Eating Propaganda

U.S. Defense Contractors caught selling women and children

2012-02-13T00:37:00.000-08:00

Dyncorp and a few other U.S. defense contractors were caught in Bosnia in the 90's, during the war (and Afghanistan and Iraq more recently) snatching up women and children and selling them for sex slavery and snuff films in Eastern Europe. They got away with it because people do not have the guts to stand up and prosecute these corporations and these governments.

There are no laws in war zones and the corporations tied closest to the military do this kind of thing, not to mention child slave labor, illegally selling weapons, and helping to smuggle drugs...then the money laundering...anyway... Be aware of it, at least.

This is just a trailer to a movie about a real event that I have complained about to people around me that nothing is ever said of it for a while now. So, I am actually glad Tinseltown has decided to make a movie on it. It is a subject that needs adressing in a real way, not some know nothing celebrity "awareness campaign."

Why Ron Paul is the Ballsiest Politician in America

2012-02-12T14:38:00.000-08:00

Ron Paul gave a speech at the CPAC 2011 convention a few moments after Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had come out on stage to accept an award for "Defending the Constitution." Anyone who has any knowledge whatsoever of the Bush administration knows that the last thing they did was defend the Constitution. The PATRIOT Act, John Warner Defense, the Bush Doctrine, the bailouts, etc., etc. undermine the Constitution in a number of horrendous ways. Ron Paul has watched them for two decades infiltrate and push the U.S towards the current situation. He's even stated that he thought they were going to attack Iraq in 1998.

Ron Paul has written in his books about the neoconservatives as well as spoken on the house floor about who they are, what the believe, how they operate. They believe in Trotskyian concepts of permanent international revolution and by extension Marxian democracy, they say that the U.S. has lost its moral values and have become a nation of nihilists hell bent on undermining anything sacred, they believe in aggressive military actions taken in favor of spreading their version of 'liberal democracy', they are driven, in part, by Zionism, and, the most controversial aspect, they promote Plato's "Magnificent Myth" or "Noble Lie." They are willing to tell lies in order to propagate their ideology...

Anyway, back to the speech. Ron Paul refers to the neoconservatives,"neo-Jacobins." In case one cannot tell from the previous description, the NeoConservatives are not conservatives at all. Their intellectual influences stem from communism, elitist deception, and radical religious ideology. The comparison that Ron Paul is making here is with the irrational aspects of the organizations that drove the French revolution into such madness and slaughter. Ron Paul implies that the NeoCon policies promote this! And he did it right to their faces (if they stayed around, I do not know). He even said in the speech, "I bet half the people in this room wouldn't even cut one penny out of the military!" when he was talking about the need to cut spending. The man does not pander. Even if he needs to call out his own audience for their own inward insincerity, he will do it.

It's funny, the leftist detractors of Ron Paul only cite minor social issues, usually abortion (of all things), yet they have no one on the left who will speak as brazenly towards the military establishment as Ron Paul. Not even Noam Chomsky uses that kind of language (Chomsky dresses everything up to sound intellectual [fail #1 according to George Orwell]).

The magnitude of Paul's accusation levied at Rumsfeld and Cheney is poignant whether people realize it or not. Paul pointed out a great weakness in the propaganda of the NeoConservative wing of the U.S politic, its rhetorical deception. Arguably, this is the most important factor because that is the only barrier that has to be broken for the people to be exposed to their network of deception and rumor and for the card castle they've constructed to crumble. Just because the NeoConservatives don't have a figurehead in the White House doesn't mean they aren't still active in think tanks, corporations, and the military. They have lost only a small amount of stature among conservatives (judging by the GOP primaries and the success of Santorum) and people only judge their failures on how effective their interventions have been. The argument is not whether or not they should have been undertaken at all, let alone undertaken for this ideology that most people cannot define, but is instead based on their success rates.

Ron Paul's statement should ring particularly true for those that know their history. The French revolution accomplished much less than the American revolution, in that it produced Napoleon, and at the cost of many more lives. If the U.S. is to see another revolution, we better hope that the Neo-Jacobins have not positioned themselves very well. If the world is to see a revolution...all bets are off.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/

Not to mention Ron Paul is the only politician that is willing to take on the Federal Reserve with an actual theoretical understanding of the subject and is not simply planning political posturing like the others.

"Reflect, if you please, on these ideas..."

2012-01-31T20:37:00.000-08:00

"Reflect, if you please, on these ideas..."

Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes
June 24, 1813

On Debt, Taxes, Banks, and Paper

"It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, “never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith.” On such a pledge as this, sacredly observed, a government may always command, on a reasonable interest, all the lendable money of their citizens, while the necessity of an equivalent tax is a salutary warning to them and their constituents against oppressions, bankruptcy, and its inevitable consequence, revolution."

"But what limits, it will be asked, does this prescribe to their powers? What is to hinder them from creating a perpetual debt? The laws of nature, I answer. The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead. The will and the power of man expire with his life, by nature's law. Some societies give it an artificial continuance, for the encouragement of industry; some refuse it, as our aboriginal neighbors, whom we call barbarians."

"We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country."

"...[context is lengthy]...The period of a generation, or the term of its life, is determined by the laws of mortality...a majority of whom act for the society, one half will be dead in eighteen years and eight months. At nineteen years then from the date of a contract, the majority of the contractors are dead, and their contract with them. Let this general theory be applied to a particular case."

"Suppose that majority, on the first day of the year 1794, had borrowed a sum of money equal to the fee-simple value of the State, and to have consumed it in eating, drinking and making merry in their day; or, if you please, in quarrelling and fighting with their unoffending neighbors. Within eighteen years and eight months, one half of the adult citizens were dead. Till then, being the majority, they might rightfully levy the interest of their debt annually on themselves and their fellow-revellers, or fellow-champions. But at that period, say at this moment, a new majority have come into place, in their own right, and not under the rights, the conditions, or laws of their predecessors. Are they bound to acknowledge the debt, to consider the preceding generation as having had a right to eat up the whole soil of their country, in the course of a life, to alienate it from them, (for it would be an alienation to the creditors,) and would they think themselves either legally or morally bound to give up their country and emigrate to another for subsistence? Every one will say no; that the soil is the gift of God to the living, as much as it had been to the deceased generation; and that the laws of nature impose no obligation on them to pay this debt."

"And although, like some other natural rights, this has not yet entered into any declaration of rights, it is no less a law, and ought to be acted on by honest governments. It is, at the same time, a salutary curb on the spirit of war and indebtment, which, since the modern theory of the perpetuation of debt, has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burthens ever accumulating."

"In such a nation there is one and one only resource for loans, sufficient to carry them through the expense of war; and that will always be sufficient, and in the power of an honest government, punctual in the preservation of its faith. The fund I mean, is the mass of circulating coin. Every one knows, that although not literally, it is nearly true, that every paper dollar emitted banishes a silver one from the circulation. A nation, therefore, making its purchases and payments with bills fitted for circulation, thrusts an equal sum of coin out of circulation. This is equivalent to borrowing that sum, and yet the vendor receiving payment in a medium as effectual as coin for his purchases or payments, has no claim to interest. And so the nation may continue to issue its bills as far as its wants require, and the limits of the circulation will admit."

"But this, the only resource which the government could command with certainty, the States have unfortunately fooled away, nay corruptly alienated to swindlers and shavers, under the cover of private banks. Say, too, as an additional evil, that the disposal funds of individuals, to this great amount, have thus been withdrawn from improvement and useful enterprise, and employed in the useless, usurious and demoralizing practices of bank directors and their accomplices."

"In the war of 1755, our State availed itself of this fund by issuing a paper money, bottomed on a specific tax for its redemption, and, to insure its credit, bearing an interest of five per cent. Within a very short time, not a bill of this emission was to be found in circulation. It was locked up in the chests of executors, guardians, widows, farmers, &c. We then issued bills bottomed on a redeeming tax, but bearing no interest. These were readily received, and never depreciated a single farthing. In the revolutionary war, the old Congress and the States issued bills without interest, and without tax. They occupied the channels of circulation very freely, till those channels were overflowed by an excess beyond all the calls of circulation."

"If treasury bills are emitted on a tax appropriated for their redemption in fifteen years, and (to insure preference in the first moments of competition) bearing an interest of six per cent. there is no one who would not take them in preference to the bank paper now afloat, on a principle of patriotism as well as interest; and they would be withdrawn from circulation into private hoards to a considerable amount. Their credit once established, others might be emitted, bottomed also on a tax, but not bearing interest; and if ever their credit faltered, open public loans, on which these bills alone should be received as specie. These, operating as a sinking fund, would reduce the quantity in circulation, so as to maintain that in an equilibrium with specie. It is not easy to estimate the obstacles which, in the beginning, we should encounter in ousting the banks from their possession of the circulation; but a steady and judicious alternation of emissions and loans, would reduce them in time. But while this is going on, another measure should be pressed, to recover ultimately our right to the circulation. The States should be applied to, to transfer the right of issuing circulating paper to Congress exclusively, in perpetuum, if possible, but during the war at least, with a saving of charter rights. "

"But it will be asked, are we to have no banks? Are merchants and others to be deprived of the resource of short accommodations, found so convenient? I answer, let us have banks; but let them be such as are alone to be found in any country on earth, except Great Britain. There is not a bank of discount on the continent of Europe, (at least there was not one when I was there,) which offers anything but cash in exchange for discounted bills. No one has a natural right to the trade of a money lender, but he who has the money to lend."

"The unlimited emission of bank paper has banished all her specie, and is now, by a depreciation acknowledged by her own statesmen, carrying her rapidly to bankruptcy, as it did France, as it did us, and will do us again, and every country permitting paper to be circulated, other than that by public authority, rigorously limited to the just measure for circulation. Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation, are at the mercy of those self-created money lenders, and are prostrated by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us. He who lent his money to the public or to an individual, before the institution of the United States Bank, twenty years ago, when wheat was well sold at a dollar the bushel, and receives now his nominal sum when it sells at two dollars, is cheated of half his fortune; and by whom? By the banks, which, since that, have thrown into circulation ten dollars of their nominal money where was one at that time."

"Reflect, if you please, on these ideas..."

General View of the Powers Conferred by The Constitution

2012-01-19T17:42:00.000-08:00

The Federalist No. 41

General View of the Powers Conferred by The Constitution

Independent Journal
Saturday, January 19, 1788

To the People of the State of New York:

THE Constitution proposed by the convention may be considered under two general points of view. The FIRST relates to the sum or quantity of power which it vests in the government, including the restraints imposed on the States. The SECOND, to the particular structure of the government, and the distribution of this power among its several branches.
Under the first view of the subject, two important questions arise: 1. Whether any part of the powers transferred to the general government be unnecessary or improper? 2. Whether the entire mass of them be dangerous to the portion of jurisdiction left in the several States?
Is the aggregate power of the general government greater than ought to have been vested in it? This is the first question.
It cannot have escaped those who have attended with candor to the arguments employed against the extensive powers of the government, that the authors of them have very little considered how far these powers were necessary means of attaining a necessary end. They have chosen rather to dwell on the inconveniences which must be unavoidably blended with all political advantages; and on the possible abuses which must be incident to every power or trust, of which a beneficial use can be made. This method of handling the subject cannot impose on the good sense of the people of America. It may display the subtlety of the writer; it may open a boundless field for rhetoric and declamation; it may inflame the passions of the unthinking, and may confirm the prejudices of the misthinking: but cool and candid people will at once reflect, that the purest of human blessings must have a portion of alloy in them; that the choice must always be made, if not of the lesser evil, at least of the GREATER, not the PERFECT, good; and that in every political institution, a power to advance the public happiness involves a discretion which may be misapplied and abused. They will see, therefore, that in all cases where power is to be conferred, the point first to be decided is, whether such a power be necessary to the public good; as the next will be, in case of an affirmative decision, to guard as effectually as possible against a perversion of the power to the public detriment.
That we may form a correct judgment on this subject, it will be proper to review the several powers conferred on the government of the Union; and that this may be the more conveniently done they may be reduced into different classes as they relate to the following different objects: 1. Security against foreign danger; 2. Regulation of the intercourse with foreign nations; 3. Maintenance of harmony and proper intercourse among the States; 4. Certain miscellaneous objects of general utility; 5. Restraint of the States from certain injurious acts; 6. Provisions for giving due efficacy to all these powers.
The powers falling within the first class are those of declaring war and granting letters of marque; of providing armies and fleets; of regulating and calling forth the militia; of levying and borrowing money.
Security against foreign danger is one of the primitive objects of civil society. It is an avowed and essential object of the American Union. The powers requisite for attaining it must be effectually confided to the federal councils.
Is the power of declaring war necessary? No man will answer this question in the negative. It would be superfluous, therefore, to enter into a proof of the affirmative. The existing Confederation establishes this power in the most ample form.
Is the power of raising armies and equipping fleets necessary? This is involved in the foregoing power. It is involved in the power of self-defense.
But was it necessary to give an INDEFINITE POWER of raising TROOPS, as well as providing fleets; and of maintaining both in PEACE, as well as in WAR?
The answer to these questions has been too far anticipated in another place to admit an extensive discussion of them in this place. The answer indeed seems to be so obvious and conclusive as scarcely to justify such a discussion in any place. With what color of propriety could the force necessary for defense be limited by those who cannot limit the force of offense? If a federal Constitution could chain the ambition or set bounds to the exertions of all other nations, then indeed might it prudently chain the discretion of its own government, and set bounds to the exertions for its own safety.
How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation? The means of security can only be regulated by the means and the danger of attack. They will, in fact, be ever determined by these rules, and by no others. It is in vain to oppose constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is worse than in vain; because it plants in the Constitution itself necessary usurpations of power, every precedent of which is a germ of unnecessary and multiplied repetitions. If one nation maintains constantly a disciplined army, ready for the service of ambition or revenge, it obliges the most pacific nations who may be within the reach of its enterprises to take corresponding precautions. The fifteenth century was the unhappy epoch of military establishments in the time of peace. They were introduced by Charles VII. of France. All Europe has followed, or been forced into, the example. Had the example not been followed by other nations, all Europe must long ago have worn the chains of a universal monarch. Were every nation except France now to disband its peace establishments, the same event might follow. The veteran legions of Rome were an overmatch for the undisciplined valor of all other nations and rendered her the mistress of the world.
Not the less true is it, that the liberties of Rome proved the final victim to her military triumphs; and that the liberties of Europe, as far as they ever existed, have, with few exceptions, been the price of her military establishments. A standing force, therefore, is a dangerous, at the same time that it may be a necessary, provision. On the smallest scale it has its inconveniences. On an extensive scale its consequences may be fatal. On any scale it is an object of laudable circumspection and precaution. A wise nation will combine all these considerations; and, whilst it does not rashly preclude itself from any resource which may become essential to its safety, will exert all its prudence in diminishing both the necessity and the danger of resorting to one which may be inauspicious to its liberties.
The clearest marks of this prudence are stamped on the proposed Constitution. The Union itself, which it cements and secures, destroys every pretext for a military establishment which could be dangerous. America united, with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat. It was remarked, on a former occasion, that the want of this pretext had saved the liberties of one nation in Europe. Being rendered by her insular situation and her maritime resources impregnable to the armies of her neighbors, the rulers of Great Britain have never been able, by real or artificial dangers, to cheat the public into an extensive peace establishment. The distance of the United States from the powerful nations of the world gives them the same happy security. A dangerous establishment can never be necessary or plausible, so long as they continue a united people. But let it never, for a moment, be forgotten that they are indebted for this advantage to the Union alone. The moment of its dissolution will be the date of a new order of things. The fears of the weaker, or the ambition of the stronger States, or Confederacies, will set the same example in the New, as Charles VII. did in the Old World. The example will be followed here from the same motives which produced universal imitation there. Instead of deriving from our situation the precious advantage which Great Britain has derived from hers, the face of America will be but a copy of that of the continent of Europe. It will present liberty everywhere crushed between standing armies and perpetual taxes. The fortunes of disunited America will be even more disastrous than those of Europe. The sources of evil in the latter are confined to her own limits. No superior powers of another quarter of the globe intrigue among her rival nations, inflame their mutual animosities, and render them the instruments of foreign ambition, jealousy, and revenge. In America the miseries springing from her internal jealousies, contentions, and wars, would form a part only of her lot. A plentiful addition of evils would have their source in that relation in which Europe stands to this quarter of the earth, and which no other quarter of the earth bears to Europe.
This picture of the consequences of disunion cannot be too highly colored, or too often exhibited. Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty, ought to have it ever before his eyes, that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America, and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it.
Next to the effectual establishment of the Union, the best possible precaution against danger from standing armies is a limitation of the term for which revenue may be appropriated to their support. This precaution the Constitution has prudently added. I will not repeat here the observations which I flatter myself have placed this subject in a just and satisfactory light. But it may not be improper to take notice of an argument against this part of the Constitution, which has been drawn from the policy and practice of Great Britain. It is said that the continuance of an army in that kingdom requires an annual vote of the legislature; whereas the American Constitution has lengthened this critical period to two years. This is the form in which the comparison is usually stated to the public: but is it a just form? Is it a fair comparison? Does the British Constitution restrain the parliamentary discretion to one year? Does the American impose on the Congress appropriations for two years? On the contrary, it cannot be unknown to the authors of the fallacy themselves, that the British Constitution fixes no limit whatever to the discretion of the legislature, and that the American ties down the legislature to two years, as the longest admissible term.
Had the argument from the British example been truly stated, it would have stood thus: The term for which supplies may be appropriated to the army establishment, though unlimited by the British Constitution, has nevertheless, in practice, been limited by parliamentary discretion to a single year. Now, if in Great Britain, where the House of Commons is elected for seven years; where so great a proportion of the members are elected by so small a proportion of the people; where the electors are so corrupted by the representatives, and the representatives so corrupted by the Crown, the representative body can possess a power to make appropriations to the army for an indefinite term, without desiring, or without daring, to extend the term beyond a single year, ought not suspicion herself to blush, in pretending that the representatives of the United States, elected FREELY by the WHOLE BODY of the people, every SECOND YEAR, cannot be safely intrusted with the discretion over such appropriations, expressly limited to the short period of TWO YEARS?
A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself. Of this truth, the management of the opposition to the federal government is an unvaried exemplification. But among all the blunders which have been committed, none is more striking than the attempt to enlist on that side the prudent jealousy entertained by the people, of standing armies. The attempt has awakened fully the public attention to that important subject; and has led to investigations which must terminate in a thorough and universal conviction, not only that the constitution has provided the most effectual guards against danger from that quarter, but that nothing short of a Constitution fully adequate to the national defense and the preservation of the Union, can save America from as many standing armies as it may be split into States or Confederacies, and from such a progressive augmentation, of these establishments in each, as will render them as burdensome to the properties and ominous to the liberties of the people, as any establishment that can become necessary, under a united and efficient government, must be tolerable to the former and safe to the latter.
The palpable necessity of the power to provide and maintain a navy has protected that part of the Constitution against a spirit of censure, which has spared few other parts. It must, indeed, be numbered among the greatest blessings of America, that as her Union will be the only source of her maritime strength, so this will be a principal source of her security against danger from abroad. In this respect our situation bears another likeness to the insular advantage of Great Britain. The batteries most capable of repelling foreign enterprises on our safety, are happily such as can never be turned by a perfidious government against our liberties.
The inhabitants of the Atlantic frontier are all of them deeply interested in this provision for naval protection, and if they have hitherto been suffered to sleep quietly in their beds; if their property has remained safe against the predatory spirit of licentious adventurers; if their maritime towns have not yet been compelled to ransom themselves from the terrors of a conflagration, by yielding to the exactions of daring and sudden invaders, these instances of good fortune are not to be ascribed to the capacity of the existing government for the protection of those from whom it claims allegiance, but to causes that are fugitive and fallacious. If we except perhaps Virginia and Maryland, which are peculiarly vulnerable on their eastern frontiers, no part of the Union ought to feel more anxiety on this subject than New York. Her seacoast is extensive. A very important district of the State is an island. The State itself is penetrated by a large navigable river for more than fifty leagues. The great emporium of its commerce, the great reservoir of its wealth, lies every moment at the mercy of events, and may almost be regarded as a hostage for ignominious compliances with the dictates of a foreign enemy, or even with the rapacious demands of pirates and barbarians. Should a war be the result of the precarious situation of European affairs, and all the unruly passions attending it be let loose on the ocean, our escape from insults and depredations, not only on that element, but every part of the other bordering on it, will be truly miraculous. In the present condition of America, the States more immediately exposed to these calamities have nothing to hope from the phantom of a general government which now exists; and if their single resources were equal to the task of fortifying themselves against the danger, the object to be protected would be almost consumed by the means of protecting them.
The power of regulating and calling forth the militia has been already sufficiently vindicated and explained.
The power of levying and borrowing money, being the sinew of that which is to be exerted in the national defense, is properly thrown into the same class with it. This power, also, has been examined already with much attention, and has, I trust, been clearly shown to be necessary, both in the extent and form given to it by the Constitution. I will address one additional reflection only to those who contend that the power ought to have been restrained to external -- taxation by which they mean, taxes on articles imported from other countries. It cannot be doubted that this will always be a valuable source of revenue; that for a considerable time it must be a principal source; that at this moment it is an essential one. But we may form very mistaken ideas on this subject, if we do not call to mind in our calculations, that the extent of revenue drawn from foreign commerce must vary with the variations, both in the extent and the kind of imports; and that these variations do not correspond with the progress of population, which must be the general measure of the public wants. As long as agriculture continues the sole field of labor, the importation of manufactures must increase as the consumers multiply. As soon as domestic manufactures are begun by the hands not called for by agriculture, the imported manufactures will decrease as the numbers of people increase. In a more remote stage, the imports may consist in a considerable part of raw materials, which will be wrought into articles for exportation, and will, therefore, require rather the encouragement of bounties, than to be loaded with discouraging duties. A system of government, meant for duration, ought to contemplate these revolutions, and be able to accommodate itself to them.
Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.
Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms "to raise money for the general welfare."
But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter.
The objection here is the more extraordinary, as it appears that the language used by the convention is a copy from the articles of Confederation. The objects of the Union among the States, as described in article third, are "their common defense, security of their liberties, and mutual and general welfare." The terms of article eighth are still more identical: "All charges of war and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury," etc. A similar language again occurs in article ninth. Construe either of these articles by the rules which would justify the construction put on the new Constitution, and they vest in the existing Congress a power to legislate in all cases whatsoever. But what would have been thought of that assembly, if, attaching themselves to these general expressions, and disregarding the specifications which ascertain and limit their import, they had exercised an unlimited power of providing for the common defense and general welfare? I appeal to the objectors themselves, whether they would in that case have employed the same reasoning in justification of Congress as they now make use of against the convention. How difficult it is for error to escape its own condemnation!

PUBLIUS

The "New Green Deal"

2012-01-04T23:31:00.000-08:00

The "New Green Deal" being touted as an alternative liberal agenda. Obama is not good enough, so they thought this up.

Here is the article.

A climate change Keynesian. Full employment. Demand deficiency. Basic economics is not something this person understands. But, the suggestions and policy implications are hilarious.

"it would pay for itself over the course of a business cycle." - from the article.

Meaning they inflate the currency into a bubble and let it burst, then the government does exactly what the banks have done in order to mold society for a short time.

Just in the introduction to the paper she cites (a forthcoming publication from Cambridge University Press), the author (Philip Harvey) tells you, in between the lines that, 'this is not economic theory, it is political theory dressed as economic theory'. And it is international political theory, not just national...(Claiming to link economic theory with the U.N Declaration of Human Rights...as opposed to the U.S. Bill of rights.)

So, about page 16 Harvey mentions that the government stimulus of $787bn was only about half paid out by may of 2010, implying that 'it was not enough', but fails to mention the 26 trillion dollars that were lent by the Federal Reserve in that same period of time.

Page 23, Harvey mentions providing child care for jobs...hell of a way to solve unemployment..."Take care of your kids! The government will pay you for it!"

"...health care, education, recreation, elder care, "cultural enrichment" (not sure what that is or means, but noting good comes to mind) all jobs for people under the "New Green Deal." It's "green" because we won't be producing anything. We'll be trading government scrip to take care of each others sick kids and parents from what it sounds.

The bottom of page 23 is the best. The paper suggests "big infrastructure projects" but goes on to say that they are "capital intensive" and says this is bad. The author correctly describes them as "capital intensive" saying it creates jobs where the "raw materials and supplies and materials" need to be centered, "not necessarily in the program itself"... Not in the program itself? Harvey is nuts. The building of the "big infrastructure" IS the point. Harvey is saying that the point is not to produce anything, but just to get people to work for the sake of working. You might as well pay people to dig ditches then fill them up again if the project itself doesn't matter.

The author's thrust is to, instead of having stimulus to encourage demand (ie. make loans), to just have the government spend the money and place people to work on them. The author differentiates between secondary demand and primary so show the difference in creating incentives for demand and just spending money on specific things. It has no regard for production and consumption differences. It will keep the economy depressed.

The classical Malthusian fallacy of thinking that true demand (and cost) can ever become relevant (or even known) in light of the crowding out of resources and labor. The whole economy will be people consuming things that they are not producing. You cannot produce roads and schools and bridges and things if the people are buying phones and clothing and food. The things that people buy day to day will increase in price in proportion to the amount of money diverted to the government projects. (Consumption patterns will not match with the production patterns.) This is why the government doesn't direct projects. It is a fallacy to think that demand/production is homogeneous in relation to supply/consumption.

The author ignores altogether the court rulings surrounding the government takeover of the production price and quantity controls during the New Deal..."Unconstitutional" I think, is what they called it. "Oh, but we're talking about the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, and why wouldn't we?"

The paper that the "New Green Deal" platform is based on is bunk; propaganda for the ruling class to continue to dominate through central banking and keeping the people's eyes covered with the veil of Keynesian fiscal policy and its depth and breadth while simultaneously keeping people scared with climate change nonsense. A terrible economics paper. Rutgers, huh?

As for the article, it is hard to get on the ballot because of the Republicrats.

The Panic of 2008: All Hail the Fed

2011-11-11T13:47:00.000-08:00

The Panic of 2008

The stock market panic that occurred was the culmination of a perverse incentive structure[1]setup by the Federal Reserve, an irresponsible Congress, and sharked eyed bankers eager to take advantage of the process and was not the fault of market liberalism.The Austrian, or psychological, School of economics, a more radical extension of the French classical liberals, has a particularly intricate theory of the business cycle that helps to explain what happens in the midst complicated economic phenomena. The panic in 2008 was the bursting of a bubble that had been expanding for years because of bad policy at the central bank and short sited political legislation.One of the key things required to understanding any modern economic panic is to understand how the central bank, private banks, and government interact with one another in these perverse incentive structures. Central banking policy and State intervention negate the liberties and freedoms of the people by distorting prices and time coordination in the market process and while they do not stop the market from forming or people’s free choices from being exercised, they diminish the effect of the choices and therefore, diminish the impact of their choices and the essence of their freedom on the market while providing incentives that entice the entire market into behavior that they would have otherwise not undertaken.

The Federal Reserve is the easiest institution to blame for the crisis. The Federal Reserve made all of the actions of the other actors involved possible. Without the Federal Reserve’s ability to create credit ad infinitum[2], the banks and government would not have the funds to create “bubbles” that then pop and turn into panics.The original purpose of the Federal Reserve was to create an “elastic money supply” and to centralize the banking authority due to the instability of the past. These functions allowed governments to inflate the currency to finance deficits and to cartelize[3] the private banks, The private banks wanted to cartelize so that the cartel might, “help remove the two great market limits on [private banks] expansion of credit…a possible loss of confidence leading to bank runs; and the loss of reserves should any bank expand its own credit.”[4] It is not corruption, however, but simply the process in which the Federal Reserve operates that causes the base distortions in the market price signaling process. In other words, booms and busts are built into the banking system, an inevitable consequence of the process of bank credit expansion.

When the Fed expands the money supply, it purchases securities on the open market. The process involves buying government debt and has the effect of signaling to borrowers that there is adequate savings in the market available for long term loans, but in reality it is just money that the Fed has created; inflation, credit, debt. It is often referred to as “monetizing debt.” When buying securities from the banks the Fed pays for them with money (Federal Reserve Notes) that the Fed creates; it “writes a check on itself”[5] and buys debt (securities) issued by the Treasury but sold through the Open Market.[6]This newly created money then goes to the bank account of whichever bank the Fed purchased assets from, where they either deposit it back at the bank’s account at the Fed (enlarging the “excess reserves”[7] on their balance sheet) or loan the money to the private markets or to the government. The new money is created ex nihilo and is then used to consume scarce, physical, tangible goods causing a rise in prices. This system of inflation[8][9] benefits the actors that receive the money first at the expense of the people who receive it last, because by the time it filters to those who get it last, the money has been used several times claiming resources out of a finite resource supply causing prices to go up by the equivalent proportion of the amount of money created. Rothbard explains succinctly how the distortion of price signals wreak havoc in the market process,

“For businessmen, seeing the rate of interest fall, react as they always would and must to such a change of market signals: They invest more in capital and producers' goods. Investments, particularly in lengthy and time-consuming projects, which previously looked unprofitable now seem profitable, because of the fall of the interest charge. In short, businessmen react as they would react if savings had genuinely increased: They expand their investment in durable equipment, in capital goods, in industrial raw material, in construction as compared to their direct production of consumer goods.

Businesses, in short, happily borrow the newly expanded bank money that is coming to them at cheaper rates; they use the money to invest in capital goods, and eventually this money gets paid out in higher rents to land, and higher wages to workers in the capital goods industries. The increased business demand bids up labor costs, but businesses think they can pay these higher costs because they have been fooled by the government-and-bank intervention in the loan market and its decisively important tampering with the interest-rate signal of the marketplace.”[10]

The inflation process also has the effect of taking the value from people’s money and transferring it to the banks who get the money first, because they spend the new money first. The process from the ground up transfers wealth (the purchasing power of the money) from the poor and middle class to the super rich banks, corporations, and bureaucrats at the top of the distribution system.

In the decade prior to the 2008 crisis, the Federal Reserve, under the chairmanship of Alan Greenspan, artificially depressed the Fed funds rate[11]from about 6% in January of 2001 to only 1.75% by December 2001. There were two reasons for the decision to drop rates this drastically; (1) the Fed had already been on a course of lowering rates in response to the bursting of the “dot-com” bubble and (2) further stimulation of the markets after 9/11. The housing bubble collapse in 2008 was blown up with the money from the “dot-com” bubble. When interest rates drop the yield curve is being pushed toward the long end.[12] Interest rates being low at present time imply large savings meaning that the banks have the capital available to fund long term investment projects, like housing and real estate. This was done by the Fed because it helps to create demand, when credit becomes cheaper and more available, it will be borrowed and spent, this creates market activity.[13]

Whether the activity is “economic” in the full sense of the word is up for debate. Ludwig von Mises generally looked at excessive or artificial credit induced consumption and investment as ‘malinvestment’ saying,

“The popularity of inflation and credit expansion, the ultimate source of the repeated attempts to render people prosperous by credit expansion, and thus the cause of the cyclical fluctuations of business, manifests itself clearly in the customary terminology. The boom is called good business, prosperity, and upswing. Its unavoidable aftermath, the readjustment of conditions to the real data of the market, is called crisis, slump, bad business, depression. People rebel against the insight that the disturbing element is to be seen in the malinvestment and the overconsumption of the boom period and that such an artificially induced boom is doomed. They are looking for the philosophers' stone to make it last…The boom squanders through malinvestment scarce factors of production and reduces the stock available through overconsumption; its alleged blessings are paid for by impoverishment.”[14]

Mises sees the recession as a correction process to “real data,” the real needs and wants of people without the tremendous amounts of credit made available through the banking system. Murray Rothbard notes that,

“…since 1980the Federal Reserve has enjoyed the absolute power to do literally anything it wants: to buy not only U.S. government securities but any asset whatever, and to buy as many assets and to inflate credit as much as it pleases. There are no restraints left on the Federal Reserve. The Fed is the master of all it surveys.”[15]

The market will always act in accordance with the price signals it gets. Price signals are the primary means of the central bank to influence the direction of the markets and the only means for markets to develop. If the Federal Reserve creates the money that it uses to buy assets out of the economy and it has no limits or oversight on the quantity of money that it creates, then it is not unreasonable to infer that the banks and governments enormous financial powers come from this virtually unlimited and invisible function happening through the Federal Reserve System; the system that combines the banks with the State to create money.

The next step in building the gallows for the economy was borne of the practices of the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The institutions themselves were created during the Great Depression under the auspice of helping to promote home ownership and affordability. They became publicly traded companies in 1968 and shortly after created the ‘mortgage backed security’, a type of derivative asset that banks have grown to love to trade. These institutions insure, purchase, and securitize mortgages with the intention of freeing up capital at the mortgage banks who make the initial loans so that they may make more loans. They then sell them to secondary market buyers as derivatives[16] of various forms (Collateralized Mortgage/Debt Obligations; Mortgage Backed Securities). These derivatives can be combined with any other type of Asset Backed Obligation/Securities by private banks as well, making derivatives very expensive and highly volatile financial risk instruments.

The primary problem that Fannie and Freddie create is known as “moral hazard,”[17] which can be acted on by, the bureaucracies involved, the politicians, irresponsible or dishonest consumers, and predatory financial interests. The key to moral hazard and the free market is the blending of freedom to take advantage of a situation, benefit, and simultaneously leave another actor with the consequence of your actions. All parties can take part in this moral hazard. The politicians can rhetorically protect the institutions based on the altruism behind their inception in an attempt to garner votes or campaign money, the consumers can take advantage of market conditions that are not conducive to their normal income and spending habits by extending credit and claiming resources that they cannot afford at that time, and the banks can trade around highly leveraged derivatives, with all parties knowing that ultimately any malinvestment will be covered by the government and therefore, the taxpayers.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were known to be privately managed companies, dealing in the private markets, but with implied, government insurance.[18] The market took ‘government backed insurance’ to mean that no matter how interest rates varied; no matter how the balance sheets at Freddie and Fannie looked, that the financing would be there. The mortgage brokers, who originate the mortgage loans, take advantage of this process because they knew that Freddie and Fannie will perform their functions and purchase the mortgage contracts from them no matter how the contract itself looked or who was tied to the other end of it. The result of mortgage realtors maximizing their utility manifests in “liar loans”[19], increased quantities of subprime loans, and adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs)[20]. These behaviors were nurtured by the “Housing and Community Development Act of 1992” which required the GSE’s to, ” facilitate the financing of affordable housing for low-income and moderate-income families”[21]Regulations were set by Housing and Urban Development that focused on providing loans to low income families in low income areas.[22]The loan originators became lax in their vetting of loan applications and this lead to increased activity in the housing market, beyond what the market would have provided when interest rates were at 6-7 percent and government backed mortgage insurance for the GSEs.On September 10^th 2003, Congressman Ron Paul, an advocate of the Austrian theory of economics, spoke at the House Financial Services Committee alerting the then Secretary of Treasury about the moral hazard created by Fannie and Freddie,

“One of the major government privileges granted to GSE’s is a line of credit with the United States Treasury. According to some estimates, the line of credit may be worth over $2 billion. This explicit promise by the Treasury to bail out GSE’s in times of economic difficulty helps the GSE’s attract investors who are willing to settle for lower yields than they would demand in the absence of the subsidy. Thus, the line of credit distorts the allocation of capital…GSEs are the only institutions besides the United States Treasury granted the explicit statutory authority to monetize their debt through the Federal Reserve. This provision gives the GSEs a source of liquidity unavailable to their competitors.”[23]

The GSEs, then, by having a State advantage,[24] take the freedom of competition away from others. The GSEs hamper the market’s ability to check and balance itself through open competition.

The last, and most visible, actors that played parts in the 2008 panic were the biggest banks in the country (and the world). The banks are the primary benefactors of artificially low interest rates. Banks can buy assets others cannot, they can make virtually limitless amounts of loans to profit off of the interest, they can fund politicians, NGOs, they underwrite war bonds, food stamps, unemployment benefits, corporate expansion,research and development, and all this through the process of credit expansion or inflation and only because Fed financing rates are so low!

The process of bank credit expansion is explained through what is known as “fractional reserve banking.” Fractional reserve banking, basically, expands credit by the bank lending more money out than it has on deposit. Credit expansion comes from the power to lend money that doesn’t exist, because they are counting all of the depositors money as only ten percent, calling it “reserves,” and loaning out ten times that amount , and calling the new money “excess reserves.”It sounds shady because it is. Rothbard bluntly says that, “…fractional reserve banking is at one and the same time fraudulent and inflationary; it generates an increase in the money supply by issuing fake warehouse receipts for money.”[25]

If the bank suffers from unexpectedly large withdrawals it could suffer a run. A bank run means that people have lost confidence in the banks investments and, fearing that their deposits have been lent and lost to foolish ventures, are trying to withdrawal money that they have on deposit, but that the bank no longer has. This would have the market forces force the bank out of business. Banks know this is the case and Rothbard points out in the opening of his article “Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy”written for a 1984 issue of World Market Perspective that,

“Businessmen or manufacturers can either be genuine free enterprise or statists; they can eithermake their way on the free market or seek special government favors and privileges. They choose according to their individual preferences and values. But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism.

Commercial bankers, engaged as they are in unsound fractional reserve credit, are, in the free market, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Hence they are always reaching for government aid and bailout.

Investment bankers do much of their business underwriting government bonds, in the United States and abroad. Therefore, they have a vested interest in promoting deficits and in forcing taxpayers to redeem government debt. Both sets of bankers, then, tend to be tied in with government policy, and try to influence and control government actions in domestic and foreign affairs.”[26]

Banks have interests in putting the government in compromising situations that require loans to ameliorate. Banks will always gauge risk on the side of getting bailouts because that is in their self-interest.

In 2008, the banks needed the governments and the central banks of the world to inflate the currency or “the sky would fall” and “martial law”[27] would be a possibility. Three years after the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, the public comes to find that the government itself spent almost ten trillion dollars and lent/insured three trillion to bail out the banks that had been the source of the risky behavior that was insured by the government.[28]The Federal Reserve, on the other hand, needs no legislation to pass out their bailout money and that means little to no public scrutiny.

Congressmen Ron Paul and Senator Bernie Sanders worked to get a bipartisan audit of the Federal Reserve through.[29] The audit revealed that the Fed had created and dispersed 16 trillion dollars in bailouts to banks and corporations all over the world.[30] This was the first time the Congress has ever exercised its power to investigate the powers of the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve System is more secret than the “CIA, DIA, or some other super-secret intelligence agency.”[31]A central bank is antithetical to competition in banking and is the primary instigator of economic woes according to the Austrian Business Cycle theory.

The process of the “market correction” is predictable through the Austrian Business Cycle Theory. The Austrian business cycle theory is characterized by the outlook it takes on the boom versus the bust. The Austrians distinguish their school of thought from others because they are wary of the boom. Most people notice there is a problem at the outset of the bust.

In 2008, people noticed there was a problem when credit dried up. As Mises says, “Once the reversal of the trade cycle sets in following the change in banking policy, it becomes very difficult to obtain loans because of the general restriction of credit. The rate of interest consequently rises very rapidly as a result of a sudden panic.”[32] At least, in the free market rates would rise. During the last decade the Federal Reserve has exercised very rigid control over the Fed funds rate in response to the bursting of the tech bubble they dropped rates from 6% to under 2%, then they were able to creep rates up to 5% from 2005 to late 2006, when the Fed began to lower rates quickly from 5% in September 2007 to 2% in September 2008, then after the panic to 0.25%, where they have remained for the last 3 years.[33] The Austrians blame the problems for occurring during the boom, Mises explains that the booms are brought on by an“expansion of credit and by lowering of the rate of interest”[34] If one looks at the chart of the last decade interest rates were not low the entire decade, they were artificially lowered in 2001, then slowly increased until 2005.Mises anticipates this tactic of artificially lowering the interest rate to rescue malinvestment, then raising it in hope of preventing an excessive boom phase is in vain, “This raising of the rate of interest is nevertheless insufficient to reestablish equilibrium on the market and put a stop to the unhealthy boom.”[35]

Some of the textbook State policy implications from recessions are gathered by Rothbard in his book America’s Great Depressionon page 19,

“(1) Prevent or delay liquidation.Lend money to shaky businesses, call on banks to lend further, etc.

(2) Inflate further. Further inflation blocks the necessary fall in prices, thus delaying adjustment and prolonging depression. Further credit expansion creates more malinvestments, which, in their turn, will have to be liquidated in some later depression. A government “easy money” policy prevents the market’s return to the necessary higher interest rates.

(3) Keep wage rates up. Artificial maintenance of wage rates in a depression insures permanent mass unemployment. Furthermore, in a deflation, when prices are falling, keeping the same rate of money wages means that real wage rates have been pushed higher. In the face of falling business demand, this greatly aggravates the unemployment problem.

(4) Keep prices up. Keeping prices above their free-market levels will create unsalable surpluses, and prevent a return to prosperity.

(5) Stimulate consumption and discourage saving. We have seen that more saving and less consumption would speed recovery; more consumption and less saving aggravate the shortage of saved capital even further. Government can encourage consumption by “food stamp plans” and relief payments. It can discourage savings and investment by higher taxes, particularly on the wealthy and on corporations and estates. As a matter of fact, any increase of taxes and government spending will discourage saving and investment and stimulate consumption, since government spending is all consumption. Some of the private funds would have been saved and invested; all of the government funds are consumed. Any increase in the relative size of government in the economy, therefore, shifts the societal consumption–investment ratio in favor of consumption, and prolongs the depression.

(6) Subsidize unemployment. Any subsidization of unemployment (via unemployment “insurance,” relief, etc.) will prolong unemployment indefinitely, and delay the shift of workers to the fields where jobs are available.”[36]

Each and every one of those should look familiar as they are the exact prescriptions put forth by almost everyone in the economics profession and the political realm in response to the 2008 panic. Rothbard continues, “These…are the measures which will delay the recovery process and aggravate the depression. Yet, they are the time-honored favorites of government policy…”[37]Today, in the real world, the State and it’s bank, the Federal Reserve, issued/borrowed 25 trillion dollars to ensure that all of the things Rothbard said not to do, were done.[38]The Federal Reserve artificially lowered interest rates, by providing liquidity to the banks to make excessive loans, then Congress passes laws that create government insurance on those excessive loans, then the banks and consumers go to town taking on debts that they cannot afford under normal market circumstances because all of their behavior is insured. The cataclysm was not caused by the market, but intervention of the price signals by the central bank and moral hazard setup by an irresponsible Congress. So, how does Congress remedy moral hazard? By rewarding the bad behavior that they setup.

Bailouts inhibit people from making beneficial choices in the market. Resources are held up for mistakes made in the past and people do not have the ability to acquire them for their own uses. State planning, therefore, inhibits people’s freedom to choose. The State cannot pick what is right or wrong, moral or immoral, productive or unproductive, and most importantly the State cannot determine what is free and what is not.

According to the theories of classical liberalism, the State should keep out of the economy; free markets and liberty are virtually synonymous.John Stuart Mill and Murray Rothbard both discussed the ethics surrounding liberty and its application, both coming to the conclusion that while people may harbor their own subjective moral/value judgments, the law should not be cultivated and applied based on those notions.The law must allow for people to make bad decisions because that is what allows people freedom. Freedom means one may make mistakes.

Rothbard, in the preface to his, Ethics of Liberty says, “Economics can provide much of the data…, but it cannot establish the political philosophy itself. Political judgments are necessarily value judgments, political philosophy is therefore necessarily ethical…”[39] The political structure making any judgment is going to be judging the information with “ethical” bias, or value judgments. It cannot judge without them. Mill recognizes this as well, and points out that a free people, “…will never let itself be enslaved by any man or body of men because these are able to seize and pull the reins of the central administration...But where everything is done through the bureaucracy, nothing to which the bureaucracy is really adverse can be done at all.”[40] If the Federal Reserve bureaucracy controls the primary market price signal, then it would seem that to Mill, there is not much that can be done that the banks are “adverse” to. The U.S. is also likely not “a free people” as he describes because nothing that the markets do, no choices people make, will upset the influence over the people that the central bank and the private banks that comprise it enjoy today.The attempts to identify what “-ism” the U.S. markets fall under may fall short of importance. The central bank manipulating interest rates may be the only “value judgment” that the government has to decide to negate the perceived economic choices people can make. After all, it distorts the price signals and hence organic information about market conditions. While economic information holds no value judgments, at the point when political judgments and economic judgments meet, for instance with the decision to manipulate interest rates, people lose freedom in the form of their abilities to make decisions free from the influence of a central bureaucracy.

Under these circumstances, the liar loans and ARM’s taken by people who cannot afford the reset rates are perfectly legitimate and borne of expected behavior. People respond to incentives and when incentives are manipulated through the credit system can people be blamed for responding in a way that is intended by the policy? They are free to make the decisions. The Federal Reserve and government wanted to encourage the housing market and both took steps to make stimulate housing demand. The result was people taking advantage of the situations setup. Even if the consumers who knew they could not handle the reset prices and took large ARM risks, they may have been doing it on purpose. They may have thought that they could flip the house before the reset, or planned from the start to get the ARM in order to borrow against the mortgage then declare bankruptcy so they can then rent with the money they gained from borrowing against the mortgage. The information is only available to them, inside their own heads!

F.A. Hayek says that people can be largely ignorant of the economic process, but still make the correct economic choices, if only the price system was left unhampered to show people what resources provide what level of benefit to them at what time and the possible cost of something, or everything, else.[41]He gives examples of subjective valuations placed on certain pieces of information that cause the individual actors to make minute changes to their future plans based on fluctuating prices,

“The most significant fact about this system is the economy of knowledge with which it operates, or how little the individual participants need to know in order to be able to take the right action…as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they may know more than is reflected in the price movement.”[42]

People may see a small price fluctuation destroy their profits, or it could increase them tenfold, only the participants know as it is their realm of knowledge. The importance of the price system cannot be overstated. The Federal Reserve can be seen manipulating the base price, the interest rate, on a day to day basis. Ron Paul explains the real world effects of interest rate manipulation in a Statement before the Financial Services Committee in September of 2007,

“The housing boom was caused by the Federal Reserve’s policy resulting in low interest rates. Consumers misled by low interest rates, were looking to consume, while home builders saw the low interest rates as a signal to build, and build they did…The interest rates is the price of time, as the value of a dollar today and the value ofa dollar one year from now are not the same. Just like any price in the market, interest rates have an important informational signaling purpose. Government fixing of the interest rate has the same deleterious effects as price controls in other areas. Reduction in the interest rate has two major effects: it encourages consumption over saving; and it makes long-term, capital-intensive projects cheaper to undertake.”[43]

The current unemployment problem could be relieved if the resources that the government and central bank appropriate for their own ends could be released to the market. If “real market data” were to tug on the strings of demand it would reveal where market demand is for those resources that the government and banks are currently arbitrarily utilizing or even destroying wealth injecting capital into business that are not profitable. After all, the market gauge for efficient deployment of resources is whether or not voluntary transactions result in a profit. Making a profit is how the entrepreneur knows that he is adding value to the input factors and satisfying demand at the same time. Mises explains the system of profit and loss, “profit and loss are generated by success or failure in adjusting the course of production activities to the most urgent demand of the consumers.”[44]Just as profit shows efficiency and efficient deployment of resources flush with the consumer demand, loss, then, shows inefficiency and the destruction of value or the wasting of time. To bailout losses is to destroy wealth twice.

Some people find then on value-judgment perspective requirement of liberalism unfavorable and blame the banks for engaging in potentially dangerous financial transactions at the expense of the taxpayer. If we are to say we live in a liberal society with a free market economy we must not blame the consumers or the banks for taking loans that they could not afford, or offering loans to people who could not afford them. All they are doing is responding to incentives set up by the State. They are playing the game setup for them to play. The State is the only institution that claims a legitimate coercive monopoly on the initiation of violent force. State actions are generally perceived as a “given” by society.Many people view it as noble, trying, compassionate, the embodiment of progress; civilization; mankind, justice, and virtue.And the same can be said of the central bank. Most people laude and revere the Federal Reserve, it may be from ignorance, alternate economic theory, or normative political stance. However one prefers to view them, it is difficult to deny that the fundamental facilitation of economic shenanigans is rooted in the moral hazard created by the government and central bank. The free market would never produce economic circumstances where the savings rate is lowand the general interest rates are at zero or one percent.Savings rates need to be high in order for the market to produce low interest rates, as interest rates are formed from the markets preference of present goods against future goods.[45][46] Low interest rates encourage people to consume because it gives the appearance of large savings. As people consume, interest rates climb up as the savings is depleted and people need to be inticed by high interest rates to save again.The problems came from too much credit and debt and not enough savings.

Society should aim for less government direction because no matter how altruistic the democratic interventions into the market may be, the government and central bank will cause more misallocations of scare resources and distortions in the markets production and consumption patterns than the benefits that the State provides will be worth. Intervention serves to confuse people about market balances and trends.All the State does is displace the economic inconvenience from one party and relegate it to a party that does not have it, and vice versa.

[1]Incentive structures that actually incentivize people to make bad or uneconomic choices.

[2]In the free market, banks get their credit creation ability and limit from the same place, the amount of money the depositors entrust to them. Without a gold standard, or an equivelent, banks or governments are free to issue debt instruments arbitrarily.

[3]The purpose of cartelizing the banks is so that they can expand credit in unison and thus lose the risk of competition. If they were competitive then when one bank expands credit too far they risk a bank run or at the least losing customers to a bank with a more sound lending practice. Expanding credit in unison is done through the central bank, as Rothbard explains, it “acquires its control over the banking system…making its own liabilities legal tender for all debts and receivables in taxes; granting the central bank a monopoly of the issue of bank notes, as contrasted to deposits; or through the outright forcing of banks to use the central bank as their client for keeping their reserves of cash.” Murray Rothbard, The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and other essays, “Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure” (Auburn, AL; LvMI, 1996) (Original publication: Center For Libertarian Studies, 1978) p. 79.

[4] Murray Rothbard,The Case Against the Fed (Auburn, AL: LvMI, 1994) p. 58 Members of banking cartels can compete unfairly within the cartel by secretly expanding credit beyond what the cartel has agreed upon.

[5]Ibid,p. 140 Rothbard gives a detailed example of the money creation process using real world banks for clarity.

[6]The Federal Reserve buys debt from private banks, not the Treasury directly, increasing the banks assets. http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/openmarket_concepts.html

[7]The amount of deposits that the bank can loan and still retain reserves for deposit.

[8]“Inflation” as defined by the Austrian and classical liberal schools of economics refers to a rise in the supply of money or credit available in relation to the amount of available goods and services, which merely leads to a rise in prices.

[9] Murray Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State (Aubrn, AL: LvMI, 2009) (Princeton, NJ.: D. Van Nostrand, 1962) p. 991 Rothbard defines any expansion of the money or credit supply beyond the backing specie, as inflation. In terms of fiat money, specie can be replaced with goods or taxable labor.

[10]Murray Rothbard, The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and other essays, “Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure” (Auburn, AL; LvMI, 1996) (Original publication: Center For Libertarian Studies, 1978) p. 84

[11]The interest rate that the Federal Reserve charges its member banks. For specifics on the Federal funds rate, see: http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed15.html (Accessed 11/11/11)

[12] The Yield Curve refers to the time preference for loans; the price of the loan and the time to maturity on the bond. Low interest rates mean that money is cheap to borrow and interest payments will be smaller and paid less frequently. High interest rates bring high interest payments and higher payments come in shorter time increments. See: Philipp Bagus and David Howden, “The Term Structure of Savings, The Yield Curve, and Maturity Mismatching”, The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. Vol.13 No.3 (Fall 2010) p. 66-67.

[13] This strategy came from the imagined problem of “demand deficiency” by John Maynard Keynes and his school of thought going back to Thomas Malthus. Ricardo and Malthus fought over “Say’s Law”† a century before Keynes and Hayek. Ricardo famously wrote Malthus and said, “With abundance of capital and a low price of labour there cannot fail to be some employments which would yield good profits…Men err in their production; there is no deficiency of demand. If I wanted cloth and and you cotton goods, it would be great folly in us both, with a view to an exchange between us, for one of us to produce velvets and the other wine; we are guilty of some such folly now, and I can scarcely account for the length of time that this delusion continues.” David Ricardo, “Letters of David Ricardo to Thomas Robert Malthus, 1810-1823” ed. James Bonar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887) p. 174 http://www.archive.org/stream/lettersofdavidri00ricaiala#page/174/mode/2up (Accessed 11/1/11) †Say’s Law says that ‘the needs and wants of man are unlimited in scope’ and that ‘supply creates demand’ among other things. Together, Say’s laws of markets can be seen as guidelines for how Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” works.

[14]Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, Part IV, Chapter XX, Sec. 8. (Auburn, AL: LvMI, 1998) (1949) p. 573

[15] Murray Rothbard,The Case Against the Fed (Auburn, AL: LvMI, 1994) p. 132

[16]“Dictionary of Banking and Finance” 3^rd. Ed. (London: A&C Black, 2005) p. 100. Derivatives are contractual assets that “derive” their value from another asset on the market. It can be any kind of asset, stock, bond, commodity, including other derivatives.

[17] Moral Hazard occurs when the risk for a decision one party makes is displaced and another feels the effect of the risk. It is defined by Jörg Guido Hülsmann as, “the incentive of a person A to use more resources than he otherwise would have used, because he knows, or believes he knows, that someone else B will provide some or all of these resources. The important point is that this occurs against B's will and that B is unable to sanction this expropriation immediately.” http://mises.org/daily/2935 (Accessed 11/1/11)

[18] The government took over all obligations of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae during the post 2008 fallout. They total around four trillion dollars today, combined.http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2011/snapshots/2434.html

[19]Loans given without proof of income or filed with faux asset and income information.

[20] Peter Schiff, a successful stock broker and adherent to the Austrian School of economics, was writing articles, books, and giving speeches years before the bursting of the bubble warning that ARMs and Fed policy were inflating a bubble in concordance with very negative hostoric trends. http://www.europac.net/news/peter_schiff_foresaw_housing_bust_way_early (Accessed 11/2/11)

[21]http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/12/usc_sec_12_00004501----000-.html. TITLE 12>CHAPTER 46> § 4501

[22]http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/12/usc_sec_12_00004562----000-.html. TITLE 12>CHAPTER 46>SUBCHAPTER I>Part B>subpart 2> § 4562

[23] Ron Paul, Pillars of Prosperity: Free Markets, Honest Money, and Private Property, Pt. 8 (Auburn, AL: LvMI, 2008) p. 379-380

[24] Power and Market Monopolistic privilege

[25] Murray Rothbard, Mystery of Banking, 2^nd Ed. Ch.VII, Pt. 3. (Auburn, Al: LvMI, 2008) p. 97

[26]Murray Rothbard, Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy, (Center for Libertarian Studies, 1995) p.1

[27] The executive branch threatened the Congress in order to help push them to pass the bill. Congressman Brad Sherman had this to say, “The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere. That atmosphere is not justified. Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday that the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day, another couple of thousand the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnbNm6hoBXc&feature=player_embedded

[28] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/04/business/20090205-bailout-totals-graphic.html

[29] The GAO audit, “FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM: Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Policies and Processes for Managing EmergencyAssistance”http://sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/GAO%20Fed%20Investigation.pdf

[30] “The GAO report said that the Fed issued “conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.”http://www.forbes.com/sites/traceygreenstein/2011/09/20/the-feds-16-trillion-bailouts-under-reported/

[31]Murray Rothbard, Case Against the Fed, (Auburn, AL: LvMI, 1994) p. 1

[32] Ludwig von Mises, The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and other essays (Auburn, AL; LvMI, 1996) (Original publication: Center For Libertarian Studies, 1978) p. 32

[33]http://www.newyorkfed.org/charts/ff/

[34] Ludwig von Mises, The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and other essays (Auburn, AL; LvMI, 1996) (Original publication: Center For Libertarian Studies, 1978) p. 31

[35] Ibid. p.31

[36]Murray Rothbard, America’s Great Depression, 5^th Ed. (Auburn, AL: LvMI, 2000) (1963) p. 19-20

[37] Ibid, p.21

[38] The world derivative markets, at the end of Q4 2010, sat at just over 600 trillion dollars according to the Bank for International Settlements. http://www.bis.org/statistics/otcder/dt1920a.pdf (Accessed 11/1/11) The Fed may need the IMF if they are to bail all of that out…

[39]Murray Rothbard, Ethics of Liberty, (NY: NY Univ. Press, 2002) (1982) p. xlvii

[40] John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, (NY: B&N, 2004) (1859) p. 121

[41]F.A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society” The American Economic Review, Vol. 35, No. 4.(Sep., 1945), pp. 519-530.p. 527http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%28194509%2935%3A4%3C519%3ATUOKIS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1(Accessed 11/1/11)

[42]Ibid. p. 527

[43]Ron Paul, Pillars of Prosperity: Free Markets, Honest Money, and Private Property, Pt. 8 (Auburn, AL: LvMI, 2008) p. 388

[44]Ludwig von Mises, Profit and Loss, (Auburn, AL: LvMI, 2008)p. 8

[45]Ludwig von Mises, Human Action Part 4, Ch. XIX, Sec. 1 (Auburn, AL: LvMI, 1998) p. 521

[46]Murray Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State (Auburn, AL: LvMI, 2009) (Princeton, NJ.: D. Van Nostrand, 1962) p. 375

War is a Fucking Racket.

2011-08-17T21:36:00.000-07:00

This is something people need to sit down and watch through in its entirety. Stop saying you support the wars, stop saying you support the troops and the U.S. government, stop calling yourself a patriot or telling others how informed you are. The military and the defense contracting network is so corrupt it will make your head spin. Dyncorp selling women and children for snuff films, other defense contractors having their rapes and murders and drug smuggling covered up by the Pentagon, the skull and bones in the politicians eyes, and a flag over a coffin for good measure; what people see is everything to the reality that their mind builds for them.

Our soldiers are routinely broken down mentally to not value life at all. Not even their own. They are trained to want to kill. They are willing to die just so they can kill. They are given orders to rape, mutilate, and burn children alive and follow those orders because they don't know any better. They are taught that unflinching barbarism is respect and order. They think it is fun to kill defenseless puppies and people with different colored skin. This is no exaggeration; watch the movie.

People need to see that in order to look at the other side of war, the side that isn't all handshakes and lollipops like in D.C., you have to take a hit on your own ego. It is much easier for people to not look at horrific images that their brothers and sisters are engaged in (with smiles) and to stick a cheap yellow magnet on their bumper that says they support the troops than to concern themselves with the what and why of war. Not knowing how fucked up and sick war is is the only reason it persists.

Put away your Entourage DVDs, turn off Jersey Shore, stop listening to Obama. Once you see the other side of war you will realize that the world is a shitty place. It can be fixed....but not knowing about it is not bliss, it is just ignorance.

ツ Ron Paul needs a catchy slogan

2011-08-11T23:24:00.000-07:00

Ron Paul needs a catchy slogan. Something like "Politicians dull? War and economy, vote for Ron Paul" Not saying that should be it, but maybe someone can think of something.

It would need to ring, not be cheesy, be meaningful/insightful, and have Ron Paul's name in it. Brainstorm!?!? Find beat poets you know and ask them. Find Yogi, or monks, or whatever in Tibet. Find a magician, we need "Hope and Change" but with Ron Paul's name.

"Hope and Change; with Ron Paul's name" actually isn't too bad, is it?

Check this site out for what people think of Ron Paul after the debate on 8/11/11. Notice where all of Romney's support comes from, haha.

Eating Propaganda (Part 2)

2011-07-28T11:01:00.000-07:00

Propaganda is, today, broken into three categories of varying importance and usage as well as usefulness. There are three forms of it: black, white, and gray. They are all used for the same purpose; subverting independent thought in exchange for blind compliance to suggestion, but are broken into categories based on motivations and sources. Some have malicious intent, others do not. All are subject to infiltration and co-opting by subversive elements; all are meant to change the opinion of people who do not directly take interest in things. It is best for anyone intending to figure out why a certain piece of propaganda is in use, to follow the money and to do more research.

Black propaganda is subversive and meant to distort truths and proselytize based on falsities. Sometimes it is used to disseminate false information in the name of the organizations that it opposes. This technique is sometimes referred to as co-opting, which can refer to many things, but in this case consists of propaganda placed by an agent provocateur to mis- and/or dis-inform.

"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it" - Saul Alinsky

Saul Alinsky preached this method, in his book - 'Rules for Radicals', which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are avid fans of. Alinsky says things like, "There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds, he becomes a founding father." He knew well that rhetoric is a form of intimidation. These methods include, for example, dressing up as a member of the Ku Klux Klan and going to a political rally, that one opposes, with signs in hand that are in praise of the organization. This way it looks to outsiders as if that political party has the same interests as the KKK. 'And you wouldn't want to look like you are supporting the KKK, would you? So, you better not support that person, thing or organization.' He said that any method could be justified for any reason that furthers their accumulation of political power.

Black propaganda is used by governments to provoke insurrections in countries where it benefits them, as well as to discredit legitimate organizations that threaten the established powers, which will become peace activists as well as violent groups. It is used by corporations that have no regard for what the consequences of their actions are, whether it be pharmaceuticals, banks, or the war industry, as long as they think they can fool people into believing it. In extreme cases, it acts as an incentive for institutions to fabricate evidence for propagandist use. This can come in devastating forms such as forging documents, planting bombs or drugs, falsely implicating opposition parties, then putting unwarranted blame towards the opposition who will reap the results, to obfuscating the intent or motivation behind legitimate organizations, so that in the public eye they are discredited.

Psychological warfare is a tactic of police and military when brute force will not work and when public support is required. This can take the crude form of playing annoying music constantly toward a group of people who are trying to sleep; attempting to break their mental will. This method could, also, entail disseminating information that is damaging to their families or reputations. Blackmail and extortion are also offshoots of this method. Fake newspaper stories, jokes, subliminal symbolism, or a rumor saturated media story play these roles for the powers that know how to exercise them effectively.

A good example is when the Iraqi people allegedly pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein. The news reported on U.S. TV as if it was a spontaneous gathering that decided to show their support for the motivations of the U.S. military by pulling down the statue symbolic of the supremacy of their former tyrant. It was not. The spontaneity was a complete fabrication. The U.S. Marines had gotten the crane and placed it there, the U.S. Marines placed the flags over the head of the statue, then the U.S Marines used the crane to pull the statue down in front of the cameras. Then they convinced a group of people to riot and deface the now wretched symbol. It was revealed five years later through intelligence leaks, that were then admitted to by the Pentagon, that U.S. Army Psychological Operations had contrived the entire event to help increase support for the war effort among the U.S. public. Some of the people at the gathering were not even Iraqis. Below is an excellent documentary on the U.S. war propaganda efforts in recent history; it is called "Militainment." The U.S. military has recently been training Army PsyOps (military grade subversive propagandists) divisions at news stations in the United States.

White propaganda is up front with the intent and direction, but can always be semantically, or rhetorically, misleading. It may come from a church that is aiming at larger membership to afford to rent a larger, nicer, congregation space, or a school raising money for extra curricular activities or from a government gently telling its people that it is trying to depopulate. It could be harmless; a poster advertising sales at a restaurant or a warning sign that says "DANGER: CLIFF." This method usually depends on effectively misleading rhetoric; linguistic precision.

Government papers, also known as white papers are also a big part of how the Establishments (all throughout time, it sounds like) hides things in plain sight. This is a form of deceptive white propaganda. George Orwell speaks at length about this subject in his essay, "Propaganda and Demotic Speech." He says that bureaucracies use language that the common man is not familiar with on purpose, so as to mislead them into supporting, or not questioning, policy or methods. The language is vague, esoteric, and disconnected and the intention is to disguise intent or content and assumes a knowledge that normal people do not have. The rhetoric that is used is to disarm the emotional effectiveness of the 'whole' by describing the 'parts' in ways that people cannot fully comprehend and also to preempt any dissent that attempts to use language more common to the average person as a method of exposure.

One example, is a white paper called "Which Path to Persia?" It is an "objectively" written, CIA reviewed (for classified information), 150 page document, is publicly available, and that goes into great detail about many different scenarios in which there might be, could be, will be, won't be, some kind of military clash with Iran. It was released in June 2009 by the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. It begins, "The authors are deeply grateful for the financial assistance from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Crown Family Foundation, and others in the drafting and publication of this study." (WPtP? p.v) The Crown Family Foundation is involved in grants to (financing research at) the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. The Saban Group... The Brookings Institution's board of trustees is nothing, but big businesses, Goldman Sachs, Carlyle Group, other investment banks, and energy companies.

The authors are Kenneth M. Pollack, former Director on the National Security Council, Senior Research Professor at the National Defense University, and Persian Gulf CIA analyst; Daniel L Byman, Director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies and Associate Professor at Georgetown University, other credentials include the RAND corporation and the 9/11 Commission; Martin Indyk, former Ambassador to Israel, former Assistant Sec. of State, former member of the National Security Council, is noted as being an expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict; Suzanne Maloney, former employee on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff where she was an analyst and made recommendations on Iran, Iraq, and the Middle East, former Middle East adviser at ExxonMobil Corporation, as well as the Task Force on U.S-Iran Relations at the Council on Foreign Relations; Michael E. O' Hanlon, Director of Research for the 21st Century Defense Initiative and Senior Author of the Brookings Iraq Index, former defense budget analyst; Bruce Riedel, former Chairman of Obama's Strategic Review of U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, 30 year CIA veteran, retired, with postings in Europe and the Middle East, former National Security Council, Dept. Ass. Sec. of Defense, and senior adviser for NATO (WPtP? p.xii -xiii) This information is useful, just so the reader knows exactly what interests are contemplating this issue. We can deduce from here that: the NSC, CIA, RAND, ExxonMobil, CFR, State Dept., Israel, NATO, the White House, and two academics have interests, finances, and know how, enough to form policy recommendations to the U.S. and possibly Israel. (Pollack was accused of acting as an informant in an Israeli espionage ring.)

The "objectivity" that this document is written with is objective in how to achieve a very specific goal of regime change and, ultimately, total nuclear disarmament by Iran. The objectivity is apparent because there is no overt recommendations. There is no discussion of why the relationship between the two states exists as it does. The authors and their financial backers already agree on that. There is objectivity in that sense as well. I will do a review of the document at some point in the future. They have already attempted many of the tactics written about, obviously because it was released in June of 2009, but that should be concerning.

Gray propaganda may be put out because the message will garner followers, but if that same message was released with a source identified from a religious group or a radical NGO, it might not be as well received. George Orwell holds that all art is propaganda because it seeks to display a certain set of perceptions from a subjective point of view; Necessarily propagating an idea or set of views.

The Man with the Plan.

2011-07-19T23:08:00.000-07:00

The ONLY man with ANY plan.

You many not agree on everything, but understand the gravity of the major two issues; our economy and the wars we fight. The military has consistently given him more money than the other candidates combined. If you support the troops, then support Ron Paul.

TomWoods.com (Thomas Woods) - Excellent overview.

Reading? what? that's not cool.

Ron Paul is the real Peace candidate.

Mmmmmmmmmmm bullshit, aaaaaarrrggggghhhh

Real War Propaganda.

Here is an example: they just stage events and send in mindless 'reporters' to report on it. Psy-ops, in this case, using pornography to trick people into thinking rapes are taking place. They were "UNABLE TO VERIFY AUTHENTICITY," but they know it comes from Tripoli. Libya has done nothing to deserve what is happening to them. There has never been any evidence provided that Gaddafi was bombing his own people.

War Alert!!!

2011-07-17T19:48:00.000-07:00

I ran across this blog post that led to this article and i figured i would post the highlights as well as some other things I found that are or could be related.

September yet again. Apparently, there have been various reports as well as a naval deployment map released that hint at the outlines of an Israeli military strike on Iran. Another U.S. aircraft carrier has been dispatched to the Arabian Gulf/Indian Ocean; the U.S.S. G.H.W. Bush, George Washington, and Ronald Reagan are now all in the area. This fits timing in many ways that are detailed in "Which Path to Persia?" where the U.S. war planners theorize about the geopolitical possibilities in their "struggle" to end Iranian nuclear production. The U.S. establishment has long expected this to happen it is just a matter up to the internal mechanisms of the Israeli government. Some of the retired Israeli defense ministers have been speaking out recently on their perception of a power vacuum that is left in the Israeli military.

The Economic Policy Journal explains why it is reporting on this issue:

"Economist Nouriel Roubini has tweeted the link to the ZeroHedge story. As long-term EPJ readers know, I consider Roubini the most connected man in finance. He has a small house warming party and George Soros shows up. To ring in the New Year, he shows up at billionaire Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich's New Year's eve party. He gave Larry Summers stock in his company. Within hours of DSK being arrested, he tweeted that Christine Lagarde would take his place--as she has done. He is a consultant to most of the central banks in the world...I have never seen Roubini tweeting on foreign affairs before, he is unlikely to be tweeting because he finds the story interesting. The story likely falls in line with what he is hearing from his very in the know network."

It is interesting that the last decade of war has all taken place in accordance with the requirements of the "New Middle East" that the Bush administration helped to think up in 2006,

"New Middle East"

"This project, which has been in the planning stages for several years, consists in creating an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO garrisoned Afghanistan."

"Old Middle East"

Notice that Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran have portions of land missing (although Iran does get some back where Afghanistan loses it). Apparently, that is for a new Kurd state; Free Kurdistan and some new land for Azerbaijan. Iraq is divided in two, a Shia state and a Sunni state with Baghdad labeled a "city-state" in between the two. This is not surprising as the U.S. has billion dollar military bases in Baghdad.

On the other side of Iran is a new larger Afghanistan, a reduced Pakistan, and another new state, "Free Baluchistan" that is made of small parts of both. Notice that Afghanistan now touches China's border.

The next thing to notice is Saudi Arabia. It is much smaller as the land has been carved up and given to yet another new state and land extensions to Yemen, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Jordan. The new state is called "Islamic Sacred State" and contains Mecca. Regime changes are implied to have happened virtually everywhere for this to ever be a realistic map; a major war could be what is necessary.

The map itself (pictured above, "New Middle East") is "not representative of Pentagon doctrine" but was theorized by retired Lietnant-Colonel (U.S. Army) Ralph Peters in 2006 and was referred to by some of the Bush administration officials and is used for strategic training all over in military academia. "Which Path to Persia?" is another not official Pentagon war document. It is a map of many of the possible war scenarios involving regime change in Iran and was written by plenty of people inside of the military establishment and CIA as well as wealthy think tanks. It is interesting to ponder why the U.S. establishment has such a distaste for countries hiding nuclear weapons when Israel is suspected of harboring an arsenal of atomic weaponry.

Some of these things should help to shed light on why the U.S. government insists on keeping troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for the indefinite future, despite the rhetoric of 'ending the wars' and 'bringing the troops home'. Not only does it provide support and framework for the Israeli war planners, but it also gives the multi-national oil and construction companies what they want; destabilized regions with no formal government to say "No" to their building and routing plans or the mercenary armies they employ to protect them. Just drug dealers that are paid off by the corrupting forces. It is the same strategy employed by the British Empire when it was smuggling opium into China during the opium wars.

The military is involved in a process of bulkanization of the areas where U.S. troops are stationed and in Saudi Arabia. In Afghanistan, the U.S. has deliberately set up drug lords and pushed for the state to dissolve into many states that are divided along their religious sect lines. In Iraq, the U.S. has deposed a Sunni dictator, Saddam Hussein, and allowed a Shiite government to be propped up, creating an Iranian ally. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Yemen have all been having struggles against their dictatorships, yet Libya is the only one getting NATO/U.S. "assistance." Does seeing these maps put the whole series of events in a little more perspective? The U.S. is provoking and otherwise, allowing, dissent only in the countries where it can benefit. Syria is brutalizing its protesters and its people and, while it appears as though NATO is getting ready to intervene, they have not yet. Turkey and Syria have had border disputes for awhile. Many Syrians have fled to Turkey and Turkey is becoming upset at the reasons why this is happening. Turkey could very well invade Syria.

Saudi Arabia is being prepped for a conflict with Iran through Yemen and Bahrain. Yemen and Bahrain are both Sunni governments and currently being protested by Shia's. They are cracking down hard on the protesters in both states and the U.S. does nothing; the U.S. media says nothing. In Yemen, the Sunni government is backed by the Saudis while the rebels are Shiite and backed by Iran. The same is true in Bahrain. Saudi Arabia has vowed never to allow a Shiite government to prevail along their borders. The U.S. is on a very coordinated destabilization campaign that is likely to lead to several more civil wars and several more invasions. We can see their goals; they are not even close.

This last week, Hillary Clinton recognized the rebels in Libya as the legitimate government there. There are plenty of reports that say that the rebels in Libya are made up of al qaeda. The U.S. media absolutely refuses to report on Gaddafi's support and when it does report on Libya, completely obfuscates what is going on there. This is how the U.S. acts and it shows that al qaeda is little more than a patsy proxy group not unlike the Contras. Here is video of the Gaddafi supporters. Webster Tarpley also describes what is going on and to what extent. The whole event was a show of force to NATO and the 'rebels'.

The 'Arab Spring' was a part of a much larger operation in terms of the U.S-Iranian strategy. Many including, Webster Tarpley as well as F. William Engdahl, have written about these issues. North Africa is considered by the U.S. to be part of the "Greater Middle East" as do portions of central Asia. Egypt is a whole story unto itself, but it was a provocation by the U.S. As one can see from the maps, the U.S intends to destabilize many more areas in hopes of slowly carving out new borders, almost everywhere in the region, that will allow for Western hegemony to prevail. With the recent deployments of military armaments and large scale drill exercises from the U.S. to China, one would think that the it was a mistake to get rid of the color coded warning system (joke).

The ZeroHedge article says of the Israeli role,

"Masters asked Baer why the US military is not mobilising to stop this war from happening. Baer responded that the military is opposed, as is former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who used his influence to thwart an Israeli attack during the Bush and Obama administrations. But he's gone now and "there is a warning order inside the Pentagon" to prepare for war." The punchline: "There is almost "near certainty" that Netanyahu is "planning an attack [on Iran] ... and it will probably be in September before the vote on a Palestinian state. And he's also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict", Baer explained."

and that,

"Given all that, is it possible that the United States would allow Israel to attack when the president knows we would be forced to join the war on Israel's side? The president is up for re-election next year," Blair pointed out, and Israel is "truly out of control". What happens when you see 100 F-16's approaching Iraq and there is a call to the White House [from Netanyahu] that says "We're going in, we're at war with Iran"? What does the President of the United States do? He has little influence over Bibi Netanyahu. ... We can't stop him. And he knows it."

By the way, Robert Baer, is the guy who George Clooney plays in Syriana. He wrote the book "See No Evil" which inspired the movie.

The best hope we have, strangely, comes from one of the U.S. imperial strategists, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in an interview with the Daily Beast, where he implied that the U.S. military should shoot down the Israeli fighters when they fly over Iraqi airspace to bomb Iran. That was in 2009, I wonder if he thinks the same thing today?

"Created by wars that required it, the machine now created the wars it required" - Joseph Schumpeter

We all know from the broken window fallacy that war is the best way to increase production which is just what the U.S. needs. Let's just hope that the oil production isn't altered too much cause a war of this potential scale would cripple the U.S. and Chinese economies that are dependent on the circulation of middle eastern oil. The video below features Paul Krugman in the beginning, claiming that war is good for the economy, before it details his error in logic. He is a terrible economist and only has credibility because he won an increasingly meaningless Nobel prize. Look for this man to sell war as the answer for the continually deteriorating economy as he is a very high paid economic propagandist. And don't be surprised if there is a serious terror attack in the meantime, real or staged, to 'help the public to understand' the danger and necessity of action.

What is Financial Terrorism?

2011-07-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

Give yourself a few minutes of clarity and watch this episode of the Keiser Report. It is very enlightening.

They discuss at the beginning how many people do not even realize what social programs they are on. It is pretty ridiculous. Interestingly enough, the report used in the episode was also in my economics book from my last post (pictured right).

Then they talk about how that filters its way into the financial terrorism that is taking place all over the world right now. I had to post the episode because after they make the comparison to the banks "gambling on the future of the US" they talk about a very specific person, Eric Cantor, who has a very specific bond, creating a conflict of interest for the US Senator and his stance on the debt ceiling.

@6:21 - "ULTRA short! Double down. Betting that the American bond market will collapse." - Max Keiser

I laughed so hard.

If you don't know what "Shorting" is Max explains it @~9:50 or so.

Thoughts?

Textbook Economic Propaganda, Literally.

2011-07-15T23:24:00.000-07:00

Here is one example of how economics is used to propagandize very specific ideas in people. The author sets up very flimsy arguments and then treats them as if they are scientific problems than only government economists can see and fix. The class is E308, and "NOT INTENDED FOR ECONOMICS MAJORS." The class is given early on in the education and economics curriculum.

Here is the book: "Public Finance and Public Policy" I used the 3rd edition in class. I have some page citations, but this post was made from my notes and I have since sold the book and do not have proper references =/

Chapter 1, Section 1. Political Obfuscation

It starts with politics on page one. The author begins by giving his account of the 2008 financial panic and the subsequent political reaction. This whole two page explanation is riddled with what I consider to be lies and purposeful distortions. At first, i gave him the benefit of the doubt in that he may have been trying to simplify the given reactions and interventions, but this is doesn't hold up towards the end of the several paragraphs.

First, he says that the issue divided the politicians straight down party lines and that the republicans were resistant to the bailouts and that the democrats had pushed for large interventions. He wrongly credits the Obama administration and congress for passing the initial $787 billion stimulus. He says that the bill was passed by a, "Strong Democratic Congress and the newly elected President Obama," and that, "The final stimulus," had more Democratic influence. I find this to be incorrect because it was passed in September 2008 and anyone who was paying attention would know that September comes before November and even if it didn't Obama would not be getting credit until the end of January when he took office. He quotes Harry Reid, "Our entire country will suffer and the world will suffer," to incite the gravity of the situation in the reader.

He takes a quote from John McCain way out of context. The quote is: "We're laying out multi trillions of dollars of debt on future generations of Americans. I cannot support such a thing." We all know that McCain flew home from the campaign trail to vote for TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program). This quote was taken, not only after the election, but about a different bailout; Obama's 'out of the gate' $800bn dollar program. Sure enough, when one follows the citation provided by the author, one finds that it is in fact not from Bush's $787 bailout. The author is purposely selecting false and misleading quotations.

He then says that the public had a "59% approval rating" of the passage of the bill, an un-cited statistic. My question here is, if the Congress didn't pass it, and had to be threatened and coerced to pass it, and the people wanted it so badly, why was the Congressional approval rating in the single digits immediately after the passage of the bill? I can cite my statistics and they are not the same. In fact, this article seems to be closer to the author's time of revisions for this edition and has a similar statistic. Could the author have been trying to associate the positive public opinion with "Brand Obama"? Or might he not have even realized it?

I submit, this has been written firmly to plant false ideas and progression of events in naive readers minds. The intended result is to further polarize the economic understanding of those inclined towards education and/or the public sector (something they don't need any more of!). When I say 'polarize the economic understanding', I mean to mislead people into thinking that this book is objective evaluation and not and example of politically motivated use of language; obfuscation.

Chapter 1, Section 4. Something For the Whole Family

Here the author discusses the merits of, you guessed it, flu vaccinations. To get people's minds in the right state of emotion, he starts by saying there are 45 million Americans without health insurance. He says that people who do not take flu shots increase the risk of contaminating others. This carries more negative externalities in the form of causing a rise in medical costs and, because the author is a professor, students grades drop. The definition of a negative externality (from the book [for clarity]): "When a decision imposes on others costs that I don't bear." Seems like my forcing medicine down someone's throat might be a decision that imposes costs that I don't bear, no?

These are not arguments that anyone would make using verbal logic. He is making a very broad assertion based on a, seemingly economic, mathematical formula. It is based on simple inverse relationship principles and is fallacious in the parameters he sets up. The original formula was theorized by Daniel Bernoulli:

"Δu/ Δx. [utility] diminishes as x increases." (Rothbard Vol.1 p.380-381)

Gruber is assuming that utility is properly measurable, which is not true under scrutiny.

- If i get my flu shot I do decrease the risk of others getting it, assuming I am around people who do not have the vaccine, but I do not cause a rise in medical costs in general. After all, if I don't get my vaccine then i am not consuming a unit of it. This technically will drop the price, or not change it, because I'm leaving my unit on the market for others, effectively ensuring that the market is +1 unit no matter what because i am not buying one. Costs generally lower here.

Got it, Gruber?

- My flu shot has nothing to do with other students grades, regardless of the complications of externalities. This is not an economic argument that one would make with verbal logic. His logic says that, by my getting a flu shot, then others school performance would rise and would lower the costs associated. This is absurd. My getting a flu shot consumes a unit on the market meaning that there are less available for others to purchase and consume and my consumption, or lack of, has nothing to do with other students grades. After all, they can get the shot or choose not to, so it cannot be entirely my 'fault' for someone else getting sick. Get it?

He is, supposedly, an economist, are we not considering correlation and causation? Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

The bulk of these pages were written as evidence that mandatory vaccines are beneficial and perfectly "rational." Economics says so.

Chapter 11, Section 1. Productivity through Envy

In this section the author intends to confuse and distort the economic distinctions between wealth creation and wage distribution. This is the worst of all in my opinion. He thinks that since the public funds education system that the public must receive (tangible) benefits in return...dangerous stuff we get into this book.

The story is about Stacy, who goes to college, gets a higher education and therefore, becomes more productive in the workforce. (It should be pointed out that this chapter is about "Education and Productivity" and from the perspective of teachers) A.K.A. a more productive teacher. Right away the author says, "...higher standard of living that comes with increased productivity." But the next sentence he changes the means to the end:

"However, this higher standard of living is not an externality if the worker is the only one who reaps the benefit from her higher productivity...For example, if more education raises Stacy's Marginal Product of Labor (MPL) but the increase is fully reflected in her receiving a higher wage from her employer, then there is no positive externality to society from Stacey's education."

- Her education need not 'benefit' anyone but her. It looks like this is an example of a negative externality for paying taxes, no? The positive externalities Gruber manages to make up are: a. – Her success encourages others to work harder (This is laughably unlikely. I would bet that envy does the opposite of encouraging production). and b. The government can tax her in a higher bracket...

This is naked Marxism. She is producing above her need (because she can) and it is expected that her 'surplus' productivity should be taxed for the benefit of others.

If we think of Stacy as a table maker (something tangibly productive) and she goes to college and becomes more productive at making tables, IE. less materials, less time, etc., then we would say that the marginal cost (MC) of producing the tables have dropped. This allows the seller to sell for less. This encourages more people to buy the tables as a new market has open up, the lower price market, and as more and more people accumulate tables in their houses (something they would not stockpile or buy repeatedly; Diminishing Marginal Utility) this is the wealth that is being added to society. When more people have the 'luxury of the table', does that not constitute a raised standard of living? The author overlooks the fact that you do not increase wealth in society by buying things, you increase it by creating them. Buying things causes people to create them. Therefore, you create wealth while you are working and being paid in wages. Where the wages are consumed show where productivity (reinvestment) is further desired by society.

Since when does an 'increase in productivity' not mean wealth creation? Her working harder (improving efficiency) does add wealth to society.

The book also stresses the difference in equity and efficiency. I find this to be a misnomer. Time is money. I do not expect equitable results from a project that i put no effort, time, labor, or money into.

Chapter 11, Section 2. Active and Informed Voters

P.293 - Citizenship (Public Education) The author suggests "State funds" be used to encourage "Informed and active voters" in the form of public schools. He is at this point literally calling for the education of immigrants in public schools so that they may be "Informed and active voters." He says this will, "improve the democratic process" and is "fairly compelling." There is a sort of inherent agenda bias in this thinking.

Later on P. 293 Failure to maximize family utility. The author states that parents may not know the right 'level' of education to provide for their child. He looks at the parents concerns for present consumption vs. the child's future income. (when deciding on a money level for the child's education). In other words, the author assumes that parents aren't smart enough or responsible enough to make these decision; they could be too selfish to think of the child as well, but the government econometricians sure know what's right! This is another example where the book is promoting public policy over family decision making.

As a side note, the author overlooks the quantity mechanism of having too many college degrees in the job market, diluting the value of each other. We don't need everyone in college. Some people need to work in the blue collar labor forces. It is just not politically correct to say so.

Be careful when you are reading. There were plenty more examples in this book. Propaganda is intricate, obfuscatory, and present everywhere. There is no better way to propagate an idea or an ideology than to teach it as fact to young people and presenting these ideas as a science in the form of economics is very effective.

Eating Propaganda (Part 1)

2011-07-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

If people are ever to conquer the fictional narrative that the (I shudder to call it) 'mainstream media' has created, and facilitated on behalf of those that require it, they must come to understand the tactics that the media conglomerates use to create fables from real information. What people have, for some reason, come to accept as 'spin' is in practice a form of lying without technically telling a lie. It is a rhetorical game. Semantics. Think of when a little kid says, "I plomise," when made to promise against something that they want. The kid thinks, "If mom didn't catch it, then i didn't really promise!" This is what the media promotes when it repeats, and helps to instill, Official Press Statements from the their corporate sponsors and political overlords. For instance, the U.S. bombings in upwards of ten countries is, "Not war, but kinetic military action." Or that the Federal Reserve didn't create trillions ($X,XXX,XXX,XXX,XXX) of dollars in hypothetical credit to trade the banks for worthless paper assets, they, "Quantitatively eased the banks to shore up toxic assets." They are trained by government coercion and advertising money not to question the "Official Public Relations Statement."

Public relations is just a euphemism for propaganda. It, the term "public relations," was brought into broad usage after World War I because the governments of the world went into high gear using propaganda to cull war dissent in the public psyche. The word 'propaganda' comes from the Vatican (ha) and, today, simply means that something is 'in action' propagating an idea; be it a poster, TV show, magazine, movie, newspaper, book, or a piece of art. There were no negative connotations with the word before the war. Interestingly, because of the new negative association with the word, the term 'public relations' is itself an example of itself. The term 'public relations' was rhetorically designed to disguise the meaning and true nature of the word which it was replacing, 'propaganda'.

A Little History

School of Athens - Raphael (1510)

In the past, society developed a liberal education system that was broken into two basic formats: language and mathematics. Language was taught first and was broken into three branches; grammar, logic (dialectic), and rhetoric. They were taught in that order and it was known as the trivium. We might call it 'undergraduate' school today, but it would have been taught much earlier in life than college for contemporary society. This concept of the trivium was the basis for people's ability to both learn and to teach. It is not missing today, but chopped up and fed, slowly, and in the wrong order, to people who become less and less able to learn.

Grammar, being first, was the method of the mechanics of language. It taught people how to identify phrases and objects. The structure of language is unearthed in grammar. Logic, was then what it is today. It sought to construct the sequence of events, helped to clarify contradictory thoughts, and reinforced understanding of cause and effect, before and after, and post hoc ergo propter hoc. Logic also performed the function of helping to avoid in one's own arguments, or identify in others, fallacies. Rhetoric, was the last stage and the most important. It helped people to articulate exactly what they meant. It taught people to speak elegantly and with linguistic precision. A proper understanding of rhetoric, and thus language at large, gave people the ability, if used correctly, to command the understanding of others. When Alexander the Great heard of Aristotle's writings being used to educate in this manner anyone who could read, he wrote to him saying,

Alexander 356 - 323 B.C.

"You have not done well to publish your books of oral doctrine [rhetoric]; for what is there now that we excel others in, if those things which we have been particularly instructed in be laid open to all? For my part, I assure you, I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion. Farewell." (Plutarch Alexander 356-323 B.C. 10th paragraph)

Obviously, Alexander was upset that Aristotle was giving away the power to comprehend and to persuade. Alexander's "dominion" and its "extent" was the ability that he had to manipulate the will of the people who heard him speak because he knew the proper function of language. This gave people the power to argue back against someone who was seen as tricking, or usurping, their ability to make free, willful, informed choices by the manipulation of language. To understand this basic education system is to speak the language of persuasion. Propaganda will pop out at you.

Socrates was also lambasted for "making the weaker argument the stronger." In Plato's "Apology," Socrates, who was on trial for corrupting the mental process's of the people who had listened to him speak, was given the opportunity to tell his side of the story and was subsequently found guilty on grounds of "specious reasoning and deceptive speaking." He pleaded with them, arguing that he should not even be on trial, but looked at as a teacher and guider of wisdom. A victim of his own superiority, Socrates was seen to be winning arguments that the majority of Athenians thought he should not be winning. He simply knew how to convince them and most people did not get it. They thought he was tricking them. Now, mind you, this didn't end well for Socrates, the Athenians sentenced him to death, but the principle of not giving in to idiocy is its true value. What Socrates once used to try to enlighten people, that is the power to persuade, is today being used to keep people utterly brain dead when it comes to anything outside of their immediate vision.

Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, helped popularize the use of propaganda after World War I as well as the term "public relations". He made the observation that the use of mass propaganda doesn't need to be restricted to war time. The function of wartime propaganda was to encourage secrecy, patriotism, work ethic, etc., and it could be used to help develop certain characteristics out of society during peace time as well. Bernays gives the example of influential leaders being a target of manipulation of public opinion. "'Leaders' assert their authority through community drives and amateur theatricals. Thousands of women may unconsciously belong to a sorority which follows the fashions set by a single society leader."(Propaganda p.17) Corporations realized immediately that it could be used to create and dominate markets. They figured out that they could exploit the class envy of the rich through peer pressure and several other methods.

Bernays

"Men are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions. A man may believe that he buys a motor car because, after careful study of the technical features of all makes on the market, he has concluded that this is the best. His almost certainly fooling himself. He bought it, perhaps because a friend whose financial acumen he respects bought one last week; or because his neighbors believed he was not able to afford a car of that class; or because its colors are those of his college fraternity." (p.51)

Bernays mentions that newspapers editors used to kill stories if they thought that the column was meant to benefit anyone, but the contrast, in 1928, was that that view had been abandoned and that it did not matter if the stories were of benefit to anyone as long as it was "news worthy." (p. 151) We can see how even that principle has shifted. Today, news stations refuse to report on events that damage an interest that could advertise with them.

A few years later, in 1937, an organization was started to spot and inform the public of the use propaganda. This organization was called "Institute for Propaganda Analysis." The Institute published four books on propaganda. The techniques it wrote about stressed the importance of the fallacy. Fallacies are errors or misconceptions in methods of reasoning; faulty logic. It was subsequently shut down by the government at the start of U.S. involvement in World War II. There were seven main techniques of propaganda according to the Institute:

American Gothic (1930) - Grant Wood

Plain Folks - An ad that claims to be aligned with the everyday person and their everyday interests. It is a method of creating artificial trust in the spokesman to the person receiving. This exploits the fallacy of generalizations and 'appeal to emotion' through transferal, testimonial, and bandwagon.

Name Calling - Fear mongering; uses prejudice in many forms to incite emotional reactions to information with the intent of forming the opinion of the recipient. This is best exemplified by the fallacy of 'ad hominem', to the man; off the subject attacks on one's character. Calling people unpatriotic for not supporting your political agenda, calling someone an ideologue. Scaring people with rhetoric as a way of using their emotions to control them.

mmmm cigarettes...notice the black, white and red.

Transfer - This method is commonly used in advertising today. Celebrity endorsements are used to bring appeal to an object or idea. This can also be used in the opposite manner by associating a person with bad things, as is commonly done in political campaign ads. Symbolism is also used in this manner. This is an overt, kind of, subversive technique; hiding it in plain sight. The goal may be the public impression of positive generalization as well as a reverse psychological ploy of calling out the character of those that choose or think differently; an inverse of name calling.

Testimonial - This is when labels carry endorsements from people who wield influence for one reason or another. A world class athlete would know more about what deodorants work and what do not or what food is healthy and what is not. This may have a faulty premise and is an example of the fallacy of "argument through modesty." Or, an "appeal to authority" because "the authority figure would know better." This is not to be confused with subjective interpretation of evidence, which is a different form, (without malicious intent) but appeals to some kind of authority or expert in whatever field is relevant. Leaving only subjective interpretation as the main point of contention.

Passivity

Card Stacking - This is where information is misrepresented. It can be looked at like confirmation bias; the observation of only the information that backs up preconceived notions. Some say that this is unavoidable because you tend to just not really admit things you see, all the little bits of data that blur by in a day, into your immediate conscious. Either one can omit some information (the lie of omission) or present selective evidence that supports the end of the propagandist. This is common on news media channels on TV and radio. They will present information twisted to the pleasure of the viewership/listenership demographics. This is sometimes accompanied by disparaging the opposition; ad hominem and transfer.

Glittering Generalities - these are emotionally appealing words or phrases so closely associated with highly-valued concepts and beliefs that they carry conviction without supporting information or reason. This technique purposely reinforces the fallacy of sweeping generalizations. Referred to as an accident of logic, but used by propagandists it is anything but accidental.

Bandwagon - This is the most common form of propaganda in use. Bandwagon is a technique used to gather people under a fad or social phenomenon. Because more people are on one side, it is correct. This is also similar to saying that all that is needed for a correct decision is a consensus of opinion. It is another version of the fallacy of generalizations and appeals to emotion. It earns its effectiveness on the backs of the feelings of loneliness that are inherent in people. "You don't want to be left out do you?!" "No Child Left Behind."

Instant Classic.

2011-07-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Adaptation on the Mises forums for this montage. And Ron Paul.

got it

Also, this babe, doing a pretty good Palin mind read

#Operation Bohemian Grove?

2011-07-12T13:42:00.000-07:00

Hopefully they are actually hacking these 'organizations'...

USA! USA! USA!

2011-07-09T22:53:00.000-07:00

Banks.

#1
WHERE
IT
MATTERS!!

This shows the true state of the U.S. economy. Ask yourself whether or not it is worth it to fight back.

I wonder what the U.S. could cut back on...?

"The

American

Mentality"

You are HERE.

--Or maybe you're not, I don't know.

American Productivity

The American Work Ethic

"American Ingenuity or American Honesty"

"What Needs to Happen"

"What Should"

Where is Ron Paul?!?

2011-07-08T20:54:00.000-07:00

The mainstream media has again proven that it holds a distinguishable bias in its political news reporting. On June 30th, the Republican candidates had to have their second quarter donation totals in. This number is used as a kind of gauge on how well the candidates are received early on. Mitt Romney, being the favorite of the banking elite, won by a large margin, with almost 20 million, while the others were all, for the most part, comparative in totals. Ron Paul came in second with 4.5 million and then Tim Pawlenty with 4.2 million and Joe Huntsman at 4.1 million. The others falling into the 'nominal' funds category. But, the average watcher of 'Morning Joe' wouldn't know Ron Paul's total would they? MSNBC corrected this instance the next day, but habitually omits the success of Paul's campaign. Here is another exclusion of the success of Ron Paul, this time by the LA Times and using the same 'source' from AP that MSNBC and Joe Scarborough used to omit him.

This has been a habit of the mainstream media when it comes to Dr. Paul's campaign efforts. Fox actively tried to make their viewers think that people were upset that Ron Paul won the CPAC straw poll, when in reality they were not. Fox ran sound bytes from the previous year over the video of the current event to project disapproval, that wasn't there, from the audience at a victory by Ron Paul.

CNN deliberately shows misleading polls numbers in order to skew public opinion of him. This poll by CNN says the public think very differently than what the the media generates. The 'bandwagon effect' is in full force as a method of propaganda by these 'news' organizations. The corporate media machine fears the 12th monkey. It marks the decline of their repetition based brainwashing system.

Ask yourself what the other candidates have in common and why they exclude Ron Paul in ways that transcend traditional political boundaries as well as traditional smear campaigns? It is important that you do this. This election will require that Ron Paul supporters do everything in their power to get everyone they know to understand how their own interests are being used against them in the name of banking stability, endless debt, and wars.

How do you think these things can be brought to light?

On a lighter note, Larry David was on Morning Joe that morning. "Llyod Braun? You know Llyod Braun?!"

Independence Day

2011-07-04T04:09:00.000-07:00

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

#OpESR

2011-07-02T21:42:00.000-07:00

A99

#USDayofRage

#DayofRageCA (All 50 States)

The Mystery of Raymond Davis.

2011-06-25T17:36:00.000-07:00

The following is a discussion of why we 'found' Osama, where, and when. Remember, Obama started planning the May 1st raid in March, while was filling out his brackets, son! He had the information prior to October of 2010, but didn't authorize planning until after this little James Bond slip up.

So i was doing some reading about this guy, Raymond Davis. He was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan for shooting dead two men who he claims 'brandished' a pistol at him. Differing reports say that he shot the men several times through the windshield of his car and then stepped out to shoot them again. They were ahead of him in traffic and had their backs to him. He called for assistance and a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado is said to have went across the median towards him and collided with and killed a motorcyclist before failing to reach Davis and fleeing the scene. This car was later revealed to have inconsistent license plates. Davis said that he was under the impression that the two men were robbing him and was acting is self defense. The Pakistani's claim that the two men he shot weren't street thugs out to rob foreigners, but Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agents.

The dichotomy of the U.S. official version and what the Pakistani's claim gets even wider as we go on. The problem I am having is over how the most important things, the implications, of what was going on here and why this is such a big deal. Maybe there is a reason why the Obama administration asked, specifically for the U.S. media to stand down on this one,

"A number of US media outlets learned about Davis's CIA role but have kept it under wraps at the request of the Obama administration. A Colorado television station, 9NEWS, made a connection after speaking to Davis's wife. She referred its inquiries to a number in Washington which turned out to be the CIA. The station removed the CIA reference from its website at the request of the US government."

Davis is a CIA 'contractor' as far as the media is concerned. Some describe him as a 'diplomat' others say he's there on 'official business', but reports started coming in that he "had ties with local militants" and that this discovery was made through his cell phone records. American officials said that, "Davis’s job was to trail links of the Taliban and al Qaeda in different parts of Pakistan." They found in his car, "158 items...which include a 9mm Gloc Pistol, five 9mm magazines, 75 bullets, GPS device, an infrared torch, a wireless set, two mobile phones, a digital camera, a survival kit, five ATM cards, and Pakistani and US currency notes." These all sound like things a 'diplomat' has and needs. The camera had pictures from the Indian border as well as Pakistani defense installments. The Pakistanis were immediately vindicated when the State Depatment released that Raymond Davis was merely an alias and not at all a diplomat and that he did not have diplomatic immunity and even if he did, murder is outside of those immunities. The CIA had nothing when they said that he had it and the Pakistanis knew it.

The man was very clearly a spy/mercenary who was caught red handed killing two people who were investigating him and his actions. Upon arrest there were reports that indicate him as being part of, "TF373," a covert operation on the Afghani border of Pakistan related to TFOrange and the SEAL team involved in the Abottabod operation on May 1st. These reports even go so far as to say that there was evidence of him selling 'nuclear fissle' and 'biological' materials. These allegations originate in claims from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and are not widely reported in the Western media. The Pakistani's believe Davis is part of a concerted effort to make the Pakistani nuclear facilities and weapons appear compromised. Davis has since been released and sent home on what amounts to a 'blood money' deal paid to the family's of the deceased. This is, apparently, more or less a common practice in Pakistan.

To put this into perspective, we see that Osama was found using the same technique of tracing phone calls. The U.S. is trying pretty hard to do just what the Pakistani's are accusing the U.S. of trying to do. Namely, make their country look like it is overrun by terrorists that have access to nuclear weapons.

Interestingly enough, the Pakistani's tried (and failed) to use Davis to free a controversial detainee of our own, Aafia Siddique. She was accused, once upon a time, of funding Al Qaeda and having indirect links to the main plotters of 9/11 and was sentenced to 86 years in prison last year. Although these reports show deliberate misinformation planted in official military reports to absolve the military from any wrong doing she was still convicted. She is also suspected of being a prisoner, with no rights and no formal charges, in a secret unacknowledged prison in Afghanistan from 2003 to late 2008. What Amnesty International calls a 'ghost detainee'. And we all know that if it is not 'officially' reported, then it's probably not real.

I don't know what I'd put past the U.S. Establishment. And when it comes to war with Pakistan the Chinese have taken their side. As our leaders have shown, they want Pakistan's nukes and have had active the units that they plan to get them with.

The Federal Reserve.

2011-06-25T12:34:00.000-07:00

The Federal Reserve. In case you've never heard of it.

Warrrrrrrmmerr with #RapNews

2011-06-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

"Now in Libya we see the possible use of depleted uranium shells, we see infrastructure destroyed, we see universities bombed, we see all the “collateral damage.” Yet, this is a “humanitarian intervention”?" -- Ron Paul

I found these videos as well. You'd be suprised at how accurate all of the information is given the portrayals. Esoteric, hackers, mass media, conspiracy, military, and apathy. Props to juicemedia.com for making them. If you use the internet I'd support #antisec, but keep in mind 'anarchist' groups are easy to infiltrate for the people that don't support it. There are reasons why Lulzsec hacked Infragard. Infragard is a group of citizen spies, deputized by the FBI. Enjoy.

"Knowledge is power."

Revised and hopefully clarified on 7/3/11.

The REVOLUTION could be televised, but who cares?! I just got poked!

2011-06-18T19:15:00.000-07:00

It is amazing to me that as people become more and more "connected" through the internet they become more and more disconnected when, all things considered, actually caring about other people and their lives. I can understand, to some level, why people would want an online self-worship center...maybe they have a talent that they want to show off, maybe they have political messages they think they have thought out and would like other people to subscribe to (=D), maybe they are trying to start a business, but this states the case rather well.

I think the problem is that most people in the United States of Amnesia cannot literally see the world falling apart from inside their bedroom window. They only see what they want to see, which is very dangerous. It really is like the Matrix. Our media doesn't show us the riots in Europe or Africa, or the Middle East; it only makes print media. They don't tell us that NATO bombed a Libyan University. We are simply fed propaganda about how the people 'over there' are animals and uncivilized. But those people have found solidarity. When we aren't forced to interact in situations which we find unpleasant we lose the connection to humanity that brings us together in a meaningful way. Everything becomes superficial and inherently political. (Yes, when you are in personal situations, with friends or family, where there are differences of opinion or in information dissemination, broadly speaking, it is politics) We have the option of engrossing ourselves in only things that we care about, and i am sorry to report to you that, we stop noticing anything else. It makes a clear case for extreme-selfishness to become the cultural norm. Just because everyone has a facebook and a twitter or whatever doesn't mean we are unified in our thoughts or feelings simply because we are all on the same website. hahaha. But think of it this way, if you don't like what someone has to say you can just "x" out of it. The thing that sucks about that is that some things are meant to enrage you. They are meant to get you riled up, but you will never get the message when you are just "x" ing out so you can go to the SG blog. You will perpetually be a slave to your own narrow vision of what is real and what is important. A cog.

I got bitched at for my blog title not being clear enough so here it is: We, in the U.S. are fed more propaganda than anywhere else in world history. We, knowing nothing about the banking system and how it rules our lives, our political system and people, don't care. It's not because it is unimportant, it is because it is purposely withheld as viable information from our news circuits. When you consider the effectiveness of Goebbels in Nazi Germany and compare it to the War Machine that is most of our economy, he would be taking lessons from us. The Europeans know that their enemy is the entire Western banking system as where over here we think it is 'global warming' and a few hundred impoverished, drug addicted, convict-exile, religious lunatics that our government organized and funded to destabilize Soviet occupied Afghanistan in the 80's. Yes, al queda is us and we use them to fuck up other countries then our government and cunt media lie and tell us that it is foreign propaganda.

The revolution could be televised? ...It simply won't matter because everyone is on their facebook showing everyone else pictures of all the beers they drank last night! and how cool their new WILDLY OVERPRICED third-world made clothes are! or fawning over their new iphone! "AREN'T I COOL!?!?!

As Webster Tarpley says, this generation is a generation of nihilists with nothing particular to believe in, that ties them together as a generation. Therefore, we cannot be deterred from our own beliefs no matter how absurd they may be. We'll believe in whatever and that's that. "So, if my government is across the world murdering millions of people for...whatever reason, that is irrespective of anything that pertains to my interests and there is no reason why i should care about it. It is not important." I'm not saying I'm perfect or excluded from all of my own complaints, but "the unexamined life is not worth living." I do my best to make sure the people around me have some perspective of how important the world situation is and how their life expendable to the system and that that in itself should be reason to fight back, even if it huwts thew wittlw feewings regarding what is 'important'. What is ironic about it is that I am the anarchist, the libertarian, but by most accounts, I am the one who is, "...devoid of human feelings, without religion, an Atheist, a Malthusian..."

Hero League

2011-06-18T02:21:00.000-07:00

fucking a

Internet: Epitome of Anarchy

2011-06-18T01:10:00.000-07:00

I was cruising over at the Mises Forums and made the following post about Internet Freedom and regulation. There is concern that the Congress will pass a law allowing people who link to websites that are accused of copyright infringement to be prosecuted under felony charges. Certainly it is absurd and virtually impossible to enforce. Here are my thoughts on internet freedom and the economics of the internet.

First, the internet doesn't fall under normal economic circumstances. Scarcity is a non-issue. Replication of data is free and instant. Think about that. Transmitting data is not free, but it takes little effort and replaces traditional physical distribution, I will go through that later. The only thing left is development. Development being the actual building of the data (music, movies, games, books, research). Things like piracy will, in the near future, force a decline in the revenues of publishers and by extension developers. (This goes for music and movies and books as well). The Mises Institute has the right idea with books. Everything, as far as i know, that they publish themselves is on their site for free (I've downloaded hundreds of books and essays from them for my Kindle and buy when i can. Yes i do do it).

Current intellectual property laws are absurd and were written for machine production, or physical production in general, not personal computer data, but that is not how the governments of the world look at it. They think that if the big corporations decline in value that it is a sign of economic weakness, not for the economic growth which it, in reality, is. People are making more economic choices because they can. They are acting because the means of saving, or economic choice, has been made more efficient and therefore more accessible. The media data that they purchase on the internet, for 1/5th the price of the retail brick and mortar version, frees up the 4/5ths of their money that they would have spent on the same thing. So, that savings is dispersed elsewhere in the economy and furthers the consumer's standard of living; albeit in a new and more economic direction. They now have what they would have bought anyway, but paid dramatically reduced prices. My contention, which is fairly obvious, is that this relationship of scarcity of production goods and super abundance of digital data files, will decrease overall production of the digital data physical equivalents and that the money will be spent on physical luxuries overall, in whatever form they may take.

This may mean that some familiar retail stores go out of business. The volume of sales of physical goods that are available in digital format will erode the revenues and profitability of brick and mortar stores that make their money around these formats. We've already seen this, for the most part, in the corporate music industry. They still make sales, but they are in constant decline and will never recover. Movie production companies have yet to suffer this fate. Movies themselves require much more effort and labor be put into their production and this money is usually made back before the it leave the theater. Maybe, in the future, movies that don't at least break even, before they leave the box office, won't see mass DVD releases, but only online sales. Retail video games will go the same route as movies, but they will be more able to cope with the declines in revenue. The game developers that have been successful in the indie development world are setting the stage that all computer software developers will mimic in the near future. The difference, again, is that indie games are less likely to see mass retail distribution. So it would follow, that in the future there will be dramatically reduced quantities of the different physical copies of music, movies, and games for sale which would imply that retail stores will be proportionately smaller. There will simply be less goods that are able to be produced to put on retail shelves. This is what the internet will do to the "retail service sector" economy in the U.S. Laws prohibiting people from sharing information are illegitimate and interfere with people's ability to make economic choices. Because of copyright laws and illegitimate intellectual property regulations the U.S. economy will further spin its way down the toilet.

These new laws are grasping at straws to prevent the big name music, movie, and game publishers from going bankrupt in the long run. They won't be able to maintain their enormous amount of money so they legislate against options on the internet as a way of making their shit relevant. All media should basically be free on the internet anyway. Freeware and Shareware (pay if you want) has been around ever since Windows 3.1 and that is the way the internet will equilibrate after the ENTIRE bubble has deflated (assuming the government and our wise overlords let it/us).

The laws show the true nature of the 'justice' system and the federal regulating agencies as the hyper-corporate fascist ideologues they all are at heart. "Fascism" or "Corporatism" is, for the most part , but among other things, the form of economy that used to be called "Mercantilism." Which has, throughout history, been the dominate method of economy. It is what states strive for; the economy of an empire. The only difference here is the focus on money rather than exports. Exports at least ensure there is domestic production occurring. So in this way, mercantilism would be a little bit better than the twisted system the U.S has, in which, all trade is held together by further expenditure of credit. The banks underwrite corporate development and keep specific information away from the market. This allows banks to direct the flow of corporate funds and this allows them to influence the expansion of virtually all economic and governmental activity, assuming debt is involved. And sometimes they end up getting the nation state armies to go to war over their interests. Internet regulation produces through law artificial scarcity of an infinitely abundant good. When lobbied for by big name corporations and financial interests, it becomes a modern example of this corporate/government scheme. In a free market, the companies can't regulate each other, but if they can co-opt a monopolistic lawmaking institution, they can. This usually results in unofficial cartels formed through the government regulatory agencies, in the guise of State or public interest, and this is why we see this kind of stupidity, corruption and, frankly, overall irresponsibility of our leaders to be so ignorant of the mal-intent behind these kinds of legislation.

The way I see it, the corporations are trying to create situations of asymmetric information flows so that people will rely on them for things. And it really is as simple as that. Yes, we need to buy things in order for production of the software, music, and movies to be continued, but the reality of it is that it will just have to be done for cheaper. What is referred to today as "user-made" will soon just mean "made" because there will be no centralized or dominant forces of development. (This all excludes the machines that the programs run on, obviously. I don’t know anyone who can pull together the silicon, copper, lasers, etc. that are required for the creation of a microprocessor or a cell phone).

Streaming music and videos is a joke if you plan on "owning" the material for use on your own terms, or simply if the internet is out and you've "purchased" it. The only way this can be circumvented is if the EULA's explicitly say, "YOU DO NOT OWN THIS," which, of course, some of them do. Others allow you to copy the disc or make image files for backup purposes. The only cost for anything on the internet (which is just INFORMATION) is the infrastructure to bring the internet into your home. You know, the monthly bill you pay to Comcast or Verizon et al. Software development and data distribution don't need to be centralized. Unfortunately, the incessant push for centralization comes to us in the form, courtesy of some of the biggest names in technology, in the form of the cloud.

The 'cloud' concept is also a desperate way to keep control over the internet and personal information and make the end-user dependent. "Store your data with us on our servers that way if they go down or get hacked your PC or tablet or laptop is worthless!" Yea, good thinking Jobs... Make my PC, "just a device." Sure thing, Google... Right on, Amazon... thanks for keeping my privacy in mind while selling all of my info to...whoever (or giving it to the government). Really, the cloud concept is similar to old neighborhood phone lines; if someone picked up the phone in their house and some one down the block was on at the same time it would be like a chat room. You could hear other households conversations without them knowing. It is very similar to hacking. The only difference being, that it was once actual chatting. They even claim that this will cut down on computer and software prices. Trying to make computers cheaper by not giving them substantial hard drives is a crazy idea. Clearly, the big name tech companies don't want us storing our own data. Because we can distribute it outside of their observation. If they are trying to lower prices they need to see that physical media is the poison. Not the hardware.

Think about what it takes to produce a DVD for sale at Best Buy. You need heavy metals for the ink for the cover, wood for the paper, petroleum for the plastic,then stamp it all together, shipping (from China) (on a boat) and then you can't even count on all of the units produced being sold. That is why movies cost $20 or $30 bucks, CD's $15, and games $60! And to be fair, games are sold on contract for the most part with Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony because they must purchase a development license for the consoles and the console manufacturers rely on third party sales to even make a profit on the game hardware. Another check-mark in the positive column for PC gaming is indie game development like Super Meat Boy or Amnesia. The developers of Dead Cyborg have attempted the pay-what-you-want model. They are relatively low cost production and low retail priced games. Prices for PC games can fall because they are not encumbered by contractual arrangements with the hardware developers. The freedom that independent computing allows for is incredible in its scope.

For instance, if you look at the company VaLVE, they make computer games (Half-life, Portal, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress) and are very successful, you'll see that they used to make 5-7 dollars profit per unit at the brick and mortar. However, when they began to sell games, still fully priced, on their online service, Steam, their profit margin moved up to 34-39 dollars per unit! (I am having trouble finding the interview where I read this =/ when I do I'll link) (also Forbes said that VaLVE is worth more than Apple. They only employ something like 250 people and are valued around 4 billion! However, that is only an estimate as they don't publish full numbers and aren't publicly traded. *In terms of human productivity, as translated into dollars, VaLVE is worth more than Google and Apple.*) VaLVE also understands that if you drop the price the market becomes larger,

"During the Holiday sales:

10% (off) sale = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
25% sale = 245% increase in sales
50% sale = 320% increase in sales
75% sale = 1470% increase in sales."

This helps to exemplify (a pretty simple economic axiom) that more people will attempt to obtain the product as the price decreases (my guess is that the internet market, piracy, indie development, and hacking will force the price decline). It's too bad that the FED doesn't get this when it comes to housing markets...

The internet really is the epitome of anarchy. Free association with friendly cooperative development and distribution, all for very little resources.

The old market is useless and is only running up the U.S. trade deficit (that link/[pictured right] shows the MONTHLY numbers and what's worse is that those numbers have been growing for 30 years!) and sending our money overseas to the real production facilities and for some reason, our government wants to continue this. Piracy is healthy (at least for the U.S. consumer's perception of economy or what is actually economic) because the internet means, not just freeDOM, but FREE. These RIAA types are making last ditch efforts to restructure the entire Internet to the ‘cloud’ service to prevent my scenario from realizing......my god...I think I know how Peter Schiff feels.

I'll stick with bit-torrent because:

There are no advertisements

There is only a limit in quantity based on your bandwidth (buy more if you want more)

Boom.

After complaints, revised and, hopefully, clarified on 7/10/11

War and Debt

2011-06-17T17:44:00.000-07:00

Some of you may or may not have seen the Republican Presidential Primary debate. The media gives us shit to work with if we are trying to actually promote good in the world. Obama is pretty much assured a second term with the Republican candidates as they are. There is only one exception, Ron Paul.

Now, many people think he doesn't have a chance. This is because they think that everyone has a superficial view of politics and don't think that people can distinguish between shills and the real deal. Which, there is some evidence to support. They want movie stars and simplicity. Bread and circuses. This election will be different. The anti-war people can no longer say that Obama is the anti-war candidate. And, surely, he is not an anti-debt candidate.

The main platform for any political candidate is to protect the U.S. citizens from external harm. This plays a large part of both parties in the U.S. The difference between the 2012 election and the past two elections in 2004 and 2008, is that we have no obvious “mainstream” anti-war candidate. This is HUGE. No one, aside from psychotics, like hearing on the news that anyone around the globe is dying needlessly. Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate who has any potential to pull the generally exclusive left-wing anti-war vote his way.

If one looks at what is happening in regards to U.S. foreign policy it becomes immediately obvious that Obama had no intention of scaling down the wars upon being inaugurated. He didn’t close Guantanamo, he hasn’t ended drone bombings in foreign countries, habeas corpus is still M.I.A., rendition and torture are still ‘useful’, and the domestic spy state expands unabated. Quite to the contrary, he has done exactly what Romney said he will do and that is, namely, consult his generals. The logical issue here is the generals are the same from administration to administration. If every president listens to them, then the overall foreign policy never changes. This is not to mention the think tanks where the intellectual plans are made of which many generals and defense interests participate. Some have said Paul to be “irresponsible” for wanting to tell his generals what to do. I am left wondering if they have considered the implications of having our military occupying Iraq and Afghanistan while, at the same time, bombing Pakistan and Yemen, unconstitutionally contemplating the deployment of ground troops in Libya, and threatening Lebanon, Iran and Syria. How well do the voters know the generals and some of the ridiculous ideas that they have theorized? (I’m thinking McChrystal’s plan for Task Force Orange to seize Pakistani nuclear arms in much the same manner as the so called “Osama take down” [EDIT: 8/16/11 The source site for that is gone now...here is the Google cache of the page.). How well can we identify the interests of defense contractors and private 'security' forces? And just what does Patraeus watch, ‘Jersey Shore’ or ‘16 and Pregnant’?

Any other Republican candidate can say all they want about ending the wars now that it is en vogue, but they will not stand a chance of chiming the left-wing voters to jump ship from Obama. Think about this. The general liberal voter will not vote for Bachmann, Cain, or any of the other xenophobic mouthpieces based on their stances of what is called ‘social conservatism’ or stated bluntly moral judgementalism. Liberals are for gay rights, open immigration, and abortion, they are against domestic spying and want the military/industrial/security complex dismantled and Ron Paul accepts that people have various interests and priorities. Live and let live.

The main issue for the tea party is the debt. It is obvious that Paul is the only economically literate candidate. He consistently gives real examples that aren’t politically expedient. He knows the distinctions between various schools of economics, of which many are unaware because economics is sold as a “science” in school and therefore is assumed to give definitive conclusions to situations. It cannot, as it is only a series of theories attempting to explain the distribution of goods under conditions of scarcity. The Austrian school, of which Paul subscribes, attempts to observe what markets do in unhampered conditions because ultimately the market is more powerful than regulations. This is what allows those who understand it (Austrian economics) to 'predict' what could happen given certain circumstances.

The “tea party” only has to decide between Paul and Bachmann. Romney, Cain, Pawlenty, and the other one don’t stand with the tea party as much as they stand for the traditional Bush-era GOP. Bachmann’s main talking point was her many, many children. She apparently wants to be the mother of all of America. A noble pursuit, but I have a mom, the country has Founding Fathers, and humanity has Mother Earth. So we’re pretty much covered in that regard. I thought we needed a leader anyway. Bachmann would be an okay Press Secretary for President Paul, however. Maybe that is what Ron should have said when asked at the debate.

Paul has several decades of speeches recorded on the floor on the Congressional Hall stating his positions on virtually every issue that is brought forth. He is consistent, principled, logical, sane, moral, and above all honest about political situations. While Obama and Bush have done their part to bring the U.S. to the brink of both bankruptcy and a possible world war. The liberals are in dismay and are effectively vulnerable to anti-war sentiment, while the tea party has split the republican vote. If the GOP puts up any candidate other than Paul, they hand the election to Obama. If they run Paul, they can cut Obama’s anti-war voter base down significantly. Paul stands alone saying, “End the Empire.” Let’s actually do the world a favor and do it on our terms before the rest of the world does on theirs. Peace.

Eating Propaganda

U.S. Defense Contractors caught selling women and children

Why Ron Paul is the Ballsiest Politician in America

"Reflect, if you please, on these ideas..."

General View of the Powers Conferred by The Constitution

The Federalist No. 41

General View of the Powers Conferred by The Constitution

Independent JournalSaturday, January 19, 1788

To the People of the State of New York:

The "New Green Deal"

The Panic of 2008: All Hail the Fed

War is a Fucking Racket.

ツ Ron Paul needs a catchy slogan

Eating Propaganda (Part 2)

The Man with the Plan.

War Alert!!!

What is Financial Terrorism?

Textbook Economic Propaganda, Literally.

Eating Propaganda (Part 1)

Instant Classic.

#Operation Bohemian Grove?

USA! USA! USA!

Where is Ron Paul?!?

Independence Day

#OpESR

The Mystery of Raymond Davis.

The Federal Reserve.

Warrrrrrrmmerr with #RapNews

The REVOLUTION could be televised, but who cares?! I just got poked!

Hero League

Internet: Epitome of Anarchy

War and Debt

Independent Journal
Saturday, January 19, 1788