Studies show that spirulina can help prevent cancer, boost brain function and more
by: Michael Ravensthorpe
Spirulina is a type of green algae that grows in fresh water bodies. It is a survivor plant which, unlike most flora, is able to withstand considerable temperature variations and still thrive. It is cultivated worldwide and has been harvested as a food source for thousands of years.
According to David Wolfe, author of the book, Superfoods: The Food and Medicine of the Future, spirulina is one of the most nutritious foods in the world. In fact, it has become synonymous with the "superfood" label. This article contains an overview of spirulina's health benefits and the studies that confirm them.
Research into spirulina
Rich in nutrients - Spirulina's biggest attraction is its incomparable levels of nutrients. According to spectral analysis provided by Self's "NutritionData," a 28 gram (1 ounce) serving of dried spirulina contains 44 percent of our RDI of iron, 32 percent of our RDI of protein, 60 percent of our RDI of riboflavin, 44 percent of our RDI of thiamin and a whopping 85 percent of our RDI of copper. The same serving size also contains smaller amounts of vitamins A, C, E and K, numerous other B-vitamins and trace minerals, and essential fatty acids. This astonishing nutritional profile makes spirulina a near-perfect food, lacking only in vitamin D.
Cancer prevention - According to a 2004 study published in Biochemical Pharmacology, spirulina contains a protein, C-phycocyanin, that can significantly reduce the proliferation of cultured leukemia cells by causing the cells to undergo apoptosis ("cell death"). A later 2009 study published in the Cancer Science journal found that mice that were fed a spirulina extract had increased activity of natural killer cells (immune cells that kill cancer cells) than those fed the placebo. The researchers concluded that "NK activation by spirulina has some advantage in combinational use with BCG-cell wall skeleton for developing adjuvant-based antitumor immunotherapy."
Antiviral properties - A 2005 study published in Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology has shown that spirulina's "high concentration of natural nutrients" can improve white blood cell activity and stimulate antibodies. These properties make spirulina an excellent guard against many serious viruses. "[Spirulina preparations] have been found to be active against several enveloped viruses including herpes virus, cytomegalovirus, influenza virus and HIV," claim the researchers. "They [...] inhibit carcinogenesis due to anti-oxidant properties that protect tissues and also reduce toxicity of liver, kidney and testes."
Liver protection - Though consuming spirulina can boost the health of all our organs, research has shown that it is especially beneficial for our livers. An Indian-Malaysian study published in the December 2008 issue of International Journal of Integrative Biology, for instance, found that mice that were fed spirulina extracts experienced elevated liver enzymes, protecting them from liver damage. The researchers noted that spirulina's antioxidant concentrations were responsible for this benefit.
Boosts brain function - A 2005 study published in the Journal of Experimental Neurology has demonstrated that a spirulina dose of 180 milligrams per kilogram of weight had the ability to reduce brain damage and aid the recovery of neurons in rats who had suffered strokes. The researchers acknowledged a connection between improved brain function and a "diet enriched in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory phytochemicals."
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/043789_superfoods_spirulina_brain_cancer.html#ixzz2sTaKEXSK
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
The Fed stole it...
By Paul Rosenberg
You may have heard something about this story, but I think it’s important to take a few minutes to restate the facts clearly. In the modern news environment, stories come and go so fast – and in so many parts – that it’s very easy to get lost along the way.
So, here’s what we know so far:
In 2012, the Bundesbank (the central bank of Germany) asked to visit the vault of the Federal Reserve in New York, to view the 1,536 tons of gold they have stored there.
The Federal Reserve told them no. They were not allowed to see their gold.
In response, Germany said that they wanted 300 tons of their gold back.
The Federal Reserve said that they’d need seven years to get the gold back to Germany. (Something that should take them seven weeks, tops.)
One year later, the Fed has returned only 5 tons of gold to Germany. At this rate, it will take 60 years for the Germans to get less than one fifth of their gold back.
Though I don’t know precisely what, it is very clear that something strange is going on here… something that the prestigious central bankers want to keep away from the light of day.
Shipping 300 tons of metal is hardly a new and difficult technical challenge. Companies involved in metal trading do this all the time. Sure, gold requires extra security, but security is also something that lots of people know how to provide.
Give me half a percent as a premium, and I’ll have it arranged by next week!
The German Responses
The initial German response was the one mentioned above: Give us back our gold. But that happened over a year ago, after they weren’t allowed to see their gold. There have been further responses, following the very lame delivery of five tons.
These responses have come in just the past month or so:
The president of Germany’s top financial regulations group said that manipulation of gold and silver “is worse than the Libor-rigging scandal.” (The Libor scandal was and is a big deal, and lots of lawsuits are underway over it.) That’s a big accusation.
Then, Deutsche Bank, the biggest German bank, dropped out of the London gold fixing pool; the group of bankers that set the official price of gold. This is also related to the investigations by European regulators into the suspected manipulation of precious metals prices by banks. Again, this is a very significant event.
Germany does not seem happy about what the Fed is doing to them. These responses may seem timid, compared to what you or I might do if someone refused to give us back our gold, but they very clearly show that the German banks are objecting. (What’s going on behind the scenes remains unknown to us.)
In addition to this, the Financial Times ran an article advising investors to demand physical delivery of their gold. Bloomberg published an article on gold price manipulation. Whether they were pushed to do this by the Germans remains an open question...
Link:
http://www.freemansperspective.com/germanys-gold/
Sunstein and libertarians...
How to Spot a Paranoid Government Bureaucrat
Cass Sunstein is scary – and scared
By Justin Raimondo
Whatever else one might say about Cass Sunstein, he surely knows who his enemies are. The former head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and member of the President’s panel on NSA “reforms” – infamous for his suggestion that government agents should “cognitively infiltrate” alleged “conspiracy-minded” groups – is out with a new one, this time aimed at “paranoid libertarianism.” Taking up where Princeton University historian and Clintonista Sean Wilentz left off, Sunstein avers:
“It can be found on the political right, in familiar objections to gun control, progressive taxation, environmental protection and health-care reform. It can also be found on the left, in familiar objections to religious displays at public institutions and to efforts to reduce the risk of terrorism.”
In short, any objection to the Obama administration’s agenda is indicative of “paranoia” on both sides of the political spectrum. While it would be tempting to write this off as mere partisan bombast, this isn’t the case with Sunstein, an ideologue whose faith in the beneficence of government action underlies all his public pronouncements. If government sees some benefit to state-sponsored displays of religiosity, well then what’s your problem? And as for the Surveillance State – it’s just a program to “reduce the risk of terrorism,” and has absolutely nothing to do with industrial espionage, compiling dossiers on innocent Americans, and tapping Angela Merkel’s phone.
By carrying on the discussion on the plane of High Theory, Sunstein avoids talking about specifics that contradict his thesis: but for those of us not ensconced in the ivory tower of a Harvard professor this simply will not do. In reality, it has been shown that the justification for the National Security Agency’s data dragnet – that it has supposedly stopped several major terrorist plots in the past – is simply untrue.
So how do you spot these libertarian subversives who deserve to be “cognitively infiltrated” and quite possibly suppressed? According to Professor Sunstein, they share five characteristics:
“The first is a wildly exaggerated sense of risks – a belief that if government is engaging in certain action (such as surveillance or gun control), it will inevitably use its authority so as to jeopardize civil liberties and perhaps democracy itself. In practice, of course, the risk might be real. But paranoid libertarians are convinced of its reality whether or not they have good reason for their conviction.”
What would be a “good reason,” in Sunstein’s view? He doesn’t say, conveniently enough, but what about secrecy? Shouldn’t our suspicions be aroused by the fact that the NSA started spying on us behind our backs? Not even the author of the Patriot Act knew it was being utilized by this administration – and its predecessor – to justify scooping up all telephonic and Internet data generated within our borders and far beyond. Why was it all done in the dark, with even the court proceedings “legalizing” this anti-constitutional coup kept secret? The answer is clearly because such brazen chicanery could never stand the light of day.
And surely Sunstein’s argument can be turned around and aimed at its author: isn’t his proposal that the US government hire paid snoops to “cognitively infiltrate” so-called conspiracy theorists on the Internet (and elsewhere) using a hammer to kill a flea? In his infamous paper, he cites polls showing a good proportion of the people of New York believe the 9/11 attacks were the work of the US government, but even if this somewhat dubious statistic reflects reality what is the risk of failing to confront it with government action? Does Sunstein expect 9/11 “truthers” to take over the state of New York anytime soon? Who’s paranoid now?
Which leads us quite naturally into a discussion of the alleged second characteristic of these supposed paranoids:
“A presumption of bad faith on the part of government officials – a belief that their motivations must be distrusted. If, for example, officials at a state university sponsor a Christian prayer at a graduation ceremony, the problem is that they don’t believe in religious liberty at all (and thus seek to eliminate it). If officials are seeking to impose new restrictions on those who seek to purchase guns, the ‘real’ reason is that they seek to ban gun ownership (and thus to disarm the citizenry).
Sunstein’s choice of examples is the equivalent of putting his hands over his ears and shouting “Lalalalalalalala! I can’t hear you!” What we’re talking about is the NSA and its relentless campaign to abolish privacy in much of the world: the key element here, which Sunstein ducks, is secrecy: not even members of Congress knew the nature and extend of the NSA’s all-out assault on the Fourth Amendment. This is enough to assume bad faith on the part of government officials – unless you’re Cass Sunstein, in which case faith in the superior moral status of these officials is akin to a religious dogma.
It’s not surprising Sunstein wants to change the subject and talk about prayer and gun control – after all, he’s appealing to the Democratic party’s “progressive” base, which hates both – but let’s address his disingenuous argument anyway.
As we know, Sunstein’s esteem for the Constitution as written is quite low: after all, this is someone with grave doubts about the First Amendment, which, he avers, needs to be amended to establish “federal guidelines for the coverage of public issues,” i.e. government censorship of the media. So his disdain for the Second Amendment, not to mention the establishment clause of the First, hardly comes as a shock. This is all part of his crackpot idea that we need a “New Deal” for the Constitution – by gutting the Bill of Rights. While Sunstein and his fellow authoritarians want to get rid of the Constitution as we know it, they have yet to muster the political muscle to pull it off: doesn’t the preservation of the rule of law, and the very “liberal state” he says he champions, require that he wait until this sea change is formalized?
Read the rest here:
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/02/02/how-to-spot-a-paranoid-government-bureaucrat/
Cass Sunstein is scary – and scared
By Justin Raimondo
Whatever else one might say about Cass Sunstein, he surely knows who his enemies are. The former head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and member of the President’s panel on NSA “reforms” – infamous for his suggestion that government agents should “cognitively infiltrate” alleged “conspiracy-minded” groups – is out with a new one, this time aimed at “paranoid libertarianism.” Taking up where Princeton University historian and Clintonista Sean Wilentz left off, Sunstein avers:
“It can be found on the political right, in familiar objections to gun control, progressive taxation, environmental protection and health-care reform. It can also be found on the left, in familiar objections to religious displays at public institutions and to efforts to reduce the risk of terrorism.”
In short, any objection to the Obama administration’s agenda is indicative of “paranoia” on both sides of the political spectrum. While it would be tempting to write this off as mere partisan bombast, this isn’t the case with Sunstein, an ideologue whose faith in the beneficence of government action underlies all his public pronouncements. If government sees some benefit to state-sponsored displays of religiosity, well then what’s your problem? And as for the Surveillance State – it’s just a program to “reduce the risk of terrorism,” and has absolutely nothing to do with industrial espionage, compiling dossiers on innocent Americans, and tapping Angela Merkel’s phone.
By carrying on the discussion on the plane of High Theory, Sunstein avoids talking about specifics that contradict his thesis: but for those of us not ensconced in the ivory tower of a Harvard professor this simply will not do. In reality, it has been shown that the justification for the National Security Agency’s data dragnet – that it has supposedly stopped several major terrorist plots in the past – is simply untrue.
So how do you spot these libertarian subversives who deserve to be “cognitively infiltrated” and quite possibly suppressed? According to Professor Sunstein, they share five characteristics:
“The first is a wildly exaggerated sense of risks – a belief that if government is engaging in certain action (such as surveillance or gun control), it will inevitably use its authority so as to jeopardize civil liberties and perhaps democracy itself. In practice, of course, the risk might be real. But paranoid libertarians are convinced of its reality whether or not they have good reason for their conviction.”
What would be a “good reason,” in Sunstein’s view? He doesn’t say, conveniently enough, but what about secrecy? Shouldn’t our suspicions be aroused by the fact that the NSA started spying on us behind our backs? Not even the author of the Patriot Act knew it was being utilized by this administration – and its predecessor – to justify scooping up all telephonic and Internet data generated within our borders and far beyond. Why was it all done in the dark, with even the court proceedings “legalizing” this anti-constitutional coup kept secret? The answer is clearly because such brazen chicanery could never stand the light of day.
And surely Sunstein’s argument can be turned around and aimed at its author: isn’t his proposal that the US government hire paid snoops to “cognitively infiltrate” so-called conspiracy theorists on the Internet (and elsewhere) using a hammer to kill a flea? In his infamous paper, he cites polls showing a good proportion of the people of New York believe the 9/11 attacks were the work of the US government, but even if this somewhat dubious statistic reflects reality what is the risk of failing to confront it with government action? Does Sunstein expect 9/11 “truthers” to take over the state of New York anytime soon? Who’s paranoid now?
Which leads us quite naturally into a discussion of the alleged second characteristic of these supposed paranoids:
“A presumption of bad faith on the part of government officials – a belief that their motivations must be distrusted. If, for example, officials at a state university sponsor a Christian prayer at a graduation ceremony, the problem is that they don’t believe in religious liberty at all (and thus seek to eliminate it). If officials are seeking to impose new restrictions on those who seek to purchase guns, the ‘real’ reason is that they seek to ban gun ownership (and thus to disarm the citizenry).
Sunstein’s choice of examples is the equivalent of putting his hands over his ears and shouting “Lalalalalalalala! I can’t hear you!” What we’re talking about is the NSA and its relentless campaign to abolish privacy in much of the world: the key element here, which Sunstein ducks, is secrecy: not even members of Congress knew the nature and extend of the NSA’s all-out assault on the Fourth Amendment. This is enough to assume bad faith on the part of government officials – unless you’re Cass Sunstein, in which case faith in the superior moral status of these officials is akin to a religious dogma.
It’s not surprising Sunstein wants to change the subject and talk about prayer and gun control – after all, he’s appealing to the Democratic party’s “progressive” base, which hates both – but let’s address his disingenuous argument anyway.
As we know, Sunstein’s esteem for the Constitution as written is quite low: after all, this is someone with grave doubts about the First Amendment, which, he avers, needs to be amended to establish “federal guidelines for the coverage of public issues,” i.e. government censorship of the media. So his disdain for the Second Amendment, not to mention the establishment clause of the First, hardly comes as a shock. This is all part of his crackpot idea that we need a “New Deal” for the Constitution – by gutting the Bill of Rights. While Sunstein and his fellow authoritarians want to get rid of the Constitution as we know it, they have yet to muster the political muscle to pull it off: doesn’t the preservation of the rule of law, and the very “liberal state” he says he champions, require that he wait until this sea change is formalized?
Read the rest here:
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/02/02/how-to-spot-a-paranoid-government-bureaucrat/
DiLorenzo destroys David Brooks...
How David Brooks Panders to Power by Perverting History
By Thomas DiLorenzo
In a January 30 column David Brooks, the house neocon of the New York Times (the favorite tabloid of the Lunatic Left) urged Obama to ignore both his socialist/egalitarian base and the “conservative tradition that believes in limiting government to enhance freedom.” Obama already has nothing but hateful contempt for the latter tradition and needs no convincing by a right-wing statist like David Brooks.
The president should also abandon his life-long infatuation with and devotion to socialism as well, advises David Brooks. In its place he should pursue an agenda of crony capitalism disguised as a “social mobility agenda” with the help of professional propagandists and perverters of American history such as Brooks and his fellow neocons. Of course, Brooks doesn’t use these less-than-flattering words to describe his Machiavellian agenda. He talks of “a third ancient tradition” in American history, namely, “the Whig tradition, which begins with people like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln.”
Either Brooks knows nothing at all, whatsoever, about the Whig Party tradition in American history, or he is lying through his teeth about it. For he describes it as having been devoted to “using the power of government to give marginalized Americans the tools to compete in a capitalist economy.” The Whigs, says Brooks, “fought against the divisive populist Jacksonians” who supposedly sought to “pit classes against each other.” Every bit of this is exactly the opposite of the truth. The Whigs were the party of crony capitalism, of government of plutocracy, by the plutocracy, for the plutocracy. That is why so many historians have marveled over how a man like Abe Lincoln, who grew up so poor, would become the political water carrier for the Northeastern moneyed elite in American politics.
The most divisive economic issue in American politics during the heyday of the Whig Party (1832 – 1852) was the battle over free trade versus protectionism. If the Whigs stood for anything, they stood for corporate welfare in the form of high protectionist tariffs that would plunder the masses for the benefit of the few. This meant, for the most part, plundering Southern farmers more than anyone for the benefit of Northern manufacturers who would be protected from international competition by the high tariffs. As John C. Calhoun once said, what “protectionism” protects the public from is low prices. Next to slavery, protectionism was the biggest assault on property rights in America during the first half of the nineteenth century. The Whigs did not believe in “sacred” property rights, as Brooks foolishly writes. Their entire political agenda was based on the government-enforced attenuation of property rights for the benefit of the wealthy and politically-connected.
Next to political plunder through protectionism, the Whigs stood for the worst sort of crony capitalism in the form of needless corporate welfare for road-, canal-, and railroad-building corporations. This was euphemistically called “internal improvement subsidies” at the time. Private capital markets financed thousands of miles of private roads during the first decades of the nineteenth century. As of 1800 there were sixty-nine privately-financed road-building companies in America that would build more than 400 private roads over the next forty years, as economist Daniel Klein has documented. The great railroad entrepreneur James J. Hill also proved that government subsidies were not needed to build a transcontinental railroad as he and his investors and business partners built and managed the Great Northern Railroad without a dime of government subsidy, not even “land grants.”
When the Whigs did get their way and conned state government into funding “internal improvement subsidies” it was an unmitigated financial disaster. Very few, if any projects were ever finished; taxpayers were stuck with enormous government debts to pay off; much of the money was simply stolen; and by 1860 every state except for Massachusetts had amended its constitution to prohibit the use of tax dollars for corporations to do anything with according to economic historian Carter Goodrich.
Edgar Lee Masters, the famous 1930s-era poet, playwright (author of The Spoon River Anthology), and law partner of Clarence Darrow, perfectly described the Whig Party on page 27 of his book, Lincoln the Man. Describing the leader of the Whigs, Henry Clay, Masters wrote:
Clay was the champion of that political system which doles favors to the
strong in order to win and to keep their adherence to the government. His
system offered shelter to devious schemes and corrupt enterprises . . . . He
was the beloved son [figuratively speaking] of Alexander Hamilton with his
corrupt funding schemes, his superstitions concerning the advantage of
a public debt, and a people taxed to make profits for enterprises that
cannot stand alone. His example and doctrines led to the creation of a
party that had no platform to announce, because its principles were
plunder and nothing else.
This is exactly correct, and exactly the opposite of what David Brooks wants his New York Times audience to believe. Clay’s agenda, which Alexander Hamilton originally labeled “The American System,” was really an Americanized version of the corrupt mercantilist system the American founders had fought a revolution against. The Hamilton/Clay/Lincoln “American System” included protectionism, corporate welfare, and a central bank to dispense even more corporate welfare subsidies to politically-connected businesses. It was a recipe for political power based on using taxpayer dollars to line the pockets of the (mostly Northern state) business plutocracy at the expense of the general public. Some things never change in a democracy.
It is equally outrageous for Brooks to claim that the Jacksonians were “divisive” and wanted to “pit classes against each other.” This was the function of David Brooks’s beloved Whigs, who were simply an early version of the neocons; it was the libertarian Jacksonians who opposed politicized divisiveness and the pitting of classes against each other. This is exemplified in President Andrew Jackson’s famous veto of the re-chartering of the Second Bank of the United States, a precursor of the Fed.
The Whigs championed a central bank. The Bank of the United States (BUS) even paid both of Brooks’s heroes, Clay and Webster, many thousands of dollars as bribery money to promote the continuation of the bank despite the fact that it was well known that the BUS had corrupted politics and generated boom-and-bust cycles. In vetoing the re-chartering of the BUS (which was not overturned), Jackson wrote:
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts
of government to their selfish purposes . . . . In the full enjoyment of the
gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy and virtue,
every man is equally entitled to protection by the law; but when the laws
undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions,
to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer
and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society – the
farmers, mechanics and laborers – who have neither the time nor the
means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of
the injustice of their Government . . . . In the act before me [the bill to
re-charter the BUS] there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure
from these just principles.
Neither Jackson nor the Jacksonians were “perfect” libertarians, but by their motto of “equal rights” they meant equality under the law and opposition to the use of the state to dispense “exclusive privileges” and special favors to special interests. They stood for exactly the opposite of what David Brooks claims they stood for, in other words.
Brooks’s commentary turns to slapstick humor at one point when he claims that the Whigs, who were, after all, politicians, were somehow “family-oriented in their moral and social attitudes.” (I assume that he threw this into his article to further dupe the “evangelical Christian” base of the Republican Party into accepting his thesis). The leader of the Whigs, the slave-owning Kentucky hemp plantation patriarch Henry Clay, was indeed “family oriented” in that he had eleven children. But he was also a notorious gambler who rang up $40,000 in personal debt in the 1820s and was famous for staying out late carousing and dancing with women other than his wife while he was in Washington and the wife was back home in Kentucky, according to several biographies.
Armed with this absurdly false history of American politics, Brooks argues for an explosion of governmental central planning by Obama during the rest of his term. He wants Obama to employ “social entrepreneurs” to fundamentally transform American society by “improving family patterns,” expanding early childhood education,” structuring neighborhoods,” paying “young men wage subsidies so they are worth marrying,” training “middle-aged workers” for jobs, and generally micromanaging everyone’s life from cradle to grave. In his words, government should promote “[social] mobility issues from the beginning to the end of the lifespan.”
Something very much like this has been tried before. It was called totalitarian socialism and it failed miserably.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/thomas-dilorenzo/perverting-history-to-promote-power/
By Thomas DiLorenzo
In a January 30 column David Brooks, the house neocon of the New York Times (the favorite tabloid of the Lunatic Left) urged Obama to ignore both his socialist/egalitarian base and the “conservative tradition that believes in limiting government to enhance freedom.” Obama already has nothing but hateful contempt for the latter tradition and needs no convincing by a right-wing statist like David Brooks.
The president should also abandon his life-long infatuation with and devotion to socialism as well, advises David Brooks. In its place he should pursue an agenda of crony capitalism disguised as a “social mobility agenda” with the help of professional propagandists and perverters of American history such as Brooks and his fellow neocons. Of course, Brooks doesn’t use these less-than-flattering words to describe his Machiavellian agenda. He talks of “a third ancient tradition” in American history, namely, “the Whig tradition, which begins with people like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln.”
Either Brooks knows nothing at all, whatsoever, about the Whig Party tradition in American history, or he is lying through his teeth about it. For he describes it as having been devoted to “using the power of government to give marginalized Americans the tools to compete in a capitalist economy.” The Whigs, says Brooks, “fought against the divisive populist Jacksonians” who supposedly sought to “pit classes against each other.” Every bit of this is exactly the opposite of the truth. The Whigs were the party of crony capitalism, of government of plutocracy, by the plutocracy, for the plutocracy. That is why so many historians have marveled over how a man like Abe Lincoln, who grew up so poor, would become the political water carrier for the Northeastern moneyed elite in American politics.
The most divisive economic issue in American politics during the heyday of the Whig Party (1832 – 1852) was the battle over free trade versus protectionism. If the Whigs stood for anything, they stood for corporate welfare in the form of high protectionist tariffs that would plunder the masses for the benefit of the few. This meant, for the most part, plundering Southern farmers more than anyone for the benefit of Northern manufacturers who would be protected from international competition by the high tariffs. As John C. Calhoun once said, what “protectionism” protects the public from is low prices. Next to slavery, protectionism was the biggest assault on property rights in America during the first half of the nineteenth century. The Whigs did not believe in “sacred” property rights, as Brooks foolishly writes. Their entire political agenda was based on the government-enforced attenuation of property rights for the benefit of the wealthy and politically-connected.
Next to political plunder through protectionism, the Whigs stood for the worst sort of crony capitalism in the form of needless corporate welfare for road-, canal-, and railroad-building corporations. This was euphemistically called “internal improvement subsidies” at the time. Private capital markets financed thousands of miles of private roads during the first decades of the nineteenth century. As of 1800 there were sixty-nine privately-financed road-building companies in America that would build more than 400 private roads over the next forty years, as economist Daniel Klein has documented. The great railroad entrepreneur James J. Hill also proved that government subsidies were not needed to build a transcontinental railroad as he and his investors and business partners built and managed the Great Northern Railroad without a dime of government subsidy, not even “land grants.”
When the Whigs did get their way and conned state government into funding “internal improvement subsidies” it was an unmitigated financial disaster. Very few, if any projects were ever finished; taxpayers were stuck with enormous government debts to pay off; much of the money was simply stolen; and by 1860 every state except for Massachusetts had amended its constitution to prohibit the use of tax dollars for corporations to do anything with according to economic historian Carter Goodrich.
Edgar Lee Masters, the famous 1930s-era poet, playwright (author of The Spoon River Anthology), and law partner of Clarence Darrow, perfectly described the Whig Party on page 27 of his book, Lincoln the Man. Describing the leader of the Whigs, Henry Clay, Masters wrote:
Clay was the champion of that political system which doles favors to the
strong in order to win and to keep their adherence to the government. His
system offered shelter to devious schemes and corrupt enterprises . . . . He
was the beloved son [figuratively speaking] of Alexander Hamilton with his
corrupt funding schemes, his superstitions concerning the advantage of
a public debt, and a people taxed to make profits for enterprises that
cannot stand alone. His example and doctrines led to the creation of a
party that had no platform to announce, because its principles were
plunder and nothing else.
This is exactly correct, and exactly the opposite of what David Brooks wants his New York Times audience to believe. Clay’s agenda, which Alexander Hamilton originally labeled “The American System,” was really an Americanized version of the corrupt mercantilist system the American founders had fought a revolution against. The Hamilton/Clay/Lincoln “American System” included protectionism, corporate welfare, and a central bank to dispense even more corporate welfare subsidies to politically-connected businesses. It was a recipe for political power based on using taxpayer dollars to line the pockets of the (mostly Northern state) business plutocracy at the expense of the general public. Some things never change in a democracy.
It is equally outrageous for Brooks to claim that the Jacksonians were “divisive” and wanted to “pit classes against each other.” This was the function of David Brooks’s beloved Whigs, who were simply an early version of the neocons; it was the libertarian Jacksonians who opposed politicized divisiveness and the pitting of classes against each other. This is exemplified in President Andrew Jackson’s famous veto of the re-chartering of the Second Bank of the United States, a precursor of the Fed.
The Whigs championed a central bank. The Bank of the United States (BUS) even paid both of Brooks’s heroes, Clay and Webster, many thousands of dollars as bribery money to promote the continuation of the bank despite the fact that it was well known that the BUS had corrupted politics and generated boom-and-bust cycles. In vetoing the re-chartering of the BUS (which was not overturned), Jackson wrote:
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts
of government to their selfish purposes . . . . In the full enjoyment of the
gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy and virtue,
every man is equally entitled to protection by the law; but when the laws
undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions,
to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer
and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society – the
farmers, mechanics and laborers – who have neither the time nor the
means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of
the injustice of their Government . . . . In the act before me [the bill to
re-charter the BUS] there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure
from these just principles.
Neither Jackson nor the Jacksonians were “perfect” libertarians, but by their motto of “equal rights” they meant equality under the law and opposition to the use of the state to dispense “exclusive privileges” and special favors to special interests. They stood for exactly the opposite of what David Brooks claims they stood for, in other words.
Brooks’s commentary turns to slapstick humor at one point when he claims that the Whigs, who were, after all, politicians, were somehow “family-oriented in their moral and social attitudes.” (I assume that he threw this into his article to further dupe the “evangelical Christian” base of the Republican Party into accepting his thesis). The leader of the Whigs, the slave-owning Kentucky hemp plantation patriarch Henry Clay, was indeed “family oriented” in that he had eleven children. But he was also a notorious gambler who rang up $40,000 in personal debt in the 1820s and was famous for staying out late carousing and dancing with women other than his wife while he was in Washington and the wife was back home in Kentucky, according to several biographies.
Armed with this absurdly false history of American politics, Brooks argues for an explosion of governmental central planning by Obama during the rest of his term. He wants Obama to employ “social entrepreneurs” to fundamentally transform American society by “improving family patterns,” expanding early childhood education,” structuring neighborhoods,” paying “young men wage subsidies so they are worth marrying,” training “middle-aged workers” for jobs, and generally micromanaging everyone’s life from cradle to grave. In his words, government should promote “[social] mobility issues from the beginning to the end of the lifespan.”
Something very much like this has been tried before. It was called totalitarian socialism and it failed miserably.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/thomas-dilorenzo/perverting-history-to-promote-power/
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Homeland Security created terror...
Vegas Homeland Security Theater Operation Ends its Run
William Norman Grigg
Homeland Security Theater productions follow a rigid formula. A suitably unpleasant and easily manipulated person is identified by undercover operatives, carefully cultivated as a “villain,” the lured into saying something stupid into a recorder – or quietly assenting to some outlandish plot concocted by a “terrorism facilitator” (yes, that is what the Regime calls its hired provocateurs).
At a suitable time, the agency that scripted the “plot” will arrest the person it has snared in it, along with anybody else who happened to get caught in the undertow. Regime-aligned media outlets will dutifully regurgitate officially approved talking points describing the dire and deadly plot that was foiled by the government’s bold and valiant security operatives. The chastened and unworthy public will be lectured about the need for unending vigilance and the duty of citizens to prostrate themselves with gratitude before the gallant defenders of the public weal, oh may they be held in eternal reverence.
Some of these cynical little melodramas come complete with a show trial. Others end with the confected cases being quietly dismissed. The so-called “Sovereign Citizen” police kidnapping plot in Las Vegas has followed the latter course: Late last summer, headlines trumpeted the arrest of a dangerous man who sought to abduct and murder police; yesterday (February 3) the public was informed that this figure of singular menace has accepted a plea deal under which he will serve roughly one year in jail.
Last August, the Las Vegas Metro Police arrested David Allen Brutsche, an ex-convict and registered sex offender, on charges of plotting to kidnap police officers, murder them, and dispose of their bodies in the desert. His “co-conspirator” was a 68-year-old paralegal named Devon Newman, whose sole involvement in the affair consisted of being in the same room with Brutsche and several undercover operatives from the Metro Police’s Intelligence Unit when details of the government-orchestrated “plot” were discussed.
Brutsche describes himself as a believer in “Sovereign Citizen” concepts, but denies involvement in any organized movement. His only connection to the “movement” came after police – seeking a suitable star for their agitprop production – arrested him in April for selling water on the Strip. Brutsche had been involved in several previous police encounters, during which he expressed a predictable (and entirely reasonable) resentment toward the State’s costumed emissaries of officially sanctioned violence.
Metro officials, who reciprocated Brutsche’s hostility, put him in a cell with Scott R. Majewski. Although he posed as a fellow ex-con, Majewski is actually an intelligence operative who is paid nearly $120,000 a year to keep political dissidents under surveillance and choreograph what he describes as “theater” operations targeting them.
After Brutsche was released from jail, Majewski offered to introduce him to others who shared “Sovereign” views – all of whom were police operatives as well. At some point, the group was expanded to include a 67-year-old woman named Newman, who was brought into this mess to be a “co-conspirator” who had no connection to the police force.
The script written by Majewski called for police to be kidnapped and put on “trial” for crimes against the public, after which they would be executed. Last August 20, an unnamed police operative summoned Brutsche and Newman and insisted that the time had come to go “operational.” Within a few hours the patsies had been arrested, and the Metro PD’s propaganda office, by way of complaisant news outlets, was hailing this supposed accomplishment. One entirely typical news account struck from Metro’s propaganda template claimed that “Undercover Metro officers infiltrated the group … [and learned] of their detailed plans to `snatch and grab’ random police officers, try them for treason in a `sovereign’ court and execute them….”
There was no “group” apart from the Metro officers themselves, and there was no “plot” of any kind.
Less than a month after the arrests, all of the murder conspiracy charges were quietly dropped for lack of evidence. In December, Newman pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor charge. Yesterday, following a decent interval, the entire case was brought to an end with a deal in which Brutsche pleaded guilty to a federal kidnapping conspiracy charge. With time already served, Brutsche could be released from jail in August.
“I do plead guilty,” Brutsche said during yesterday’s hearing. “I wanted to say something. It seemed like entrapment to me.”
Of course it was entrapment, carried out as part of an exercise in large-scale public deception by a police department whose officers routinely murder innocent people on the streets and face no accountability.
In the weeks immediately preceding the arrest of Brutsche and Newman, six members of the Clark County Use of Force Board resigned to protest Sheriff Doug Gillespie’s refusal to fire Officer Jacquar Roston, who had shot and seriously wounded an innocent man the previous November. The board had unanimously recommended that Roston be fired – but Gillespie insisted that a week-long suspension was sufficient “punishment” for Roston’s act of attempted murder.
Stung by overdue media scrutiny of a rigged “inquest” system that always validated police shootings, Gillespie had promised serious reforms – while retaining the authority to do the bidding of police unions, which dictated that no officer would ever face serious consequences for unlawfully shooting a Mundane.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center and similar left-wing “watchdog” groups, “Sovereign Citizens” are violent people whose lawless behavior threatens the public. Taking refuge in obscure and incomprehensible language and implausible claims of immunity, such people believe that they can steal and kill with impunity. That description is disputable when applied to “Sovereign Citizens,” but a perfect fit for the people who just brought down the curtain on the Metro PD’s recent Homeland Security Theater performance.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/
William Norman Grigg
Homeland Security Theater productions follow a rigid formula. A suitably unpleasant and easily manipulated person is identified by undercover operatives, carefully cultivated as a “villain,” the lured into saying something stupid into a recorder – or quietly assenting to some outlandish plot concocted by a “terrorism facilitator” (yes, that is what the Regime calls its hired provocateurs).
At a suitable time, the agency that scripted the “plot” will arrest the person it has snared in it, along with anybody else who happened to get caught in the undertow. Regime-aligned media outlets will dutifully regurgitate officially approved talking points describing the dire and deadly plot that was foiled by the government’s bold and valiant security operatives. The chastened and unworthy public will be lectured about the need for unending vigilance and the duty of citizens to prostrate themselves with gratitude before the gallant defenders of the public weal, oh may they be held in eternal reverence.
Some of these cynical little melodramas come complete with a show trial. Others end with the confected cases being quietly dismissed. The so-called “Sovereign Citizen” police kidnapping plot in Las Vegas has followed the latter course: Late last summer, headlines trumpeted the arrest of a dangerous man who sought to abduct and murder police; yesterday (February 3) the public was informed that this figure of singular menace has accepted a plea deal under which he will serve roughly one year in jail.
Last August, the Las Vegas Metro Police arrested David Allen Brutsche, an ex-convict and registered sex offender, on charges of plotting to kidnap police officers, murder them, and dispose of their bodies in the desert. His “co-conspirator” was a 68-year-old paralegal named Devon Newman, whose sole involvement in the affair consisted of being in the same room with Brutsche and several undercover operatives from the Metro Police’s Intelligence Unit when details of the government-orchestrated “plot” were discussed.
Brutsche describes himself as a believer in “Sovereign Citizen” concepts, but denies involvement in any organized movement. His only connection to the “movement” came after police – seeking a suitable star for their agitprop production – arrested him in April for selling water on the Strip. Brutsche had been involved in several previous police encounters, during which he expressed a predictable (and entirely reasonable) resentment toward the State’s costumed emissaries of officially sanctioned violence.
Metro officials, who reciprocated Brutsche’s hostility, put him in a cell with Scott R. Majewski. Although he posed as a fellow ex-con, Majewski is actually an intelligence operative who is paid nearly $120,000 a year to keep political dissidents under surveillance and choreograph what he describes as “theater” operations targeting them.
After Brutsche was released from jail, Majewski offered to introduce him to others who shared “Sovereign” views – all of whom were police operatives as well. At some point, the group was expanded to include a 67-year-old woman named Newman, who was brought into this mess to be a “co-conspirator” who had no connection to the police force.
The script written by Majewski called for police to be kidnapped and put on “trial” for crimes against the public, after which they would be executed. Last August 20, an unnamed police operative summoned Brutsche and Newman and insisted that the time had come to go “operational.” Within a few hours the patsies had been arrested, and the Metro PD’s propaganda office, by way of complaisant news outlets, was hailing this supposed accomplishment. One entirely typical news account struck from Metro’s propaganda template claimed that “Undercover Metro officers infiltrated the group … [and learned] of their detailed plans to `snatch and grab’ random police officers, try them for treason in a `sovereign’ court and execute them….”
There was no “group” apart from the Metro officers themselves, and there was no “plot” of any kind.
Less than a month after the arrests, all of the murder conspiracy charges were quietly dropped for lack of evidence. In December, Newman pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor charge. Yesterday, following a decent interval, the entire case was brought to an end with a deal in which Brutsche pleaded guilty to a federal kidnapping conspiracy charge. With time already served, Brutsche could be released from jail in August.
“I do plead guilty,” Brutsche said during yesterday’s hearing. “I wanted to say something. It seemed like entrapment to me.”
Of course it was entrapment, carried out as part of an exercise in large-scale public deception by a police department whose officers routinely murder innocent people on the streets and face no accountability.
In the weeks immediately preceding the arrest of Brutsche and Newman, six members of the Clark County Use of Force Board resigned to protest Sheriff Doug Gillespie’s refusal to fire Officer Jacquar Roston, who had shot and seriously wounded an innocent man the previous November. The board had unanimously recommended that Roston be fired – but Gillespie insisted that a week-long suspension was sufficient “punishment” for Roston’s act of attempted murder.
Stung by overdue media scrutiny of a rigged “inquest” system that always validated police shootings, Gillespie had promised serious reforms – while retaining the authority to do the bidding of police unions, which dictated that no officer would ever face serious consequences for unlawfully shooting a Mundane.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center and similar left-wing “watchdog” groups, “Sovereign Citizens” are violent people whose lawless behavior threatens the public. Taking refuge in obscure and incomprehensible language and implausible claims of immunity, such people believe that they can steal and kill with impunity. That description is disputable when applied to “Sovereign Citizens,” but a perfect fit for the people who just brought down the curtain on the Metro PD’s recent Homeland Security Theater performance.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/
"It’s clear public schools are foisting a curriculum upon students which encourages globalist ideals and is opposed to anything that promotes American sovereignty, free speech, the Second Amendment and individuality."
Ironically, school forces students to recognize Cinco de Mayo
Adan Salazar
A high school in Colorado denied students’ requests to organize a day in honor of the United States, students attending the school recently revealed.
Students at Fort Collins High School wanted to dedicate one day out of the school’s Winter Spirit Week to celebrating American patriotism. Students declared “Merica Monday” could be a day where people could band together and dress in the colors of the American flag.
School administrators, however, thought the event would be far too exclusive and nixed the proposal.
“They said they didn’t want to offend anyone from other countries or immigrants,” one 16-year-old student council member told Fox News’ Todd Starnes. “They just really did not want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.”
Upon learning of the administrations’ denial, outraged parents – who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal – also disapproved of the school’s actions.
“It’s bizarre and idiotic that we’ve come to this crossroads in our society that we are having to sacrifice our own culture and belief system,” a concerned parent lamented to Starnes. “I can’t even tell you how it got our blood boiling.”
A second, more general proposal, in the form of “My Country Monday,” was also rejected by school officialdom.
“It’s shocking,” the student remarked to Starnes. “There are men and women fighting for our country and we should be able to celebrate that and be proud that we live in a country where we are allowed to vote – the right to free speech. They won’t even let us celebrate it.”
The school did eventually reinstate “My Country Monday” once Starnes began calling them for an interview.
However, in a shocking indication of the cultural neutralization taking place in American public schools, Starnes reports Fort Collins students are ironically “required to participate in Cinco de Mayo celebrations,” honoring the Mexican culture and heritage.
American public schools being used as tools of indoctrination and political repression is nothing new, but the trend towards demonizing allegiance to America and its Constitutional ideals has seemingly increased in the past few decades.
Last October, for instance, students in Arkansas received an assignment in which they were instructed to “revise” the Bill of Rights due to it being “outdated,” asking students to amend the U.S. Constitution which the lesson said “may not remain in its current form any longer.”
In the past, high school students have also been reprimanded for displaying images of the American flag on their chest during a school-sponsored lip-dub video, and a student was suspended and arrested after he wore a shirt in support of the NRA and the Second Amendment.
While students are “learning” to be tolerant of other nationalities, they are at the same time being given assignments asking them to design “flags for a new socialist country,” are bafflingly being forced to learn adult sex acts and are also being taught that “all right wing extremist groups” are fascist, under the new Common Core instructional doctrine.
It’s clear public schools are foisting a curriculum upon students which encourages globalist ideals and is opposed to anything that promotes American sovereignty, free speech, the Second Amendment and individuality.
In the years to come, the deceptive educational methods used to subtly brainwash young Americans will become more apparent and accelerate, as the progressive dissolution of the America we all once knew and loved continues.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/colorado-high-school-to-students-no-celebration-honoring-america.html
Minimum wage increase??? Economics 101...
Minimum wage hike? Understand economics
By Mark C. Schug And Gordon D. Gaster
Economic illiteracy among American voters is a high cost for the most vulnerable in our society. The newly resuscitated debate regarding the minimum wage is just the latest example.
A November 2013 Gallup Poll found that more than three-quarters of Americans — 76% — say they would vote for raising the minimum wage to $9 per hour (it is currently $7.25). Only about one-fifth — 22% — would vote against it.
Folks with a basic understanding of economics scratch their heads in wonder at this sort of news. As any economist will tell you, the minimum wage is a story about supply and demand. In Econ 101, students learn that prices are incentives that influence the actions of buyers and sellers.
At the core, it's pretty simple. The law of demand states that as the price of a good or service increases, consumers will buy less. As the price goes down, consumers will buy more. The law of supply states that as the price of a good or service goes up, producers will supply more. As the price goes down, producers will supply less. The point where supply and demand balance is called the market price.
Unfortunately, many people have difficulty translating these common-sense ideas — ones they experience every day in supermarkets and at gas stations — to the labor market for unskilled workers and how it affects them.
In markets for unskilled labor, demand is created by employers, and when the price of unskilled labor (wages) goes up, employers will buy less — often laying off employees or finding labor-saving substitutes through new technology. When the price of unskilled labor goes down, they hire more employees. Suppliers in unskilled labor markets are the people who wish to work. When wages increase, workers are willing to do more work. When wages go down, workers are less willing to work.
The point where supply and demand for unskilled labor balance is once again the market price. When wages are arbitrarily set above the market price, the result is a surplus, and that surplus is what politicians and the media call unemployment.
The majority of academic research supports this conclusion. An exhaustive review of recent research by David Neuman and William Wascher concluded that 85% of the most credible minimum wage studies provide strong evidence of negative employment effects resulting from minimum wage laws.
Regrettably, many politicians have a vested interest in deceit, and they depend on the economic ignorance of voters to get their way.
Supporters of minimum wage laws have a concentrated interest in doing so. Labor unions, for example, believe their members benefit when wages for unskilled workers are set artificially high. Leaders of labor unions work very hard to convince voters that the laws of supply and demand should be ignored.
Many politicians accept the support of such interest groups even though they almost certainly recognize that the laws of supply and demand cannot be repealed and that their interference with market prices for wages will cause more harm than good.
How can politicians get away with such deceit? Unfortunately, the reduced employment caused by minimum wage laws is nearly invisible. It is spread out over a voiceless and disorganized group of unskilled workers who may wish to work but are priced out of the market. They are in no position to hire lobbyists, organize advertising campaigns, make campaign contributions or stage protests.
But hiring lobbyists and staging protests isn't necessarily the solution. It starts with educating the citizenry and instilling them with a strong economic foundation. Economics Wisconsin offers two-day seminars for opinion leaders — teachers, elected officials, journalists and clergy — and the Stavros Center for Economic Education at Florida State University is offering a new online course for teachers and others called Common Sense: Economics for Life! These and many other like-minded organizations deserve the support of people who support economic literacy.
At the end of the day, it doesn't help anyone if the understanding of the minimum wage and other economic policies is limited to a few academics. If we want to move our country forward, educating our fellow man is the first step.
Mark C. Schug is an economic consultant and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Gordon D. Gaster is a financial consultant in Jupiter, Fla.
Link:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/minimum-wage-hike-understand-economics-b99194614z1-243428321.html
By Mark C. Schug And Gordon D. Gaster
Economic illiteracy among American voters is a high cost for the most vulnerable in our society. The newly resuscitated debate regarding the minimum wage is just the latest example.
A November 2013 Gallup Poll found that more than three-quarters of Americans — 76% — say they would vote for raising the minimum wage to $9 per hour (it is currently $7.25). Only about one-fifth — 22% — would vote against it.
Folks with a basic understanding of economics scratch their heads in wonder at this sort of news. As any economist will tell you, the minimum wage is a story about supply and demand. In Econ 101, students learn that prices are incentives that influence the actions of buyers and sellers.
At the core, it's pretty simple. The law of demand states that as the price of a good or service increases, consumers will buy less. As the price goes down, consumers will buy more. The law of supply states that as the price of a good or service goes up, producers will supply more. As the price goes down, producers will supply less. The point where supply and demand balance is called the market price.
Unfortunately, many people have difficulty translating these common-sense ideas — ones they experience every day in supermarkets and at gas stations — to the labor market for unskilled workers and how it affects them.
In markets for unskilled labor, demand is created by employers, and when the price of unskilled labor (wages) goes up, employers will buy less — often laying off employees or finding labor-saving substitutes through new technology. When the price of unskilled labor goes down, they hire more employees. Suppliers in unskilled labor markets are the people who wish to work. When wages increase, workers are willing to do more work. When wages go down, workers are less willing to work.
The point where supply and demand for unskilled labor balance is once again the market price. When wages are arbitrarily set above the market price, the result is a surplus, and that surplus is what politicians and the media call unemployment.
The majority of academic research supports this conclusion. An exhaustive review of recent research by David Neuman and William Wascher concluded that 85% of the most credible minimum wage studies provide strong evidence of negative employment effects resulting from minimum wage laws.
Regrettably, many politicians have a vested interest in deceit, and they depend on the economic ignorance of voters to get their way.
Supporters of minimum wage laws have a concentrated interest in doing so. Labor unions, for example, believe their members benefit when wages for unskilled workers are set artificially high. Leaders of labor unions work very hard to convince voters that the laws of supply and demand should be ignored.
Many politicians accept the support of such interest groups even though they almost certainly recognize that the laws of supply and demand cannot be repealed and that their interference with market prices for wages will cause more harm than good.
How can politicians get away with such deceit? Unfortunately, the reduced employment caused by minimum wage laws is nearly invisible. It is spread out over a voiceless and disorganized group of unskilled workers who may wish to work but are priced out of the market. They are in no position to hire lobbyists, organize advertising campaigns, make campaign contributions or stage protests.
But hiring lobbyists and staging protests isn't necessarily the solution. It starts with educating the citizenry and instilling them with a strong economic foundation. Economics Wisconsin offers two-day seminars for opinion leaders — teachers, elected officials, journalists and clergy — and the Stavros Center for Economic Education at Florida State University is offering a new online course for teachers and others called Common Sense: Economics for Life! These and many other like-minded organizations deserve the support of people who support economic literacy.
At the end of the day, it doesn't help anyone if the understanding of the minimum wage and other economic policies is limited to a few academics. If we want to move our country forward, educating our fellow man is the first step.
Mark C. Schug is an economic consultant and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Gordon D. Gaster is a financial consultant in Jupiter, Fla.
Link:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/minimum-wage-hike-understand-economics-b99194614z1-243428321.html
"It is difficult to say how the next year will play out, but one thing is certain; something very strange and dangerous is afoot. The goal of globalists is to engineer desperation. To create a catastrophe and then force the masses to beg for help."
The Final Swindle Of Private American Wealth Has Begun
by Brandon Smith
I began writing analysis on the macro-economic situation of the American financial structure back in 2006, and in the eight years since, I have seen an undeniably steady trend of fiscal decline.
I have never had any doubt that the U.S. economy was headed for total and catastrophic collapse, the only question was when, exactly, the final trigger event would occur. As I have pointed out in the past, economic implosion is a process. It grows over time, like the ice shelf on a mountain developing into a potential avalanche. It is easy to shrug off the danger because the visible destruction is not immediate; but when the avalanche finally begins, it is far too late for most people to escape…
If you view the progressive financial breakdown in America as some kind of “comedy of errors” or a trial of unlucky coincidences, then there is not much I can do to educate you on the reasons behind the carnage. If, however, you understand that there is a deliberate motivation behind American collapse, then what I have to say here will not fall on biased ears.
The financial crash of 2008, the same crash which has been ongoing for years, is NOT an accident. It is a concerted and engineered crisis meant to position the U.S. for currency disintegration and the institution of a global basket currency controlled by an unaccountable supranational governing body like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The American populace is being conditioned through economic fear to accept the institutionalization of global financial control and the loss of sovereignty.
Anyone skeptical of this conclusion is welcome to study my numerous past examinations on the issue of globalization; I don’t have the time within this article to re-explain, and frankly, with so much information on dollar destruction available to the public today I’ve grown tired of anyone with a lack of awareness.
If you continue to believe that the Fed actually exists to “help” stabilize our economy or our currency, then you will never find the logic behind what they do. If you understand that the goal of the Fed and the globalists is to dismantle the dollar and the U.S. economic system to make way for something “new”, then certain recent events and policy initiatives do start to make sense.
The year of 2014 has been looming as a serious concern for me since the final quarter of 2013, and you can read about those concerns in my article Expect Devastating Global Economic Changes In 2014.
At the end of 2013 we saw at least three major events that could have sent America spiraling into total collapse. The first was the announcement of possible taper measures by the Fed, which have now begun. The second was the possible invasion of Syria which the Obama Administration is still desperate for despite successful efforts by the liberty movement to deny him public support for war. And the third event was the last debt ceiling debate (or debt ceiling theater depending on how you look at it), which placed the U.S. squarely on the edge of fiscal default.
As we begin 2014, these same threatening issues remain, only at greater levels and with more prominence. New developments reinforce my original position that this year will be remembered by historians as the year in which the final breakdown of the U.S. monetary dynamic culminated. Here are some of those developments explained…
Taper Of QE3
When I first suggested that a Fed taper was not only possible but probable months ago, I was met with a lot of criticism from some in the alternative economic world. You can read my taper articles here and here.
This was understandable. The Fed uses multiple stimulus outlets besides QE in order to manipulate U.S. markets. Artificially lowering interest rates is very much a form of stimulus in itself, for instance.
However, I think a dangerous blindness to threats beyond money printing has developed within our community of analysts and this must be remedied. People need to realize first that the Fed does NOT care about the continued health of our economy, and they may not care about presenting a facade of health for much longer either. Alternative analysts also need to come to grips with the reality that overt money printing is not the only method at the disposal of globalists when destroying the greenback. A debt default is just as likely to cause loss of world reserve status and devaluation, no printing press required. Blame goes to government and political gridlock while the banks slither away in the midst of the chaos.
The taper of QE3 is not a “head fake”, it is very real, but there are many hidden motivations behind such cuts.
Currently, $20 billion has been cut from the $85 billion per month program, and we are already beginning to see what appear to be market effects, including a flight from emerging market currencies from Argentina to Turkey. A couple of years ago investors viewed these markets as among the few places they could make a positive return, or in other words, one of the few places they could successfully gamble. The Fed taper, though, seems to be shifting the flow of capital away from emerging markets.
The mainstream argument is that stimulus was flowing into emerging markets, giving them liquidity support, and the taper is drying up that liquidity. Whether this is actually true is hard to say, given that without a full audit we have no idea how much fiat the Federal Reserve has actually created and how much of it they send out into foreign markets.
I stand more on the position that the Fed taper was begun in preparation for a slowdown in global markets. In fact, I believe central bankers have been well aware that a decline in every sector was coming, and are moving to insulate themselves.
Look at it this way: The taper program distances the bankers from responsibility for any dramatic changes in our financial framework, at least in the eyes of the general public. If a market crisis takes place WHILE stimulus measures are still at full speed, this makes the banks look rather guilty, or at least incompetent. People would begin to question the validity of central bank methods, and they might even question the validity of the central bank’s existence. The Fed is creating space between itself and the economy because they know that a trigger event is coming. They want to ensure that they are not blamed and that stimulus itself is not seen as ineffective.
We all know that the claims of recovery are utter nonsense. One need only look at true unemployment numbers, dismal sales reports from last quarter, and the all time low household savings of the average American to see this. The taper is not in response to an improving economic environment. Rather, the taper is a signal for the next stage of collapse.
The exodus from emerging market currencies and stocks was coming regardless of the Fed taper because of a global slowdown in demand. This slowdown is clearly visible in the Baltic Dry Index, which has lost around 50 percent of its value in the past three weeks.
Stocks are beginning to plummet around the world and all mainstream pundits are pointing fingers at the reduction in stimulus. What is the message? That we “can’t live” without the aid of the central banks. The truth is, the effectiveness of stimulus manipulation has a shelf life, and that shelf life is over for the Federal Reserve. I suspect they will continue cutting QE every month for the next year as stocks decline.
Government Controlled Investment
Last month, just as taper measures were being implemented, the White House launched an investment program called MyRA; a retirement IRA program in which middle class and low wage Americans can invest part of their paycheck in government bonds.
That’s right, if you wanted to know where the money was going to come from to support U.S. debt if the Fed cuts QE, guess what, the money is going to come from YOU.
For a decade or so China was the primary buyer and crutch for U.S. debt spending. After the derivatives crash of 2008, the Federal Reserve became the largest purchaser of Treasury bonds. With the decline of foreign interest in long term U.S. debt, and the taper in full effect, it only makes sense that the government would seek out an alternative source of capital to continue the debt cycle. The MyRA program turns the general American public into a new cash stream, but there’s more going on here than meets the eye…
I find it rather suspicious that a government-controlled retirement program is suddenly introduced just as the Fed has begun to taper, as stocks are beginning to fall, and as questions arise over the U.S. debt ceiling. I have three major concerns:
First, is it possible that like the Fed, the government is also aware that a crash in stocks is coming? And, are they offering the MyRA program as an easy outlet (or trap) for people to pour in what little savings they have as panic over declining equities accelerates?
Second, the program is currently voluntary, but what if the plan is to make it mandatory? Obama has already signed mandatory health insurance “taxation” into law, which is meant to steal a portion of every paycheck. Why not steal an even larger portion from every paycheck in order to support U.S. debt? It’s for the “greater good,” after all.
Third, is this a deliberate strategy to corral the last vestiges of private American wealth into the corner of U.S. bonds, so that this wealth can be confiscated or annihilated? What happens if there is indeed an eventual debt default, as I believe there will be? Will Americans be herded into bonds by a crisis in stocks only to have bonds implode as well? Will they be conned into bond investment out of a “patriotic duty” to save the nation from default? Or, will the government just take their money through legislative wrangling, as was done in Cyprus not long ago?
The Final Swindle
The next debt ceiling debate is coming at the end of this month. If the government decides to kick the can down the road for another quarter, I believe this will be the last time. The most recent actions of the Fed and the government signal preparations for a stock implosion and ultimate debt calamity. Default would have immediate effects in foreign markets, but the appearance of U.S. stability could drag on for a time, giving the globalists ample opportunity to siphon every ounce of financial blood from the public.
It is difficult to say how the next year will play out, but one thing is certain; something very strange and dangerous is afoot. The goal of globalists is to engineer desperation. To create a catastrophe and then force the masses to beg for help. How many hands of “friendship” will be offered in the wake of a U.S. wealth and currency crisis? What offers for “aid” will come from the IMF? How much of our country and how many of our people will be collateralized to secure that aid? And, how many Americans will go along with the swindle because they were not prepared in advance?
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/2014/02/04/the-final-swindle-of-private-american-wealth-has-begun/
by Brandon Smith
I began writing analysis on the macro-economic situation of the American financial structure back in 2006, and in the eight years since, I have seen an undeniably steady trend of fiscal decline.
I have never had any doubt that the U.S. economy was headed for total and catastrophic collapse, the only question was when, exactly, the final trigger event would occur. As I have pointed out in the past, economic implosion is a process. It grows over time, like the ice shelf on a mountain developing into a potential avalanche. It is easy to shrug off the danger because the visible destruction is not immediate; but when the avalanche finally begins, it is far too late for most people to escape…
If you view the progressive financial breakdown in America as some kind of “comedy of errors” or a trial of unlucky coincidences, then there is not much I can do to educate you on the reasons behind the carnage. If, however, you understand that there is a deliberate motivation behind American collapse, then what I have to say here will not fall on biased ears.
The financial crash of 2008, the same crash which has been ongoing for years, is NOT an accident. It is a concerted and engineered crisis meant to position the U.S. for currency disintegration and the institution of a global basket currency controlled by an unaccountable supranational governing body like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The American populace is being conditioned through economic fear to accept the institutionalization of global financial control and the loss of sovereignty.
Anyone skeptical of this conclusion is welcome to study my numerous past examinations on the issue of globalization; I don’t have the time within this article to re-explain, and frankly, with so much information on dollar destruction available to the public today I’ve grown tired of anyone with a lack of awareness.
If you continue to believe that the Fed actually exists to “help” stabilize our economy or our currency, then you will never find the logic behind what they do. If you understand that the goal of the Fed and the globalists is to dismantle the dollar and the U.S. economic system to make way for something “new”, then certain recent events and policy initiatives do start to make sense.
The year of 2014 has been looming as a serious concern for me since the final quarter of 2013, and you can read about those concerns in my article Expect Devastating Global Economic Changes In 2014.
At the end of 2013 we saw at least three major events that could have sent America spiraling into total collapse. The first was the announcement of possible taper measures by the Fed, which have now begun. The second was the possible invasion of Syria which the Obama Administration is still desperate for despite successful efforts by the liberty movement to deny him public support for war. And the third event was the last debt ceiling debate (or debt ceiling theater depending on how you look at it), which placed the U.S. squarely on the edge of fiscal default.
As we begin 2014, these same threatening issues remain, only at greater levels and with more prominence. New developments reinforce my original position that this year will be remembered by historians as the year in which the final breakdown of the U.S. monetary dynamic culminated. Here are some of those developments explained…
Taper Of QE3
When I first suggested that a Fed taper was not only possible but probable months ago, I was met with a lot of criticism from some in the alternative economic world. You can read my taper articles here and here.
This was understandable. The Fed uses multiple stimulus outlets besides QE in order to manipulate U.S. markets. Artificially lowering interest rates is very much a form of stimulus in itself, for instance.
However, I think a dangerous blindness to threats beyond money printing has developed within our community of analysts and this must be remedied. People need to realize first that the Fed does NOT care about the continued health of our economy, and they may not care about presenting a facade of health for much longer either. Alternative analysts also need to come to grips with the reality that overt money printing is not the only method at the disposal of globalists when destroying the greenback. A debt default is just as likely to cause loss of world reserve status and devaluation, no printing press required. Blame goes to government and political gridlock while the banks slither away in the midst of the chaos.
The taper of QE3 is not a “head fake”, it is very real, but there are many hidden motivations behind such cuts.
Currently, $20 billion has been cut from the $85 billion per month program, and we are already beginning to see what appear to be market effects, including a flight from emerging market currencies from Argentina to Turkey. A couple of years ago investors viewed these markets as among the few places they could make a positive return, or in other words, one of the few places they could successfully gamble. The Fed taper, though, seems to be shifting the flow of capital away from emerging markets.
The mainstream argument is that stimulus was flowing into emerging markets, giving them liquidity support, and the taper is drying up that liquidity. Whether this is actually true is hard to say, given that without a full audit we have no idea how much fiat the Federal Reserve has actually created and how much of it they send out into foreign markets.
I stand more on the position that the Fed taper was begun in preparation for a slowdown in global markets. In fact, I believe central bankers have been well aware that a decline in every sector was coming, and are moving to insulate themselves.
Look at it this way: The taper program distances the bankers from responsibility for any dramatic changes in our financial framework, at least in the eyes of the general public. If a market crisis takes place WHILE stimulus measures are still at full speed, this makes the banks look rather guilty, or at least incompetent. People would begin to question the validity of central bank methods, and they might even question the validity of the central bank’s existence. The Fed is creating space between itself and the economy because they know that a trigger event is coming. They want to ensure that they are not blamed and that stimulus itself is not seen as ineffective.
We all know that the claims of recovery are utter nonsense. One need only look at true unemployment numbers, dismal sales reports from last quarter, and the all time low household savings of the average American to see this. The taper is not in response to an improving economic environment. Rather, the taper is a signal for the next stage of collapse.
The exodus from emerging market currencies and stocks was coming regardless of the Fed taper because of a global slowdown in demand. This slowdown is clearly visible in the Baltic Dry Index, which has lost around 50 percent of its value in the past three weeks.
Stocks are beginning to plummet around the world and all mainstream pundits are pointing fingers at the reduction in stimulus. What is the message? That we “can’t live” without the aid of the central banks. The truth is, the effectiveness of stimulus manipulation has a shelf life, and that shelf life is over for the Federal Reserve. I suspect they will continue cutting QE every month for the next year as stocks decline.
Government Controlled Investment
Last month, just as taper measures were being implemented, the White House launched an investment program called MyRA; a retirement IRA program in which middle class and low wage Americans can invest part of their paycheck in government bonds.
That’s right, if you wanted to know where the money was going to come from to support U.S. debt if the Fed cuts QE, guess what, the money is going to come from YOU.
For a decade or so China was the primary buyer and crutch for U.S. debt spending. After the derivatives crash of 2008, the Federal Reserve became the largest purchaser of Treasury bonds. With the decline of foreign interest in long term U.S. debt, and the taper in full effect, it only makes sense that the government would seek out an alternative source of capital to continue the debt cycle. The MyRA program turns the general American public into a new cash stream, but there’s more going on here than meets the eye…
I find it rather suspicious that a government-controlled retirement program is suddenly introduced just as the Fed has begun to taper, as stocks are beginning to fall, and as questions arise over the U.S. debt ceiling. I have three major concerns:
First, is it possible that like the Fed, the government is also aware that a crash in stocks is coming? And, are they offering the MyRA program as an easy outlet (or trap) for people to pour in what little savings they have as panic over declining equities accelerates?
Second, the program is currently voluntary, but what if the plan is to make it mandatory? Obama has already signed mandatory health insurance “taxation” into law, which is meant to steal a portion of every paycheck. Why not steal an even larger portion from every paycheck in order to support U.S. debt? It’s for the “greater good,” after all.
Third, is this a deliberate strategy to corral the last vestiges of private American wealth into the corner of U.S. bonds, so that this wealth can be confiscated or annihilated? What happens if there is indeed an eventual debt default, as I believe there will be? Will Americans be herded into bonds by a crisis in stocks only to have bonds implode as well? Will they be conned into bond investment out of a “patriotic duty” to save the nation from default? Or, will the government just take their money through legislative wrangling, as was done in Cyprus not long ago?
The Final Swindle
The next debt ceiling debate is coming at the end of this month. If the government decides to kick the can down the road for another quarter, I believe this will be the last time. The most recent actions of the Fed and the government signal preparations for a stock implosion and ultimate debt calamity. Default would have immediate effects in foreign markets, but the appearance of U.S. stability could drag on for a time, giving the globalists ample opportunity to siphon every ounce of financial blood from the public.
It is difficult to say how the next year will play out, but one thing is certain; something very strange and dangerous is afoot. The goal of globalists is to engineer desperation. To create a catastrophe and then force the masses to beg for help. How many hands of “friendship” will be offered in the wake of a U.S. wealth and currency crisis? What offers for “aid” will come from the IMF? How much of our country and how many of our people will be collateralized to secure that aid? And, how many Americans will go along with the swindle because they were not prepared in advance?
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/2014/02/04/the-final-swindle-of-private-american-wealth-has-begun/
Exercise helps prevent cancer...
by: David Gutierrez
A more active lifestyle doesn't just reduce your risk of cancer and improve survival rates among cancer patients: a new study conducted by researchers from Loyola University and published in the Journal of Physical Activity & Health shows that exercise also halves the risk of death among cancer survivors.
Better diagnoses and treatments for cancer mean that survivors are living longer than ever before, said study co-author Kathleen Wolin. This makes the study's findings particularly relevant.
"Physical activity should be actively promoted to such individuals to enhance longevity," Wolin said.
"Much less likely to die"
The study was conducted using data from Harvard's Alumni Health Study, which collected health information on men who attended Harvard between the years of 1916 and 1950. In 1988, 1,021 cancer survivors completed detailed questionnaires about their exercise habits, including sports, going for walks and even climbing stairs. The men updated this information in 1993.
All participants were over the age of 71 at the study's start and had previously been diagnosed with a form of cancer other than non-melanoma skin cancer.
The researchers found that men who exercised enough to burn more than 12,600 calories per week (an average of 1,800 per day) were 48 percent less likely to die from any cause than men who burned less than 2,100 calories per week (an average of 300 per day). They were also 38 percent less likely to die from another case of cancer and 49 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease.
A 176-pound man who followed health guidelines to take a brisk, 30-minute walk five days per week would burn 4,200 calories from exercise in that week.
Exercise is for everyone
Although the new study is the first to show that exercise extends the lifespan of cancer survivors, it is only the latest in a long line of studies showing the benefits of exercise in improving health, including fighting cancer.
For example, a 2010 study concluded that 3.4 percent of breast cancer cases, 3.8 percent of endometrial cancer cases and 5.3 percent of colon cancer cases could be prevented if people met the recommendation to exercise at least 30 minutes per day, five days per week. This adds up to 3,000 cancers per year that could be prevented by exercise in the United Kingdom alone.
"We know exercise can help reduce the chance of getting cancer in the first place," said Martin Ledwick, of Cancer Research UK.
"Previous studies have [also] suggested exercise can help some people feel better after being diagnosed and cope better with fatigue related to cancer and its treatment."
Studies have shown that breast cancer survivors with lower body weights are significantly less likely to suffer cancer recurrence, while prostate cancer patients who get at least three hours of vigorous exercise per week have significantly higher survival rates.
"It's absolutely true that exercise is shown to be helpful in most cancer cases," said Anne Elliot of Middlesex University. "It also helps hugely with arthritis and circulatory diseases. We know that if you do exercise you are improving your respiratory and immune systems and they are linked to lifespan."
Apart from promoting general health, exercise appears to fight cancer through several different mechanisms. It helps repair the immune system's T-cells, which fight tumors and are also important in aiding chemotherapy recovery. It lowers blood levels of insulin, which has been linked to breast cancer, and of sex hormones that have been linked to cancers of the breast, prostate and uterine lining. It also reduces obesity, which has been linked to many cancers.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/043770_cancer_exercise_physical_health.html#ixzz2sMxO3XNE
Has the crash already begun???
The Dow Has Already Fallen More Than 1000 Points From The Peak Of The Market
Michael Snyder
That didn’t take long. On Monday, the Dow was down another 326 points. Overall, the Dow has now fallen more than 1000 points from the peak of the market (16,588.25) back in late December.
This is the first time that we have seen the Dow drop below its 200-day moving average in more than a year, and there are many that believe that this is just the beginning of a major stock market decline. Meanwhile, things are even worse in other parts of the world. For example, the Nikkei is now down about 1700 points from its 2013 high. This is causing havoc all over Asia, and the sharp movement that we have been seeing in the USD/JPY is creating a tremendous amount of anxiety among Forex traders. For those that are not interested in the technical details, what all of this means is that global financial markets are starting to become extremely unstable.
Unfortunately, there does not appear to be much hope on the horizon for investors. In fact, troubling news just continues to pour in from all over the planet. Just consider the following…
-Major currencies all over South America continue to collapse.
-Massive central bank intervention has done little to slow down the currency collapse in Turkey.
-Investors pulled more than 6 billion dollars out of emerging market equity funds last week alone.
-The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) has risen above 20 for the first time in four months.
-Last month, new manufacturing orders in the United States declined at the fastest pace that we have seen since December 1980.
-Real disposable income in the United States has just experienced the largest year over year drop that we have seen since 1974.
-In January, vehicle sales for Ford were down 7.5 percent and vehicle sales for GM were down 12 percent. Both companies are blaming bad weather.
-A major newspaper in the UK is warning that “growing problems in the Chinese banking system could spill over into a wider financial crisis“.
-U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is warning that the federal government could hit the debt ceiling by the end of this month if Congress does not act.
-It is being reported that Dell Computer plans to lay off more than 15,000 workers.
-The IMF recently said that the the probability that the global economy will fall into a deflation trap “may now be as high as 20%“.
-The Baltic Dry Index is now down 50 percent from its December highs.
If our economic troubles continue to mount, could we be facing a global “financial avalanche” fairly quickly?
That is what some very prominent analysts believe.
Below, I have posted quotes from five men that are greatly respected in the financial world. What they have to say is quite chilling…
#1 Doug Casey: “Now is a very good time to start thinking financially because I’m afraid that this year, in 2014, we’re going to go back into the financial hurricane. We’ve been in the eye of the storm since 2009, but now we’re going to go back into the trailing edge of the storm, and it’s going to be much longer lasting and much worse and much different than what we had in 2008 and 2009.”
#2 Bill Fleckenstein: “The [price-to-earnings ratio] is 16, 17 times earnings,” Fleckenstein said on Tuesday’s episode of “Futures Now.” “Why would you pay 16 times for an S&P company? I don’t care about where rates are, because rates are artificially suppressed. Why isn’t that worth 11 or 12 times? Just by that analysis, you’d be down by a quarter or 30 percent. So there’s a huge amount of downside.”
#3 Egon von Greyerz of Matterhorn Asset Management: “Nothing goes (down) in a straight line, but the emerging market problems will accelerate and it will spread to the very overbought and the very overvalued stock markets and economies in the West.
So stock markets are now starting a secular bear trend which will last for many years, and we could see falls of massive proportions. At the end of this, the wealth that has been created in the last few decades will be destroyed.”
#4 Peter Schiff: “The crisis is imminent,” Schiff said. ”I don’t think Obama is going to finish his second term without the bottom dropping out. And stock market investors are oblivious to the problems.”
“We’re broke, Schiff added. ”We owe trillions. Look at our budget deficit; look at the debt to GDP ratio, the unfunded liabilities. If we were in the Eurozone, they would kick us out.”
#5 Gerald Celente: “This selloff in the emerging markets, with their currencies going down and their interest rates going up, it’s going to be disastrous and there are going to be riots everywhere…
…So as the decline in their economies accelerates, you are going to see the civil unrest intensify.”
Those that do not believe that we could ever see “civil unrest” on the streets of America should take note of what just happened in Seattle.
After the Seahawks won the Super Bowl, fans celebrated by “lighting fires, damaging historic buildings and ripping down street signs“.
If that is how average Americans will behave when something good happens, how will they act when the economy totally collapses and nobody can find work for an extended period of time?
We are rapidly approaching another great financial crisis. Unfortunately, we didn’t learn any of the lessons that we should have learned last time. It is being projected that the debt of the federal government will more than double during the Obama years, the “too big to fail banks” have collectively gotten 37 percent larger over the past five years, and the big banks have become more financially reckless than ever before.
When the next great financial crisis arrives (and without a doubt it is inevitable), millions more Americans will lose their jobs and millions more Americans will lose their homes.
Now is not the time to be buying lots of expensive new toys, going on expensive vacations or piling up lots of debt.
Now is the time to build up an emergency fund and to do whatever you can to get prepared for the great storm that is coming.
As you can see from the financial headlines, time is rapidly running out.
Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-dow-has-already-fallen-more-than-1000-points-from-the-peak-of-the-market
Michael Snyder
That didn’t take long. On Monday, the Dow was down another 326 points. Overall, the Dow has now fallen more than 1000 points from the peak of the market (16,588.25) back in late December.
This is the first time that we have seen the Dow drop below its 200-day moving average in more than a year, and there are many that believe that this is just the beginning of a major stock market decline. Meanwhile, things are even worse in other parts of the world. For example, the Nikkei is now down about 1700 points from its 2013 high. This is causing havoc all over Asia, and the sharp movement that we have been seeing in the USD/JPY is creating a tremendous amount of anxiety among Forex traders. For those that are not interested in the technical details, what all of this means is that global financial markets are starting to become extremely unstable.
Unfortunately, there does not appear to be much hope on the horizon for investors. In fact, troubling news just continues to pour in from all over the planet. Just consider the following…
-Major currencies all over South America continue to collapse.
-Massive central bank intervention has done little to slow down the currency collapse in Turkey.
-Investors pulled more than 6 billion dollars out of emerging market equity funds last week alone.
-The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) has risen above 20 for the first time in four months.
-Last month, new manufacturing orders in the United States declined at the fastest pace that we have seen since December 1980.
-Real disposable income in the United States has just experienced the largest year over year drop that we have seen since 1974.
-In January, vehicle sales for Ford were down 7.5 percent and vehicle sales for GM were down 12 percent. Both companies are blaming bad weather.
-A major newspaper in the UK is warning that “growing problems in the Chinese banking system could spill over into a wider financial crisis“.
-U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is warning that the federal government could hit the debt ceiling by the end of this month if Congress does not act.
-It is being reported that Dell Computer plans to lay off more than 15,000 workers.
-The IMF recently said that the the probability that the global economy will fall into a deflation trap “may now be as high as 20%“.
-The Baltic Dry Index is now down 50 percent from its December highs.
If our economic troubles continue to mount, could we be facing a global “financial avalanche” fairly quickly?
That is what some very prominent analysts believe.
Below, I have posted quotes from five men that are greatly respected in the financial world. What they have to say is quite chilling…
#1 Doug Casey: “Now is a very good time to start thinking financially because I’m afraid that this year, in 2014, we’re going to go back into the financial hurricane. We’ve been in the eye of the storm since 2009, but now we’re going to go back into the trailing edge of the storm, and it’s going to be much longer lasting and much worse and much different than what we had in 2008 and 2009.”
#2 Bill Fleckenstein: “The [price-to-earnings ratio] is 16, 17 times earnings,” Fleckenstein said on Tuesday’s episode of “Futures Now.” “Why would you pay 16 times for an S&P company? I don’t care about where rates are, because rates are artificially suppressed. Why isn’t that worth 11 or 12 times? Just by that analysis, you’d be down by a quarter or 30 percent. So there’s a huge amount of downside.”
#3 Egon von Greyerz of Matterhorn Asset Management: “Nothing goes (down) in a straight line, but the emerging market problems will accelerate and it will spread to the very overbought and the very overvalued stock markets and economies in the West.
So stock markets are now starting a secular bear trend which will last for many years, and we could see falls of massive proportions. At the end of this, the wealth that has been created in the last few decades will be destroyed.”
#4 Peter Schiff: “The crisis is imminent,” Schiff said. ”I don’t think Obama is going to finish his second term without the bottom dropping out. And stock market investors are oblivious to the problems.”
“We’re broke, Schiff added. ”We owe trillions. Look at our budget deficit; look at the debt to GDP ratio, the unfunded liabilities. If we were in the Eurozone, they would kick us out.”
#5 Gerald Celente: “This selloff in the emerging markets, with their currencies going down and their interest rates going up, it’s going to be disastrous and there are going to be riots everywhere…
…So as the decline in their economies accelerates, you are going to see the civil unrest intensify.”
Those that do not believe that we could ever see “civil unrest” on the streets of America should take note of what just happened in Seattle.
After the Seahawks won the Super Bowl, fans celebrated by “lighting fires, damaging historic buildings and ripping down street signs“.
If that is how average Americans will behave when something good happens, how will they act when the economy totally collapses and nobody can find work for an extended period of time?
We are rapidly approaching another great financial crisis. Unfortunately, we didn’t learn any of the lessons that we should have learned last time. It is being projected that the debt of the federal government will more than double during the Obama years, the “too big to fail banks” have collectively gotten 37 percent larger over the past five years, and the big banks have become more financially reckless than ever before.
When the next great financial crisis arrives (and without a doubt it is inevitable), millions more Americans will lose their jobs and millions more Americans will lose their homes.
Now is not the time to be buying lots of expensive new toys, going on expensive vacations or piling up lots of debt.
Now is the time to build up an emergency fund and to do whatever you can to get prepared for the great storm that is coming.
As you can see from the financial headlines, time is rapidly running out.
Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-dow-has-already-fallen-more-than-1000-points-from-the-peak-of-the-market
Your children belong to the state...
Panelist at Podesta Think Tank on Common Core: ‘The Children Belong to All of Us’
Penny Starr
In addressing criticism of the Common Core national education standards, a panelist at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, said critics were a “tiny minority” who opposed standards altogether, which was unfair because “the children belong to all of us.”
The CAP was founded by John Podesta, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton and now an adviser to President Barack Obama. At a CAP event to promote Common Core on Friday, CNSNews.com asked about the critics who say federal monetary incentives attached to Common Core is driving the states to implement the standards.
Paul Reville, the former secretary of education for Massachusetts and a Common Core supporter, said, “To be sure, there’s always a small voice – and I think these voices get amplified in the midst of these arguments – of people who were never in favor of standards in the first place and never wanted to have any kind of testing or accountability and those voices get amplified.”
“But those are a tiny minority,” he said. “An overwhelming majority of teachers are saying this is something – as [panelist] Toby [Romer] said – that makes sense.”
Read the rest here:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/panelist-podesta-think-tank-common-core-children-belong-all-us
Penny Starr
In addressing criticism of the Common Core national education standards, a panelist at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, said critics were a “tiny minority” who opposed standards altogether, which was unfair because “the children belong to all of us.”
The CAP was founded by John Podesta, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton and now an adviser to President Barack Obama. At a CAP event to promote Common Core on Friday, CNSNews.com asked about the critics who say federal monetary incentives attached to Common Core is driving the states to implement the standards.
Paul Reville, the former secretary of education for Massachusetts and a Common Core supporter, said, “To be sure, there’s always a small voice – and I think these voices get amplified in the midst of these arguments – of people who were never in favor of standards in the first place and never wanted to have any kind of testing or accountability and those voices get amplified.”
“But those are a tiny minority,” he said. “An overwhelming majority of teachers are saying this is something – as [panelist] Toby [Romer] said – that makes sense.”
Read the rest here:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/panelist-podesta-think-tank-common-core-children-belong-all-us
Predicting the crash of "14"???
Harvard Economist Fears Starting “Bank Run” on BoA by Withdrawing $1 Million
Another ominous warning of imminent economic turmoil
Paul Joseph Watson
Former Harvard Professor of Economics Terry Burnham fears starting a “run” on Bank of America after he made public his decision to withdraw $1 million dollars from his checking account as a protest against Janet Yellen beginning her term as Federal Reserve head this month.
In an article for PBS entitled Is your money safe at the bank? An economist says ‘no’ and withdraws his, Burnham, an ardent critic of the Fed, writes, “Why do I risk starting a run on Bank of America by withdrawing my money and presuming that many fellow depositors will read this and rush to withdraw too? Because they pay me zero interest. Thus, even an infinitesimal chance Bank of America will not repay me in full, whenever I ask, switches the cost-benefit conclusion from stay to flee.”
Burnham explains that Bank of America may be “unwilling or unable” to return his money should one of a number of different circumstances arise, such as depositors demanding their money back en masse, or if the investments on which 90% of depositors’ money Bank of America has loaned out to cover go bust.
In addition, Burnham points out that the FDIC, which guarantees to insure deposits up to $250,000, only has about $41 billion in reserve against $6 trillion in insured deposits.
The Harvard economist pins the blame of economic uncertainty on government intervention, and specifically Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve for pursuing absurd quantitative easing policies which will “unravel in the U.S. as it has every other time it has been tried from Weimar Germany to Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.”
Burnham’s words are sure to send another ominous chill through markets already beset with paranoia following a drop of 1000 points on the Dow Jones since its height in December. Global markets are also getting crushed with the Nikkei falling over 4% yesterday and European markets also suffering drastic downturns.
A recent spate of banker suicides has stoked fears that a major financial crash could be just around the corner, one indication of which could be banks like HSBC imposing capital controls on customers attempting to withdraw larger sums of money. Last week, Russian lender ‘My Bank’ also temporarily banned all cash withdrawals.
As Mac Slavo highlights, Grady Means, economist and advisor to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, predicted that the 4th of March 2014 would be the date on which the economic collapse accelerated, followed by, “A run on the bank (that) will start suddenly, build quickly and snowball.”
“The doomsday clock will ring then because the U.S. economy may fully crash around that date, which will, in turn, bring down all world economies and all hope of any recovery for the foreseeable future — certainly over the course of most of our lifetimes,” wrote Means in a 2012 Washington Times editorial.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/harvard-economist-fears-starting-bank-run-on-boa-by-withdrawing-1-million.html
Elite Insider Predicted Massive Crash in 2012: “Very Large Probability… Around March 4, 2014″
Mac Slavo
We understand that Doomsday predictions are aplenty these days, but given what’s going on around the world right now it may be time to revisit the eerily prescient forecast of an elite insider.
Grady Means is a former advisor to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, a former economist at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and has managed multi-billion dollar firms over his career. Back in October of 2012 Means penned a commentary and analysis for the Washington Times in which he noted that “America’s fall will take global economies with it.”
But he didn’t stop there. Means gave us a target date.
There is a very large probability that the real end of the world will occur around March 4, 2014.
The doomsday clock will ring then because the U.S. economy may fully crash around that date, which will, in turn, bring down all world economies and all hope of any recovery for the foreseeable future — certainly over the course of most of our lifetimes. Interest rates will skyrocket, businesses will fail, unemployment will go to record levels, material and food shortages will be rampant, and there could be major social unrest.
Any wishful thinking that America is in a “recovery” and that “things are getting better” is an illusion.
The central issue is confidence in America, and the world is losing confidence quickly. At a certain point, soon, the United States will reach a level of deficit spending and debt at which the countries of the world will lose faith in America and begin to withdraw their investments. Many leading economists and bankers think another trillion dollars or so may do it. A run on the bank will start suddenly, build quickly and snowball.
At that point, we will need to finance our own deficit, and we will not be able to do so. We will raise bond rates to re-attract foreign investment, interest rates will go up, and businesses will fail. Unemployment will skyrocket.
The rest of the world will fully crash along with us.
There’s a sentiment among those on Main Street, and as of today on Wall Street, that there is a major disconnect between company stock valuations and economic activity in the real world.
Despite their best efforts to convince us that we’re in a recovery, the establishment is running into a problem… reality.
This morning we learned that the Institute for Supply Management monthly report went kaboom, showing a large contraction in new production, indicating that retailers are pulling back on stocking their shelves. Perhaps the ISM report has something to do with consumer sentiment, which according to today’s Gallup survey on consumer spending suggests consumers are cutting costs wherever possible.
But that’s not all. Even the largest retailer in the world is having problems and seeing negative growth. Walmart announced that last November’s cuts to food stamp recipients hurt their fourth quarter sales, adding further credence to the notion that without direct government bailouts the stability of America’s companies comes into question.
Need we even mention that over 100 million Americans are not in the labor force, or that five million people may lose their unemployment benefits by the end of this year?
And, of course, let’s not forget that we’ve created more debt as a nation in the last five years than in all of the years from our country’s founding through the year 2008 combined.
Those investing in financial markets have certainly taken note. On top of the 326 point decline in the Dow Jones today, the market is down a combined 1,000 points from its peak just a month ago. And, with three well known bankers committing suicide in the last week, people are starting to pay attention.
No one really knows exactly why the market is falling or what happens next, but if you’re going to consider any prediction on the future of the financial and economic sector, why not consider what the elite have to say about it?
If there is a major financial collapse in the works as we speak, then Grady Means’ prediction should scare the hell out of you. If he’s right, then this isn’t just going to be a market crash.
We could well be facing the beginnings of an all-out financial Armageddon that will make 2008 look like a brief warm up.
This collapse, as noted by the US Treasury Department and Grady Means, is going to have generational effects – a depressive economic environment for our entire lifetimes.
Preparing for such a scenario is not easy. One must take into consideration everything from emergency supply lists to deal with the instantaneous collapse of our monetary system and financial markets, while also considering long-term strategies that involve the development of barterable trade skills and relocating to land that has productive capacity so you can grow your own food.
We had a reader recently comment about the coming collapse. She warned that preparing for a weeks- or months-long emergency is insufficient. She suggested that perhaps we need to consider the worst case scenario: years of joblessness, destitution and depression.
It’s happened before and it was so bad that we still talk about the Great Depression to this day.
Who’s to say it can’t happen again?
Link:
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/elite-insider-predicted-massive-crash-in-2012-very-large-probability-around-march-4-2014_02032014
Another ominous warning of imminent economic turmoil
Paul Joseph Watson
Former Harvard Professor of Economics Terry Burnham fears starting a “run” on Bank of America after he made public his decision to withdraw $1 million dollars from his checking account as a protest against Janet Yellen beginning her term as Federal Reserve head this month.
In an article for PBS entitled Is your money safe at the bank? An economist says ‘no’ and withdraws his, Burnham, an ardent critic of the Fed, writes, “Why do I risk starting a run on Bank of America by withdrawing my money and presuming that many fellow depositors will read this and rush to withdraw too? Because they pay me zero interest. Thus, even an infinitesimal chance Bank of America will not repay me in full, whenever I ask, switches the cost-benefit conclusion from stay to flee.”
Burnham explains that Bank of America may be “unwilling or unable” to return his money should one of a number of different circumstances arise, such as depositors demanding their money back en masse, or if the investments on which 90% of depositors’ money Bank of America has loaned out to cover go bust.
In addition, Burnham points out that the FDIC, which guarantees to insure deposits up to $250,000, only has about $41 billion in reserve against $6 trillion in insured deposits.
The Harvard economist pins the blame of economic uncertainty on government intervention, and specifically Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve for pursuing absurd quantitative easing policies which will “unravel in the U.S. as it has every other time it has been tried from Weimar Germany to Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.”
Burnham’s words are sure to send another ominous chill through markets already beset with paranoia following a drop of 1000 points on the Dow Jones since its height in December. Global markets are also getting crushed with the Nikkei falling over 4% yesterday and European markets also suffering drastic downturns.
A recent spate of banker suicides has stoked fears that a major financial crash could be just around the corner, one indication of which could be banks like HSBC imposing capital controls on customers attempting to withdraw larger sums of money. Last week, Russian lender ‘My Bank’ also temporarily banned all cash withdrawals.
As Mac Slavo highlights, Grady Means, economist and advisor to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, predicted that the 4th of March 2014 would be the date on which the economic collapse accelerated, followed by, “A run on the bank (that) will start suddenly, build quickly and snowball.”
“The doomsday clock will ring then because the U.S. economy may fully crash around that date, which will, in turn, bring down all world economies and all hope of any recovery for the foreseeable future — certainly over the course of most of our lifetimes,” wrote Means in a 2012 Washington Times editorial.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/harvard-economist-fears-starting-bank-run-on-boa-by-withdrawing-1-million.html
Elite Insider Predicted Massive Crash in 2012: “Very Large Probability… Around March 4, 2014″
Mac Slavo
We understand that Doomsday predictions are aplenty these days, but given what’s going on around the world right now it may be time to revisit the eerily prescient forecast of an elite insider.
Grady Means is a former advisor to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, a former economist at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and has managed multi-billion dollar firms over his career. Back in October of 2012 Means penned a commentary and analysis for the Washington Times in which he noted that “America’s fall will take global economies with it.”
But he didn’t stop there. Means gave us a target date.
There is a very large probability that the real end of the world will occur around March 4, 2014.
The doomsday clock will ring then because the U.S. economy may fully crash around that date, which will, in turn, bring down all world economies and all hope of any recovery for the foreseeable future — certainly over the course of most of our lifetimes. Interest rates will skyrocket, businesses will fail, unemployment will go to record levels, material and food shortages will be rampant, and there could be major social unrest.
Any wishful thinking that America is in a “recovery” and that “things are getting better” is an illusion.
The central issue is confidence in America, and the world is losing confidence quickly. At a certain point, soon, the United States will reach a level of deficit spending and debt at which the countries of the world will lose faith in America and begin to withdraw their investments. Many leading economists and bankers think another trillion dollars or so may do it. A run on the bank will start suddenly, build quickly and snowball.
At that point, we will need to finance our own deficit, and we will not be able to do so. We will raise bond rates to re-attract foreign investment, interest rates will go up, and businesses will fail. Unemployment will skyrocket.
The rest of the world will fully crash along with us.
There’s a sentiment among those on Main Street, and as of today on Wall Street, that there is a major disconnect between company stock valuations and economic activity in the real world.
Despite their best efforts to convince us that we’re in a recovery, the establishment is running into a problem… reality.
This morning we learned that the Institute for Supply Management monthly report went kaboom, showing a large contraction in new production, indicating that retailers are pulling back on stocking their shelves. Perhaps the ISM report has something to do with consumer sentiment, which according to today’s Gallup survey on consumer spending suggests consumers are cutting costs wherever possible.
But that’s not all. Even the largest retailer in the world is having problems and seeing negative growth. Walmart announced that last November’s cuts to food stamp recipients hurt their fourth quarter sales, adding further credence to the notion that without direct government bailouts the stability of America’s companies comes into question.
Need we even mention that over 100 million Americans are not in the labor force, or that five million people may lose their unemployment benefits by the end of this year?
And, of course, let’s not forget that we’ve created more debt as a nation in the last five years than in all of the years from our country’s founding through the year 2008 combined.
Those investing in financial markets have certainly taken note. On top of the 326 point decline in the Dow Jones today, the market is down a combined 1,000 points from its peak just a month ago. And, with three well known bankers committing suicide in the last week, people are starting to pay attention.
No one really knows exactly why the market is falling or what happens next, but if you’re going to consider any prediction on the future of the financial and economic sector, why not consider what the elite have to say about it?
If there is a major financial collapse in the works as we speak, then Grady Means’ prediction should scare the hell out of you. If he’s right, then this isn’t just going to be a market crash.
We could well be facing the beginnings of an all-out financial Armageddon that will make 2008 look like a brief warm up.
This collapse, as noted by the US Treasury Department and Grady Means, is going to have generational effects – a depressive economic environment for our entire lifetimes.
Preparing for such a scenario is not easy. One must take into consideration everything from emergency supply lists to deal with the instantaneous collapse of our monetary system and financial markets, while also considering long-term strategies that involve the development of barterable trade skills and relocating to land that has productive capacity so you can grow your own food.
We had a reader recently comment about the coming collapse. She warned that preparing for a weeks- or months-long emergency is insufficient. She suggested that perhaps we need to consider the worst case scenario: years of joblessness, destitution and depression.
It’s happened before and it was so bad that we still talk about the Great Depression to this day.
Who’s to say it can’t happen again?
Link:
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/elite-insider-predicted-massive-crash-in-2012-very-large-probability-around-march-4-2014_02032014
You say you want a revolution???
50 Years After the Beatles: Isn’t It Time for Another Political & Cultural Revolution?
By John W. Whitehead
It’s been 50 years since the Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—first landed in America on Feb. 7, 1964, and the news media is awash with nostalgic tributes to the band that “changed everything.” The Grammys will be saluting the Beatles with a 2-hour star-studded tribute. JFK Airport plans to dedicate a historical marker to commemorate the moment the four lads from Liverpool arrived on a Pan Am flight, to be greeted by hordes of screaming fans. And all across the country, including in New York City, conferences, tribute band performances, and reenactments will pay homage to Beatlemania and their music.
While there is much to celebrate about the Beatles coming to America, there is also much to regret, starting with the fact that while we may remember the music of the Beatles, we’ve lost sight of the hope for change and revolutionary spirit that were hallmarks of those days. Indeed, the Beatles opened the floodgates of music with their riveting Feb. 9 performance on the Ed Sullivan Show which was televised to 72 million Americans in what has been dubbed “the night that changed America.” Beatlemania, in turn, helped fuel a social, cultural and political revolution that took aim at everything from war, capitalism and racism to women’s rights, militarization and equality.
Fifty years later, while we may be inundated with a glut of music that passes for art and artists that pass for activists, with no shortage of national problems plaguing us (police abuse, endless wars, government corruption, government surveillance, inequality, etc.), we are sorely lacking individuals with the kind of radicalism and willingness to challenge the status quo. This is the difference between Then and Now, between an America that was ripe for the Beatles’ music andtheir message of change and an America that is celebrating the Beatles’ music while oblivious to their radicalism.
Unlike artists before them, the Beatles had power over millions of people worldwide. In 1967, for example, with the release of their Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album, as one critic noted, it was the closest Europe had been to unification since the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Most thought North America could have been included as well. And the Beatles became the embodiment of the Summer of Love with their live global BBC television broadcast of “All You Need Is Love” in June 1967. Approximately 400 million people across five continents tuned in. This type of power was something new. Previously, only popes, kings and perhaps a few intellectuals could hope to wield such influence in their lifetime.
Following the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy in 1968, the optimism of the Summer of Love quickly evaporated and young people revolted worldwide. In the U.S., the cataclysm came as 10,000 demonstrators descended on the Democratic Party’s national convention in August. Police reacted by brutally beating rock-throwing demonstrators as well as passersby, journalists and volunteers. Violence and revolt were now in vogue.
The Beatles, the most influential pop voice of the time, responded to this shift towards violence with “Revolution,” the first Beatles song with an explicitly political statement. As “Revolution” stresses, it was not a movement about physically overthrowing a regime. It was a spiritual revolution, one aimed at overthrowing preconceived notions. Thus, before you can effect a lasting change, as John Lennon sings, you have to “free your mind.” As John Lennon sings in his masterpiece on the need for nonviolent change, “When you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out?”
It didn’t take long for Lennon, the activist of the group, to recognize that he could use his celebrity status to not only communicate his own ideas about the world but change the way people thought about issues of the day. He subsequently began his quest for worldwide peace. In fact, it may be that Lennon was the last great iconic anti-war activist of our age. Indeed, by October 1969, Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” had become a universal chant at anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. On November 15, during a peace rally in Washington, DC, the legendary folk singer Pete Seeger led nearly half a million demonstrators in singing “Give Peace a Chance” at the Washington Monument.
Of all the Beatles, it may be Lennon’s activism which speaks most to the concerns of our present day and the ever-growing menace of the police state. In fact, as I document in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, Lennon, enemy number one in the eyes of the U.S. government, was targeted for surveillance by the FBI (most likely in conjunction with the NSA).
Fearing Lennon might incite antiwar protests, the Nixon administration directed the FBI to keep close tabs on the ex-Beatle, resulting in close to 400 pages of files on his activities during the early 1970s. But the government’s actions didn’t stop with mere surveillance. The agency went so far as to attempt to have Lennon deported on drug charges. As professor Jon Wiener, a historian who sued the federal government to have the files on Lennon made public, observed, “This is really the story of F.B.I. misconduct, of the President using the F.B.I. to get his enemies, to use federal agencies to suppress dissent and to silence critics.”
Fifty years after America first fell in love with Lennon and his mop-top comrades, the Beatles’ legacy lives on—at least, their musical legacy lives on.
Yet while the Beatles’ greatest legacy was in effecting a revolution of spirit and mind, today we’re in dire need of revolutionaries willing to challenge the status quo.
The world could use another revolution, don’t you think?
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/john-w-whitehead/50-years-after-the-beatles/
By John W. Whitehead
It’s been 50 years since the Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—first landed in America on Feb. 7, 1964, and the news media is awash with nostalgic tributes to the band that “changed everything.” The Grammys will be saluting the Beatles with a 2-hour star-studded tribute. JFK Airport plans to dedicate a historical marker to commemorate the moment the four lads from Liverpool arrived on a Pan Am flight, to be greeted by hordes of screaming fans. And all across the country, including in New York City, conferences, tribute band performances, and reenactments will pay homage to Beatlemania and their music.
While there is much to celebrate about the Beatles coming to America, there is also much to regret, starting with the fact that while we may remember the music of the Beatles, we’ve lost sight of the hope for change and revolutionary spirit that were hallmarks of those days. Indeed, the Beatles opened the floodgates of music with their riveting Feb. 9 performance on the Ed Sullivan Show which was televised to 72 million Americans in what has been dubbed “the night that changed America.” Beatlemania, in turn, helped fuel a social, cultural and political revolution that took aim at everything from war, capitalism and racism to women’s rights, militarization and equality.
Fifty years later, while we may be inundated with a glut of music that passes for art and artists that pass for activists, with no shortage of national problems plaguing us (police abuse, endless wars, government corruption, government surveillance, inequality, etc.), we are sorely lacking individuals with the kind of radicalism and willingness to challenge the status quo. This is the difference between Then and Now, between an America that was ripe for the Beatles’ music andtheir message of change and an America that is celebrating the Beatles’ music while oblivious to their radicalism.
Unlike artists before them, the Beatles had power over millions of people worldwide. In 1967, for example, with the release of their Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album, as one critic noted, it was the closest Europe had been to unification since the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Most thought North America could have been included as well. And the Beatles became the embodiment of the Summer of Love with their live global BBC television broadcast of “All You Need Is Love” in June 1967. Approximately 400 million people across five continents tuned in. This type of power was something new. Previously, only popes, kings and perhaps a few intellectuals could hope to wield such influence in their lifetime.
Following the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy in 1968, the optimism of the Summer of Love quickly evaporated and young people revolted worldwide. In the U.S., the cataclysm came as 10,000 demonstrators descended on the Democratic Party’s national convention in August. Police reacted by brutally beating rock-throwing demonstrators as well as passersby, journalists and volunteers. Violence and revolt were now in vogue.
The Beatles, the most influential pop voice of the time, responded to this shift towards violence with “Revolution,” the first Beatles song with an explicitly political statement. As “Revolution” stresses, it was not a movement about physically overthrowing a regime. It was a spiritual revolution, one aimed at overthrowing preconceived notions. Thus, before you can effect a lasting change, as John Lennon sings, you have to “free your mind.” As John Lennon sings in his masterpiece on the need for nonviolent change, “When you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out?”
It didn’t take long for Lennon, the activist of the group, to recognize that he could use his celebrity status to not only communicate his own ideas about the world but change the way people thought about issues of the day. He subsequently began his quest for worldwide peace. In fact, it may be that Lennon was the last great iconic anti-war activist of our age. Indeed, by October 1969, Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” had become a universal chant at anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. On November 15, during a peace rally in Washington, DC, the legendary folk singer Pete Seeger led nearly half a million demonstrators in singing “Give Peace a Chance” at the Washington Monument.
Of all the Beatles, it may be Lennon’s activism which speaks most to the concerns of our present day and the ever-growing menace of the police state. In fact, as I document in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, Lennon, enemy number one in the eyes of the U.S. government, was targeted for surveillance by the FBI (most likely in conjunction with the NSA).
Fearing Lennon might incite antiwar protests, the Nixon administration directed the FBI to keep close tabs on the ex-Beatle, resulting in close to 400 pages of files on his activities during the early 1970s. But the government’s actions didn’t stop with mere surveillance. The agency went so far as to attempt to have Lennon deported on drug charges. As professor Jon Wiener, a historian who sued the federal government to have the files on Lennon made public, observed, “This is really the story of F.B.I. misconduct, of the President using the F.B.I. to get his enemies, to use federal agencies to suppress dissent and to silence critics.”
Fifty years after America first fell in love with Lennon and his mop-top comrades, the Beatles’ legacy lives on—at least, their musical legacy lives on.
Yet while the Beatles’ greatest legacy was in effecting a revolution of spirit and mind, today we’re in dire need of revolutionaries willing to challenge the status quo.
The world could use another revolution, don’t you think?
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/john-w-whitehead/50-years-after-the-beatles/
All the government needs is another Jack Ruby...
Does US “Death Sentence” In Boston Case Equal Silence?
By Russ Baker
On January 30, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the federal government would seek the death penalty against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing suspect. The media by and large did not seem to find the move worth scrutinizing.
At WhoWhatWhy, we disagree. Since the first week following the tragedy, we’ve been raising issues about the way in which a story riddled with improbabilities, anomalies and question marks (see, for example, this, this,this, and this.) was turned quickly into a “solved crime” and a done deal—with nary a question about whether a government that has lied to the American people time and again over the years could possibly be up to something.
One thing we pointed out: We ought to be wary of claims that the brothers should be given the ubiquitous moniker of “lone wolves”—even if it is proven that they planted the bombs. This is especially true, given the confirmed pre-Marathon interactions between the Tsarnaev family and the federal government (including contacts with the FBI), an uncle tied to the CIA, Russian intelligence interest, complaints from the parents that their children were set up, and more.
We also noted how the only people who could shed light on what actually happened were being silenced, by fate or design. First, Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a hail of gunfire. Then his brother Dzhokhar was nearly killed in a massive strafing of the boat in which he was hiding, unarmed. Then a friend of Tamerlan’s, Ibragim Todashev, was killed in a still-unexplained shooting while unarmed and in FBI custody. Then Todashev’s girlfriend and friends were told to stop talking about what had happened or be deported, and then harassed, and, in at least her case, actually deported.
The bottom line is that the official story put out through leaks to friendly media during the early hours and days after the bombing has become the unquestioned account, with no apparent serious and open-minded investigation having followed, as best as we can tell. Legal authorities have blocked public disclosure of documents that normally should see the light of day.
This leaves only Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to tell us his story and that of his brother and this remarkable set of events, one of the most bizarre, profound, and consequential episodes in recent American history, and the biggest “terrorist” incident since September 11, more than a decade before.
But will Dzhokhar ever get to tell his story? The government’s announcement that it is seeking the death penalty suggests that it wishes to bury the matter—figuratively, if not literally.
Dzhokhar’s options for avoiding the death penalty are to go on trial and try to beat the collective might of the US security establishment and predetermined public opinion or to simply admit guilt and plea bargain for a lesser punishment. We wonder if he will ever be allowed to testify. Even if the death penalty strategy leads to a guilty plea on a lesser charge, Tsarnaev will most likely never be released from prison, and could be put into isolation where he can never tell his story—as has been done with the “American Taliban” John Lindh. This treatment is usually justified in such situations as necessary to either “protect” the prisoner or to prevent him from communicating with “other” terrorists—although the latter would be a stretch in the case of Tsarnaev, who is being presented as essentially “acting alone” with only his dead brother as a collaborator.
Even if he does testify, would it be a matter of dutifully confirming the official narrative in return for a lesser punishment?
A Stacked Deck
The government holds all the cards, and so is unlikely to lose in any case. But its advantageous position is further enhanced by the nature of juries in capital cases. They are pre-screened so that all members are on record as being willing to vote for the death penalty under the right circumstances. Those citizens who believe the death penalty should never or rarely be used–or who worry aloud about the long tradition of wrongful convictions—are excluded from the start. The jurors therefore tend to be politically conservative, people who believe the testimony of law enforcement officials, who have an antipathy towards the notion of “innocent until proven guilty,” and who generally favor the prosecution at trial.
The only right thing, for the American people and for defendants in our system of jurisprudence, is a real trial, presented to a truly impartial jury of Tsarnaev’s peers, with the defense given every opportunity to tell an alternative story. But the federal government seems determined not to allow that to happen. Thus, the ploy with “death penalty or silence”.
As for Obama, his general position on the death penalty has “evolved” over the years since 1996, when he declared his unilateral opposition to it. He became more sympathetic to the method as his political star rose.
But as we have noted, some things are too big for mere mortals. And, given the indications that a massive cover-up of some kind is afoot yet again, it is clear that this is one of those situations.
Link:
http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/02/03/does-us-death-sentence-in-boston-case-equal-silence/
By Russ Baker
On January 30, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the federal government would seek the death penalty against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing suspect. The media by and large did not seem to find the move worth scrutinizing.
At WhoWhatWhy, we disagree. Since the first week following the tragedy, we’ve been raising issues about the way in which a story riddled with improbabilities, anomalies and question marks (see, for example, this, this,this, and this.) was turned quickly into a “solved crime” and a done deal—with nary a question about whether a government that has lied to the American people time and again over the years could possibly be up to something.
One thing we pointed out: We ought to be wary of claims that the brothers should be given the ubiquitous moniker of “lone wolves”—even if it is proven that they planted the bombs. This is especially true, given the confirmed pre-Marathon interactions between the Tsarnaev family and the federal government (including contacts with the FBI), an uncle tied to the CIA, Russian intelligence interest, complaints from the parents that their children were set up, and more.
We also noted how the only people who could shed light on what actually happened were being silenced, by fate or design. First, Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a hail of gunfire. Then his brother Dzhokhar was nearly killed in a massive strafing of the boat in which he was hiding, unarmed. Then a friend of Tamerlan’s, Ibragim Todashev, was killed in a still-unexplained shooting while unarmed and in FBI custody. Then Todashev’s girlfriend and friends were told to stop talking about what had happened or be deported, and then harassed, and, in at least her case, actually deported.
The bottom line is that the official story put out through leaks to friendly media during the early hours and days after the bombing has become the unquestioned account, with no apparent serious and open-minded investigation having followed, as best as we can tell. Legal authorities have blocked public disclosure of documents that normally should see the light of day.
This leaves only Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to tell us his story and that of his brother and this remarkable set of events, one of the most bizarre, profound, and consequential episodes in recent American history, and the biggest “terrorist” incident since September 11, more than a decade before.
But will Dzhokhar ever get to tell his story? The government’s announcement that it is seeking the death penalty suggests that it wishes to bury the matter—figuratively, if not literally.
Dzhokhar’s options for avoiding the death penalty are to go on trial and try to beat the collective might of the US security establishment and predetermined public opinion or to simply admit guilt and plea bargain for a lesser punishment. We wonder if he will ever be allowed to testify. Even if the death penalty strategy leads to a guilty plea on a lesser charge, Tsarnaev will most likely never be released from prison, and could be put into isolation where he can never tell his story—as has been done with the “American Taliban” John Lindh. This treatment is usually justified in such situations as necessary to either “protect” the prisoner or to prevent him from communicating with “other” terrorists—although the latter would be a stretch in the case of Tsarnaev, who is being presented as essentially “acting alone” with only his dead brother as a collaborator.
Even if he does testify, would it be a matter of dutifully confirming the official narrative in return for a lesser punishment?
A Stacked Deck
The government holds all the cards, and so is unlikely to lose in any case. But its advantageous position is further enhanced by the nature of juries in capital cases. They are pre-screened so that all members are on record as being willing to vote for the death penalty under the right circumstances. Those citizens who believe the death penalty should never or rarely be used–or who worry aloud about the long tradition of wrongful convictions—are excluded from the start. The jurors therefore tend to be politically conservative, people who believe the testimony of law enforcement officials, who have an antipathy towards the notion of “innocent until proven guilty,” and who generally favor the prosecution at trial.
The only right thing, for the American people and for defendants in our system of jurisprudence, is a real trial, presented to a truly impartial jury of Tsarnaev’s peers, with the defense given every opportunity to tell an alternative story. But the federal government seems determined not to allow that to happen. Thus, the ploy with “death penalty or silence”.
As for Obama, his general position on the death penalty has “evolved” over the years since 1996, when he declared his unilateral opposition to it. He became more sympathetic to the method as his political star rose.
But as we have noted, some things are too big for mere mortals. And, given the indications that a massive cover-up of some kind is afoot yet again, it is clear that this is one of those situations.
Link:
http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/02/03/does-us-death-sentence-in-boston-case-equal-silence/
Is journalism dead???
Today’s Thoughts, Feb. 3, 2014: Journalism in America
By Eric Peters
What happened to journalism that actually challenged – or even questioned – authority? You know, looked into things – and (as the slogan of a big-time paper styles it) exposed wrongdoing to the world without fear or favor? When did journalists become the leashed Shih Tzus of the powers that be, barking ferociously at times but never or very rarely at anything that really matters?
I can speak to this – as a guy who did work within the system as a writer/editor (and who personally knows people who still do).
There is no written code one must follow to get hired – and to avoid getting fired – as a journalist in America. However, there is a very clear sub rosa understanding as regards the opinions one must possess (or not express) which results in a startling – almost Stalinist – degree of political orthodoxy at major papers, TV networks, magazines and so on.
The independent thinker is not wanted – and the independent actor will quickly find himself unemployed and/or unemployable.
The media is also extremely insular and controlled. There are very few independent newspapers, for instance. Most of the medium-sized (and small) city/local papers are just shells. They are either owned by a national media conglomerate (e.g., Gannett) or they obtain most of their “copy” from “the wire” – the AP – and produce very little of their own, independent copy. The editors at these smaller papers simply pluck the stories – invariably the same stories, written by a handful of writers – and place them on the page. Hence the startling uniformity of the stories (and the opinions expressed). It is just like McDonad’s. A Quarter Pounder With Cheese in Seattle tastes pretty much exactly like a Quarter Pounder With Cheese in Pittsburgh.
Keep in mind, also, that most young journalists are the product of government schools – and of a society dominated by government/corporate conditioning, most of all in non-thinking. To react by rote. To be “one of the boys.” To laugh breezily at the right jokes and banter. To evince disapproval of that which you are expected to disapprove of.
In other words, to be a vapid, inoffensive chucklehead.
I personally saw what happens to people who are heterodox in their opinions – and dared to not care. I saw them – the wire pullers – destroy the careers of two exceptional writers and thinkers: Joe Sobran and Sam Francis. Joe for his questioning of slavish, Israel uber alles politics; Sam for his politically incorrect writings on race. Both had syndication deals, regular columns in major papers and magazines (Joe at National Review). Then, like someone turned off a light in a room, virtually no major publication carried their columns any longer. In short order they were reduced to poverty – and professional obscurity. Both died not long thereafter.
A lesson to others...
Read the rest here:
http://ericpetersautos.com/2014/02/03/todays-thoughts-feb-2-2014-journalism-dead/
By Eric Peters
What happened to journalism that actually challenged – or even questioned – authority? You know, looked into things – and (as the slogan of a big-time paper styles it) exposed wrongdoing to the world without fear or favor? When did journalists become the leashed Shih Tzus of the powers that be, barking ferociously at times but never or very rarely at anything that really matters?
I can speak to this – as a guy who did work within the system as a writer/editor (and who personally knows people who still do).
There is no written code one must follow to get hired – and to avoid getting fired – as a journalist in America. However, there is a very clear sub rosa understanding as regards the opinions one must possess (or not express) which results in a startling – almost Stalinist – degree of political orthodoxy at major papers, TV networks, magazines and so on.
The independent thinker is not wanted – and the independent actor will quickly find himself unemployed and/or unemployable.
The media is also extremely insular and controlled. There are very few independent newspapers, for instance. Most of the medium-sized (and small) city/local papers are just shells. They are either owned by a national media conglomerate (e.g., Gannett) or they obtain most of their “copy” from “the wire” – the AP – and produce very little of their own, independent copy. The editors at these smaller papers simply pluck the stories – invariably the same stories, written by a handful of writers – and place them on the page. Hence the startling uniformity of the stories (and the opinions expressed). It is just like McDonad’s. A Quarter Pounder With Cheese in Seattle tastes pretty much exactly like a Quarter Pounder With Cheese in Pittsburgh.
Keep in mind, also, that most young journalists are the product of government schools – and of a society dominated by government/corporate conditioning, most of all in non-thinking. To react by rote. To be “one of the boys.” To laugh breezily at the right jokes and banter. To evince disapproval of that which you are expected to disapprove of.
In other words, to be a vapid, inoffensive chucklehead.
I personally saw what happens to people who are heterodox in their opinions – and dared to not care. I saw them – the wire pullers – destroy the careers of two exceptional writers and thinkers: Joe Sobran and Sam Francis. Joe for his questioning of slavish, Israel uber alles politics; Sam for his politically incorrect writings on race. Both had syndication deals, regular columns in major papers and magazines (Joe at National Review). Then, like someone turned off a light in a room, virtually no major publication carried their columns any longer. In short order they were reduced to poverty – and professional obscurity. Both died not long thereafter.
A lesson to others...
Read the rest here:
http://ericpetersautos.com/2014/02/03/todays-thoughts-feb-2-2014-journalism-dead/
"In summary, for every “paranoid libertarian,” that crazy canary or a doom-warning albatross, stoically suffering their curses, yet blessed with flight and an ability to see and know the environment below the surface and far above it, we have a petrified statist wandering in a medieval forest, unappreciated, underpaid, ignored, lost and scared silly. And whining about it."
How to Spot A Petrified Statist
By Karen Kwiatkowski
Cass Sunstein quotes Sean Wilentz, who reinvents Richard Hofstadter’s “paranoid style of American politics” into the small-minded, counter-intellectual smear of “paranoid libertarian.” Wilentz’s article in the New Republic is long and vaguely academic, but there’s more to it than that.
Entitled “Would You Feel Differently About Snowden, Greenwald, and Assange If You Knew What They Really Thought?” Professor Wilentz has written a hit piece on these three famous “transparencists.” He paints them (even the Australian!) as associated with the Ron Paul anti-state, pro-peace, libertarian political phenom, and even includes several paragraphs on Ron Paul himself! As far as I can see, Wilentz is the parent of a well-written whine about why these whistleblowers are so popular among so many average people in this country, and why that is so terribly, awfully, fundamentally wrong.
I can’t resist sharing Wilentz’ conclusion, because it’s just that good!
Snowden, Greenwald, and Assange have largely set the terms in the debate over transparency and privacy in America. But the value of some of their revelations does not mean that they deserve the prestige and influence that has been accorded to them. The leakers and their supporters would never hand the state modern surveillance powers, even if they came wrapped in all sorts of rules and regulations that would constrain their abuse. They are right to worry, but wrong—even paranoid—to distrust democratic governments in this way. Surveillance and secrecy will never be attractive features of a democratic government, but they are not inimical to it, either. This the leakers will never understand. [bold-face added]
For a professor of American history to claim that democratic government can be trusted, or to suggest that the U.S., with 330 million people and over four time zones are somehow governed democratically is a bit over the top. Perhaps he believes it. However, the mention of what one group “deserves” reminded me of The Anti Capitalistic Mentality, where Mises writes of American intellectuals being often left out of the larger society, and resentful of both the monetary rewards, and more importantly, the overall popularity of other sectors, be they businessmen, football players, entertainers, and truthtellers empowered by cheap technology.
Mises also points out that “If a group of people secludes itself from the rest of the nation, especially from its intellectual leaders….they unavoidably become targets of rather hostile criticisms on the part of those whom they keep out of their circles.” Certainly, Wilentz is feeling – dare I say – a bit paranoid because he hasn’t been included either in the truthtelling adventures of Snowden, Greenwald and Assange, or in the mass accolades these bold leaders are earning among the hoi polloi.
While Wilentz wales away at his targets and wails for the democracy he imagines has been harmed, the far sharper Cass Sunstein has simultaneously fine-tuned and broadened the attack. His “How to Spot A Paranoid Libertarian” is a boiling oil dump on the serfs storming the statist’s castle. Sunstein is careful to distinguish paranoid libertarians from the acceptable minarchist, the pro-warfare state, small-government hypocrite, and smart regulatory, nudge-friendly libertarians, who are happy to remain fringe players in the establishment, while ignoring both facts and history. I’m not criticizing these various liberty-advocating units. As Sunstein and most of us understand, armies are always divided by function and ability.
Within this framework, Sunstein seeks to define his enemy, which is to say the enemy of centralism and totalitarianism. He is also firing back at those who have found Sunstein’s academic and political work to be an anathema to fundamental liberty at all levels, and arrogant to boot. His five characteristics of the paranoid libertarian may be summarized as follows: 1) a sense that government authority will tend to grow and be misused; 2) a related “bad faith” presumption about the motivations and truthfulness of elected officials; 3) a sense of victimization relating to items 1 and 2; 4) an indifference or lack of interest in policy tradeoffs regarding fundamental liberties and rights, and; 5) an enthusiasm for slippery slope arguments (presumably, he refers to slippery slope arguments lacking logical fact-based implications).
If one overlooks the nastiness of tone, the open defense of the state socialism of both Bush and Obama administrations, and the sarcastic “reasonableness” of Sunstein’s essay, I find little with which to disagree. In every way, Sunstein has described the attitude of the average American in the year 2014, five years into an economic “recovery” that has left the government claiming that state and federal agencies and central banks really aren’t the only beneficiaries of Bernankite monetary easement, and that it isn’t really true that that only 47% of adult Americans are working full time.
The Sunstein essay, the lament of Wilentz, and the many expositions of others associated with and supportive of the status quo fascism in America serve as a delightful sign that things are changing. Clearly, the modern state and its apologists are in defense mode, and possibly even frantic defense mode.
Elsewhere, Sunstein has worried that too many of us listen only to our like-minded friends, and he misses the point that this tendency applies precisely and originally to the intelligentsia. Wilentz writes that as far as he can tell, government whistleblowers really just hate the modern liberal state, and wish to see it destroyed. These observations are a bit over the top, and again more suited to someone on the verge of hiring a private investigator to follow their spouse than a well-balanced student of American culture, government and technology.
It occurs to me Wilentz, Sunstein and company have provided for us set of indicators for identifying the petrified statist. I am referring to petrified as in frightened, rather than petrified as in old wood, although both characterizations may serve. In fact, the latter may be the more accurate prediction, given what we know of historical tendencies of authoritarian overreach. In any case, consider this:
1) Statists come in all flavors. But the petrified statist is obsessed with trying to identify, and marginalize, the successful anti-state spokesperson or activities. Beyond government whistleblowers, the petrified statist is somewhat obsessed with peace, free market and limited government advocates from the so-called “right” like the Mises Institute and Ron Paul Institute. They are also alarmed by popular trends and activities that rest on a somewhat “left” leaning rejection of the state. This includes faith-based movements, liberty movements, and pro-Constitution groups as well as the anti-GMO, localism, tiny house, debt-free, and natural health care movements. Because many of these ideas are community-centered, network-driven, and results-oriented, they are spreading rapidly. Most importantly, these ideas, movements and activities seem to give hope and fulminate real change. For the petrified statist, hope and change are the responsibility of government, and any evidence to the contrary will be “wildly exaggerated” and fear-inducing.
2) The petrified statist is nearly always a defender of politicians and whatever they do, so long as those politicians advocate government authority, government spending, and government grants and favors that provide for a wide array of academic and media jobs. Accolades for Bloomberg’s silliness regarding the size of New Yorker’s sippy cups, and Chris Christie’s statism under the guise a strong conservative leadership are common and unquestioned among statists in general. These kinds of politicians are particularly honored and admired by the petrified statist in a way that is almost iconic, and worshipful.
3) The petrified statist is a secret military fetishist, adoring the military for what it can do for the state at home and abroad, and envying the top-down authoritarianism of a military organization. However, the military also frightens the petrified statist. Veterans specifically are not, and cannot be, trusted to support the blooming fascism that is modern America. The economics (poor), demographics (young), geographics (southern and western), and ideology (pro-constitution, pro-second amendment, and patriotic) create a large body of citizens who don’t like government much. In a way, the petrified statist feels not only victimized, but also strangely betrayed, by the kinds of people who serve and have served in the government’s standing armies.
4) The average statist is not reflective or pensive, and he or she rarely seeks conflict or to explain themselves. The lethargic momentum of can-kicking bureaucracy and status quo is quite enough for them. But the petrified statist is cursed with a need to explain themselves, and to have all of “us” whomever “we” are understand why we shouldn’t be, and to admit our error of, bowling alone, when in fact, we are not bowling alone at all. The petrified statist cannot admit and refuses to recognize that they fundamentally don’t matter to the rest of us. What do we think of them? Not to paraphrase Ayn Rand, but there is a reason she is viscerally despised by the petrified statist. The bulk of the country, and the entire liberty consortium, do not think of the petrified statists at all.
5) A fifth characteristic of the petrified statist, beyond his generalized and well-deserved anxiety about the collapse of the American empire, is an over-active imagination regarding the “enemies” of the state. A petrified statist has personalized the state, and sees “government” as an entity with its own rights, its own rules, a benevolent and uber-necessary conglomeration that has a mission unto itself. Sovereign immunity is necessary, because the godhead is always good. But when the state is personalized, then it can have personal enemies, and a battle of sorts may be waged. This is a false construct, but it drives the petrified statist of the modern era into a defensive mode. In fact, the state, and government, is as powerful as we the people allow it to be, and when we stop the obedience, the state begins to shift. If we desire, we can collapse the state much as a balloon shrinks inevitably in the face of pressure, temperature, disaster or time. Humans live, communities live, but government per se is not a living, breathing entity. Sadly, the petrified statist holds to the fallacy of the living and right-holding state, and naturally and constantly fear for its survival.
In summary, for every “paranoid libertarian,” that crazy canary or a doom-warning albatross, stoically suffering their curses, yet blessed with flight and an ability to see and know the environment below the surface and far above it, we have a petrified statist wandering in a medieval forest, unappreciated, underpaid, ignored, lost and scared silly. And whining about it.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/karen-kwiatkowski/i-despise-cass-sunstein/
By Karen Kwiatkowski
Cass Sunstein quotes Sean Wilentz, who reinvents Richard Hofstadter’s “paranoid style of American politics” into the small-minded, counter-intellectual smear of “paranoid libertarian.” Wilentz’s article in the New Republic is long and vaguely academic, but there’s more to it than that.
Entitled “Would You Feel Differently About Snowden, Greenwald, and Assange If You Knew What They Really Thought?” Professor Wilentz has written a hit piece on these three famous “transparencists.” He paints them (even the Australian!) as associated with the Ron Paul anti-state, pro-peace, libertarian political phenom, and even includes several paragraphs on Ron Paul himself! As far as I can see, Wilentz is the parent of a well-written whine about why these whistleblowers are so popular among so many average people in this country, and why that is so terribly, awfully, fundamentally wrong.
I can’t resist sharing Wilentz’ conclusion, because it’s just that good!
Snowden, Greenwald, and Assange have largely set the terms in the debate over transparency and privacy in America. But the value of some of their revelations does not mean that they deserve the prestige and influence that has been accorded to them. The leakers and their supporters would never hand the state modern surveillance powers, even if they came wrapped in all sorts of rules and regulations that would constrain their abuse. They are right to worry, but wrong—even paranoid—to distrust democratic governments in this way. Surveillance and secrecy will never be attractive features of a democratic government, but they are not inimical to it, either. This the leakers will never understand. [bold-face added]
For a professor of American history to claim that democratic government can be trusted, or to suggest that the U.S., with 330 million people and over four time zones are somehow governed democratically is a bit over the top. Perhaps he believes it. However, the mention of what one group “deserves” reminded me of The Anti Capitalistic Mentality, where Mises writes of American intellectuals being often left out of the larger society, and resentful of both the monetary rewards, and more importantly, the overall popularity of other sectors, be they businessmen, football players, entertainers, and truthtellers empowered by cheap technology.
Mises also points out that “If a group of people secludes itself from the rest of the nation, especially from its intellectual leaders….they unavoidably become targets of rather hostile criticisms on the part of those whom they keep out of their circles.” Certainly, Wilentz is feeling – dare I say – a bit paranoid because he hasn’t been included either in the truthtelling adventures of Snowden, Greenwald and Assange, or in the mass accolades these bold leaders are earning among the hoi polloi.
While Wilentz wales away at his targets and wails for the democracy he imagines has been harmed, the far sharper Cass Sunstein has simultaneously fine-tuned and broadened the attack. His “How to Spot A Paranoid Libertarian” is a boiling oil dump on the serfs storming the statist’s castle. Sunstein is careful to distinguish paranoid libertarians from the acceptable minarchist, the pro-warfare state, small-government hypocrite, and smart regulatory, nudge-friendly libertarians, who are happy to remain fringe players in the establishment, while ignoring both facts and history. I’m not criticizing these various liberty-advocating units. As Sunstein and most of us understand, armies are always divided by function and ability.
Within this framework, Sunstein seeks to define his enemy, which is to say the enemy of centralism and totalitarianism. He is also firing back at those who have found Sunstein’s academic and political work to be an anathema to fundamental liberty at all levels, and arrogant to boot. His five characteristics of the paranoid libertarian may be summarized as follows: 1) a sense that government authority will tend to grow and be misused; 2) a related “bad faith” presumption about the motivations and truthfulness of elected officials; 3) a sense of victimization relating to items 1 and 2; 4) an indifference or lack of interest in policy tradeoffs regarding fundamental liberties and rights, and; 5) an enthusiasm for slippery slope arguments (presumably, he refers to slippery slope arguments lacking logical fact-based implications).
If one overlooks the nastiness of tone, the open defense of the state socialism of both Bush and Obama administrations, and the sarcastic “reasonableness” of Sunstein’s essay, I find little with which to disagree. In every way, Sunstein has described the attitude of the average American in the year 2014, five years into an economic “recovery” that has left the government claiming that state and federal agencies and central banks really aren’t the only beneficiaries of Bernankite monetary easement, and that it isn’t really true that that only 47% of adult Americans are working full time.
The Sunstein essay, the lament of Wilentz, and the many expositions of others associated with and supportive of the status quo fascism in America serve as a delightful sign that things are changing. Clearly, the modern state and its apologists are in defense mode, and possibly even frantic defense mode.
Elsewhere, Sunstein has worried that too many of us listen only to our like-minded friends, and he misses the point that this tendency applies precisely and originally to the intelligentsia. Wilentz writes that as far as he can tell, government whistleblowers really just hate the modern liberal state, and wish to see it destroyed. These observations are a bit over the top, and again more suited to someone on the verge of hiring a private investigator to follow their spouse than a well-balanced student of American culture, government and technology.
It occurs to me Wilentz, Sunstein and company have provided for us set of indicators for identifying the petrified statist. I am referring to petrified as in frightened, rather than petrified as in old wood, although both characterizations may serve. In fact, the latter may be the more accurate prediction, given what we know of historical tendencies of authoritarian overreach. In any case, consider this:
1) Statists come in all flavors. But the petrified statist is obsessed with trying to identify, and marginalize, the successful anti-state spokesperson or activities. Beyond government whistleblowers, the petrified statist is somewhat obsessed with peace, free market and limited government advocates from the so-called “right” like the Mises Institute and Ron Paul Institute. They are also alarmed by popular trends and activities that rest on a somewhat “left” leaning rejection of the state. This includes faith-based movements, liberty movements, and pro-Constitution groups as well as the anti-GMO, localism, tiny house, debt-free, and natural health care movements. Because many of these ideas are community-centered, network-driven, and results-oriented, they are spreading rapidly. Most importantly, these ideas, movements and activities seem to give hope and fulminate real change. For the petrified statist, hope and change are the responsibility of government, and any evidence to the contrary will be “wildly exaggerated” and fear-inducing.
2) The petrified statist is nearly always a defender of politicians and whatever they do, so long as those politicians advocate government authority, government spending, and government grants and favors that provide for a wide array of academic and media jobs. Accolades for Bloomberg’s silliness regarding the size of New Yorker’s sippy cups, and Chris Christie’s statism under the guise a strong conservative leadership are common and unquestioned among statists in general. These kinds of politicians are particularly honored and admired by the petrified statist in a way that is almost iconic, and worshipful.
3) The petrified statist is a secret military fetishist, adoring the military for what it can do for the state at home and abroad, and envying the top-down authoritarianism of a military organization. However, the military also frightens the petrified statist. Veterans specifically are not, and cannot be, trusted to support the blooming fascism that is modern America. The economics (poor), demographics (young), geographics (southern and western), and ideology (pro-constitution, pro-second amendment, and patriotic) create a large body of citizens who don’t like government much. In a way, the petrified statist feels not only victimized, but also strangely betrayed, by the kinds of people who serve and have served in the government’s standing armies.
4) The average statist is not reflective or pensive, and he or she rarely seeks conflict or to explain themselves. The lethargic momentum of can-kicking bureaucracy and status quo is quite enough for them. But the petrified statist is cursed with a need to explain themselves, and to have all of “us” whomever “we” are understand why we shouldn’t be, and to admit our error of, bowling alone, when in fact, we are not bowling alone at all. The petrified statist cannot admit and refuses to recognize that they fundamentally don’t matter to the rest of us. What do we think of them? Not to paraphrase Ayn Rand, but there is a reason she is viscerally despised by the petrified statist. The bulk of the country, and the entire liberty consortium, do not think of the petrified statists at all.
5) A fifth characteristic of the petrified statist, beyond his generalized and well-deserved anxiety about the collapse of the American empire, is an over-active imagination regarding the “enemies” of the state. A petrified statist has personalized the state, and sees “government” as an entity with its own rights, its own rules, a benevolent and uber-necessary conglomeration that has a mission unto itself. Sovereign immunity is necessary, because the godhead is always good. But when the state is personalized, then it can have personal enemies, and a battle of sorts may be waged. This is a false construct, but it drives the petrified statist of the modern era into a defensive mode. In fact, the state, and government, is as powerful as we the people allow it to be, and when we stop the obedience, the state begins to shift. If we desire, we can collapse the state much as a balloon shrinks inevitably in the face of pressure, temperature, disaster or time. Humans live, communities live, but government per se is not a living, breathing entity. Sadly, the petrified statist holds to the fallacy of the living and right-holding state, and naturally and constantly fear for its survival.
In summary, for every “paranoid libertarian,” that crazy canary or a doom-warning albatross, stoically suffering their curses, yet blessed with flight and an ability to see and know the environment below the surface and far above it, we have a petrified statist wandering in a medieval forest, unappreciated, underpaid, ignored, lost and scared silly. And whining about it.
Link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/karen-kwiatkowski/i-despise-cass-sunstein/
Monday, February 3, 2014
Impact of minimum wage increase on small business will be "significant"...
A Small-Businessman on the Common Sense Impact of the Minimum Wage
Economic Policy Journal
Richard Duncan, president of Rich Duncan Construction in Salem, Ore, tells WSJ:
As we close the gap between minimum wage and a firm’s starting wage, we lessen the ability to hire younger untrained talent.
When the minimum wage increases, we put more demands on the outcome and performance of the new emerging workforce. This leaves youth and the entry-level workforce less opportunity to enter, as the job description will have to match the pay scale. Our current workforce will have to do more work with fewer employees to share the workload, especially in the competitive small-business world, as it takes more than guts to hire additional employees.
If an additional person costs more to bring on, it will just be that much longer before a firm will next hire. Therefore yes, the impact will be significant.
Link:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/02/a-small-businessman-on-common-sense.html
Economic Policy Journal
Richard Duncan, president of Rich Duncan Construction in Salem, Ore, tells WSJ:
As we close the gap between minimum wage and a firm’s starting wage, we lessen the ability to hire younger untrained talent.
When the minimum wage increases, we put more demands on the outcome and performance of the new emerging workforce. This leaves youth and the entry-level workforce less opportunity to enter, as the job description will have to match the pay scale. Our current workforce will have to do more work with fewer employees to share the workload, especially in the competitive small-business world, as it takes more than guts to hire additional employees.
If an additional person costs more to bring on, it will just be that much longer before a firm will next hire. Therefore yes, the impact will be significant.
Link:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/02/a-small-businessman-on-common-sense.html
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