; in “things;” or at gun-shows, but in the depths of our minds. Many properly lamented the deaths of these young men and women who, in their early twenties, were on the threshold of productive lives. But I suspect that many of those who grieve over these crazed killings will see no connection with the institutionalized slaughter of equally young soldiers and foreigners in foreign lands. The phrase “support the troops” (which really means “support the war”) is a glaring symptom of our collectivized madness. If you doubt this, imagine the reaction most of us would have to a bumper-sticker that read: “support Elliott Rodger.”
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/05/butler-shaffer/guns-are-scapegoats/
By Butler Shaffer
It is impossible for that which is free by nature to
be disturbed by anything but itself. It is a man’s own
judgments which disturb him.
- Epictetus
Following World Wars I and II, formal and informal proposals were made for the military disarmament of nation-states. The war system has been so destructive of life that many naïve souls believed that some form of dumping weapons into the seas would bring about peace by depriving political systems of the tools of warfare. This same assumption underlies modern international efforts to dismantle – or to at least prevent increased production of – nuclear weapons, whose capacities for the mass slaughter of innocents were amply demonstrated to the world by America in 1945. That nuclear disarmament treaties would be unable to undo the knowledge of how to create such weapons, or to transform the disposition to use them, reflects the intellectual and spiritual emptiness of our species.
When, in college, I was introduced to the Stoic philosophers, I became aware of the self-directed nature of our anger. Do we get upset at the thug who victimizes us in some way, or are we annoyed with ourselves for not being able to prevent his attack? A virus may cause us more pain and suffering than did the injuries inflicted by the hooligan, but we do not become enraged at the germ. Why? What is the difference? The Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, provides this insight: “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
Is it not evident that the locus of our “judgments” and “estimates” of which the Stoics speak is our mind? Is it not to the content of our thinking that we must look for an understanding of most of the difficulties we have with others; of what we have made of ourselves? Carl Jung devoted much of his writings to helping us become aware of the nature of the “dark side” of the collective unconscious, and of how we respond to its energies. By virtue of our humanity, each of us has the capacity to engage in actions of which we would consciously disapprove. If adequately provoked, we might resort to violence, acts of theft, making dishonest statements, or such lesser offenses as avoiding responsibility for our behavior, being lazy or biased against members of other races, or not properly performing our work. That these “dark side” forces – our “shadow” – reside within each of us, does not mean that we are fated to act upon them. That most of us do not hit someone over the head with a baseball bat just because we may feel like it, shows that we do not act upon such shadow dispositions.
A practice that has contributed to the mass-mobilization of these “dark side” energies is our well-conditioned habit of identifying ourselves with abstractions. Instead of looking for meaning and direction within ourselves, we look to all kinds of identities; what Frederick Perls called “ego boundaries,” or Ludwig von Bertalanffy named the “ego barrier.” By attaching ourselves to our race, gender, nationality, religion, ethnic grouping, ideology, or any of a variety of other concepts, we create a division – and, hence, conflict – between our inner self, and the external abstractions we seek to become.
The well-being of institutions depends upon people having a dualistic identity in which we individually become the personification of the abstraction. The business conference attendee who introduced himself as “I am Xerox” was a perfect example of this trait. It is this mindset that produces the soldier who will storm an enemy fortification in the belief that he is saving his “country” (i.e., the extension of himself). The idea that, in blindly following a suicidal order, he is playing out his conditioning as a robotic mechanism, a tool to be exploited by the institutional order that directed his conditioning, never invades his mind. He will continue to delude himself that he is a “free individual,” just as ordinary Germans, after World War II, believed that “they thought they were free” under years of Hitlerian despotism.
If you identify your sense of being with an institution (e.g., the nation-state) then its glorious accomplishments as well as its evil consequences become quite personal. Those who adorn their houses with American flags, or dress up in red-white-and-blue “America: Love It or Leave It” T-shirts are doing more than simply participating in limited cultural celebrations such as Halloween trick-or-treating, or dancing around a May-pole. They are making a metaphysical statement about their sense of who they are; that they correlate their sense of being with an institution that defines itself in terms of enjoying a monopoly on the use of violence; and whose modus operandi is to coerce, steal, threaten, torture, terrorize, and kill whomever it deems suitable to the accomplishment of its purposes.
It is at this point that “dark side” voices, consciously-derived thought, and the spiritual dimensions of being human, enter into conversations within our minds. The political systems with which we have been trained to identify ourselves are destructive of life. The principal indictment of the modern nation-state is that, in its varied practices and manifestations, it no longer serves any life-sustaining purpose whatsoever.
“Life” is purposeful activity, but whose purposes are to be fostered? Whose “life” is to be supported by the social systems through which we cooperate with one another for our mutual benefit? Such questions bring us to the far deeper questions now percolating within many minds, particularly young men and women. Does “life” belong to the living, to be directed by, and serving the interests of, individuals; or – like systems of slavery – does life belong to abstractions we have been conditioned to revere, and whose powers derive from the weakness of our refusal to assert our claims of self-ownership?
When the American government admits that twenty-two military veterans of both current and earlier wars commit suicide every day, one can begin to get a sense of just how anti-life the war system is, even for those who survive its horrors. When one adds to such numbers the many others whose participation in sanctified butchery has left them physically, mentally, or spiritually crippled, the human costs climb exponentially. And what of the families: the spouses, parents, children, grandparents, and siblings, whose lives will be permanently shredded by deaths arising from “service” to agencies of unrestrained violence?
Those who have not yet cut their umbilical cords to the state will continue seeking explanations for the ubiquitous violence that permeates our culture, a destructiveness they are unwilling to attribute to themselves as personifications of the system created and sustained by their thinking. When troubled young men kill students at schools (and why do so many of these multiple killings take place at schools?), those who continue their attachments to institutionalism blank out. Their intellectual vacuity allows them to plumb to no greater depth for an explanation than to blame guns. Violent movies, TV programs, and video-games will also be blamed by some, just as long coats were so accused following the Columbine school shootings a few years ago. The idea that things can have a will to action, while humans lack the will to resist their seductive powers, is to resort to primitive thinking.
If we are to move beyond simple-minded explanations for both our personal and societal problems, we must be willing to explore what J. Krishnamurti called “the movement of thought.” It is more comforting for us to share Mark Twain’s sentiment that “nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.” But if we are genuinely sincere in our purpose to help end mankind’s destructive ways, we must begin with our own contributions to collective madness. A beginning point might be found in Carl Jung’s works on “dark side” projections. When police officers or American soldiers gun down people as innocent of wrongdoing as these six victims of Elliot Rodger, few if any complaints are heard. The gun-control crowd does not offer up such killings as evidence for the need to rid the world of guns. These guns are being used on behalf of the state, an institution whose very nature is to have a monopoly on the use of violence. To even suggest that violence should be de-institutionalized in our world would be to raise the specter of a major paradigm shift in our thinking; the kind of transformation that worshipers of the nation-state would be unable to make.
And yet, as the aforesaid three-party conversation goes on amongst our conscious and unconscious voices, the energies of the life-force become increasingly vocal. Most of us are not violent and destructive people, but each of us does have a “dark side” which, as we have seen since 9/11, can be easily mobilized into a mob. Those who continue to identify themselves with the nation-state will be disinclined to see their revered system as any kind of wrongdoer, for to do would implicate themselves as wrongdoers.
Most people are decent enough to oppose the killing of others. Those who support the war system are able to rationalize the killing of innocents as “collateral damage” arising from the deadly nature of warfare. But when soldiers and police officers engage in the intentional killing of noncombatants unrelated to the conduct of war – or, in the case of police officers, of persons who pose no threat to others – most people would, at least privately, disapprove of such acts. But as such actors are doing the work of the state – which involves employing violence against others – it becomes difficult for those who identify themselves with the state to offer criticism.
At this point, “dark side” forces may get activated. Inner voices that might simultaneously condemn acts of murder when carried out by private persons, while excusing those done by agents of the state with which they identify themselves, generate a subtle confusion. How can the chaos that arises from trying to harmonize irreconcilable premises be eliminated? The method to which the unconscious mind has habitually resorted is to project the source of the conflict onto others; to find a “scapegoat” who can be punished.
I suspect that minds that are unable to withdraw from the collective mindset wherein these psychic conflicts are bred and nourished, may quite unconsciously find a convenient scapegoat in the tools of death employed by both private and governmental killers. The policeman and soldier who kill harmless persons, and the young man who indiscriminately murders strangers, all employ the same means: guns. Ahh, it must be guns that are causing all of this mayhem; getting rid of guns will restore peace to society, just as earlier hucksters of wishful thinking thought that sinking battleships, tanks, and bombers would end wars.
The recent killings in Santa Barbara were performed with a mixture of weapons. Three victims were killed by gunshot, and three others were stabbed to death with a knife. The special-interest gun-control lobby was quick to exploit the situation for their ends, totally ignoring the stabbing deaths. Why? Why have there been no campaigns against the ownership of knives, or poisons, or baseball bats, or hammers, or any other tool that could be used to inflict death? Why just guns? Is there a hierarchy of methods of victimhood we are supposed to respect?
Might the answer to this question lie in the fact that the state’s weapon-of-choice has long been the gun, whether in the hands of a soldier or police officer? As the state does not use swords, blunt instruments, or even stones in its violence against people, those who identify themselves with the state would be unlikely to find any inner conflicts over the private killings carried out with the use of weapons that are not used by the state.
“Stop the madness!,” screamed the parent of one of victims of these killings. I agree with this man, but suggest that the source of the insanity that plagues the world is not to be found in physical objects; in “things;” or at gun-shows, but in the depths of our minds. Many properly lamented the deaths of these young men and women who, in their early twenties, were on the threshold of productive lives. But I suspect that many of those who grieve over these crazed killings will see no connection with the institutionalized slaughter of equally young soldiers and foreigners in foreign lands. The phrase “support the troops” (which really means “support the war”) is a glaring symptom of our collectivized madness. If you doubt this, imagine the reaction most of us would have to a bumper-sticker that read: “support Elliott Rodger.”
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/05/butler-shaffer/guns-are-scapegoats/
" Somehow in his decades of research, Piketty overlooks the fact that the industrial revolution reduced the consequences of inequality. Peasants, who had been locked into subsistence farming for centuries, found themselves with stunningly improved economic prospects in just a few generations. So, whereas feudal society was divided into a few people who were stunningly rich and the masses who were miserably poor, capitalism created the middle class for the first time in history and allowed for the possibility of real economic mobility."
Piketty's Envy Problem
By Peter Schiff
There can be little doubt that Thomas Piketty’s new book Capital in the 21st Century has struck a nerve globally. In fact, the Piketty phenomenon (the economic equivalent to Beatlemania) has in some ways become a bigger story than the ideas themselves. However, the book’s popularity is not at all surprising when you consider that its central premise: how radical wealth redistribution will create a better society, has always had its enthusiastic champions (many of whom instigated revolts and revolutions). What is surprising, however, is that the absurd ideas contained in the book could captivate so many supposedly intelligent people.
Prior to the 20th Century, the urge to redistribute was held in check only by the unassailable power of the ruling classes, and to a lesser extent by moral and practical reservations against theft. Karl Marx did an end-run around the moral objections by asserting that the rich became so only through theft, and that the elimination of private property held the key to economic growth. But the dismal results of the 20th Century’s communist revolutions took the wind out of the sails of the redistributionists. After such a drubbing, bold new ideas were needed to rescue the cause. Piketty’s 700 pages have apparently filled that void.
Any modern political pollster will tell you that the battle of ideas is won or lost in the first 15 seconds. Piketty’s primary achievement lies not in the heft of his book, or in his analysis of centuries of income data (which has shown signs of fraying), but in conjuring a seductively simple and emotionally satisfying idea: that the rich got that way because the return on invested capital (r) is generally two to three percentage points higher annually than economic growth (g). Therefore, people with money to invest (the wealthy) will always get richer, at a faster pace, than everyone else. Free markets,therefore, are a one-way road towards ever-greater inequality.
Since Pitketty sees wealth in terms of zero sum gains (someone gets rich by making another poor) he believes that the suffering of the masses will increase until this cycle is broken by either: 1) wealth destruction that occurs during war or depression (which makes the wealthy poorer) or 2) wealth re-distribution achieved through income, wealth, or property taxes. And although Piketty seems to admire the results achieved by war and depression, he does not advocate them as matters of policy. This leaves taxes, which he believes should be raised high enough to prevent both high incomes and the potential for inherited wealth.
Before proceeding to dismantle the core of his thesis, one must marvel at the absurdity of his premise. In the book, he states “For those who work for a living, the level of inequality in the United States is probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world.” Given that equality is his yardstick for economic success, this means that he believes that America is likely the worst place for a non-rich person to ever have been born. That’s a very big statement. And it is true in a very limited and superficial sense. For instance, according to Forbes, Bill Gates is $78 billion richer than the poorest American. Finding another instance of that much monetary disparity may be difficult. But wealth is measured far more effectively in other ways, living standards in particular.
For instance, the wealthiest Roman is widely believed to have been Crassus, a first century BC landowner. At a time when a loaf of bread sold for ½ of a sestertius, Crassus had an estimated net worth of 200 million sestertii, or about 400 million loaves of bread. Today, in the U.S., where a loaf of bread costs about $3, Bill Gates could buy about 25 billion of them. So when measured in terms of bread, Gates is richer. But that’s about the only category where that is true.
Crassus lived in a palace that would have been beyond comprehension for most Romans. He had as much exotic food and fine wines as he could stuff into his body, he had hot baths every day, and had his own staff of servants, bearers, cooks, performers, masseurs, entertainers, and musicians. His children had private tutors. If it got too hot, he was carried in a private coach to his beach homes and had his servants fan him 24 hours a day. In contrast, the poorest Romans, if they were not chained to an oar or fighting wild beasts in the arena, were likely toiling in the fields eating nothing but bread, if they were lucky. Unlike Crassus, they had no access to a varied diet, health care, education, entertainment, or indoor plumbing.
In contrast, look at how Bill Gates lives in comparison to the poorest Americans. The commodes used by both are remarkably similar, and both enjoy hot and cold running water. Gates certainly has access to better food and better health care, but Americans do not die of hunger or drop dead in the streets from disease, and they certainly have more to eat than just bread. For entertainment, Bill Gates likely turns on the TV and sees the same shows that even the poorest Americans watch, and when it gets hot he turns on the air conditioning, something that many poor Americans can also do. Certainly flipping burgers in a McDonald’s is no walk in the park, but it is far better than being a galley slave. The same disparity can be made throughout history, from Kublai Khan, to Louis XIV. Monarchs and nobility achieved unimagined wealth while surrounded by abject poverty. The same thing happens today in places like North Korea, where Kim Jong-un lives in splendor while his citizens literally starve to death.
Unemployment, infirmity or disabilities are not death sentences in America as they were in many other places throughout history. In fact, it’s very possible here to earn more by not working. Yet Piketty would have us believe that the inequality in the U.S. now is worse than in any other place, at any other time. If you can swallow that, I guess you are open to anything else he has to serve.
All economists, regardless of their political orientation, acknowledge that improving productive capital is essential for economic growth. We are only as good as the tools we have. Food, clothing and shelter are so much more plentiful now than they were 200 years ago because modern capital equipment makes the processes of farming, manufacturing, and building so much more efficient and productive (despite government regulations and taxes that undermine those efficiencies). Piketty tries to show that he has moved past Marx by acknowledging the failures of state-planned economies.
But he believes that the state should place upper limits on the amount of wealth the capitalists are allowed to retain from the fruits of their efforts. To do this, he imagines income tax rates that would approach 80% on incomes over $500,000 or so, combined with an annual 10% tax on existing wealth (in all its forms: land, housing, art, intellectual property, etc.). To be effective, he argues that these confiscatory taxes should be imposed globally so that wealthy people could not shift assets around the world to avoid taxes. He admits that these transferences may not actually increase tax revenues, which could be used, supposedly, to help the lives of the poor. Instead he claims the point is simply to prevent rich people from staying that way or getting that way in the first place.
Since it would be naive to assume that the wealthy would continue to work and invest at their usual pace once they crossed over Piketty’s income and wealth thresholds, he clearly believes that the economy would not suffer from their disengagement. Given the effort it takes to earn money and the value everyone places on their limited leisure time, it is likely that many entrepreneurs will simply decide that 100% effort for a 20% return is no longer worth it. Does Piketty really believe that the economy would be helped if the Steve Jobses and Bill Gateses of the world simply decided to stop working once they earned a half a million dollars?
Because he sees inherited wealth as the original economic sin, he also advocates tax policies that will put an end to it. What will this accomplish? By barring the possibility of passing on money or property to children, successful people will be much more inclined to spend on luxury services (travel and entertainment) than to save or plan for the future. While most modern economists believe that savings detract from an economy by reducing current spending, it is actually the seed capital that funds future economic growth. In addition, businesses managed for the long haul tend to offer incremental value to society. Bringing children into the family business also creates value, not just for shareholders but for customers. But Piketty would prefer that business owners pull the plug on their own companies long before they reach their potential value and before they can bring their children into the business. How exactly does this benefit society?
If income and wealth are capped, people with capital and incomes above the threshold will have no incentive to invest or make loans. After all, why take the risks when almost all the rewards would go to taxes? This means that there will be less capital available to lend to businesses and individuals. This will cause interest rates to rise, thereby dampening economic growth. Wealth taxes would exert similar upward pressure on interest rates by cutting down on the pool of capital that is available to be lent. Wealthy people will know that any unspent wealth will be taxed at 10% annually, so only investments that are likely to earn more than 10%, by a margin wide enough to compensate for the risk, would be considered. That’s a high threshold.
The primary flaw in his arguments are not moral, or even computational, but logical. He notes that the return of capital is greater than economic growth, but he fails to consider how capital itself “returns” benefits for all. For instance, it’s easy to see that Steve Jobs made billions by developing and selling Apple products. All you need to do is look at his bank account. But it’s much harder, if not impossible, to measure the much greater benefit that everyone else received from his ideas. It only comes out if you ask the right questions. For instance, how much would someone need to pay you to voluntarily give up the Internet for a year? It’s likely that most Americans would pick a number north of $10,000. This for a service that most people pay less than $80 per month (sometimes it’s free with a cup of coffee). This differential is the “dark matter” that Piketty fails to see, because he doesn’t even bother to look.
Somehow in his decades of research, Piketty overlooks the fact that the industrial revolution reduced the consequences of inequality. Peasants, who had been locked into subsistence farming for centuries, found themselves with stunningly improved economic prospects in just a few generations. So, whereas feudal society was divided into a few people who were stunningly rich and the masses who were miserably poor, capitalism created the middle class for the first time in history and allowed for the possibility of real economic mobility. As a by-product, some of the more successful entrepreneurs generated the largest fortunes ever measured. But for Piketty it’s only the extremes that matter. That’s because he, and his adherents, are more driven by envy than by a desire for success. But in the real world, where envy is inedible, living standards are the only things that matter.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/05/peter-schiff/envy-is-evil/
By Peter Schiff
There can be little doubt that Thomas Piketty’s new book Capital in the 21st Century has struck a nerve globally. In fact, the Piketty phenomenon (the economic equivalent to Beatlemania) has in some ways become a bigger story than the ideas themselves. However, the book’s popularity is not at all surprising when you consider that its central premise: how radical wealth redistribution will create a better society, has always had its enthusiastic champions (many of whom instigated revolts and revolutions). What is surprising, however, is that the absurd ideas contained in the book could captivate so many supposedly intelligent people.
Prior to the 20th Century, the urge to redistribute was held in check only by the unassailable power of the ruling classes, and to a lesser extent by moral and practical reservations against theft. Karl Marx did an end-run around the moral objections by asserting that the rich became so only through theft, and that the elimination of private property held the key to economic growth. But the dismal results of the 20th Century’s communist revolutions took the wind out of the sails of the redistributionists. After such a drubbing, bold new ideas were needed to rescue the cause. Piketty’s 700 pages have apparently filled that void.
Any modern political pollster will tell you that the battle of ideas is won or lost in the first 15 seconds. Piketty’s primary achievement lies not in the heft of his book, or in his analysis of centuries of income data (which has shown signs of fraying), but in conjuring a seductively simple and emotionally satisfying idea: that the rich got that way because the return on invested capital (r) is generally two to three percentage points higher annually than economic growth (g). Therefore, people with money to invest (the wealthy) will always get richer, at a faster pace, than everyone else. Free markets,therefore, are a one-way road towards ever-greater inequality.
Since Pitketty sees wealth in terms of zero sum gains (someone gets rich by making another poor) he believes that the suffering of the masses will increase until this cycle is broken by either: 1) wealth destruction that occurs during war or depression (which makes the wealthy poorer) or 2) wealth re-distribution achieved through income, wealth, or property taxes. And although Piketty seems to admire the results achieved by war and depression, he does not advocate them as matters of policy. This leaves taxes, which he believes should be raised high enough to prevent both high incomes and the potential for inherited wealth.
Before proceeding to dismantle the core of his thesis, one must marvel at the absurdity of his premise. In the book, he states “For those who work for a living, the level of inequality in the United States is probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world.” Given that equality is his yardstick for economic success, this means that he believes that America is likely the worst place for a non-rich person to ever have been born. That’s a very big statement. And it is true in a very limited and superficial sense. For instance, according to Forbes, Bill Gates is $78 billion richer than the poorest American. Finding another instance of that much monetary disparity may be difficult. But wealth is measured far more effectively in other ways, living standards in particular.
For instance, the wealthiest Roman is widely believed to have been Crassus, a first century BC landowner. At a time when a loaf of bread sold for ½ of a sestertius, Crassus had an estimated net worth of 200 million sestertii, or about 400 million loaves of bread. Today, in the U.S., where a loaf of bread costs about $3, Bill Gates could buy about 25 billion of them. So when measured in terms of bread, Gates is richer. But that’s about the only category where that is true.
Crassus lived in a palace that would have been beyond comprehension for most Romans. He had as much exotic food and fine wines as he could stuff into his body, he had hot baths every day, and had his own staff of servants, bearers, cooks, performers, masseurs, entertainers, and musicians. His children had private tutors. If it got too hot, he was carried in a private coach to his beach homes and had his servants fan him 24 hours a day. In contrast, the poorest Romans, if they were not chained to an oar or fighting wild beasts in the arena, were likely toiling in the fields eating nothing but bread, if they were lucky. Unlike Crassus, they had no access to a varied diet, health care, education, entertainment, or indoor plumbing.
In contrast, look at how Bill Gates lives in comparison to the poorest Americans. The commodes used by both are remarkably similar, and both enjoy hot and cold running water. Gates certainly has access to better food and better health care, but Americans do not die of hunger or drop dead in the streets from disease, and they certainly have more to eat than just bread. For entertainment, Bill Gates likely turns on the TV and sees the same shows that even the poorest Americans watch, and when it gets hot he turns on the air conditioning, something that many poor Americans can also do. Certainly flipping burgers in a McDonald’s is no walk in the park, but it is far better than being a galley slave. The same disparity can be made throughout history, from Kublai Khan, to Louis XIV. Monarchs and nobility achieved unimagined wealth while surrounded by abject poverty. The same thing happens today in places like North Korea, where Kim Jong-un lives in splendor while his citizens literally starve to death.
Unemployment, infirmity or disabilities are not death sentences in America as they were in many other places throughout history. In fact, it’s very possible here to earn more by not working. Yet Piketty would have us believe that the inequality in the U.S. now is worse than in any other place, at any other time. If you can swallow that, I guess you are open to anything else he has to serve.
All economists, regardless of their political orientation, acknowledge that improving productive capital is essential for economic growth. We are only as good as the tools we have. Food, clothing and shelter are so much more plentiful now than they were 200 years ago because modern capital equipment makes the processes of farming, manufacturing, and building so much more efficient and productive (despite government regulations and taxes that undermine those efficiencies). Piketty tries to show that he has moved past Marx by acknowledging the failures of state-planned economies.
But he believes that the state should place upper limits on the amount of wealth the capitalists are allowed to retain from the fruits of their efforts. To do this, he imagines income tax rates that would approach 80% on incomes over $500,000 or so, combined with an annual 10% tax on existing wealth (in all its forms: land, housing, art, intellectual property, etc.). To be effective, he argues that these confiscatory taxes should be imposed globally so that wealthy people could not shift assets around the world to avoid taxes. He admits that these transferences may not actually increase tax revenues, which could be used, supposedly, to help the lives of the poor. Instead he claims the point is simply to prevent rich people from staying that way or getting that way in the first place.
Since it would be naive to assume that the wealthy would continue to work and invest at their usual pace once they crossed over Piketty’s income and wealth thresholds, he clearly believes that the economy would not suffer from their disengagement. Given the effort it takes to earn money and the value everyone places on their limited leisure time, it is likely that many entrepreneurs will simply decide that 100% effort for a 20% return is no longer worth it. Does Piketty really believe that the economy would be helped if the Steve Jobses and Bill Gateses of the world simply decided to stop working once they earned a half a million dollars?
Because he sees inherited wealth as the original economic sin, he also advocates tax policies that will put an end to it. What will this accomplish? By barring the possibility of passing on money or property to children, successful people will be much more inclined to spend on luxury services (travel and entertainment) than to save or plan for the future. While most modern economists believe that savings detract from an economy by reducing current spending, it is actually the seed capital that funds future economic growth. In addition, businesses managed for the long haul tend to offer incremental value to society. Bringing children into the family business also creates value, not just for shareholders but for customers. But Piketty would prefer that business owners pull the plug on their own companies long before they reach their potential value and before they can bring their children into the business. How exactly does this benefit society?
If income and wealth are capped, people with capital and incomes above the threshold will have no incentive to invest or make loans. After all, why take the risks when almost all the rewards would go to taxes? This means that there will be less capital available to lend to businesses and individuals. This will cause interest rates to rise, thereby dampening economic growth. Wealth taxes would exert similar upward pressure on interest rates by cutting down on the pool of capital that is available to be lent. Wealthy people will know that any unspent wealth will be taxed at 10% annually, so only investments that are likely to earn more than 10%, by a margin wide enough to compensate for the risk, would be considered. That’s a high threshold.
The primary flaw in his arguments are not moral, or even computational, but logical. He notes that the return of capital is greater than economic growth, but he fails to consider how capital itself “returns” benefits for all. For instance, it’s easy to see that Steve Jobs made billions by developing and selling Apple products. All you need to do is look at his bank account. But it’s much harder, if not impossible, to measure the much greater benefit that everyone else received from his ideas. It only comes out if you ask the right questions. For instance, how much would someone need to pay you to voluntarily give up the Internet for a year? It’s likely that most Americans would pick a number north of $10,000. This for a service that most people pay less than $80 per month (sometimes it’s free with a cup of coffee). This differential is the “dark matter” that Piketty fails to see, because he doesn’t even bother to look.
Somehow in his decades of research, Piketty overlooks the fact that the industrial revolution reduced the consequences of inequality. Peasants, who had been locked into subsistence farming for centuries, found themselves with stunningly improved economic prospects in just a few generations. So, whereas feudal society was divided into a few people who were stunningly rich and the masses who were miserably poor, capitalism created the middle class for the first time in history and allowed for the possibility of real economic mobility. As a by-product, some of the more successful entrepreneurs generated the largest fortunes ever measured. But for Piketty it’s only the extremes that matter. That’s because he, and his adherents, are more driven by envy than by a desire for success. But in the real world, where envy is inedible, living standards are the only things that matter.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/05/peter-schiff/envy-is-evil/
" He got us out of Iraq and is taking us out of Afghanistan. Yet he was pushed into a war on Libya that turned out disastrously and is now dipping his toe into what he has called “somebody else’s civil war” in Syria."
Is Obama Blundering Into a Syrian Quagmire?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
With his address at West Point, President Obama succeeded where all his previous efforts had failed. He brought us together.
Nobody seems to have liked the speech.
A glance shows that the New York Times and Washington Times, the Financial Times and Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal were all disappointed with it.
As was said of one of Harding’s addresses, it was “an army of pompous phrases marching across the landscape in search of an idea.”
What Obama has is less a foreign policy doctrine than a foreign policy disposition. He is a reluctant interventionist.
He got us out of Iraq and is taking us out of Afghanistan. Yet he was pushed into a war on Libya that turned out disastrously and is now dipping his toe into what he has called “somebody else’s civil war” in Syria.
Still, Obama’s foreign policy is not going to be judged on what he said, but what he did and failed to do. The same holds for the Beltway hawks, now so harsh on Obama, who once whooped it up for George W. Bush.
Perhaps it is time to review the respective records.
After America backed him in going after al-Qaida after 9/11, Bush, on a triumphal high, invaded Iraq. Soon we were mired in the two longest wars in our history.
America responded by evicting Bush’s party from leadership of both houses of Congress and the White House in 2008.
And what did we miss out on by not electing John McCain?
McCain would have put us into the Russo-Georgian war over South Ossetia. He would have bombed Iran’s nuclear sites. We would still have troops in Iraq. He would have bombed Syria. He would have sent weapons to Kiev to oust the Russians from Crimea and crush the pro-Russian militias in the Donbass. He would be pushing for membership in NATO for Ukraine and Georgia, so the next time there was a dust-up with Putin’s Russia, we could be right in the thick of it.
As for Obama’s foreign policy, while the think tanks and media elite regard it as vacillating and weak, the people who gave him two electoral victories seem generally to approve.
Broadly speaking, Americans are delighted our soldiers are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. They were passionately opposed last August to U.S. action in Syria. They dislike Iran, but like that the president is negotiating with Iran.
Thus, whoever persuaded Obama to send TOW antitank missiles to the Syrian rebels and train and arm them may end up responsible for his worst foreign policy blunder.
For we are now extending and broadening a Syrian war that has left 150,000 dead.
And we have become de facto allies of both the al-Qaida-linked Al Nusra Front and the more extreme Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which is carving out a caliphate from Aleppo to Anbar.
President Obama declared years ago that Assad must go.
But has he thought through who rises when Assad falls?
A civil war for power between our rebels and the Islamists would break out. A Sunni-Shia struggle could spread to Lebanon and Iraq.
Reprisals against the Alawite and Christian minorities that backed the Assad family could be horrific.
If so, demands for U.S. intervention would start coming from all quarters: Saudis, Israelis, Turks and pro-Western Syrian rebels.
Obama would be torn between the anti-war country that elected him and the pro-war capital that wants to pivot back to the Middle East.
Another worrisome possibility must be considered.
When President Reagan inserted U. S. Marines into Lebanon’s civil war in 1983, blowback came in the bombing of our embassy and the terrorist attack on the Beirut barracks, killing 241.
Are we not, by sending antitank missiles into a war where Assad is backed by Hezbollah and Iran, inviting terrorist retaliation against us or the Jordanian monarchy that is playing host to U.S. advisers?
There is a reason why Obama has been unable to formulate an Eisenhower Doctrine or a Reagan Doctrine. The nation is divided within itself about where and when we should stand or fight.
Putin’s Russia is not Stalin’s. Xi Jinping’s China is not Mao’s. The 20th century’s ideological struggles between communism, fascism and democracy that produced World War II and the Cold War are over.
Quite naturally, old allies from Saudi Arabia to South Korea and from Japan to Europe want to know why the United States is not out there on point, confronting their adversaries, as we once did.
But the reality is that we are not threatened by Assad in Syria, or by whose flag flies over Crimea or Donetsk, or by who gets custody of the islets in the South or East China Sea.
“Great Britain has lost an empire, but not yet found a role,” said Dean Acheson, also at West Point, half a century ago.
Something similar to that is happening to us.
Obama’s speech simply mirrored our own ambivalence.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/05/patrick-j-buchanan/the-us-empire-is-going-down/
By Patrick J. Buchanan
With his address at West Point, President Obama succeeded where all his previous efforts had failed. He brought us together.
Nobody seems to have liked the speech.
A glance shows that the New York Times and Washington Times, the Financial Times and Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal were all disappointed with it.
As was said of one of Harding’s addresses, it was “an army of pompous phrases marching across the landscape in search of an idea.”
What Obama has is less a foreign policy doctrine than a foreign policy disposition. He is a reluctant interventionist.
He got us out of Iraq and is taking us out of Afghanistan. Yet he was pushed into a war on Libya that turned out disastrously and is now dipping his toe into what he has called “somebody else’s civil war” in Syria.
Still, Obama’s foreign policy is not going to be judged on what he said, but what he did and failed to do. The same holds for the Beltway hawks, now so harsh on Obama, who once whooped it up for George W. Bush.
Perhaps it is time to review the respective records.
After America backed him in going after al-Qaida after 9/11, Bush, on a triumphal high, invaded Iraq. Soon we were mired in the two longest wars in our history.
America responded by evicting Bush’s party from leadership of both houses of Congress and the White House in 2008.
And what did we miss out on by not electing John McCain?
McCain would have put us into the Russo-Georgian war over South Ossetia. He would have bombed Iran’s nuclear sites. We would still have troops in Iraq. He would have bombed Syria. He would have sent weapons to Kiev to oust the Russians from Crimea and crush the pro-Russian militias in the Donbass. He would be pushing for membership in NATO for Ukraine and Georgia, so the next time there was a dust-up with Putin’s Russia, we could be right in the thick of it.
As for Obama’s foreign policy, while the think tanks and media elite regard it as vacillating and weak, the people who gave him two electoral victories seem generally to approve.
Broadly speaking, Americans are delighted our soldiers are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. They were passionately opposed last August to U.S. action in Syria. They dislike Iran, but like that the president is negotiating with Iran.
Thus, whoever persuaded Obama to send TOW antitank missiles to the Syrian rebels and train and arm them may end up responsible for his worst foreign policy blunder.
For we are now extending and broadening a Syrian war that has left 150,000 dead.
And we have become de facto allies of both the al-Qaida-linked Al Nusra Front and the more extreme Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which is carving out a caliphate from Aleppo to Anbar.
President Obama declared years ago that Assad must go.
But has he thought through who rises when Assad falls?
A civil war for power between our rebels and the Islamists would break out. A Sunni-Shia struggle could spread to Lebanon and Iraq.
Reprisals against the Alawite and Christian minorities that backed the Assad family could be horrific.
If so, demands for U.S. intervention would start coming from all quarters: Saudis, Israelis, Turks and pro-Western Syrian rebels.
Obama would be torn between the anti-war country that elected him and the pro-war capital that wants to pivot back to the Middle East.
Another worrisome possibility must be considered.
When President Reagan inserted U. S. Marines into Lebanon’s civil war in 1983, blowback came in the bombing of our embassy and the terrorist attack on the Beirut barracks, killing 241.
Are we not, by sending antitank missiles into a war where Assad is backed by Hezbollah and Iran, inviting terrorist retaliation against us or the Jordanian monarchy that is playing host to U.S. advisers?
There is a reason why Obama has been unable to formulate an Eisenhower Doctrine or a Reagan Doctrine. The nation is divided within itself about where and when we should stand or fight.
Putin’s Russia is not Stalin’s. Xi Jinping’s China is not Mao’s. The 20th century’s ideological struggles between communism, fascism and democracy that produced World War II and the Cold War are over.
Quite naturally, old allies from Saudi Arabia to South Korea and from Japan to Europe want to know why the United States is not out there on point, confronting their adversaries, as we once did.
But the reality is that we are not threatened by Assad in Syria, or by whose flag flies over Crimea or Donetsk, or by who gets custody of the islets in the South or East China Sea.
“Great Britain has lost an empire, but not yet found a role,” said Dean Acheson, also at West Point, half a century ago.
Something similar to that is happening to us.
Obama’s speech simply mirrored our own ambivalence.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/05/patrick-j-buchanan/the-us-empire-is-going-down/
Friday, May 30, 2014
It probably isn't ADHD...
20 Health Conditions That Mimic ADHD
By Edward Group
ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactive disorder, is diagnosed through mere observation of symptoms and not by any sort of scientific testing. There are no brain scans, blood tests, or biological readings to determine the presence of ADHD, just a myriad of behavioral and psychological symptoms. [1] Although many of the symptoms arise from an underlying cause, most doctors who diagnose children and adults with ADHD tend to overlook the underlying health factors in lieu of prescribing an ADHD medication. Whether concentration issues are the result of an allergy, lack of physical or mental stimulation, or is the result of nutrient malabsorption, misdiagnosis is bound to contribute to the sharp increase in ADHD diagnoses.
Conditions That Mimic ADHD
There are many biological, physiological, emotional, and medical conditions that may cause symptoms similar to those ascribed to ADHD. Here are just a few of the issues that might be influencing ADHD-like behavior.
1. Hypoglycemia
Blood sugar issues are common, especially in children who regularly consume high-carbohydrate foods. Highly processed foods often encourage a blood sugar crash. Low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia, can cause irritability, lack of concentration and focus, and low energy levels — classic “ADHD” symptoms. [2] Although research hasn’t shown that sugar causes ADHD, it has been shown to boost observable symptoms.
2. Allergies
Allergic reactions to synthetic dyes, preservatives, and other food chemicals can lead to symptoms associated with ADHD. [3] [4] One of the first steps to take if you’re experiencing concentration or focus problems is to avoid synthetic, processed, and non-organic food whenever possible.
3. Learning Disabilities
There are many reasons why a child (or even an adult) may have trouble learning. Perhaps they learn at a slower rate. On the other hand, maybe they can pick up new information faster than those around them, resulting in extra downtime for daydreaming and restlessness. Whatever the cause, undiagnosed issues can result in an ADHD diagnosis. Perhaps all that’s required to improve symptoms is a change of environment or teaching method.
4. Hyper- or Hypothyroidism
Both the underproduction and overproduction of thyroid hormones can cause energy imbalances, mood disorders, and concentration issues. Anyone who is currently experiencing such problems should have their thyroid evaluated before diving into traditional ADHD therapies. [5]
5. Hearing and Vision Issues
If a child has trouble seeing the board or hearing the teacher, this could affect how they perform in the classroom. This can affect adults as well, and many older adults are reluctant to tell their doctor about hearing or eyesight issues. Remedying poor eyesight or hearing may be helpful for avoiding an ADHD diagnosis.
6. Lead Poisoning
People with abnormal levels of lead in their body are more likely to suffer from lower IQ, attention deficits, and negative work and school performance. Studies indicate that lead may be one of the leading culprits for increasing hyperactivity in children. [6]
Genetic Conditions That Mimic ADHD
Certain genetic diseases, like diabetes and heart disease, may also increase ADHD symptoms. People who have been diagnosed with ADHD should take inventory to determine if they’re instead suffering from any one of the following conditions.
7. Diabetes
People who have a family history of diabetes should make sure they are keeping their blood sugar in check. High blood sugar, whether genetic or not, could present symptoms related to ADHD, including anxiety, poor focus, and aggression. [7]
8. Heart Disease
Any sort of heart abnormality can affect blood, oxygen, and nutrient flow to the brain. Adults and children alike should look into their heart health if on the verge of being diagnosed with ADHD, especially if heart disease runs in the family.
9. Anemia
While anemia isn’t always inherited, the condition, marked by a lack of red blood cells, is often a result of genetics. Anemia can cause a decreased level of oxygen to the brain, possibly leading to brain dysfunction.
10. Bipolar Disorder
Many health experts believe that 85% of children with bipolar disorder meet the criteria set for ADHD. [8] For children suffering from bipolar, mood swings can occur throughout the day, and many doctors, parents, and teachers misjudge these occurrences as ADHD.
Read the rest here:
http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/20-health-conditions-that-mimic-adhd/
By Edward Group
ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactive disorder, is diagnosed through mere observation of symptoms and not by any sort of scientific testing. There are no brain scans, blood tests, or biological readings to determine the presence of ADHD, just a myriad of behavioral and psychological symptoms. [1] Although many of the symptoms arise from an underlying cause, most doctors who diagnose children and adults with ADHD tend to overlook the underlying health factors in lieu of prescribing an ADHD medication. Whether concentration issues are the result of an allergy, lack of physical or mental stimulation, or is the result of nutrient malabsorption, misdiagnosis is bound to contribute to the sharp increase in ADHD diagnoses.
Conditions That Mimic ADHD
There are many biological, physiological, emotional, and medical conditions that may cause symptoms similar to those ascribed to ADHD. Here are just a few of the issues that might be influencing ADHD-like behavior.
1. Hypoglycemia
Blood sugar issues are common, especially in children who regularly consume high-carbohydrate foods. Highly processed foods often encourage a blood sugar crash. Low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia, can cause irritability, lack of concentration and focus, and low energy levels — classic “ADHD” symptoms. [2] Although research hasn’t shown that sugar causes ADHD, it has been shown to boost observable symptoms.
2. Allergies
Allergic reactions to synthetic dyes, preservatives, and other food chemicals can lead to symptoms associated with ADHD. [3] [4] One of the first steps to take if you’re experiencing concentration or focus problems is to avoid synthetic, processed, and non-organic food whenever possible.
3. Learning Disabilities
There are many reasons why a child (or even an adult) may have trouble learning. Perhaps they learn at a slower rate. On the other hand, maybe they can pick up new information faster than those around them, resulting in extra downtime for daydreaming and restlessness. Whatever the cause, undiagnosed issues can result in an ADHD diagnosis. Perhaps all that’s required to improve symptoms is a change of environment or teaching method.
4. Hyper- or Hypothyroidism
Both the underproduction and overproduction of thyroid hormones can cause energy imbalances, mood disorders, and concentration issues. Anyone who is currently experiencing such problems should have their thyroid evaluated before diving into traditional ADHD therapies. [5]
5. Hearing and Vision Issues
If a child has trouble seeing the board or hearing the teacher, this could affect how they perform in the classroom. This can affect adults as well, and many older adults are reluctant to tell their doctor about hearing or eyesight issues. Remedying poor eyesight or hearing may be helpful for avoiding an ADHD diagnosis.
6. Lead Poisoning
People with abnormal levels of lead in their body are more likely to suffer from lower IQ, attention deficits, and negative work and school performance. Studies indicate that lead may be one of the leading culprits for increasing hyperactivity in children. [6]
Genetic Conditions That Mimic ADHD
Certain genetic diseases, like diabetes and heart disease, may also increase ADHD symptoms. People who have been diagnosed with ADHD should take inventory to determine if they’re instead suffering from any one of the following conditions.
7. Diabetes
People who have a family history of diabetes should make sure they are keeping their blood sugar in check. High blood sugar, whether genetic or not, could present symptoms related to ADHD, including anxiety, poor focus, and aggression. [7]
8. Heart Disease
Any sort of heart abnormality can affect blood, oxygen, and nutrient flow to the brain. Adults and children alike should look into their heart health if on the verge of being diagnosed with ADHD, especially if heart disease runs in the family.
9. Anemia
While anemia isn’t always inherited, the condition, marked by a lack of red blood cells, is often a result of genetics. Anemia can cause a decreased level of oxygen to the brain, possibly leading to brain dysfunction.
10. Bipolar Disorder
Many health experts believe that 85% of children with bipolar disorder meet the criteria set for ADHD. [8] For children suffering from bipolar, mood swings can occur throughout the day, and many doctors, parents, and teachers misjudge these occurrences as ADHD.
Read the rest here:
http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/20-health-conditions-that-mimic-adhd/
"In reality, the Bilderberg Group is pushing ahead with its anti-free market, state-corporate takeover designed to destroy independent nations as well as the individual in order to make the population dependent on a system controlled by the tiny elite well-represented at the conference."
Leaked Secret Agenda From Bilderberg 2014 Revealed
Kit Daniels
Bilderberg, the annual gathering of the world’s most powerful politicians and business magnates, is clearly shaping global policies by positioning its favored politicians as world leaders, determining the timetables of military conflicts and influencing economic policies of nearly every nation on the planet, impacting the lives of billions around the globe.
Daniel Estulin, an author and expert on the Bilderberg Group, has learned from his internal sources several items on Bilderberg’s agenda for this year’s conference in Copenhagen, Denmark which began yesterday:
1) Nuclear diplomacy – how Russia, China and even Iran could work together to erode western hegemony.
2) The recent gas agreement between Russia and China – how this and other long-term projects between the two countries will likely reduce dependency on the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency.
3) The rise of nationalism within Europe that is challenging the power structure of the European Union – the recent victories of the populist United Kingdom Independence Party, which opposes the European Union, is particularly concerning to the Bilderberg Group because the EU, and its Euro currency, were formulated by the group at its second annual meeting in 1955.
4) The European Union’s Internet privacy regulations – what they mean for the United States.
5) The rise of cyber warfare – government can use the threat of cyber attacks, which could theoretically disrupt financial markets even worse than the Stock Market Crash of 1929, to strengthen censorship and other Internet regulations.
6) From Ukraine to Syria – Is Obama’s foreign policy doomed?
7) The “climate change” agenda – the deindustrialization of targeted nations associated with “climate change” treaties and legislation...
Read the rest here:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/leaked-secret-agenda-from-bilderberg-2014-revealed.html
Kit Daniels
Bilderberg, the annual gathering of the world’s most powerful politicians and business magnates, is clearly shaping global policies by positioning its favored politicians as world leaders, determining the timetables of military conflicts and influencing economic policies of nearly every nation on the planet, impacting the lives of billions around the globe.
Daniel Estulin, an author and expert on the Bilderberg Group, has learned from his internal sources several items on Bilderberg’s agenda for this year’s conference in Copenhagen, Denmark which began yesterday:
1) Nuclear diplomacy – how Russia, China and even Iran could work together to erode western hegemony.
2) The recent gas agreement between Russia and China – how this and other long-term projects between the two countries will likely reduce dependency on the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency.
3) The rise of nationalism within Europe that is challenging the power structure of the European Union – the recent victories of the populist United Kingdom Independence Party, which opposes the European Union, is particularly concerning to the Bilderberg Group because the EU, and its Euro currency, were formulated by the group at its second annual meeting in 1955.
4) The European Union’s Internet privacy regulations – what they mean for the United States.
5) The rise of cyber warfare – government can use the threat of cyber attacks, which could theoretically disrupt financial markets even worse than the Stock Market Crash of 1929, to strengthen censorship and other Internet regulations.
6) From Ukraine to Syria – Is Obama’s foreign policy doomed?
7) The “climate change” agenda – the deindustrialization of targeted nations associated with “climate change” treaties and legislation...
Read the rest here:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/leaked-secret-agenda-from-bilderberg-2014-revealed.html
"Didn’t I tell you that the war on terrorism is even better than the war on communism? It’s like the Energizer Bunny. It just keeps going and going and going."
The War on Terrorism Is One Fine Scam
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Throughout the Cold War, the proponents of the national-security state assured us that the only reason the United States needed to adopt this totalitarian-like apparatus was because of the international communist conspiracy emanating from the Soviet Union and Red China. Once the Cold War was won, the statists said, America could restore the limited-government constitutional republic that the Constitution established.
Of course, the argument was a sham. The proponents of empire, standing army, and CIA knew that the possibility that the Cold War would ever end was virtually non-existent. They knew that the “communist threat” could be used as a perpetual justification for the existence of America’s warfare state and its ever-growing budgets and army of contractors and subcontractors. The statists just loved big government and figured that they had come up with the perfect scam to achieve it on a permanent basis.
And then the unexpected happened, which sent the national-security state and its proponents into a state of fear and panic. The Cold War ended. Suddenly, the justification for the national-security state apparatus, which had fundamentally altered the American way of life, was gone.
What to do now?
One option was the obvious one: dismantle the national-security state by closing all the overseas bases, bring all the troops home, discharge them, dismantle the enormous standing army, close domestic military bases, abolish (i.e., not reform) the CIA and the NSA, and end all the taxation needed to support this gigantic, privileged force in American life.
After all, if the Cold War was the justification for bringing the warfare-state apparatus into existence, and if the Cold War was now over, then why not send the warfare-state apparatus out of existence?
Alas, it was not to be. The national-security state steadfastly remained in existence and, even worse, went abroad in search of hornets’ nest to poke, thereby engendering anger and hatred that would, not surprisingly, end up manifesting itself in anti-American terrorism. That’s what 9/11 was all about, along with the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the attack on the USS Cole, and others.
With 9/11, the national-security state now had its new justification for its existence and expansion: “a war on terrorism” that would replace its Cold War “war on communism.”
This new justification was as good as, if not better, than the old one. A war on terrorism could easily be made perpetual, especially given that the U.S. government could easily produce anti-American terrorism with its interventionist policies abroad.
In fact, the whole thing actually became a perpetual terrorist-producing motion machine: Send the troops abroad to combat terrorism, which produces the anger and hatred that leads to terrorism, which is then used to justify keeping the troops abroad to combat terrorism.
Can you show me a more ideal scam than that? Especially when the gullible masses easily swallow and embrace the line, “Anti-American terrorism has nothing to do with U.S. interventionism abroad. Those horrible terrorists just hate us for our freedom and values.”
Consider the two countries that were invaded and occupied for more than a decade in the name of the “war on terrorism”—Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, they are both hell-holes, despite the fact that the U.S. national-security state continues to inculcate in us the belief that U.S. troops died in the process of converting Iraq and Afghanistan into paradises of freedom, democracy, peace, and prosperity. That’s why the members of Congress won’t even take even one of their much-ballyhooed junket vacations there.
President Obama’s recent trip to Afghanistan pretty much says it all. Like his other trips that he’s made to that country, this one was made in the darkness of night, unannounced to the public. After spending a few hours with the troops at Bagram Air Force Base, he quickly got on his plane and returned home.
Why? Why didn’t Obama make a big public announcement before going to Afghanistan? Doesn’t he do that when he’s traveling to, say, England? Why sneak into the country? Why not spend even one night there? Why not tour the country? Why not visit President Karzai in Kabul, the capital of the nation?
The answer is simple: Obama and his advisors do not consider it safe to be in Afghanistan. Despite more than a decade of U.S. occupation, one in which U.S. troops have had unfettered authority to kill anyone they want, Afghanistan is a hell-hole of anger, rage, violence, shootings, ambushes, raids, torture, incarceration, corruption, dictatorship, and deep anti-American sentiment.
In his recent speech at West Point, Obama said he feels haunted by the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. He should feel haunted. After all, what have they died for? Like the 58,000 plus U.S. soldiers who the national-security state sacrificed in Vietnam, the soldiers who have died in Afghanistan have died for nothing.
Of course, Obama should also feel haunted by the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have been killed by U.S. troops, 99 percent of whom had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Those people died for nothing too.
Now that the U.S. military empire has been booted out of Iraq and is sort of and slowly exiting Afghanistan, what is being done with all those overseas troops?
No, they’re not being brought home and discharged, which is what should have happened when the Cold War ended.
Instead, a new mission must be found for them, over there. After all, to bring them home would be considered “isolationist.”
So, now Obama’s army is “pivoting” to Africa of all places.
Why Africa?
Didn’t you know? There are “terrorists” in Africa. So we need to move the much-vaunted “war on terrorism” from the Middle East to Africa.
And if that doesn’t work, we can move it to Latin America. Hey, there are terrorists there too, especially in the drug war.
Didn’t I tell you that the war on terrorism is even better than the war on communism? It’s like the Energizer Bunny. It just keeps going and going and going.
And what happens when some of those African terrorists retaliate with some sort of big terrorist attack here in the United States? We all know what will happen. U.S. national-security state officials will trot out all the post-9/11 bromides about how those African terrorists hate us for our freedom and values. And they’ll tell us how fortunate it is that the troops are already in Africa fighting the “war on terrorism.” Oh, and they’ll also tell us how urgent it is to increase military spending.
What happens if the “war on terrorism” in Africa doesn’t generate the necessary fear and anxiety among the American people?
No problem. The national-security state can always return to the Cold War and the international communist conspiracy, ginning up some new crisis with “aggressive” Russia or “assertive” Red China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, or whatever. Hey, didn’t you see that Russia and China are now working together? What better proof of an international communist conspiracy than that?
When will Americans recognize all this for the scam it is? It’s the perfect scam to keep the warfare-state apparatus in its fortified exalted position in America’s governmental structure, a position that continues to infringe upon our freedom and privacy and damage our economic well-being and security?
Link:
http://fff.org/2014/05/30/the-war-on-terrorism-is-one-fine-scam/
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Throughout the Cold War, the proponents of the national-security state assured us that the only reason the United States needed to adopt this totalitarian-like apparatus was because of the international communist conspiracy emanating from the Soviet Union and Red China. Once the Cold War was won, the statists said, America could restore the limited-government constitutional republic that the Constitution established.
Of course, the argument was a sham. The proponents of empire, standing army, and CIA knew that the possibility that the Cold War would ever end was virtually non-existent. They knew that the “communist threat” could be used as a perpetual justification for the existence of America’s warfare state and its ever-growing budgets and army of contractors and subcontractors. The statists just loved big government and figured that they had come up with the perfect scam to achieve it on a permanent basis.
And then the unexpected happened, which sent the national-security state and its proponents into a state of fear and panic. The Cold War ended. Suddenly, the justification for the national-security state apparatus, which had fundamentally altered the American way of life, was gone.
What to do now?
One option was the obvious one: dismantle the national-security state by closing all the overseas bases, bring all the troops home, discharge them, dismantle the enormous standing army, close domestic military bases, abolish (i.e., not reform) the CIA and the NSA, and end all the taxation needed to support this gigantic, privileged force in American life.
After all, if the Cold War was the justification for bringing the warfare-state apparatus into existence, and if the Cold War was now over, then why not send the warfare-state apparatus out of existence?
Alas, it was not to be. The national-security state steadfastly remained in existence and, even worse, went abroad in search of hornets’ nest to poke, thereby engendering anger and hatred that would, not surprisingly, end up manifesting itself in anti-American terrorism. That’s what 9/11 was all about, along with the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the attack on the USS Cole, and others.
With 9/11, the national-security state now had its new justification for its existence and expansion: “a war on terrorism” that would replace its Cold War “war on communism.”
This new justification was as good as, if not better, than the old one. A war on terrorism could easily be made perpetual, especially given that the U.S. government could easily produce anti-American terrorism with its interventionist policies abroad.
In fact, the whole thing actually became a perpetual terrorist-producing motion machine: Send the troops abroad to combat terrorism, which produces the anger and hatred that leads to terrorism, which is then used to justify keeping the troops abroad to combat terrorism.
Can you show me a more ideal scam than that? Especially when the gullible masses easily swallow and embrace the line, “Anti-American terrorism has nothing to do with U.S. interventionism abroad. Those horrible terrorists just hate us for our freedom and values.”
Consider the two countries that were invaded and occupied for more than a decade in the name of the “war on terrorism”—Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, they are both hell-holes, despite the fact that the U.S. national-security state continues to inculcate in us the belief that U.S. troops died in the process of converting Iraq and Afghanistan into paradises of freedom, democracy, peace, and prosperity. That’s why the members of Congress won’t even take even one of their much-ballyhooed junket vacations there.
President Obama’s recent trip to Afghanistan pretty much says it all. Like his other trips that he’s made to that country, this one was made in the darkness of night, unannounced to the public. After spending a few hours with the troops at Bagram Air Force Base, he quickly got on his plane and returned home.
Why? Why didn’t Obama make a big public announcement before going to Afghanistan? Doesn’t he do that when he’s traveling to, say, England? Why sneak into the country? Why not spend even one night there? Why not tour the country? Why not visit President Karzai in Kabul, the capital of the nation?
The answer is simple: Obama and his advisors do not consider it safe to be in Afghanistan. Despite more than a decade of U.S. occupation, one in which U.S. troops have had unfettered authority to kill anyone they want, Afghanistan is a hell-hole of anger, rage, violence, shootings, ambushes, raids, torture, incarceration, corruption, dictatorship, and deep anti-American sentiment.
In his recent speech at West Point, Obama said he feels haunted by the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. He should feel haunted. After all, what have they died for? Like the 58,000 plus U.S. soldiers who the national-security state sacrificed in Vietnam, the soldiers who have died in Afghanistan have died for nothing.
Of course, Obama should also feel haunted by the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have been killed by U.S. troops, 99 percent of whom had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Those people died for nothing too.
Now that the U.S. military empire has been booted out of Iraq and is sort of and slowly exiting Afghanistan, what is being done with all those overseas troops?
No, they’re not being brought home and discharged, which is what should have happened when the Cold War ended.
Instead, a new mission must be found for them, over there. After all, to bring them home would be considered “isolationist.”
So, now Obama’s army is “pivoting” to Africa of all places.
Why Africa?
Didn’t you know? There are “terrorists” in Africa. So we need to move the much-vaunted “war on terrorism” from the Middle East to Africa.
And if that doesn’t work, we can move it to Latin America. Hey, there are terrorists there too, especially in the drug war.
Didn’t I tell you that the war on terrorism is even better than the war on communism? It’s like the Energizer Bunny. It just keeps going and going and going.
And what happens when some of those African terrorists retaliate with some sort of big terrorist attack here in the United States? We all know what will happen. U.S. national-security state officials will trot out all the post-9/11 bromides about how those African terrorists hate us for our freedom and values. And they’ll tell us how fortunate it is that the troops are already in Africa fighting the “war on terrorism.” Oh, and they’ll also tell us how urgent it is to increase military spending.
What happens if the “war on terrorism” in Africa doesn’t generate the necessary fear and anxiety among the American people?
No problem. The national-security state can always return to the Cold War and the international communist conspiracy, ginning up some new crisis with “aggressive” Russia or “assertive” Red China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, or whatever. Hey, didn’t you see that Russia and China are now working together? What better proof of an international communist conspiracy than that?
When will Americans recognize all this for the scam it is? It’s the perfect scam to keep the warfare-state apparatus in its fortified exalted position in America’s governmental structure, a position that continues to infringe upon our freedom and privacy and damage our economic well-being and security?
Link:
http://fff.org/2014/05/30/the-war-on-terrorism-is-one-fine-scam/
"Despite the lack of attention from the mischaracterized “mainstream” press, the controversial meeting brings together much of the top echelon of the global establishment — bankers, royalty, military bosses, Internet titans, politicians, corporate chieftains, central bankers, academics, media bosses, intelligence officials, and more."
Globalist Cabal Meets for Secretive Bilderberg Summit
Written by Alex Newman
A collection of around 150 of the most powerful and influential globalists is quietly converging on the Danish capital today for the annual Bilderberg summit this weekend to discuss your future. Despite the lack of attention from the mischaracterized “mainstream” press, the controversial meeting brings together much of the top echelon of the global establishment — bankers, royalty, military bosses, Internet titans, politicians, corporate chieftains, central bankers, academics, media bosses, intelligence officials, and more. Protesters and alternative media reporters are also descending on Copenhagen for the secretive confab.
While the shadowy gathering is off the record and rarely attracts much public scrutiny, Bilderberg attendees have in the past revealed that the self-appointed global elites make decisions there with far-reaching implications for humanity. From hatching the radical plot for a single currency in Europe to supercharging the careers of little-known politicians such as then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton willing to do their bidding, anecdotal evidence and even statements from insiders suggest that the annual meetings play a crucial role in mapping out the globalist agenda. One attendee recently told the German publication Cicero that the Bilderberg meeting was more important than the much more well-known Davos summit.
This year’s Bilderberg gathering — the 62nd so far — again brings together a virtual who’s who of establishment-minded powerbrokers or their minions, more than a few of whom have deeply controversial records. Among those attending this year: Former Secretary of State Henry "New World Order" Kissinger; NATO boss Anders Fogh Rasmussen; former Treasury Secretary and co-chair of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations Robert Rubin; Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz; Google Chairman Eric Schmidt; Neocon extraordinaire and Goldman Sachs International Advisors Board Chairman Robert Zoellick; former CIA boss David Petraeus; IMF chief Christine Lagarde; and many more.
As in past years, there will undoubtedly be other top globalists in attendance who are not listed — preferring to remain anonymous, perhaps, due to concerns about the Logan Act, which could make some Americans in attendance into felons. Still, the publicly available list includes a prominent roster of U.S. so-called “neo-conservatives;” the globalist pseudo-conservatives who plagued the world with the unconstitutional Iraq war and “pre-emptive” war doctrines. Also on the list are CEOs of some of the world’s top corporations and mega-banks such as Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, TD Bank Group, the European Central Bank (ECB), and more.
However, mixed in with all the crony capitalists and their Western government lackeys are plenty of socialists and communists, too. Even the mass-murdering Communist regime ruling over mainland China will have operatives there. Chinese Communist Party Central Committee member He Liu, who leads the ruthless party’s “financial and economic affairs group office,” will be in attendance; as will a Chinese professor and banker with myriad ties to the dictatorship in Beijing. A Socialist Party Parliamentarian from Portugal, Inês de Medeiros, is on the list as well.
The establishment media — becoming increasingly discredited in the United States, where just one in five Americans express confidence in the institution — will also be well represented at the summit. As usual, for example, the globalist magazine The Economist will have Editor-in-chief John Micklethwait there. Chief economics commentator Martin Wolf with The Financial Times will be present as well. Other “mainstream” media figures include political editor-in-chief Tove Lifvendahl for one of Sweden’s top newspapers, senior columnist Cengiz Çandar with Al Monitor and Radika, Austrian newspaper Der Standard publisher Oscar Bronner, editor-in-chief Monica Maggioni with Italy’s Rainews24 and RAI TV, French paper Le Monde executive editor Natalie Nougayrède, and more. Whether any of those supposed “media professionals” will do their duty and inform the public on the gathering remains to be seen, but few expect to see Bilderberg covered in those outlets — much less the real agenda.
In the past, the meetings have not even been publicly acknowledged, with the increasingly unpopular establishment press usually ignoring or demonizing anyone who criticizes or even questions why global policymakers meet in secret behind a virtual army of taxpayer-funded security forces. Virtually none of the pseudo-journalists in attendance have informed their readers or audiences of the summit’s existence — much less what is discussed. More recently, though, thanks largely to the efforts of the alternative media, the Bilderberg has become slightly more transparent — although not much. At least now, the organizers release a partial list of attendees as well as the supposed “key topics for discussion.”
In a press release dated May 26, Bilderberg claimed that the major subjects on the agenda would include the alleged “economic recovery” and whether it is “sustainable,” shifts in technology and jobs, Ukraine, current events, the “new architecture of the Middle East,” and more. “Who will pay for the demographics?” is also listed as a discussion topic, along with “What [sic] next for Europe?” and “How special is the relationship in intelligence sharing?” The “future of democracy” and the “middle class trap” will supposedly be discussed, too, as well as China’s “political and economic outlook.” Multiple insiders and Bilderberg attendees have in the past suggested that the murderous regime in Beijing would help lead what they refer to as the “New World Order.”
“Does privacy exist?” is another one of the key topics, according to the release. The question is ironic considering the paranoid and secrecy-obsessed nature of the Bilderberg meeting, which treats non-establishment reporters and public scrutiny as pests to be avoided. The agenda topic is even more ironic in light of the role played by key Bilderberg attendees in attempting to shred every remaining vestige of your privacy via unlawful and immoral spying on citizens. Former National Security Agency (NSA) director and ex-commander of the U.S. Cyber Command Keith Alexander, for example, is among the “intelligence” bosses listed as attending the confab.
Of course, the NSA was exposed recently by a whistleblower for unconstitutionally vacuuming up information on hundreds of millions of Americans without a warrant. Another former NSA boss, Michael Hayden, also confessed publicly last month that the Obama administration has been murdering people around the world based solely on “metadata” gathered by the controversial agency. Also in attendance at this year’s summit will be U.K. “Secret Intelligence Service” boss John Sawers. Previous Bilderberg attendees such as Bill Gates, Obama, and Louis Gerstner, Jr. have also played a critical role in imposing Common Core and the accompanying espionage apparatus aimed at shredding your children’s privacy rights.
In a brief statement, the recently established official Bilderberg website offered some bland and almost certainly misleading comments about itself and its controversial meetings. “Founded in 1954, Bilderberg is an annual conference designed to foster dialogue between Europe and North America,” it said in the press release. “Every year, between 120-150 political leaders and experts from industry, finance, academia and the media are invited to take part in the conference. About two thirds of the participants come from Europe and the rest from North America; approximately one third from politics and government and the rest from other fields.”
It then elaborates slightly on what Bilderberg wants the public to think about the nature of its gatherings. “The conference is a forum for informal discussions about major issues facing the world,” the press release claims. “The meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule, which states that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) nor of any other participant may be revealed. Thanks to the private nature of the conference, the participants are not bound by the conventions of their office or by pre-agreed positions. As such, they can take time to listen, reflect and gather insights. There is no desired outcome, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken, and no policy statements are issued.”
In other words, if Bilderberg’s official statement is to be believed — that would be rather foolish, considering many attendees’ long and dangerous track records of deception — the gathering is little more than an opportunity to freely discuss important issues. However, even recently, a top Bilderberg operative, Etienne Davignon — a former EU commissar and current Belgian minister of state — hinted at the summit’s influence when he told the EU Observer that the summits played a major role in foisting the euro on the formerly sovereign nations of Europe. Davignon will be in attendance again this year, the public list shows.
The New American will be on the ground in Copenhagen reporting on the Bilderberg summit. A request for interviews and comments sent to the confab’s official press e-mail were not answered by publication time.
Link:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/18371-globalist-cabal-meets-for-secretive-bilderberg-summit
Written by Alex Newman
A collection of around 150 of the most powerful and influential globalists is quietly converging on the Danish capital today for the annual Bilderberg summit this weekend to discuss your future. Despite the lack of attention from the mischaracterized “mainstream” press, the controversial meeting brings together much of the top echelon of the global establishment — bankers, royalty, military bosses, Internet titans, politicians, corporate chieftains, central bankers, academics, media bosses, intelligence officials, and more. Protesters and alternative media reporters are also descending on Copenhagen for the secretive confab.
While the shadowy gathering is off the record and rarely attracts much public scrutiny, Bilderberg attendees have in the past revealed that the self-appointed global elites make decisions there with far-reaching implications for humanity. From hatching the radical plot for a single currency in Europe to supercharging the careers of little-known politicians such as then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton willing to do their bidding, anecdotal evidence and even statements from insiders suggest that the annual meetings play a crucial role in mapping out the globalist agenda. One attendee recently told the German publication Cicero that the Bilderberg meeting was more important than the much more well-known Davos summit.
This year’s Bilderberg gathering — the 62nd so far — again brings together a virtual who’s who of establishment-minded powerbrokers or their minions, more than a few of whom have deeply controversial records. Among those attending this year: Former Secretary of State Henry "New World Order" Kissinger; NATO boss Anders Fogh Rasmussen; former Treasury Secretary and co-chair of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations Robert Rubin; Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz; Google Chairman Eric Schmidt; Neocon extraordinaire and Goldman Sachs International Advisors Board Chairman Robert Zoellick; former CIA boss David Petraeus; IMF chief Christine Lagarde; and many more.
As in past years, there will undoubtedly be other top globalists in attendance who are not listed — preferring to remain anonymous, perhaps, due to concerns about the Logan Act, which could make some Americans in attendance into felons. Still, the publicly available list includes a prominent roster of U.S. so-called “neo-conservatives;” the globalist pseudo-conservatives who plagued the world with the unconstitutional Iraq war and “pre-emptive” war doctrines. Also on the list are CEOs of some of the world’s top corporations and mega-banks such as Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, TD Bank Group, the European Central Bank (ECB), and more.
However, mixed in with all the crony capitalists and their Western government lackeys are plenty of socialists and communists, too. Even the mass-murdering Communist regime ruling over mainland China will have operatives there. Chinese Communist Party Central Committee member He Liu, who leads the ruthless party’s “financial and economic affairs group office,” will be in attendance; as will a Chinese professor and banker with myriad ties to the dictatorship in Beijing. A Socialist Party Parliamentarian from Portugal, Inês de Medeiros, is on the list as well.
The establishment media — becoming increasingly discredited in the United States, where just one in five Americans express confidence in the institution — will also be well represented at the summit. As usual, for example, the globalist magazine The Economist will have Editor-in-chief John Micklethwait there. Chief economics commentator Martin Wolf with The Financial Times will be present as well. Other “mainstream” media figures include political editor-in-chief Tove Lifvendahl for one of Sweden’s top newspapers, senior columnist Cengiz Çandar with Al Monitor and Radika, Austrian newspaper Der Standard publisher Oscar Bronner, editor-in-chief Monica Maggioni with Italy’s Rainews24 and RAI TV, French paper Le Monde executive editor Natalie Nougayrède, and more. Whether any of those supposed “media professionals” will do their duty and inform the public on the gathering remains to be seen, but few expect to see Bilderberg covered in those outlets — much less the real agenda.
In the past, the meetings have not even been publicly acknowledged, with the increasingly unpopular establishment press usually ignoring or demonizing anyone who criticizes or even questions why global policymakers meet in secret behind a virtual army of taxpayer-funded security forces. Virtually none of the pseudo-journalists in attendance have informed their readers or audiences of the summit’s existence — much less what is discussed. More recently, though, thanks largely to the efforts of the alternative media, the Bilderberg has become slightly more transparent — although not much. At least now, the organizers release a partial list of attendees as well as the supposed “key topics for discussion.”
In a press release dated May 26, Bilderberg claimed that the major subjects on the agenda would include the alleged “economic recovery” and whether it is “sustainable,” shifts in technology and jobs, Ukraine, current events, the “new architecture of the Middle East,” and more. “Who will pay for the demographics?” is also listed as a discussion topic, along with “What [sic] next for Europe?” and “How special is the relationship in intelligence sharing?” The “future of democracy” and the “middle class trap” will supposedly be discussed, too, as well as China’s “political and economic outlook.” Multiple insiders and Bilderberg attendees have in the past suggested that the murderous regime in Beijing would help lead what they refer to as the “New World Order.”
“Does privacy exist?” is another one of the key topics, according to the release. The question is ironic considering the paranoid and secrecy-obsessed nature of the Bilderberg meeting, which treats non-establishment reporters and public scrutiny as pests to be avoided. The agenda topic is even more ironic in light of the role played by key Bilderberg attendees in attempting to shred every remaining vestige of your privacy via unlawful and immoral spying on citizens. Former National Security Agency (NSA) director and ex-commander of the U.S. Cyber Command Keith Alexander, for example, is among the “intelligence” bosses listed as attending the confab.
Of course, the NSA was exposed recently by a whistleblower for unconstitutionally vacuuming up information on hundreds of millions of Americans without a warrant. Another former NSA boss, Michael Hayden, also confessed publicly last month that the Obama administration has been murdering people around the world based solely on “metadata” gathered by the controversial agency. Also in attendance at this year’s summit will be U.K. “Secret Intelligence Service” boss John Sawers. Previous Bilderberg attendees such as Bill Gates, Obama, and Louis Gerstner, Jr. have also played a critical role in imposing Common Core and the accompanying espionage apparatus aimed at shredding your children’s privacy rights.
In a brief statement, the recently established official Bilderberg website offered some bland and almost certainly misleading comments about itself and its controversial meetings. “Founded in 1954, Bilderberg is an annual conference designed to foster dialogue between Europe and North America,” it said in the press release. “Every year, between 120-150 political leaders and experts from industry, finance, academia and the media are invited to take part in the conference. About two thirds of the participants come from Europe and the rest from North America; approximately one third from politics and government and the rest from other fields.”
It then elaborates slightly on what Bilderberg wants the public to think about the nature of its gatherings. “The conference is a forum for informal discussions about major issues facing the world,” the press release claims. “The meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule, which states that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) nor of any other participant may be revealed. Thanks to the private nature of the conference, the participants are not bound by the conventions of their office or by pre-agreed positions. As such, they can take time to listen, reflect and gather insights. There is no desired outcome, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken, and no policy statements are issued.”
In other words, if Bilderberg’s official statement is to be believed — that would be rather foolish, considering many attendees’ long and dangerous track records of deception — the gathering is little more than an opportunity to freely discuss important issues. However, even recently, a top Bilderberg operative, Etienne Davignon — a former EU commissar and current Belgian minister of state — hinted at the summit’s influence when he told the EU Observer that the summits played a major role in foisting the euro on the formerly sovereign nations of Europe. Davignon will be in attendance again this year, the public list shows.
The New American will be on the ground in Copenhagen reporting on the Bilderberg summit. A request for interviews and comments sent to the confab’s official press e-mail were not answered by publication time.
Link:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/18371-globalist-cabal-meets-for-secretive-bilderberg-summit
The left and right's attack on the Constitution...
Working Together to Rewrite the Constitution
Written by Christian Gomez
The deceptive Left-Right coalition to rewrite the Constitution by means of an Article V convention threatens our personal rights and freedoms.
Despite war, social upheaval, demographic shifts, and economic ups and downs, the U.S. Constitution has endured for more than two centuries, securing the blessings of liberty for Americans. Now, however, a new threat emerges that seeks to radically alter the Constitution under the guise of amending it. Those seeking radical change to the Constitution look to co-opt it by invoking an Article V “convention for proposing amendments,” otherwise known as a constitutional convention.
Given out-of-control spending by Congress and a national debt of $17.5 trillion — and another estimated $129 trillion in unfunded liabilities — many Americans, especially conservatives, believe that adding a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution would restrain federal spending. Having little confidence in the ability of Congress to correct these financial woes, advocates for a balanced budget amendment (BBA) have once more turned their efforts to what the states can do, specifically the Article V convention process.
However, conservatives seeking a constitutional convention to propose a BBA would be surprised to learn that others, including extreme leftists, also want a convention to advance their own agendas, proposing radical changes with which conservatives would vigorously disagree. Leading convention advocates from both the Left and Right are actually working together to bring about a constitutional convention, even as key advocates on the Left publicly call for a “runaway” convention in order to make multiple and far-reaching changes to the Constitution.
Amending the Constitution
Article V is a one-paragraph article in the Constitution that includes two methods for proposing amendments. The first and only method used so far empowers Congress to propose an amendment “whenever two thirds of the both houses shall deem it necessary.”
The second method for proposing amendments, which has never been employed since the original Constitutional Convention of 1787, is through a constitutional convention called by Congress “on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states.” Once the applications from 34 states are received, Congress is constitutionally bound to “call a convention for proposing amendments.”
Article V also outlines two modes of ratification. The amendments proposed, either by Congress or at a constitutional convention, can only become part of the Constitution once they have been “ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress.”
Back to the Future
Well-meaning conservatives who advocate for a constitutional convention fail to recognize that once Congress convenes a convention it cannot be undone and no predetermined rules or limitations, adopted by either Congress or the states, will have any bearing on what the convention delegates may choose to do or propose. As the representatives of the sovereign will of the people-at-large in each state, convention delegates would have free latitude to propose any changes they see fit, including the writing of an entirely new constitution, along with changes to the mode of ratification, so as to guarantee the adoption of their amendments. This scenario is known as a “runaway” convention, and it is not without historical precedent.
The Continental Congress originally tasked the delegates assembled at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787 with “the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.” At the time, the Articles of Confederation (AOC) was the law of the land. Article XIII of the Articles of Confederation specifically stipulated that “any alterations” made to them must be unanimously “confirmed by the legislatures of every State.” (Emphasis added.)
Both of these mandates were clearly exceeded. The delegates chose to replace the Articles with an entirely new federal constitution. They also altered the mode of ratification from being “confirmed by the legislatures of every State,” in Article XIII of the AOC, to “the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof,” in Article V of the new Constitution. (Emphasis added.)
On September 13, 1788, with only 11 of the 13 states having ratified the new Constitution, the Continental Congress passed a resolution declaring that it “had been ratified.” North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified and would not do so until nearly a year and a half later. On May 29, 1790, Rhode Island became the 13th and final state to ratify the Constitution. The new Constitution replacing the AOC was adopted before being “confirmed by the legislatures of every State,” as Article XIII required. With such precedent, who can say it will not happen again?
Call a Convention
Founded in 2013, Call a Convention is an organization whose stated purpose is to reform Washington, “striking at the root of increasingly troubling issues which have plagued our federal government for decades” by way of an “Article V Amendments Convention.” Call a Convention devotes its efforts to getting groups on both the Right and Left to work together in order to convince state legislatures to petition Congress to call a convention.
Point one of Call a Convention’s strategy calls for the creation of a “non-partisan collaboration with other Article V and Amendments groups.” Under the “About” menu item on the Call a Convention website, there is an “Article V Advocates” webpage with the headline “The Article V Movement — Right and Left Working Together for Real Reform” (see graphic on this page). Under the headline we are told: “We are organizations and individuals from both the right and the left who recognize that Washington is broken and will not reform itself.... [We] must call a Convention, and move forward on our common ground for the good of the nation.”
Below this explanation is a list of various conservative “Article V Movement” groups, such as Mark Meckler and Michael Farris’ Convention of States (COS), Article V Caucus (of state legislators), American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force, and Compact for America. Listed along with these conservative groups are progressive liberal organizations, such as Convention USA, Amend America, ArticleV.org (“the Inter-Occupy Article V Work Group”), Call a Convention, and Wolf-PAC. Although most of these groups claim to favor only a “limited” convention to propose one amendment or a few limited amendments, they are nevertheless listed on the Call a Convention website as members of a movement whose goal is “a truly open and constructive” Article V convention.
The faces behind Call a Convention are Lawrence Lessig, its founder; Jeff McLean, the executive director; and Shelby Williams, who serves as the director. Before becoming executive director of Call a Convention, Jeff McLean served as vice-president of Americans United to Rebuild Democracy, which is a nonprofit organization that describes itself as “an alliance between Conservatives and Progressives for fundamental election reforms including a clean elections system, congressional term limits and a ban on the practice of Gerrymandering.”
Leading the pack is Lawrence Lessig, who founded Call a Convention in August 2013. Lessig holds the title of Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, and has previously taught law at the University of Chicago and Stanford Law School. Lessig served as an advisor on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, and his name was even rumored as a possible Supreme Court justice nominee should Obama win the election. Lessig’s name also appeared on the 2013 guest list for the Bilderberg Conference, where establishment bigwigs from Europe and North America met to discuss various topics, including U.S. foreign policy, the EU, the promises and impacts of online education, and nationalism and populism.
Lessig emerged on the national scene following the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed corporations, specifically incorporated 501(c)(4) public advocacy groups, and trade associations to make financial contributions to electoral races. Since then, Lessig and left-wing Article V groups, such as Move to Amend and Wolf-PAC, have taken the lead in seeking to overturn the court’s decision by pushing for a campaign finance amendment to the Constitution that would bar all private money from political races and require elections to be publicly financed.
Another page on Call a Convention’s website lists the various “Amendments” they support: a Balanced Budget Amendment, a Campaign Finance Amendment, a National Debt Relief Amendment, Term Limits for Congress, and Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices. However, since Call a Convention’s goal is “a truly open and constructive” convention, the listing of these amendments is likely only a means toward their ultimate objective of proposing radical rewrites to the Constitution.
In his 2011 book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It, Lessig discussed the adverse implications to “democracy” from the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case. Unsurprisingly, Chapter 20 of the book outlined a constitutional convention as the necessary solution. On page 293, Lessig stressed the need for a convention on the basis of the fundamentally transformative changes that only a constitutional convention could bring about: “Even though it has never happened, however, a constitutional convention is the one final plausible strategy for forcing fundamental reform onto our Congress.” (Emphasis added.) On the same page, Lessig continued to make his desire for a broad constitutional convention clear when he explained that going through Congress to propose amendments would fall short of resulting in the type of “fundamental reform” only achievable through a convention:
It’s going to be easier to organize movements within the states to demand fundamental reform than it will be to organize Congress to vote for any particular amendment to the Constitution to effect that reform. And more important, it’s going to be much easier to get a conversation about fundamental reform going in the context of a call for a convention than it will be through any other plausible political means. The reason is an important strategic opportunity that a call for a convention would offer and that a demand for an amendment would not: different souls with different objectives could agree on the need for a convention without agreeing on the particular proposals that a convention should recommend. Some might want term limits. Some might want to abolish the Electoral College, or ban political gerrymandering. And some might want to demand a system for funding elections that restores integrity and independence to Congress (me!).
All of these different souls could agree at least on the need to create the platform upon which their different ideas could be debated. The platform is the convention. [Emphasis added.]
Call a Convention’s founder places greater emphasis and importance on the “platform” than on any particular amendments. The five amendments listed on Call a Convention’s website are merely a catalyst of the “different ideas” necessary to convince both the Right and the Left to come together in support of a convention, whose true purpose is to debate and propose fundamental changes to the Constitution.
Co-opting the Right
Since the mid 1970s, conservative attempts at a constitutional convention have been primarily focused on adding a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. One of the groups pushing hard for a BBA via an Article V convention today is Compact for America. The Compact for America (CFA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with an ambitious plan that calls for the creation of an interstate compact, made up of 38 states (the minimum required number of states to ratify an amendment to the Constitution), to petition Congress to call an Article V convention for proposing a balanced budget amendment, which would also be “pre-drafted” and “pre-ratified” within the 38 states’ initial applications.
CFA’s plan calls for designating the governor of each state to serve as his or her state’s official delegate to the convention. The CFA is the brainchild of Nick Dranias, the director of policy and constitutional government for the Goldwater Institute. Among those on CFA’s advisory council is Lawrence Lessig.
Another organization listed on Call a Convention’s “Article V Movement” page is Convention of States (COS), which is a project of Mark Meckler’s Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG). Convention of States encourages state legislatures to introduce and pass resolutions applying to Congress to call a convention of the states in order to propose “amendments that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials.”
Before establishing Citizens for Self-Governance in 2012, Mark Meckler was the co-founder and national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots. In 2011, both Meckler and Lessig attended the Conference on the Constitutional Convention (ConConCon), held at Harvard University September 24-25, 2011. Meckler cohosted the event with Lessig, which, like Call a Convention, intended to bring both the Right and Left together to work toward a new constitutional convention. Also in attendance at the Harvard ConConCon was Nick Dranias of CFA.
As recently as March 21, 2014, both Lessig and Meckler spoke at the same event, this time at the Citizen University’s (motto: “Let’s Do Democracy”) Annual National Conference in Seattle; Lessig’s topic was “How to Start a Rebellion,” featuring “bottom up change and passionate cross-partisan political rejuvenation.” Lessig’s connection with CFA and Mark Meckler is not so much an endorsement for a BBA or limited government as it is an opportunity for Lessig to work alongside conservatives toward the common goal of a constitutional convention. The Right is being used to help facilitate the aspiration of Lessig and others for a convention to make far-reaching changes to the Constitution.
Working With the Left
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case, the Left made campaign finance reform the rallying cry for their efforts to amend the Constitution. Cenk Uygur, the host and producer of The Young Turks, has been a strong supporter for campaign finance reform following the court’s ruling. Uygur also attended the Harvard ConConCon, where he became convinced that the only recourse for campaign finance reform is an Article V constitutional convention.
In November 2011, Uygur founded Wolf-PAC with the stated aim to “restore true, representative democracy in the United States by pressuring our State Representatives to pass a much needed 28th Amendment to our Constitution which would end corporate personhood and publicly finance all elections in our country.” The text of Wolf-PAC’s proposed “28th Amendment” reads:
Corporations are not people. They have none of the Constitutional rights of human beings. Corporations are not allowed to give money to any politician directly or indirectly. No politician can raise over $100 from any person or entity. All elections must be publicly financed.
Since Wolf-PAC’s creation, both Uygur and Lessig have toured the country making appearances together encouraging people and state legislators to support and pass Article V applications for a convention to propose this “28th Amendment.” Lessig and Uygur are not the only notable personalities on the Left who would welcome an Article V convention to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.
In his newest book, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution (2014), former Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case, proposes adding the following 43 words to amend the First Amendment of the Constitution:
Neither the First Amendment nor any other provision of this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit the Congress or any state from imposing reasonable limits on the amount of money that candidates for public office, or their supporters, may spend in election campaigns.
Another of Stevens’ proposals in Six Amendments is to change the Second Amendment to read: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the militia shall not be infringed.” (Emphasis added.) The addition of these five words essentially allows for the criminalization and disarming of homeowners and law-abiding citizens.
Justice Stevens is not alone in seeking to alter the Second Amendment. Also in attendance at the Harvard ConConCon was then-Texas Wesleyan Law School Professor Mary Penrose, who currently teaches at Texas A&M University School of Law. Speaking at the 2013 UConn School of Law Second Amendment Symposium, Penrose said gun violence required “drastic measures” and affirmed that “there is not a single amendment that is absolute … no constitutional right is sacred.” She continued, “It’s time today, in our drastic measures, to repeal and replace that Second Amendment.” Halfway through her talk she stated, “I’m in favor of redrafting the entire Constitution.” Before leaving the podium Penrose concluded, “My solution goes through the Article V process … through the states model.”
Also listed on Call a Convention’s “Article V Movement” page is Convention USA. Convention USA is a nonprofit corporation that was founded by Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court Thomas E. Brennan and several of his close associates. Convention USA describes itself as an “interactive, virtual convention being conducted on the Internet for the purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States in the manner provided for in Article V of the federal constitution.” Anyone can sign up on its website as a “delegate” to participate in the online “convention” to propose and debate amendments desired to be proposed and debated at a real constitutional convention. This virtual convention will “adjourn sine die when the United States Congress calls a convention pursuant to Article V,” Convention USA’s website states. Their goal is to “generate a groundswell of public support for an Article V convention, and force Congress to call the convention.”
Convention USA’s advisory board includes Lawrence Lessig. Other members of the advisory board have proposed their own amendments, which would fundamentally transform the Constitution.
Endgame: Constitutional Rewrite
Among the names listed on Convention USA’s advisory board is University of Texas Law School Professor Sanford Levinson. On page nine of Levinson’s book Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It) (2006), he contends that “the Constitution is both insufficiently democratic, … and significantly dysfunctional.” Levinson writes, “We should no longer express our blind devotion to it.” He invites the reader to answer five questions in order to “scrutinize the adequacy of today’s Constitution.” The first question Levinson asks is:
Even if you support having a Senate in addition to the House of Representatives, do you support as well giving Wyoming the same number of votes as California, which has roughly seventy times the population?
Levinson’s final question hints at wanting to lower the threshold of the required number of states to ratify an amendment:
Do you support the ability of thirteen legislative houses in as many states to block constitutional amendments desired by the overwhelming majority of Americans as well as, possibly, eighty-six out of the ninety-nine legislative houses in the American states?
On page 11, Levinson makes the following proposal to address these questions:
Shall Congress call a constitutional convention empowered to consider the adequacy of the Constitution and, if thought necessary, to draft a new constitution that, upon completion, will be submitted to the electorate for its approval or disapproval by majority vote? Unless and until a new constitution gains popular approval, the current Constitution will continue in place. [Emphasis added.]
Initially, Levinson sought a citizens-led campaign to individually petition Congress to call a convention. However, on page 174, he stated that if Congress resists the petitions of citizens for a convention, then “one moves on to the procedure set out in Article V and lobbies for state legislatures to send similar petitions to Congress.” Levinson continued, “We are surely entitled to believe that Congress would adhere to the clear command of the Constitution and call a convention should two-thirds of the states agree.” Apart from serving on Convention USA’s advisory board, Levinson was one of the invited guest speakers at the Harvard ConConCon. Furthermore, Levinson is also listed on Call a Convention’s “Article V Movement” page.
As for Lawrence Lessig, the founder of Call a Convention, he wrote the following in an article entitled “Fidelity in Translation,” published in the May 1993 issue of the Texas Law Review:
We live in a time when almost sixty percent of the American public cannot even identify the Bill of Rights. If the document has become so out of date that its meaning is no longer plain to all — if it has become impossible to imagine a world where ordinary people carry the Constitution in their pockets — then perhaps it is time to restore its meaning by, as Justice [John Paul] Stevens has recently suggested, amending the text to preserve the meaning. Perhaps, that is, it is time to rewrite our Constitution. [Emphasis added.]
Under the guise of trying to make the Constitution more understandable for “ordinary people,” Lessig reveals his desire to rewrite the Constitution. Lessig then goes on to confirm his intention to rewrite the Constitution:
We are like the person who finds himself at the store, with a list he can no longer make out, struggling to reconstruct what it must have been that he wanted to buy; at some point it may make sense simply to decide again what he wants, to rewrite the list, to give up the obsession that it must be the same as the old list, to move on. [Emphasis added.]
Lessig, the godfather of the Article V movement, believes “it is time to rewrite our Constitution” and that those who adhere to the Constitution as it is should “give up the obsession that it must be the same as the old” in order “to move on.” Lessig’s statements invoke the same sentiment as Levinson’s.
During the ConConCon, Uygur asked Lessig questions about the prospect of a new constitutional convention and the possibility that it would become a runaway convention. Lessig responded that any “crazy amendments” proposed at a convention would still need to be ratified by 38 states. Uygur joyfully continued, “I agree, and the original convention they say was … a runaway convention. It was, and it produced the greatest document known to man.” Lessig then smiled and replied, “Let’s have some more runaway conventions.”
A “runaway” convention does not scare Lessig; it is precisely what motivates him. Individuals such as Lessig, Levinson, Penrose, and Stevens seek to do away with the “outdated” Constitution of 1787 and replace it with an entirely new constitution bearing little similarity to the current one. With each application petitioning Congress to call a constitutional convention, the country moves closer to enabling the Left to completely rewrite the Constitution. The Left’s deceptive quest to rewrite the Constitution is nothing new and would have transpired already had it not been for the effectual and fervent work of The John Birch Society. For decades The John Birch Society and its members across the country have worked tirelessly, actively educating people and lawmakers about the dangers of a constitutional convention. Art Thompson, CEO of The John Birch Society, told The New American:
With the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment, the overt thrust of the Left to alter the nature of our Constitution segued into a stealth program to bring about a constitutional convention in the name of instituting what American conservatives valued: pro-life, against flag burning, a balanced budget ― anything to gain support for an initiative to set the stage for changing the Constitution. And, all the while, the Left has been involved in the process.
Thompson continued, “More and more evidence has surfaced that this is the case. The John Birch Society has been the vanguard for 40 years in preventing a constitutional convention and we continue to be that vanguard.” Unless Americans become educated and get actively involved, the names Washington, Madison, and Franklin will be effaced by the names Lessig, Levinson, and Penrose. As Lessig gleefully wrote in 2010 regarding an Article V constitutional convention, “It would be a grand circus of democracy.”
Link:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/18332-working-together-to-rewrite-the-constitution
Written by Christian Gomez
The deceptive Left-Right coalition to rewrite the Constitution by means of an Article V convention threatens our personal rights and freedoms.
Despite war, social upheaval, demographic shifts, and economic ups and downs, the U.S. Constitution has endured for more than two centuries, securing the blessings of liberty for Americans. Now, however, a new threat emerges that seeks to radically alter the Constitution under the guise of amending it. Those seeking radical change to the Constitution look to co-opt it by invoking an Article V “convention for proposing amendments,” otherwise known as a constitutional convention.
Given out-of-control spending by Congress and a national debt of $17.5 trillion — and another estimated $129 trillion in unfunded liabilities — many Americans, especially conservatives, believe that adding a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution would restrain federal spending. Having little confidence in the ability of Congress to correct these financial woes, advocates for a balanced budget amendment (BBA) have once more turned their efforts to what the states can do, specifically the Article V convention process.
However, conservatives seeking a constitutional convention to propose a BBA would be surprised to learn that others, including extreme leftists, also want a convention to advance their own agendas, proposing radical changes with which conservatives would vigorously disagree. Leading convention advocates from both the Left and Right are actually working together to bring about a constitutional convention, even as key advocates on the Left publicly call for a “runaway” convention in order to make multiple and far-reaching changes to the Constitution.
Amending the Constitution
Article V is a one-paragraph article in the Constitution that includes two methods for proposing amendments. The first and only method used so far empowers Congress to propose an amendment “whenever two thirds of the both houses shall deem it necessary.”
The second method for proposing amendments, which has never been employed since the original Constitutional Convention of 1787, is through a constitutional convention called by Congress “on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states.” Once the applications from 34 states are received, Congress is constitutionally bound to “call a convention for proposing amendments.”
Article V also outlines two modes of ratification. The amendments proposed, either by Congress or at a constitutional convention, can only become part of the Constitution once they have been “ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress.”
Back to the Future
Well-meaning conservatives who advocate for a constitutional convention fail to recognize that once Congress convenes a convention it cannot be undone and no predetermined rules or limitations, adopted by either Congress or the states, will have any bearing on what the convention delegates may choose to do or propose. As the representatives of the sovereign will of the people-at-large in each state, convention delegates would have free latitude to propose any changes they see fit, including the writing of an entirely new constitution, along with changes to the mode of ratification, so as to guarantee the adoption of their amendments. This scenario is known as a “runaway” convention, and it is not without historical precedent.
The Continental Congress originally tasked the delegates assembled at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787 with “the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.” At the time, the Articles of Confederation (AOC) was the law of the land. Article XIII of the Articles of Confederation specifically stipulated that “any alterations” made to them must be unanimously “confirmed by the legislatures of every State.” (Emphasis added.)
Both of these mandates were clearly exceeded. The delegates chose to replace the Articles with an entirely new federal constitution. They also altered the mode of ratification from being “confirmed by the legislatures of every State,” in Article XIII of the AOC, to “the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof,” in Article V of the new Constitution. (Emphasis added.)
On September 13, 1788, with only 11 of the 13 states having ratified the new Constitution, the Continental Congress passed a resolution declaring that it “had been ratified.” North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified and would not do so until nearly a year and a half later. On May 29, 1790, Rhode Island became the 13th and final state to ratify the Constitution. The new Constitution replacing the AOC was adopted before being “confirmed by the legislatures of every State,” as Article XIII required. With such precedent, who can say it will not happen again?
Call a Convention
Founded in 2013, Call a Convention is an organization whose stated purpose is to reform Washington, “striking at the root of increasingly troubling issues which have plagued our federal government for decades” by way of an “Article V Amendments Convention.” Call a Convention devotes its efforts to getting groups on both the Right and Left to work together in order to convince state legislatures to petition Congress to call a convention.
Point one of Call a Convention’s strategy calls for the creation of a “non-partisan collaboration with other Article V and Amendments groups.” Under the “About” menu item on the Call a Convention website, there is an “Article V Advocates” webpage with the headline “The Article V Movement — Right and Left Working Together for Real Reform” (see graphic on this page). Under the headline we are told: “We are organizations and individuals from both the right and the left who recognize that Washington is broken and will not reform itself.... [We] must call a Convention, and move forward on our common ground for the good of the nation.”
Below this explanation is a list of various conservative “Article V Movement” groups, such as Mark Meckler and Michael Farris’ Convention of States (COS), Article V Caucus (of state legislators), American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force, and Compact for America. Listed along with these conservative groups are progressive liberal organizations, such as Convention USA, Amend America, ArticleV.org (“the Inter-Occupy Article V Work Group”), Call a Convention, and Wolf-PAC. Although most of these groups claim to favor only a “limited” convention to propose one amendment or a few limited amendments, they are nevertheless listed on the Call a Convention website as members of a movement whose goal is “a truly open and constructive” Article V convention.
The faces behind Call a Convention are Lawrence Lessig, its founder; Jeff McLean, the executive director; and Shelby Williams, who serves as the director. Before becoming executive director of Call a Convention, Jeff McLean served as vice-president of Americans United to Rebuild Democracy, which is a nonprofit organization that describes itself as “an alliance between Conservatives and Progressives for fundamental election reforms including a clean elections system, congressional term limits and a ban on the practice of Gerrymandering.”
Leading the pack is Lawrence Lessig, who founded Call a Convention in August 2013. Lessig holds the title of Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, and has previously taught law at the University of Chicago and Stanford Law School. Lessig served as an advisor on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, and his name was even rumored as a possible Supreme Court justice nominee should Obama win the election. Lessig’s name also appeared on the 2013 guest list for the Bilderberg Conference, where establishment bigwigs from Europe and North America met to discuss various topics, including U.S. foreign policy, the EU, the promises and impacts of online education, and nationalism and populism.
Lessig emerged on the national scene following the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed corporations, specifically incorporated 501(c)(4) public advocacy groups, and trade associations to make financial contributions to electoral races. Since then, Lessig and left-wing Article V groups, such as Move to Amend and Wolf-PAC, have taken the lead in seeking to overturn the court’s decision by pushing for a campaign finance amendment to the Constitution that would bar all private money from political races and require elections to be publicly financed.
Another page on Call a Convention’s website lists the various “Amendments” they support: a Balanced Budget Amendment, a Campaign Finance Amendment, a National Debt Relief Amendment, Term Limits for Congress, and Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices. However, since Call a Convention’s goal is “a truly open and constructive” convention, the listing of these amendments is likely only a means toward their ultimate objective of proposing radical rewrites to the Constitution.
In his 2011 book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It, Lessig discussed the adverse implications to “democracy” from the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case. Unsurprisingly, Chapter 20 of the book outlined a constitutional convention as the necessary solution. On page 293, Lessig stressed the need for a convention on the basis of the fundamentally transformative changes that only a constitutional convention could bring about: “Even though it has never happened, however, a constitutional convention is the one final plausible strategy for forcing fundamental reform onto our Congress.” (Emphasis added.) On the same page, Lessig continued to make his desire for a broad constitutional convention clear when he explained that going through Congress to propose amendments would fall short of resulting in the type of “fundamental reform” only achievable through a convention:
It’s going to be easier to organize movements within the states to demand fundamental reform than it will be to organize Congress to vote for any particular amendment to the Constitution to effect that reform. And more important, it’s going to be much easier to get a conversation about fundamental reform going in the context of a call for a convention than it will be through any other plausible political means. The reason is an important strategic opportunity that a call for a convention would offer and that a demand for an amendment would not: different souls with different objectives could agree on the need for a convention without agreeing on the particular proposals that a convention should recommend. Some might want term limits. Some might want to abolish the Electoral College, or ban political gerrymandering. And some might want to demand a system for funding elections that restores integrity and independence to Congress (me!).
All of these different souls could agree at least on the need to create the platform upon which their different ideas could be debated. The platform is the convention. [Emphasis added.]
Call a Convention’s founder places greater emphasis and importance on the “platform” than on any particular amendments. The five amendments listed on Call a Convention’s website are merely a catalyst of the “different ideas” necessary to convince both the Right and the Left to come together in support of a convention, whose true purpose is to debate and propose fundamental changes to the Constitution.
Co-opting the Right
Since the mid 1970s, conservative attempts at a constitutional convention have been primarily focused on adding a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. One of the groups pushing hard for a BBA via an Article V convention today is Compact for America. The Compact for America (CFA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with an ambitious plan that calls for the creation of an interstate compact, made up of 38 states (the minimum required number of states to ratify an amendment to the Constitution), to petition Congress to call an Article V convention for proposing a balanced budget amendment, which would also be “pre-drafted” and “pre-ratified” within the 38 states’ initial applications.
CFA’s plan calls for designating the governor of each state to serve as his or her state’s official delegate to the convention. The CFA is the brainchild of Nick Dranias, the director of policy and constitutional government for the Goldwater Institute. Among those on CFA’s advisory council is Lawrence Lessig.
Another organization listed on Call a Convention’s “Article V Movement” page is Convention of States (COS), which is a project of Mark Meckler’s Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG). Convention of States encourages state legislatures to introduce and pass resolutions applying to Congress to call a convention of the states in order to propose “amendments that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials.”
Before establishing Citizens for Self-Governance in 2012, Mark Meckler was the co-founder and national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots. In 2011, both Meckler and Lessig attended the Conference on the Constitutional Convention (ConConCon), held at Harvard University September 24-25, 2011. Meckler cohosted the event with Lessig, which, like Call a Convention, intended to bring both the Right and Left together to work toward a new constitutional convention. Also in attendance at the Harvard ConConCon was Nick Dranias of CFA.
As recently as March 21, 2014, both Lessig and Meckler spoke at the same event, this time at the Citizen University’s (motto: “Let’s Do Democracy”) Annual National Conference in Seattle; Lessig’s topic was “How to Start a Rebellion,” featuring “bottom up change and passionate cross-partisan political rejuvenation.” Lessig’s connection with CFA and Mark Meckler is not so much an endorsement for a BBA or limited government as it is an opportunity for Lessig to work alongside conservatives toward the common goal of a constitutional convention. The Right is being used to help facilitate the aspiration of Lessig and others for a convention to make far-reaching changes to the Constitution.
Working With the Left
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case, the Left made campaign finance reform the rallying cry for their efforts to amend the Constitution. Cenk Uygur, the host and producer of The Young Turks, has been a strong supporter for campaign finance reform following the court’s ruling. Uygur also attended the Harvard ConConCon, where he became convinced that the only recourse for campaign finance reform is an Article V constitutional convention.
In November 2011, Uygur founded Wolf-PAC with the stated aim to “restore true, representative democracy in the United States by pressuring our State Representatives to pass a much needed 28th Amendment to our Constitution which would end corporate personhood and publicly finance all elections in our country.” The text of Wolf-PAC’s proposed “28th Amendment” reads:
Corporations are not people. They have none of the Constitutional rights of human beings. Corporations are not allowed to give money to any politician directly or indirectly. No politician can raise over $100 from any person or entity. All elections must be publicly financed.
Since Wolf-PAC’s creation, both Uygur and Lessig have toured the country making appearances together encouraging people and state legislators to support and pass Article V applications for a convention to propose this “28th Amendment.” Lessig and Uygur are not the only notable personalities on the Left who would welcome an Article V convention to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.
In his newest book, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution (2014), former Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case, proposes adding the following 43 words to amend the First Amendment of the Constitution:
Neither the First Amendment nor any other provision of this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit the Congress or any state from imposing reasonable limits on the amount of money that candidates for public office, or their supporters, may spend in election campaigns.
Another of Stevens’ proposals in Six Amendments is to change the Second Amendment to read: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the militia shall not be infringed.” (Emphasis added.) The addition of these five words essentially allows for the criminalization and disarming of homeowners and law-abiding citizens.
Justice Stevens is not alone in seeking to alter the Second Amendment. Also in attendance at the Harvard ConConCon was then-Texas Wesleyan Law School Professor Mary Penrose, who currently teaches at Texas A&M University School of Law. Speaking at the 2013 UConn School of Law Second Amendment Symposium, Penrose said gun violence required “drastic measures” and affirmed that “there is not a single amendment that is absolute … no constitutional right is sacred.” She continued, “It’s time today, in our drastic measures, to repeal and replace that Second Amendment.” Halfway through her talk she stated, “I’m in favor of redrafting the entire Constitution.” Before leaving the podium Penrose concluded, “My solution goes through the Article V process … through the states model.”
Also listed on Call a Convention’s “Article V Movement” page is Convention USA. Convention USA is a nonprofit corporation that was founded by Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court Thomas E. Brennan and several of his close associates. Convention USA describes itself as an “interactive, virtual convention being conducted on the Internet for the purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States in the manner provided for in Article V of the federal constitution.” Anyone can sign up on its website as a “delegate” to participate in the online “convention” to propose and debate amendments desired to be proposed and debated at a real constitutional convention. This virtual convention will “adjourn sine die when the United States Congress calls a convention pursuant to Article V,” Convention USA’s website states. Their goal is to “generate a groundswell of public support for an Article V convention, and force Congress to call the convention.”
Convention USA’s advisory board includes Lawrence Lessig. Other members of the advisory board have proposed their own amendments, which would fundamentally transform the Constitution.
Endgame: Constitutional Rewrite
Among the names listed on Convention USA’s advisory board is University of Texas Law School Professor Sanford Levinson. On page nine of Levinson’s book Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It) (2006), he contends that “the Constitution is both insufficiently democratic, … and significantly dysfunctional.” Levinson writes, “We should no longer express our blind devotion to it.” He invites the reader to answer five questions in order to “scrutinize the adequacy of today’s Constitution.” The first question Levinson asks is:
Even if you support having a Senate in addition to the House of Representatives, do you support as well giving Wyoming the same number of votes as California, which has roughly seventy times the population?
Levinson’s final question hints at wanting to lower the threshold of the required number of states to ratify an amendment:
Do you support the ability of thirteen legislative houses in as many states to block constitutional amendments desired by the overwhelming majority of Americans as well as, possibly, eighty-six out of the ninety-nine legislative houses in the American states?
On page 11, Levinson makes the following proposal to address these questions:
Shall Congress call a constitutional convention empowered to consider the adequacy of the Constitution and, if thought necessary, to draft a new constitution that, upon completion, will be submitted to the electorate for its approval or disapproval by majority vote? Unless and until a new constitution gains popular approval, the current Constitution will continue in place. [Emphasis added.]
Initially, Levinson sought a citizens-led campaign to individually petition Congress to call a convention. However, on page 174, he stated that if Congress resists the petitions of citizens for a convention, then “one moves on to the procedure set out in Article V and lobbies for state legislatures to send similar petitions to Congress.” Levinson continued, “We are surely entitled to believe that Congress would adhere to the clear command of the Constitution and call a convention should two-thirds of the states agree.” Apart from serving on Convention USA’s advisory board, Levinson was one of the invited guest speakers at the Harvard ConConCon. Furthermore, Levinson is also listed on Call a Convention’s “Article V Movement” page.
As for Lawrence Lessig, the founder of Call a Convention, he wrote the following in an article entitled “Fidelity in Translation,” published in the May 1993 issue of the Texas Law Review:
We live in a time when almost sixty percent of the American public cannot even identify the Bill of Rights. If the document has become so out of date that its meaning is no longer plain to all — if it has become impossible to imagine a world where ordinary people carry the Constitution in their pockets — then perhaps it is time to restore its meaning by, as Justice [John Paul] Stevens has recently suggested, amending the text to preserve the meaning. Perhaps, that is, it is time to rewrite our Constitution. [Emphasis added.]
Under the guise of trying to make the Constitution more understandable for “ordinary people,” Lessig reveals his desire to rewrite the Constitution. Lessig then goes on to confirm his intention to rewrite the Constitution:
We are like the person who finds himself at the store, with a list he can no longer make out, struggling to reconstruct what it must have been that he wanted to buy; at some point it may make sense simply to decide again what he wants, to rewrite the list, to give up the obsession that it must be the same as the old list, to move on. [Emphasis added.]
Lessig, the godfather of the Article V movement, believes “it is time to rewrite our Constitution” and that those who adhere to the Constitution as it is should “give up the obsession that it must be the same as the old” in order “to move on.” Lessig’s statements invoke the same sentiment as Levinson’s.
During the ConConCon, Uygur asked Lessig questions about the prospect of a new constitutional convention and the possibility that it would become a runaway convention. Lessig responded that any “crazy amendments” proposed at a convention would still need to be ratified by 38 states. Uygur joyfully continued, “I agree, and the original convention they say was … a runaway convention. It was, and it produced the greatest document known to man.” Lessig then smiled and replied, “Let’s have some more runaway conventions.”
A “runaway” convention does not scare Lessig; it is precisely what motivates him. Individuals such as Lessig, Levinson, Penrose, and Stevens seek to do away with the “outdated” Constitution of 1787 and replace it with an entirely new constitution bearing little similarity to the current one. With each application petitioning Congress to call a constitutional convention, the country moves closer to enabling the Left to completely rewrite the Constitution. The Left’s deceptive quest to rewrite the Constitution is nothing new and would have transpired already had it not been for the effectual and fervent work of The John Birch Society. For decades The John Birch Society and its members across the country have worked tirelessly, actively educating people and lawmakers about the dangers of a constitutional convention. Art Thompson, CEO of The John Birch Society, told The New American:
With the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment, the overt thrust of the Left to alter the nature of our Constitution segued into a stealth program to bring about a constitutional convention in the name of instituting what American conservatives valued: pro-life, against flag burning, a balanced budget ― anything to gain support for an initiative to set the stage for changing the Constitution. And, all the while, the Left has been involved in the process.
Thompson continued, “More and more evidence has surfaced that this is the case. The John Birch Society has been the vanguard for 40 years in preventing a constitutional convention and we continue to be that vanguard.” Unless Americans become educated and get actively involved, the names Washington, Madison, and Franklin will be effaced by the names Lessig, Levinson, and Penrose. As Lessig gleefully wrote in 2010 regarding an Article V constitutional convention, “It would be a grand circus of democracy.”
Link:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/18332-working-together-to-rewrite-the-constitution
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