Tag Archives: gold

Economics, Politics 2020, Taxation

KNIFE EDGE ELECTION

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Aside from violent politics and anti-Americanism, there are even larger forces at work, and psychologies behind or in front of them, that are shaping the World.   Politics, which has caused these forces to build strength, can barely affect them, now.  Every four years we become hotly exercised over “who will lead the free world,” but the crucial differences we perceive between candidates, are rarely so significant that they will materially impact the inexorable forces already underway.  “It’s the economy, stupid.”  Even James Carville had little understanding of what he had actually said in 1992.  It is the economy… of the world.

Even the mighty United States is barely able, now, to chart its own course, economically.

It is an interesting game, for some, to dredge up what a nickel used to buy compared to today, or what used to be a “damn good weeks pay” for 60 hours of labor.  We created the mis-named “Federal” Reserve System in 1913 to supposedly prevent the excesses and crashes of the banking system, and populated the member banks with the same thieves who had helped crash the economy more than once, but who also finally came up with the right price to purchase Congress’ acquiescence to the Federal Reserve act.  Supposedly the penalties of interest costs would keep Congress from spending beyond its means.

That worked wonders. 

The flaw was and is that there’s no profit to be made without a loan being lent.  Lending to business isn’t profitable enough; big profit comes from lending to countries – especially this one.  There simply needs to be enough crises to justify deficit spending.  That works, too.

An ounce of gold sells lately for nearly $2,000.  In 1932, before FDR stole Americans’ gold by law for $20.50 an ounce, it sold for 1/100th as much.  In other words, in fewer than 90 years the purchasing power vis a’ vis gold declined by 99%.  FDR adjusted that ratio by declaring that gold cost $35 an ounce now that the government owned it, and picked up a few billion dollars with which to “fix” the depressed economy.  Controlling the price of commodities is a useful tool in controlling people.  Many commodities define the whole economies of nations.  Oil, for example, finances several, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Russia and many others.  How belligerent they are towards their “enemies” is often tied to the market price of that single commodity.

Kings and Emperors are bought and sold on some continents for oil, gold or diamonds.  The companies that own or control those commodities, or their banks, are international these days, and tied to any nation only for tax advantage rather than for any sense of tradition or patriotism.  Indeed, the money system is virtually global, not national.  That’s our money, as well.  It’s the economy, stupid.

But the problems that will swamp virtually every nation are global and non-national.  So-called “national” banks form a web of global management – financial management, financing governments.  Our own “Federal” Reserve sits at that table, not at ours.

Global financiers are not like other people.  Their outlook on life is divorced from money worries, mortgages, keeping tight schedules or shopping.  Tailors or dressmakers come to them, employees / servants obtain food and prepare it and clean up after meals.  “Average” people are nearly an alien species to them, useful only for work and taxes.  Morally they are not bound by our concepts of right and wrong: actions are either profitable or not profitable, which is to say, good or bad, including wars… the sides don’t really matter.

For pastimes, nothing is out of reach… or bounds.  Tales of extraordinary sexual pleasures and the worst imaginable, even orgiastic parties, gatherings, have surfaced.  Who can stop them when they practically own everything?  Politicians like to join them.  There is an animal attraction to “forbidden” pleasures in a non-judgmental arena, one that only religious and honest people will resist or avoid.  The “lords” of money have a lot more to say about how and how well the population of this planet will live than any elected official, much as we’d like to believe otherwise.

Of financial national powers, only the United States has the potential to constrain or reverse the utter control by shadowy international oligarchs.  That brings us tremendous opposition from sometimes unexpected quarters.  For oligarchs, socialism is an easier system of governance to deal with.  Both abject fealty to money and socialism / communism are anti-religious, “satanic” forces.  Western civilization became dominant thanks to Judeo-Christianity, no matter how many fools passionately deny it.

Our economics are based on money as a form of barter: value for value.  This is ultimate fairness and helped form the fundaments of our legal contracts in all areas of interaction, not just financial.  Honest, enforceable agreements – contracts – have been crucial for the growth of economies and for the creation of a middle class and upward mobility for those willing to work hard enough or intelligently enough.  The United States was made strong by virtue of fundamental honesty in our economy and in our business AND social “contracts.”  The Bible requires those ethics.

Yet we need look no further than our astronomical debt to see that our own nation is not nearly as “independent” as we’d like to think.  Every dollar of debt is a measure of slavery; every dollar of tax is a loss of freedom.

The alert observer can see how most countries are in alignment financially.  Those that are not are outliers and not likely to create substantial profits for bankers.  The moment they are so likely, loans start flowing in for development of various kinds, never least of which is of natural resources.  Lately the largest source of such loan-debt-control actions is China.  Are they independently seeking hegemony, or acting in concert with the global banking oligarchy?  We’ll never find out by asking them: they are communists and dis-information is an automatic defense of their utterly secular “infallibility.”

A small example of the control of governments and people by banks, can be seen here in Washington.  When the Federal Reserve was created – by bankers – the legislation allowed it to “lend” money that did not exist, to the government.  What a terrible tool to hand to bankers; what a far more terrible tool to hand to politicians.  In a single Act politicians created both a choke-collar on the American people and a PRIVATE bank that owns the levers of economic power just relinquished by Congress through the same Act.  When the Chairman of the “Fed” testifies to Congress, he or she doesn’t come to learn what financial policy should be, but to partially inform our elected representatives how things financial are going to be.

Covid-19 and recent actions of the “Fed” should make this clear to those with eyes to see.  Following a questionable lockdown of most businesses the Congress was impelled to provide expanded “unemployment” funds and various bailouts, small and large, including forgivable loans to small businesses… TRILLIONS of dollars worth.  Where did the Federal Reserve obtain that money, an American taxpaying citizen might ask?  Where?

Thin air is where.  Sitting behind desks the 17 governors of the Federal Reserve agreed to write the world’s largest fraudulent, un-backed check, drawn on an account with barely 5% of the funds on deposit for which the check is written.  Well, that’s OK, it’s legal.  Orwell was right: debt is prosperity.  That same “Board of Governors” just voted to keep interest rates close to zero for at least another year.  While we might celebrate this good news, it exposes its own threat to the nation: these same private bankers can later vote to raise interest rates, obligating the elected Federal government and its elected representatives, to pay those higher rates.

Wait just a minute, baab-a-loo, baab-a-loo, it says in the Constitution that only the Congress can initiate “bills” of “Appropriation” including, as stated in Section 9 of Article I, “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account….”  Yet here is the so-called Federal Reserve Bank able to impose financial obligation upon the country by agreement among 17 largely unknown private bankers, and not by the Congress.

If the “Treasury Notes” that the Federal Reserve “buys” with thin air are good instruments of obligation, why can’t the Congress simply authorize the printing of “money” without paying interest to anyone?  It’s the same “full faith and credit of the United States.”  What an awful position for an earlier Congress to put itself and the nation into.  What a dramatic reform and sanitization of government for an imminent Congress to perform: nationalize the Federal Reserve, a creation of the Congress in the first place.  It’s all a matter of the value of United States dollars – the U. S. should control it.  Indeed, we should no longer be beholden to international financiers.  The fact that Americans still have sufficient power to restore our true independence is why international socialism keeps attacking our system, processes and the Constitution, itself.

Can we see where this is happening?  Well, the federal Reserve was created; the dollar was separated from gold or silver backing; the dollar was shifted from U. S. currency to Federal Reserve Notes; the act of voting has been made looser and looser, with barely managed voting lists despite Federal law to the contrary; vote harvesting has been allowed; vote-by-mail has been suddenly instituted due to questionable fears of Covid-19, promising severe electoral confusion on election night; our own census has been prevented from asking about citizenship status, confusing further the apportionment of representation in Congress; and, not to overlook, leftists, communists (BLM and others) are rioting, vandalizing and burning and promising more if their candidate doesn’t win or the wrong person is confirmed to the Supreme Court.  The Left never rests.

This election year there is a knife-edge election.  The virulent left has read some marijuana leaves and discerns that the time to strike is 2020.  Thanks to President Obama the concept of compromise is gone from politics, and the freedom to actually display socialist beliefs is absolute.  The left judges that there are enough ignorant, mis-educated young fools to swing the direction of history toward socialism and communism.  Electing a virtually socialist government (anyone who is counting on Joe Biden to maintain a “centrist” direction is in immediate need of deep therapy) will effectively dissolve the United States as an independent, freedom-based, democratic republic.  The consequences will touch every one of us.

The concept of value for value, mentioned earlier, is vital to our commerce and contracts and a constant restatement of honesty in our dealings with one another.  But it also underlies our basic justice system, and requires that punishments should fit the crimes invoking them.  In both commerce and individual transactions we have slipped far away from value for value.  Our currency is backed only by our confidence and an international finance system that is willing to accept dollars in trade for commodities, a system under great international pressure for replacement.  Trust in the fundamental honesty of the United States’ government is what supports dollars as measures of value for the rest of the World.  That and the taxing power of Congress.

We are also slipping, precipitously, far down from the pinnacle of even-handed justice that guarantees our survival as a republic.  Laws governing “hate crimes” for example, shift investigations and charges from wholly evidentiary to semi-subjective, politically correct charges.  Laws that are passed under duress to satisfy threats of violence, to suggest a year 2020 example, also indicate how far we are willing to diverge from actual justice to “justice” as defined by seditious insurrectionists.  What can the future of “blind” justice possibly be?

If we are prepared, because of an onslaught of Marxist-inspired lies about crime events, and in thrall of weak politicians who have come to believe in the foggy utopianism of socialism, to relinquish truth-based, evidence-based justice, and to relinquish complete control of our weakened finances, then we deserve to lose America.  Loss of an independent United States will lead to the end of Western civilization and the demise of Judeo-Christian ethics-based culture.

Vote.

Economics, Education, Family, Race

The Bad Old Days

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It is an interesting “fad,” we might call it, to portray every event in history from the viewpoint of the most “woke” or radical perspectives fostered and pandered-to by today’s politicians.  It doesn’t seem to be helpful in terms of increasing knowledge or of increasing understanding of the past.  But it has, in the span of 20 years or so, become commonplace.  Every example of this new ignorance  need not be brought before the bar of reason for the student of history to still be able to ask, “why?”

If we accept the premise that schools are the imparters of truth, then it follows that they should be the bastions of truth, as well.  Interesting word, ‘bastion.’  It means a projection from a defensive wall that affords more effective firing angles against attackers, and it also means “bulwark.”  A bulwark is a person, or a thing, that is the immovable defense of the fort or castle.  In the battle of ideas, persons in the school or education business, are obligated  by their office in society – the official role to which they are committed and for which they are well-compensated – to be the bulwarks against UN-truth and lies.

In that regard, their best success derives from having taught students to both find truth and to recognize it when it appears… or disappears.

Parents consign their children to schools in order for them to learn truths and to learn about truth.  Human beings entrusted with imparting truth to children of any age, are sorely tested to not convey opinions or beliefs they hold that cannot be demonstrated to be true.  One might think – and parents might hope – that a mechanism exists to remove teachers who cannot help but taint truth with their opinions.  That the opposite mechanism exists should give us pause.  Short of severe debauchery or criminal acts, it is nearly impossible to pry a teacher loose from his or her tenured security.  What are they teaching?

Let’s look at a simple event that has caused news stories in recent years;  the landing of the “pilgrims” in Massachusetts Bay, ostensibly at what we know as Plymouth, named for Plymouth, England.  To get to Plymouth the so-called Pilgrims had to endure privations and tribulations that we, today, in our land of too much food and electricity, cannot conceive of.  We lose our cool when another car blocks us or cuts in front of us.  Imagine uprooting your family and leaving the place of your birth and generations of customs and history, to sign on to a corporate adventure to the “New World,” about which little is known.  Your first ship proves unseaworthy and you limp back to port until another can be obtained and hired to your purposes.

You are unable to carry with you more than a small trunk’s worth of tools and possessions.  On your little ship there are no bathrooms, no showers, salted fish and beef to eat, no fresh vegetables, no toothpaste or toilet paper.  Privacy is virtually non-existent, you know nothing of germs or disease except that the latter is common.  Childbirth is among the deadliest of burdens for women.  For years you have planned and hoped for a better life upon reaching the distant unknown shore, and after the final two months at sea you are deposited on the shore, far off from your intended destination, now forced to fend for yourselves from the ground up, in fact, building shelters, foraging for wildlife and wild fruits or berries to try to store enough food for the imminent winter which will be much harsher than what you have been used to, particularly since your delay in leaving England left you in the New World in October, rather than in May or June. 

Among your beliefs is deep religious faith in God, bolstered by frequent prayer, but He isn’t cushioning any blows or revealing hidden stores of healthy food.  Many of you die in that first winter, yet faith and incredible work see you through.  Eventually relations with natives, whom you believe to be “savages,” keep you from dying out altogether and your duties as profitable fur trappers can commence.

Accidentally, in total ignorance, you have brought germs that infect the native people, germs against which they have no defense.   You have brought another disease, economics, including concepts of private property, fences and stockades, and guns and swords of steel to defend them.  You believe that God has blessed you with a new land over which you have every right to take dominion.  History records the clash of beliefs and its outcome.

To this Prudent observer, descended from those Pilgrims and others who followed soon after, the story of immense courage and faith, regardless of what we may, today, think of that faith, is a bit heroic.  Courage in the face of danger is one of humankind’s abiding virtues and is worthy of honor and emulation, but what is more frequently discussed, even abetted by public entities, is the awfulness of the Pilgrims and all of their virtues and beliefs, since it turned out badly for the natives.   The thanks offered prayerfully to God, for the salvation of the tiny colony, must now be denigrated because of those germs and the new ideas the colonists held dear.

The strength of the underdog fighter who wins against all odds, must be hated because, we have since learned, he once flipped the bird to another driver and… it was a woman!  There will never be a good reason to train the way he did, or learn the tactics that he used to win, not ever will there be a reason to mention his name or take his picture.  Everything must be expunged.

And so education has purged itself of the role of Christianity in the creation and final founding of the United States.  Since many teachers and professors, now, are so sure that belief in the Bible’s teachings is superstition, they cannot bring themselves to learn how it is woven into the fabric of America, and certainly not to teach about it.  Is it all just economics?  That was Marx’s view; we certainly must teach about that.  So, is the “new” narrative about where America came from the same as “truth?”  It would seem Prudent to judge that it is a half-truth at best.  Does that fulfill the essential requirement that educational institutions… and functions… be the defenders and imparters of truth?  If not, what are they?  What are they being paid to do, if not impart truth?

Christopher Columbus was nothing if not unusually brave.  It took unusual courage to set sail beyond the sight of land, not knowing how far it was to reach another shore.  It was a struggle for him to obtain not one, but 3 crews to follow him on his undefined journey.  When he landed he was thousands of miles from where he thought he must be.  His mission was financed by the newly victorious, fused monarchies of Ferdinand and Isabella, who defeated the Moors just one day before granting Columbus the support he needed.

They needed gold, which the “indies” reportedly had, and some other valuables Columbus’ crewmates and soldiers might come across.  No one on earth had knowledge of germs, viruses or infections.  No one.  The Spaniards were simple thieves who believed non-Europeans, non-Catholic non-Europeans most particularly, were “savages.”  In other words, Spaniards, like French, British, Italian, Dutch and other explorers… Portuguese, were brought up to believe that because of their relative enlightenment, manufactures, printing, marriage, courts, police, and religion, they were superior to savages wherever they found them.  The Spaniards were fulfilling the charge of their King and Queen, whose authority came from God.  There was no better work they could do.  Not so simple, perhaps.

Today Columbus is vilified, as if current hot feelings might improve Columbus’ own attitudes, causing him and all of his crewmates who had just risked their lives on their mission to the “Indies,” to renounce every belief they held and their faith, and to switch to social services for the savages they had found, perhaps teaching them how to forge iron and smelt bronze, and to build better huts and grow more crops.  The next expedition could teach them to read the Bible and raise their children.

Many teachers seem consumed by the estimates of decimation brought about by European diseases thanks to Columbus’ discovering the new world.  Rather than recognize the essential sacrifice and bravery of mariners of Columbus’ day, along with the unintended consequences of the intercontinental movement of peoples, educators convinced of the evil intent of all white-skinned peoples, pummel their students with the evils initiated by white Europeans.  Increasingly liberal teachers twist the views of their students such that whites begin to hate themselves and question not only bad actions of the past, but even ideas and philosophies generated by people whose skin is not brown.

This immediately translates into hatred of America and the ideas that created it; it also validates hatreds the racialist hate-mongers are encouraging non-stop in black communities.  Neither trend is healthy for our nation, our future progress or our steady destruction of disease and poverty.  It’s stupid, essentially.  Shame on us.

This same poisoned outlook has been seized upon by socialists now to fuel their never-ending struggle to destroy individual freedom, a goal that may only be achieved by destroying America.  They must destroy Christianity, too, since many white people believe in it.

Can the descendants of slave owners atone not only for the sins of their ancestors but for the sins of their ancestors’ ancestors’ ancestors?  No, never.  The actions of the past still remain no matter what is done, now.  Can the descendants of slaves (which are virtually all of us depending on how many ancestries we include) receive some kind of justice for the sufferings of their ancestors?  No, the suffering will have still happened.  Is that suffering the reason some brown-skinned people are economically behind the curve today?  Or educationally?  No.

Up until the “Great Society,” which federalized welfare has purchased the votes of blacks for generations, the suffering of slaves had created a great strengthening of their descendants.  “We shall overcome” had genuine meaning and blacks were overcoming and gaining economic power faster than their white “oppressors.”  But when hate became a tax-funded industry, black progress not only slowed, but reversed.  And still they excel… in virtually every field, yet more also fail, convinced by their hate-filled leaders that life is unfair because of (pick all that apply) whites, Christians, police, schools, businesses, Republicans, slavery, Columbus, NASA, Trump.  What a waste, however enrichening it is for some.

Culture, Economics, Governance, Representation, Taxation

Innocence, Debauchery, and the American Dream

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America suffers in the 21st century not from a loss of innocence, but from a loss of discrimination… a loss of judgment. Mankind has never lacked for debauchery nor for ways to debauch nearly every civilized function, from work, construction and development to education, medicine, churches and religion. Everything “we” have discovered or invented, we seem to have figured out how to besmirch and cheapen… like government.

Government, at least since Saul fell on his sword and bequeathed kingship to David, however inadvertently, has been occasionally a good invention, often completely inimical to human growth and perfection. Okay, okay, humans are perfected only in the rarest of circumstances, but, still, government is mostly inimical. In the long sweep of history, despite themselves, governments have brought a semblance of order, enabled scientific advances, established widespread education – some of it good – and provided measures of safety and peace within which individuals can seek happiness, or perfection, or both.
The last we call constitutional republicanism which stands out among the dozens of forms of tyranny still in use. Nevertheless, despite its promise, this form of self-governance has not been immune to the diabolical inventiveness of the forces of debauchery, of which there is space enough to discuss only a few.

Money is big in the debauchery field, as it is in the politician field, making it frequently difficult to discern between them. There never is enough money in the politician field, particularly where it intersects with socialist whims. Money, money, money means taxes, taxes, taxes and from time to time the working people object to taxation and politicians, who have the clarity of vision denied to workers, can perceive – if not create – hordes of dependents for whom that tax money is so sorely needed. That some dependents are billionaires is of little importance in the grand scheme of dependency. You’ve got your troubles, I’ve got mine.

So if taxation can’t be trusted to produce money fast enough, it becomes increasingly crucial that ways to expand the income of government be devised and, politicians having been elected and installed for their unique efficiencies, recognize that there is no point to re-inventing the wheel, as it were, in the matters of government income, so turn to the financial successes of debauchery for new ideas. Humans have left no stone unturned in the search for ways to cheat others out of their hard-earned money and one of the neatest tricks is the infamous “Ponzi Scheme.” It is easily explained:

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud where clients are promised
a large profit at little to no risk. Companies that engage in a Ponzi
scheme focus all of their energy into attracting new clients to make
investments. This new income is used to pay original investors their
returns, marked as a profit from a legitimate transaction. Ponzi
schemes rely on a constant flow of new investments to continue to
provide returns to older investors. When this flow runs out,
the… scheme… falls… apart. [From “Investopedia”]

When the government, itself – who convicted Ponzi for fraud in 1920 – follows Ponzi’s formula, it takes a longer view and fewer dollars from each “investor,” and calls it “Social Security.” No slouches in the debauchery of public trust, politicians are able to compel workers to “invest” by force of police power, and then restrict the “returns” to only so many dollars per month and only after leaving the “investment” fallow for decades. That way the originators of the fraud will have passed on before the scope of the trick is figured out by the “investors.” “Invested” funds are then used to get future “investors” to vote for future perpetrators.

Prudence would suggest that “investors” should contemplate the consequences of having personally (actually) invested 15% of their pay over their entire working career. Upon retirement they would have had a huge financial asset and they wouldn’t be dependent on government to dribble back their own money! Of course, empowering citizens to live WITHOUT government is as anti-socialist as it could be and virtually never allowed even lip-service.

We need to give politicians the power to make life, health and death decisions for us.

Social Security really took off after World War II, as payrolls grew and pay rates along with them. The river of money was “re-invested” in all sorts of vital, crucial, crisis-averting expenditures that any sane and humane investor would endorse… had he or she known of them. After 1968 especially, the number of non-citizens who arrived on our shores seeking the “American Dream” exploded, and the means to support their “disabled, disadvantaged” selves derived from the “lockbox” of Social Security cash. Naturally, thanks to Ted Kennedy’s (the lyin’ of the Senate) legislation (Hart-Cellar Act), the colors and origins of immigrants are more important than the needs of the United States, and their relatives became more important than immigrants who can actually contribute to the strength of the nation. Many had/have no marketable skills or are “disabled” and “qualify” for SSDI or SSI support derived from – you guessed it – the “investments” of those canny worker-investors who are so proud of their own district’s Representative and state’s two Senators… oh, yes.

Unexpectedly, the Social “Security” lockbox tends to empty more quickly than promised. More money is needed! What to do? What to do without “raising taxes,” of course? There must be a form of debauchery… uhmm, we mean, outright mendacity and fraud… well, not that, of course, but some kind of “wool” that can be pulled over enough people’s eyes… naw, that’s just an old political joke, ha – ha – ha. There must be a form of courageous legislative governance that can find “new” revenue to meet the nation’s vital, crucial, crisis-averting expenditures. Aha! Loans!

Fortunately, globalist bankers had finally convinced Congress to approve the creation of a means to provide constant DEBT to the federal government. Now, if you’re one of those worker-investors we were talking about, you’re asking yourself: “Who in Hell would want a supply of debt?” (And you’d be right, but it’s a different topic.) “Everyone wants to get OUT of debt,” you’d say to yourself, being right a second time, “and anyone trying to get more debt should have his head examined!” (Or, his ledgers… again, right!)

Growing governments while controlling countries is a long-term plan. The international socialists have been at it for a long, long time. The “income” tax was instituted by amendment in 1913. This provided a large enough river of funds to enable the government to “help” itself and more and more people. Interestingly and, it certainly must be coincidentally, the Federal Reserve Act – a 20-year project of the largest banks – was passed at the end of… well, ha!… 1913! Both long-term efforts needed a global statist like Woodrow Wilson to be president in order to come to fruition.

The only way to quietly undermine the nationalism and freedom of the United States was to plant the seeds of debt and a private bank that controls the nation’s money supply is the best tool to do so. The “Fed,” as it’s called, makes economic policy as it sees fit. The “governors” don’t take advice from elected representatives, most of whom are happy to not be responsible for too awfully much. Whenever the Chairman of the Federal Reserve testifies in Congress it’s to tell Congress how things are going to be and not to ask the people’s representatives how things should be. The “Fed” is about as “federal” as Federal Express.

So what about how a central bank can control a nation’s economy? Why would any Congress vote for that? Well for the first 20 years or so the new “Fed” was practicing frog boiling, and the financial waters were just pleasantly warm… until the crash of 1929 and the attempts by, first, Hoover, and then by Roosevelt, to force an end to DE-flation and unemployment by running deficits and pushing the private economy to adapt to federal pressure. The federal government could borrow in the face of the human problems that bad economics had wrought.

Adopting the programs initiated by Hoover, FDR managed to keep the U. S., and much of the world, in depression until the Second World War broke out. Prior to the emergency legislation passed during the “Banking Holiday” of 1933, the 12 “Fed” Districts made policy on their own, enabling some to do severe damage in parts of the country while recovery was stumbling forward in others. Naturally, the preferred answers to the crisis were always based in more central control, essentially the story and the outcome of the “Great Depression.”

Until the Federal Reserve was created the U.S., like most industrial nations, was on “the gold standard.” United States Dollars represented a number of grains of 90% pure gold. That is, an ounce of “.9 fine” gold “cost” $20.67 and had since 1900. Never failing to take advantage of a crisis, 1930’s era leftists – FDR and the “brain trust” – used the banking and international gold crises to obtain emergency legislation making private ownership of gold coins, metal or bullion illegal! That is, everyone had to turn in his or her gold in exchange for $35.00 worth of U. S. “dollars” (actually, Federal reserve notes) that were now backed by so many grains of silver or by 60% as many grains of gold than prior to the seizure. It was pretty slick.

The federal government had acquired tons of gold for, in effect, next to nothing, but gold was now valued at $35 an ounce of .9 fine purity. Suddenly the government had a lot of money to spend in its attempts to correct the severe deflation and unemployment afflicting the U. S. and other industrialized nations. Most of it helped but did not solve the fundamental problems in the economy; it took a big war to do that.

We have got to give the federal government total control over our life, health and death decisions.

Where there is a name for schemes like Social Security (“Ponzi”), there isn’t a moniker for what happened to America between the two world wars, except, perhaps, “Progressivism,” not to be confused with “Progress.”

In a Constitutional Republic, “Progress” is measured first by how large a fraction of the population DOESN’T DEPEND ON GOVERNMENT for basic needs like housing, food, clothing, employment and health care. It’s also measured by the quality of citizenship, the honesty of jurisprudence, of police agencies and individuals, the clarity and even-handed enforceability of laws, the honesty of education and the level of cultural agreement by and amongst the vast majority of its citizenry.

The worst chicanery of all is the structure of the federal budget, which is barely a budget at all since it is about 75% “entitlements.” Congress has NEVER cut the budget, has never cut an “entitlement,” has never gotten rid of an “executive” department, has never paid down the national debt, at least in the past 60-odd years, has not failed to borrow from our great-great grandchildren for a like period, and has never audited the “Federal” Reserve. That’s because it’s.., well…, too busy. They are so busy on our behalf of course, and so tired from “fighting” for the middle class and “working” families who are non-working families to a significant degree, fighting to “improve education” and “leveling playing fields,” that there is barely enough time to begin to explain why what rational people think should be done simply can’t be done, unless they write a check for the campaign.

Mostly, they are too busy raising money for re-election, which is the number-one mission after a couple of years in office, and helping their real constituency: the congressmen and women and senators who sit nearby, because THEY can help in the fight for re-election more than any other group in the country.

We elect them, you and I, because their counterparts in the other party – pick one – are such scurrilous bastards and bitches that we have to keep “our” representative or senator in there so that we can continue the fight to “take back our country.” And a check for the campaign is not only vital, right at the moment you tear open your mailer, but may be multiplied up to FIVE times if your check is received by midnight 4 or 5 days hence.

Save yourself and the “campaign” even more, maximizing the value of your support, by using a (bank) interest-bearing credit-card to make your nation-saving donation!

Leftists are loathe to argue principles but they love to set the terms of public discussion. To effect that control they have to change the meaning of words… like “democracy,” for example. Where ”democracy” once meant a system of civic governance where the majority ruled – right or wrong – it now means “when Democrats rule… right or wrong.” So, when non-Democrats are in power, having been elected by a majority of votes, they are “threatening democracy.”

The United States is not organized as a “democracy.” It is a Constitutional Republic with democratically elected representatives and, interestingly, democratically elected executives, part of an extraordinarily well-designed system of dividing powers and constituencies to which each must answer. But power is vested in representatives of the citizenry who, the original theory is, are knowledgeable, honest and willing to sacrifice for their fellow citizens. That last is where the system breaks down. There no longer is any sacrifice! Right under our noses “our” representatives have turned the tables on us and we didn’t smell the odor!

Being an elected official, legislator or appointed officer in any of our states’ governments, the federal government, certainly, most cities and in virtually every public school system on up through state colleges and universities, is a very sweet deal – far more lucrative and secure than any “private” sector position, and with better benefits, more holidays and many “perks.” The “public servants” in today’s equation are you and me: taxpayers… and we don’t get free healthcare when WE retire.

“Representing” ignorant taxpayers is the best job many reps and senators will ever have: high pay, big benefits and almost no responsibility beyond re-election. Americans, themselves, should have it so good.

And, finally, for this chapter, the biggest scheme of all: that “debt” we looked at earlier. A “ponzi” scheme would seem a bad enough swindle for elected representatives to foist upon their “constituents,” but the worst is far, far greater, and so slick that Republicans are regularly denigrated for attempting to slow it – not STOP it, slow it – by just a few billions from time to time. Somehow, Democrats tell us, not going further and further into debt to pay the INTEREST-only on earlier debt, is tantamount to treason and threatens to “ruin the credit rating of the United States of America!” God save the Queen!

If you are seeking a way to judge the veracity, competence, integrity, legitimacy or sensibleness of ANY federal Congress-person, just consider the CURRENT national debt. You do know that it’s closing in on $21 TRILLION dollars, yes?

You do realize that it threatens our very economic existence? That it represents how far beyond our national means we have lived for the past 60 years? That it exemplifies the utter inability of our elected representatives (so far) to manage the budget for which they ARE responsible… and for which job they have earnestly sought our votes?

Do you recognize that unlike wars and other existential threats, since the “Great Society” kicked in, in 1968, every social discomfort has been labeled a “crisis,” confirmed by rigged congressional testimony, making raising the so-called “debt ceiling” every year an act of “courage” and of patriotism. Those 21 Trillion dollars are the proof that socialism will destroy our freedom. It is taking a long time because of the exceptional work ethics of Americans, but our economic destruction is a safe prediction, given that the history of the last 6 decades of representative government in our (ostensible) 2-party system is one of utter economic debauchery.

But then, there’s always Broward County.

Governance

CABINETS AND BUREAUS

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President Barack Obama holds a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Jan. 31, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
It’s not easy… changing the course of the ship of state, that is. Building a Great Pyramid, that’s easy. Transitioning from communism to capitalism – not so much. Worse, every move a newly elected president must make is nit-picked, criticized, undermined, called fascist and/or racist by the dominant media.

The real threat of the incoming Trump administration is that the new president may keep even some of his campaign promises. How dare he?

Those of us who were willing to overlook Trump’s several lacks of finesse and glibness, thought we could discern his visceral messages that mattered, “MTM’s.” One MTM is stopping illegal immigration. Viscerally, Americans recognize that inviting millions of very different people into our midst – people with different cultures, beliefs and languages who neither wish to adopt our culture and language nor are forced to for personal or economic survival, MAKES NO SENSE. What folly such a policy would be. What a treason it would represent.

We are transitioning from an administration whose intention it was to change, literally, the color of America. Mr. Obama is governed by a number of hatreds, among which are hatred of colonialism, hatred of white “supremacy” and hatred of capitalism. One might also discern a hatred of the Constitution in there, somewhere. What an odd person for Americans to elect.

Mr. Trump has been sounding like he may not be as concerned about the illegal entrants already here as are we who voted for his promised change. Let’s monitor what happens to the border control he also promised, very carefully. No matter how “big” we think we are in the U. S., having escaped full-scale attacks or invasion – so far – our culture is under assault, largely from confused domestic enemies who find it satisfying to hate America’s imperfections while celebrating the imperfections of others. It’s perverse. For too long we have relinquished power, including power over education, to those who hate the premises of America. Importing people of vastly different ethics – particularly Muslims – whose belief structures are antithetical to our constitution, is pretty stupid policy.

Another big MTM is about re-energizing the American manufacturing and jobs engine. Can a president actually do this? Maybe. Like most of Washington – a construct of creative bullshit – (sorry, sort-of) “managing” the economy is mostly wishes and hope. Tax cuts can surely help as lower taxes will, for a while, encourage the PRIVATE economy to make good domestic decisions and investments. Production, productivity and employment should improve. But Trump’s choices for Treasury and Chairman of The Council of Economic Advisors (White House) are from Goldman Sachs, a mendacious Wall Street behemoth, and this exposes a serious flaw in Trump’s economic courage.

Between the Federal Reserve (neither federal nor a reserve) and the Wall Street financial manipulators like Goldman Sachs, the United States has been led into astronomical debt. Trump, and all of us, need to recognize that just as every dollar of taxes is a loss of citizens’ freedom, every dollar of federal debt is a loss of national sovereignty… and loss of flexibility to manage our own domestic, foreign and military affairs. What’s a president – or a people – to do when they are stuck in a box of perpetual servility to banks?

One of the changes, perhaps the most significant of changes, that Americans tried to bring about in November, 2016, is the upside-down relationship between our supposedly sovereign nation and these blood-sucking banks. For shame. Trump has already proven to be deaf to our outcry and he’s not even in office yet. Usually newly elected presidents don’t start giving us the finger until around April first. So, many people’s concerns about Trump’s impact on – or proximity to – conservatism have some validity. We’ll see.

Finally, naming Rex Tillerson to head the State Department. Feelings are mixed, obviously, but there are positives. On the face of it there is an element of putting oligarchs in public charge of “the world.” Trump’s a business mogul and must believe that only business moguls are smart enough to manage big systems like the U. S. government. For everyone who has gained the impression that businessmen are inherently dishonest – as popular media consistently portray – giving one political power is the worst possible outcome. “They’re all crooks!”

Even worse, Tillerson is in the OIL business, helping to scourge the earth while stealing money from everyone. Woe is us. Some perspective is required.

Exxon-Mobil is certainly huge, deals in global commodities and must negotiate with virtually every country in order to maintain stable supplies and stable markets. Well, it’s time Americans admit – or recognize – that most of what foreign policy comprises is maintaining and defending global commerce, free access to the seas and stable markets and prices. It is rarely a pretty business, but undeniably vital.

And, it’s not simply oil. Oil is the current (for a hundred years) leading commodity against which almost every other commodity (corn, wheat, soybeans, beef, pork, gold, uranium and… on and on) is valued. The U. S. dollar is how oil is valued and oil is how the dollar is propped up in the face of unbelievable debt. There may be more sense behind having this particular mogul in charge at State than first appears. Exxon-Mobil is pretty-well run, after all.