Stunned Admiration

Take a close look at the image. This was published in 1912, one year before before the Federal Rerserve came into existence.

Now read these headlines from yesterday.

Bloomberg's Headline:

"Bank of America is dumping derivatives onto a subsidiary which is insured by the government – i.e. taxpayers."

Washington's Blog calls it:

"The Federal Reserve and Bank of America Initiate a Coup to Dump Billions of Dollars of Losses on the American Taxpayer"

Get the picture?

(whores, forgive me)

This Blog's Name and Subtitle Verified!!!!

Headline: "GOLDFINGER RULES THE WORLD"

OK, so I paraphrased.

And no, it wasn't the headline at http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/bbc-victim-hoax-no-yes-men-154724196.htm that I paraphrased. I paraphrased the headline that got me there.
See: http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/News/097051-2011-09-28-governments-dont-rule-the-world-goldman-sachs-rules-the-world.htm

But what's at Yahoo is what's important. It's what Market Trader Alessio Rastani said that's important, although his comment at the 2:37 -2:41.

Anyone with a brain, and 2 active braincells, knows this to be true.

(Again, my apologies to whores, everywhere)

NY AG Schneiderman Under Attack

Mr. Schneiderman & his staff, who are aggressively investigating fraudclosure and felony land record fraud, are being attacked and need our support.

Schneiderman wrote: "Our ongoing investigation into the housing crisis cannot be shut down to accommodate efforts to settle quickly and give banks and others broad immunity from further legal action. If you have any thoughts or concerns about this critical issue, please contact me at 1-800-771-7755, or send a message via Facebook or Twitter."

Here's how:

Phone
1-800-771-7755

Webmail
http://www.ag.ny.gov/online_forms/email_ag.jsp

Press Office
NYAG.Pressoffice@oag.state.ny.us

Twitter
http://twitter.com/#!/AGSchneiderman

Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/AGSchneiderman?sk=wall

(as for the tags, my apologies to whores everywhere)

Another Goldfinger Infiltration

Reading yesterday (thanx, Denninger) that (R)epugnant California "representative"(?) Darrel Issa hired a Goldfinger infiltrator (in this instance, a "former" vice president of Goldman Sachs' commodity compliance group) to work for him on the House Oversight Committee, I wasn't really surprised. Goldfinger infiltrated the Executive Department a long time ago, putting its people (I think they're technically still people) in Treasury, and State, and having them run the Commodities Futures Trading Corporation, and the S.E.C.

I wasn't even surprised to find out that the same Goldfingerer left the S.E.C. Office of Enforcement in 2005 to work for Goldman Sachs (Goldfinger), lobbying his former colleagues on Goldfinger's behalf.

It's also not surprising that he went to work(?) as an economist at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, putting his law degree to good use (any guesses what law school he graduated from?). Who doesn't know that Goldfinger lawyers make the best economists?

No, none of that is surprising. The only surprising thing is that this Goldfingerer actually changed his name. Peter Simonyi took on his mother’s maiden name shortly after leaving Goldman Sachs in 2008, and became Peter Haller.

Now, he's "helping" work on stopping regulations on Goldfinger.

And you're not gonna do a f**king thing about it, are you?

Banned Commercial

There's a reason you haven't seen this on your television.



Can you guess what that reason is?

Felonious Munk’s Wild Anti-Obama Rant

WARNING: LIKELY OFFENSIVE (but remarkably appropriate) PROFANITY (but too "on point" to pass up!

16,000,000,000,000.00

(Context provided by yesterday's post. Thanx to Larry Becraft)

The first ever GAO audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months. due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. While Americans were struggling to find jobs, the Federal Reserve had never even informed the United States Congress, let alone the rest of us, that $16 TRILLION (that's what 12 "0"'s means) dollars THAT DIDN'T EVEN EXIST was "spent" by the Federal Reserve between December 2007 and June 2010 to secretly bail out many of the world's megabanks, supercorporations, and governments.

The list of banks, corporations, and governments receiving the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 of the GAO Audit and follows:

Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion* ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)

The results were posted on Senator Bernie Sanders' webpage earlier this morning.

http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3

To place $16,000,000,000,000.00 (16 trillion) into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14,120,000,000,000.00 (14.12 trillion). The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is only $14,500,000,000,000.00 (14.5 trillion).

The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is only $3,500,000,000,000.00 (3.5 trillion). Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1,500,000,000,000.00 (trillion) deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.

Had enough, yet?

And What are YOU Gonna Do About It?

Submitted to Zerohedge by George Washington on 07/16/2011 14:36 -0400

(The reason I decided to republish this now will be obvious from the next post)

"They’re Going to Cut Back the Bone and They’re Going to Keep the Fat, Basically. They’re Going to Try to Panic the Population into Acquiescing ... While Making Sure that They Pay the Pentagon, They Pay the Foreign Aid, They Pay Wall Street"
I pointed out last year that Ronald Reagan's budget director said that the tax cuts for the wealthy were "the biggest fiscal mistake in history".

I noted yesterday:(remember, this was July 16th)

Plugging the major holes in our economy is more important than either cutting spending or raising taxes.

And stopping bailouts and giveaways for the top .1% of the richest elite (which weaken rather than strengthen the economy, as shown here, here and here) and slashing spending on unnecessary imperial wars (which reduce rather than increase our national security, as demonstrated here and here) is what the budget really needs.

As I wrote last year:

Why aren't our government "leaders" talking about slashing the military-industrial complex, which is ruining our economy with unnecessary imperial adventures?

And why aren't any of our leaders talking about stopping the permanent bailouts for the financial giants who got us into this mess? And see this.

And why aren't they taking away the power to create credit from the private banking giants - which is costing our economy trillions of dollars (and is leading to a decrease in loans to the little guy) - and give it back to the states?

If we did these things, we wouldn't have to raise taxes or cut core services to the American people.

I pointed out the next month:

If there's any shortfall, all we have to do is claw back the ill-gotten gains from the fraudsters working for the too big to fails whose unlawful actions got us into this mess in the first place. See this, this, this, this and this.

Dennis Kucinich wrote in a post entitled "Debt Political Theater Diverts Attention While Americans’ Wealth is Stolen":

The rancorous debate over the debt belies a fundamental truth of our economy -- that it is run for the few at the expense of the many, that our entire government has been turned into a machine which takes the wealth of a mass of Americans and accelerates it into the hands of the few.

***

We have to realize what this country's economy has become. Our monetary policy, through the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, privatized the money supply, gathers the wealth, puts it in the hands of the few while the Federal Reserve can create money out of nothing, give it to banks to park at the Fed while our small businesses are starving for capital.

Mark my words -- Wall Street cashes in whether we have a default or not. And the same type of thinking that created billions in bailouts for Wall Street and more than $1 trillion in giveaways by the Federal Reserve today leaves 26 million Americans either underemployed or unemployed. And nine out of ten Americans over the age of 65 are facing cuts in their Social Security in order to pay for a debt which grew from tax cuts for the rich and for endless wars.

There is a massive transfer of wealth from the American people to the hands of a few and it's going on right now as America’s eyes are misdirected to the political theater of these histrionic debt negotiations, threats to shut down the government, and willingness to make the most Americans pay dearly for debts they did not create.

These are symptoms of a government which has lost its way, and they are a challenge to the legitimacy of the two-party system.

And Michael Hudson - who is as far from a knee-jerk conservative as possible - hits the same theme with both barrels blazing:

[Interviewer]: So, what do you think? Good versus evil. We’re playing out the debt struggle and the debt ceiling issue. And if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we’ll be in the apocalypse. What do you make of it all?

HUDSON: I think it’s evil working with evil.... If you have to choose between paying Social Security and Wall Street, pay our clients, Wall Street.

***

What’s inefficient? Paying for people on Medicaid. Got to cut it. What’s inefficient? Medicare. Got to cut it. What’s inefficient? Paying Social Security. What is efficient? Giving $13 trillion to Wall Street for a bailout. Now, how on earth can the administration say, in the last three years we have given $13 trillion to Wall Street, but then, in between 2040 and 2075, we may lose $1 trillion, no money for the people?

***

It’s not about the debt ceiling. It’s about making an agreement now under an emergency conditions. You remember what Obama’s staff aide Rahm Emanuel said. He said a crisis is too important to waste. They’re using this crisis as a chance to ram through a financial policy, an anti-Medicare, anti-Medicaid, anti—selling out Social Security that they could never do under the normal course of things.

***

They’re not going to cut back the war in Libya.

***

They’re going to have to decide what to cut back. So they’re going to cut back the bone and they’re going to keep the fat, basically. They’re going to say–they’re going to try to panic the population into acquiescing in a Democratic Party sellout by cutting back payments to the people–Social Security, Medicare–while making sure that they pay the Pentagon, they pay the foreign aid, they pay Wall Street.

[Interviewer]: Yeah. But what–I hear you. But what I’m–I’m saying, what could be an alternative policy? For example, don’t raise the debt ceiling. Number two, raise taxes on the wealthy. Number three, cut back military spending. I mean, there are ways to do this without having to borrow more money, aren’t there?

HUDSON: Of course.

***

Of course they could cut back the fat. Of course what they should do is change the tax system. Of course they should get rid of the Bush tax cuts. And the one good thing in President Obama’s speech two days ago was he used the term spending on tax cuts. So that’s not the same thing as raising taxes. He said just cut spending by cutting spending on tax cuts for the financial sector, for the speculators who count all of their income that they get, billions of income, as capital gains, taxed at 15 percent instead of normal income at 35 percent. Let’s get rid of the tax loopholes that favor Wall Street.

***

Mr. Obama has always known who has been contributing primarily to his political campaigns. We know where his loyalties lie now. And, basically, he promised change because that’s what people would vote for, and he delivered the change constituency to the campaign contributors...

Ready for it?

How Blessed Is the State That Thus Destroyeth the Car

Published in the Mises Daily: Thursday, June 30, 2011 by Jeffrey A. Tucker. Republished with permission.

The modern state was born and built with the idea that it would bring material progress to the world.

How things have changed! Now the same state works to reverse progress in every possible way and even brag about the glorious things it is doing to make our lives more miserable.

It even has the chutzpah to tout that it alone can beat back our constant struggle to have a better life, and it expects us to thank our masters for this — and pay for the privilege.

These are thoughts that hit me as I read the New York Times report "Across Europe, Irking Drivers is Urban Policy." Yes, that's right: policies are not trying to make driving easier and less of a problem but harder and more of a problem so that people will abandon their cars and hoof it just like life before the invention of the wheel.

Now, truly, the ability to hop into a driver-directed steel contraption that can take us wherever we want to go at 200 miles per hour has to count as one of the great accomplishments in the history of mankind. The unleashing of human volition! For 100 years now, wherever we find progress, joy, and human fulfillment, we find the car. The car has very nearly conquered the great problems presented by the existence of scarcity of time and space, and made us able to achieve essential tasks. We work, live, shop, and travel where we want and get to each place in a fraction of the time it took our ancestors.

So what does the state do? It tries to stop it all. European governments are "creating urban environments openly hostile to cars," says the Times. "The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation."

Are European leaders even aware that they are merely reviving Chairman Mao's transportation plan? When he came to power in 1950, he declared China to be zixingche de guo, the Kingdom of Bicycles. The bike was one of three items that every citizen must own (the other two: a watch and a sewing machine). It was supposed to be a great symbol of equality and of the citizen's willingness to use their own muscle power to work for the triumph of socialism.

And so it is all over Europe, where streets are being closed, parking lots torn up, and fuel taxed to the point where it is unaffordable. In many places, speed limits are being reduced to a walking pace, and, in others, cars are being banned completely. The idea is not to build the great socialist utopia but rather to "save the environment" — and to heck with the actual well-being of human beings who pay the bills that make these states live and thrive.

And all of this for the environment? That's not the only reason. They also say that the roads are too narrow to handle high car traffic, since most date from before the car age. That's strange: city roads in the United States are also pre-car but Americans, like entrepreneur Brigham Young who built Salt Lake, thought to make them wide enough for covered wagons to make U-turns. Mostly, the real reason is that "urban planners" just don't like them and so they "generally agree that a rise in car commuting is not desirable for cities anywhere."

"These planners are secretly horrified by the sight of millions of people living well and doing their own thing."

The problem with "urban planners" — as Jane Jacobs saw — is that they do not think of people as individuals with interests who act according to their own plans with a resulting spontaneous order that makes cities great. Instead, they want to plan with a bird's-eye view of the place and force everyone to comply whether it makes people miserable or not. In the worst case, these planners are secretly horrified by the sight of millions of people living well and doing their own thing, and, like Chairman Mao, cry out for what they believe should be a more orderly system.

Armed with the power of the contemporary state — which is destroying prosperity and civilizational advance because, as it turns out, doing this is the only thing it is good at — the urban planners are accomplishing their goal, but to what end? Is reversing a century of progress a good way to make life better? The planners think so, because they have a different idea of what life should be like. They want the city to be more like an ant farm than a place for choosing, dreaming, and accomplishing. The static existence of workers and peasants under communism seems much more to their liking.

The NYT story suggests that it is very different in the United States, where the planners think cars are just fine. But this is not so. The war on the car dates back a half century. Not even the interstate highways were really built for cars. They were built for military trucks to roll around the country and control it in the event of an invasion or an uprising. The car has never really had friends in government. The car is a product of private markets, used by individuals to accomplish individual goals.

In talking about my new book, It's a Jetsons World, I've mentioned that if government didn't own the streets and so heavily regulate transportation innovation, we might already have flying cars by now. The claim can't be proven or disproven, but that's the way it is in a world lacking in verifiable claims about what might exist in the absence of government controls and punishments on innovation and production.

But think of how little progress is actually taking place even where the car is mildly tolerated.

A new Honda Accord zipped by me the other day, and I confused it for a Lexus, and a new Lexus zipped by that looked pretty much like my 1995 Accord, and then it occurred to me: is the car really improving or are we cycling through body styles the way we cycle through tie widths? That's what companies do in sectors in which consumers want only innovation in style but not structure (men's clothing). But that's not true in transportation. Yes, there are new safety features and cool built-ins in the new models. But why do the "concept cars" of the main carmakers never make it to the roads? And why do some people claim that the car has never been better than it was some 50 years ago? What innovations are we missing out on?

A vast central plan really does govern the production of cars for sale in the United States. There are Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, regulations on everything from tires to air conditioning, federal mandates on safety and engine size, and many thousands of other issues. There's not a part of the car that isn't subject to something or other, all the way down to the exact shape of the error lights in the dashboard. How much room for innovation really remains?

"They want regress and they are giving it to us good and hard."

It is as Bastiat said of the mixed economy. We will never know for sure what innovations never became a living part of our economic world because regulations hamstrung the innovators. We will never know for sure what kind of material blessings might have come our way had it not been for the daily looting of capital and creativity that takes place under the rule of Leviathan.

The government has always been the enemy of progress, even when it claimed to be its friend. In more recent history, we are hearing increasingly honest statements from the people in charge. They want regress and they are giving it to us good and hard. If this keeps up, the only land with real progress will be the one created in the digital universe, where the planners are either too slow or too stupid to regulate us back to the Stone Age they envision as their ideal.

You can subscribe to future articles by Jeffrey A. Tucker via the Mises.org RSS feed.
Read the article in its full glory at http://mises.org/daily/5421/How-Blessed-Is-the-State-That-Thus-Destroyeth-the-Car

Get the Guestroom Ready

Another one I wish I'd written...from alt-market:

An Agent Of The King In Every Home

Friday, 03 June 2011 02:44 Brandon Smith

The legal concept of citizen privacy from government intrusion is unfortunately a very new one in the long strides of human history. The idea that government can be limited, or restricted in its powers by the people, and that certain realms of life can and should be off-limits to the prying eyes of bureaucracy, is rarely applied in any culture of any era. This is because most civilizations have been founded and ruled upon the principles of military dominance. There was no separation between the government and the armies it fashioned; the government WAS the military. That is to say, martial law was a way of life for society, privacy was a foolish dream, and daring to contest the fact usually led to one’s death.

The Magna Carta of 1215, which King John was essentially forced to support, established a foundation for civil liberties which would then be fought over for the next several centuries. Beginning in 1627, and the ‘Petition of Right’ in Britain, common citizens began demanding a separation between military and civilian life, as well as the dismantling of standing armies which at that time were being used by the corrupt oligarchy as a means to subdue the populace. The aristocracy called it “royal prerogative”. The masses called it tyranny. However, as we all know, such breaks in the suffocation of despotism are few and fleeting. Fractures in the Petition of Right were frequent, and the aptitude of government to make war (even when there is no call for war) became the common excuse for the rulership to degrade civilian legal protections and hurtle them back into the dark ages, where property is a novelty that the authorities violate at their leisure.

During the years leading up to the American Revolution, the British attempted to stifle the growing independent nature of the colonies by issuing laws such as the ‘Writs of Assistance’, bypassing rights to privacy and allowing officials to search homes and businesses at will without probable cause, supposedly in the name of “capturing smugglers”. Not fully satisfied with this intrusion on the lives of the colonists, King George and his cronies issued the ‘Quartering Acts’, which required all colonists to welcome soldiers sent to subjugate them into their homes and to their dinner tables. According to law, early Americans were not only forced to allow warrant-less searches of their homes, they also had to show hospitality to the goons sent to dirty their doorsteps!

The purpose of these actions by governments is to assert their control over a population. THAT – IS – ALL. Rationalizations are always made; usually in the name of “protecting the public from harm”, but the real name of the game is imperialism, and fear. When the establishment violates the line of citizen privacy, and gives its agents the legal free reign to enter your home at will, the message they are trying to send is: “Your property is our property. Your life is our business. The law does not protect you. The law is our weapon.” In other words: Resistance is futile.

The Revolutionary War and the U.S. Constitution should have been the final word on the matter of limited government and the inherent rights of individuals. But, the Founding Fathers only thwarted the elites for a time, and as long as such powerful minorities of men exist, there will always be new methods of tyranny, and new battles to be endured. Some may respond skeptically, claiming that our society today is a far cry from the age of British oppression and soldiers storming our living rooms and our pantries. I would have to disagree of course, after I stopped cringing at their ignorance.

The 4^th Amendment A Fond Memory…

Last month in a 3-2 decision that has shocked the independent media community but gone mostly unreported in the mainstream, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that citizens have no right to block an officer’s entry into their home, even if the officer does not have a warrant. The officer also does not have to give any clear indication as to why he wishes to enter your home, meaning he can enter without cause. Justice Steven David, one of the supporting judges stated:

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence…”

“We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”

http://www.fox59.com/news/wxin-indiana-supreme-court-critics-argue-landmark-indiana-ruling-violates-right-to-privacy-20110517,0,5143977.story

Keep in mind, this is the same Indiana court that decided in a previous case that an officer serving a warrant is not required to knock (make his presence known) before entering your home if he feels circumstances require it. So, to clarify; if an officer wishes to walk into your house, for any reason, he may do so, without a warrant, and without even knocking. You cannot block his path. You cannot close your door and lock it. You cannot kick his ass. You can’t even discuss the matter calmly with him before hand. He just walks in, and, he is legally protected.

Amazing…

While the Indiana Supreme Court did follow the decision by pointing out that a homeowner may protest an officer’s wrongful search through the courts after the fact, this is hardly any solace, and is almost adding insult to injury, since these are the exact courts that have decided our 4^th Amendment rights no longer apply. Obviously, once you allow authorities to savage your Constitutional freedoms, they are hardly going to let you punish them later through their own court system.

Indiana Sheriff Don Hartman Sr., in response to the court ruling, stated in an interview that he believed the decision gave him the power to conduct house to house warrant-less searches, an idea which he still defends:

http://www.mikechurch.com/Today-s-Lead-Story/in-sheriff-if-we-need-to-conduct-random-house-to-house-searches-we-will.html

This is just the latest of a string of court decisions across the country which expand the definitions of applied law. That is to say, there is a concerted and widespread effort by courts (especially federal courts) to broaden the accepted language of the law, so that, in fact, authorities can interpret the law to mean whatever they wish it to mean for whatever purpose fits their specific needs at the time.

Cell phones are fair game, according to courts in California, and police now have the ability to search your personal data when taken into custody, even if you have not been officially charged with a crime:

http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-01-04/bay-area/26357969_1_cell-phones-searches-police-department

The Supreme Court has ruled that cops are allowed to search your premises without a warrant if they “smell marijuana” and “hear evidence being destroyed”. Just out of curiosity, what does it sound like when evidence is being destroyed? Does the Supreme Court have the sound on file somewhere? Without a doubt, certain not quite-so-honorable police will take advantage of this ridiculous decision:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/us/17scotus.html?_r=1

New Mexico has ruled that officers may confiscate firearms from your vehicle during a traffic stop even if they have no reasonable cause to do so, trampling the 2^nd Amendment as well as the 4^th. Also in New Mexico (as in many states), if you have a conceal carry permit, you are supposed to announce to the officer that you have a weapon on your person. Meaning, now you have to let the traffic cop know that you have a firearm in the car and hope he doesn’t decide to take it away from you:

http://www.guns.com/nm-court-traffic-cops-can-seize-guns-even-if-no-law-has-been-broken.html

We saw the broadening tactic with the passage of the Food Safety Bill S. 510 and the immensely heightened powers of the FDA to regulate even the most minute farm activity. We also saw it in the railroading of Liberty Dollar founder Bernard von NotHaus by the Department of Justice when they used an obscure and loosely worded statute, essentially comparing the coinage of ANY alternative currency, no matter how distant in appearance to U.S. legal tender, to counterfeiting. Now, we are seeing the tactic applied to the 4^th Amendment itself, as law enforcement agents are given extreme prejudice to interpret their rules of engagement however they see fit. Such corruption has occurred despite the application of the 4^th Amendment, to be sure, but now, the ease at which it can occur and the lack of any redress by citizens is so pronounced, there can be only one outcome; police abuse on an incredible scale.

What we are witnessing is a time honored process exploited by autocrats the world over, now being utilized right here in America. What began with the passage of the FISA Bill and the expansion of government power to tap and monitor any American’s communications without a warrant, we are now seeing in our very neighborhoods. The law is being fogged and obscured until it is no longer clearly defined, which allows police and courts to operate within a vast grey area of legal chicanery. All social structures become warped in the wake of this process until we are no longer able to recognize that which is lawful, and that which is unlawful. In the end, we will discover that almost ANYTHING can be labeled “illegal” by the establishment in such an environment, and that no one, no matter how harmless and abiding, is safe from the storm.

Going Down In Flames…

I see where this is heading, and the destination is grim, but don’t take my word for it, just simply look at what is happening around you. The divide between law enforcement and the citizenry is growing. With the Department of Homeland Security now actively placing local police and sheriff’s departments in military training regiments, in military style gear, and even arming them with tanks and heavy machine guns (yes, tanks and .50 cal machine guns), it is becoming much harder to qualify local law enforcement as a civilian entity, rather than just another extension of the Department of Defense:

http://reason.com/blog/2008/09/01/sheriff-lotts-new-toy

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_16004590

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41912754/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/t/why-do-americas-police-need-armored-tank/

Even if military outfits like Northcom are not used openly as a standing army within the U.S., we already have a standing army in the form of men who were once called peace officers, whose mandate was once to “protect and serve”. Now, the words “to protect and serve” are disappearing from police cars nationwide, and we have a law enforcement community gearing up for war! The economic breakdown has exacerbated the situation even further. As states lose more and more funding due to the crashing municipal bond markets, they are now becoming completely dependent on federal cash. And, with federal cash, there are many unfortunate strings attached…

If you have been paying attention to police brutality cases over the past few years, then you have noticed a blatant trend towards swift and immediate unprovoked violence resulting in terminal consequences. When law enforcement is trained for combat, for attack, rather than defense, when they are conditioned to believe that the public is the enemy, and that they are somehow separate, or superior, very bad things begin to happen. Let’s take a short walk down memory lane…

Oscar Grant, 22, was shot in the back by police in Oakland, CA, while restrained and laying on the ground, pleading with officers that he had a four-year-old-daughter. The incident was caught on at least three separate cell phone cameras (which may have been one of the reasons why courts in CA are so keen on allowing warrant-less search and seizure of cell phones). The shooting officer, Johannes Mehserle, was eventually charged with involuntary manslaughter (???) serving a two year sentence and eligible for parole by the end of this year. If his actions had not been caught on video and disseminated across the web, who knows if he would have even been charged at all:

John T. Williams, 50, and nearly deaf in one ear, was shot by Seattle police for whittling a piece of wood while walking across the street. Officer Ian Birk exited his vehicle, claiming Williams was “acting strangely”, yelled at him to drop the knife, then giving him less than ten seconds to comply, fired several rounds from his weapon, killing the man. The officer later claimed that Williams walked towards him in a menacing fashion. Witnesses argued to the contrary. Note that Birk had already drawn his firearm as he exited the vehicle. Also note that Birk did not identify himself as a police officer as is required by law. Williams’ knife was also found folded shut by responding officers to the scene. Birk resigned due to public pressure, but was not charged with a crime:

And most recently, Jose Guerena, 26, and a former marine, was shot 60 times (a sign of undisciplined fire) in Pima County, Arizona, by a SWAT team entering his home also occupied by his wife and four-year-old son. Guerena’s wife stated that she had seen men through the window with guns, but that they could not be identified. Guerena grabbed his rifle (as most marines would) and told his family to hide. The Pima Sheriff’s Department has changed their story on this incident several times now, but this much is clear; the department claimed Guerena fired at them with his AR-15 as they entered the home. This was a lie. Guerena’s weapon had the safety still on after his death. When this fact was made public, Pima admitted that he never fired a shot. Pima claims that they have a warrant for the Guerena home, but have obtained a court order which had it sealed from the public. Why they had it sealed is unknown (did they even have the right house?). The Guerena raid was part of a neighborhood action, supposedly to bust a drug dealing operation in the area. No drugs were found in Guerena’s home. The reason why SWAT was necessary to serve the warrant in the first place is also still unclear:

My purpose in showing you these disturbing videos is not to make you hate cops. It is to illustrate a dangerous trend amongst our civil servants. Where we once had a few “bad apples” to contend with in our police departments, now we have official training handed down from the DOD which practically requires law enforcement officials to undergo a combat mindset, a psychology of aggression. In many cases, I believe, these officers are not doing what they do out of malice or ill intent. They are doing what they do because they are being TRAINED to do it. This is what happens when a society becomes militarized. It cannot be avoided, and it will only get worse from here on. Now imagine a violent element like this being given unlimited power to decide which homes they wish to enter and how they will enter them…

Why I Will Not Submit To A Warrant-less Search…

Constitutional values cannot defend themselves. They require the people to stand firm, and to never yield. Americans today have yielded far too much already, and at some point very soon, we’re going to have to make the hard choice on what is more important; our general safety and personal comfort, or our freedoms and the freedoms of future generations. Like the American Colonials, we have a system that does not serve our best interests, but the interests of an elite few. We are quickly losing our ability to dictate the terms of our own society, and our own destinies. Sadly, we are not yet presenting the determination that the colonials held in the face of this danger. Today, we are a nation mourning its own demise before it has even occurred. We have turned to reluctant compliance and submission. We are, frankly, whiny and pathetic.

This does not have to be.

While fantastic organizations like Oath Keepers are working hard to educate police and military on their sworn duty to uphold and defend Constitutional liberties, we as the citizenry must also show our support and resolve to see that the values and principles outlined in that historic document are not tarnished by apathy. The proverbial line in the sand must be drawn now, or not at all. This means, at the very least, non-compliance with unjust laws that defile our conscience, as well as our heritage.

The common response to this by naysayers would be: “You’ll comply when you have a gun in your face…”

That’s what naysayers throughout history have always said, though. They said it to the Founding Fathers, to Gandhi, and beyond. There will always be another gun to put in the faces of men who fight for the truth of a thing. There will always be men to point those guns at us. The question is, who will be more steadfast? Is the will to dominate really stronger than the will to be free? Can you ever control a people who do not fear you, even at the barrel of a gun? This is the mindset that brought this country to life, and it is a mindset we must rediscover, if we are to have any chance of survival.

You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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Know Anyone In Vegas? I'd Love To See The Line On This One

I didn't write this. But I wish I had. As published on ZeroHedge:

A Letter To Congress

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/29/2011 17:13 -0400

• Dick Fuld
• Gross Domestic Product
• Medicare
• National Debt

from reader T. Willerson

Letter to congress

Dear Congressman:

It’s here: Your moment at the plate. You’ve whiffed more than a few … and, yes, we’re counting. But you’ve been gifted another at-bat, and the President’s tired. Seventh inning stuff is coming out of his teleprompter, and this full-count fastball will be straight, level, and slow. You won’t see another one like this for five years.

An embattled first term president is faced with an outcome that he must, at all costs, prevent, and he’s done very little ground work ahead of it. He is about to become the first President in American history to preside over a default on the national debt, unless you vote to let him raise the limit on the financial burden we leave our children. He would ultimately be crazy to deny any reasonable option, absolutely anything, rather than live with the outcome of his refusal. Politically speaking, he’s whispered a prayer to the Greek God of Imprudence and Fiscal Insanity, raised a one-finger salute to the nation’s savers through the sunroof of a stolen golden Beemer, and revved it toward the draw-bridge that you were elected to control.



Graphic by John Lohman

America’s debt has been moving straight up since the early 1980s. In the beginning it was ok. Debt is not, in itself, a bad thing, and a reasonable amount of leverage on the balance sheet can be positive for any entity, including the United States. But we’re well past that threshold. Researchers Reinhart and Rogoff, in their exhaustive recent work, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, show that, historically, when debt in an economy gets above .9x, or 90% of GDP, the interest burden creates a negative cycle from which nations struggle to recover. If we include the unfunded liabilities we’ve committed to in order to support programs like Medicare and Social Security, the United States of America’s financial obligations represent 8.7x, or 871% of GDP, almost 10x the amount that Reinhart & Rogoff determined lead to ultimate economic failure. In terms that are much easier to identify with, this comes to a debt of $1,386,340 for every family in the US! When you consider the average family’s ability to pay, it all begins to rhyme with those 2007 no - doc mortgages, doesn’t it? In fact, if the US was a corporation, we’d be in bankruptcy proceedings and you, kind sir, would be holding a pink slip, a legal summons, and a scrap of paper with Dick Fuld’s cell phone number on it for advice on staying out of jail – because the truth is that he is no more guilty than you, and you no less than him, and we can stop kidding ourselves whenever you’re ready.

But, politically, you ask… what can really be done? After all it’s always the other guy. You know, that, sniff - sniff…, mean congresswoman from a lunatic district who disagrees. It’s her fault. She doesn’t understand math. And she’s just intractable. Intractable! She believes that America’s social contract (I can’t find that in the constitution… ) is more important than the critically important task of shooting Tomahawk missiles at other parents’ kids to support… uhhm… different kids that we don’t really know, in a war that’s only sort of, well... a war. I mean, the nerve of that… woman. And there are others like her. And there’s an election coming up every two years. A bigger one every four. Wait… what in God’s name did that lunatic McCain just say? … Anyway, progress is too much to expect, and after a couple years of trying, you just… roll with the punches… do what you can… Right?

When it’s time for that morning look in the mirror, you tell yourself it’s harder than you thought. Too much of it seems bigger than the promises you made to get there. In the face of disagreement, in the thrall of tight votes and divided leadership, you simply can’t get it done the way you’d hoped. So you parse the polls, you chase the cameras, you fondle your constituents, and you wonder what the view looks like from the upper chamber. You ultimately retire to the lobbying job, with one hell of a pension, and live in a way that you despised before you realized what two kids in college, vacations in Europe, and a wife with a strappy Jimmy Choo habit would cost. You’ve kicked the proverbial can down the road, and maybe you tell yourself that it’s all our political system will allow. And so it goes.

Or you find your moment - that point of crisis when rare circumstances put the bat in your hand, and you have the leverage to make a change - the kind of change that’s identified by far more than a focus-grouped slogan; the kind that alters the course of history. You can do it by simply standing firmly for the principles upon which you were elected.

To blame you for catastrophe, legislators first have to explain the rejection of an acceptable alternative. Barack can load the teleprompter with the righteous indignation of his Father’s Dreams and level each syllable with a stage actor’s grace. The senate can whine and Harry Reid will triangulate desperately toward that elusive line between patriotism and pandering, sensitivity and simpering, missing every second and third step along the way. You’ll have to hold through the deluge because the bully pulpit wins the news cycle, but an administration bears the blame. Deflecting reporters is a privilege of the political class, but a President is beholden to history.

Certainly you could play for a single; just get a runner on base and hope like hell that the relief pitcher isn’t as strong as he’s been for the last ten years. You could pick and pry and get just enough to say you won; aim for destabilization in the next election, and keep looking for your next shot. You could bunt something unintelligible and complicated enough to confuse the anchorman and the AARP, pick the flowers from the fertilizer, and beseechingly extend the mess into the camera lens. You could head for the primrose path with a pension and the lobbying job, and wonder, in weak moments, what your grandparents would say about abdication of duty.

Or you could rise to the challenge and do something meaningful - something that would answer that cynical question, the one that is on the lips of a generation raised to mute sound bites and soapboxes with the bored sweep of a pointer finger, but whose votes elected this President. Their question: What does any of it really mean?

If not now… when? Whether you win the next election or not…whether the next news cycle gives you a boost or not…. Will you get this chance again? The President is in a bind that no speech, no dog-wagging war, no bill, and no mindless populism can change. His back is against the 2012 wall and this time the outcome is binary. He knows it. He absolutely has to have you help him raise the debt limit.

This is legacy stuff, and it doesn’t matter which side of the aisle you claim, so keep it simple. Leave out the social invasions. Stay out of bathrooms, bedrooms, churches, and doctor’s offices. Cancel the earmarks and the garbage. Skip the things that sound good but won’t work. Shoot straight and don’t strut. Do it early. Do it clearly and forcefully, but respectfully, and explain it with logic that doesn’t require lies. Deliver it in a way that leaves no doubt about your goals, your intent, or your resolve, and leave the cigars at home. Let your most aesthetic, most intelligent, most media-savvy person front it, and limit the bill to one page.

Send the President a bill that says Federal debt, in all forms and definitions, must be less than 60% of GDP by 2016, less than 50% by 2020, and less than 40% by 2024, or, in each of those years, a bi-partisan group will cut Federal Funding at the strategic, and line item level, until the goal is met. Furthermore, debt must stay below the benchmark thereafter, short of a Declaration of War or National Emergency supported by a two thirds vote of both houses of congress. And in the case of temporary exception, anything over the maximum must receive the same two-thirds vote each year or immediately go back to the limit via the same committee.

Barack will not like this choice, and he will thrash and froth. He’ll reload the teleprompter again and again in fiery waves of verbal and emotive genius that will make you question everything you believe, and, ultimately, your congressional reason d’être. But, in the end, a solution he hates will be better than having his name on the first and only default in the history of the United States.

So plant your feet and point your finger at the bleachers. Tell the President that you don’t intend to change a word because a default now is no different than a default later, and you’d rather see him get the credit. Give him a clear choice and a good look at the filthy cesspool that lies in wait on the other side of the decision, and let him decide whether to court disaster. Then take him to the wall.

Of Myth and Legend

In 10 Examples That Should Convince Anyone That We No Longer Live In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave,

a writer posits that:

The things that you are about to read should make you mad. In fact, if none of these things make you mad there is a problem. Sadly, millions of Americans have actually embraced tyranny, and if you are not outraged by any of the items listed below than you are likely one of them.

my own added commentary is in red.

The American Dream
April 21, 2011

Do you know people that still believe that America is a free country? Do you have friends or family that are proud to live in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”? If you do, just show them this article. Of course, "showing it" to them will accomplish nothing. Most won't read it, if at all, before pointing out how wrong you are for your lack of faith. The things that you are about to read are enough to make the blood of any red-blooded American boil. We don’t live in a free country anymore. Instead, we live in a “Big Brother” police state control grid that is becoming more restrictive every single day. Most of our politicians seem to be control freaks that are obsessed with running every single little detail of our lives. These days there has to be a “rule” or a “regulation” for everything. The radical social engineers in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and communist China never even dared to try some of the things that are going on in America today. Indeed, more than a year before this country "entered" World War II, FDR had accomplished, "with the stroke(s) of a pen", nearly everything a totalitarian could want. We are all being treated little better than cattle and we are all being taught that it is best to just sit in our homes and absorb all of the television “programming” that is being provided for us. We even participate by assisting the government in inculcating the message in our young (which we "sold" into the "system" that FDR created), making certain that our kids know form birth that their lives and their bodies are not their own, and more importantly, that we, as parents have no power to protect them. Meanwhile, our public schools have become little more than prison grids. Our children are being taught to enjoy living as docile slaves in a world where imagination, liberty, freedom and adventure are all greatly discouraged.

Unfortunately, none of this is an exaggeration. Our politicians love to give speeches about “liberty” and “freedom”, but they always seem to have excuses to justify the endless parade of liberty-killing laws that they are imposing on all the rest of us.

Almost all of the freedoms listed in the Bill of Rights have been severely eroded. In fact, a number of them are almost totally gone at this point.

The things that you are about to read should make you mad. But they probably won't. Between the conditioning you've been subjected to and a lifetime of forced ingestion of fluoride to make you more docile, you might well be incapable of getting mad enough to take action. In fact, if none of these things make you mad there is a problem. Sadly, millions of Americans have actually embraced tyranny, and if you are not outraged by any of the items listed below than you are likely one of them.

The following are 10 examples that show that we no longer live in the land of the free and the home of the brave….

#1 According to the ACLU, state police in Michigan are using “extraction devices” to download data from the cellphones of motorists that they pull over. This is taking place even if those pulled over are not accused of doing anything wrong.

The following is how an article on CNET News describes the capabilities of these “extraction devices”….

The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information.

#2 In the state of New York, the Department of Health has designated wiffle ball, dodge ball, kick ball, freeze tag, red rover, frisbee tossing and tug of war as “risky recreational activities“. Any organization or program that allows kids to enjoy these games during the summer will now be subject to strict government regulation according to the New York Daily News….

Under the new rules, any program that offers two or more organized recreational activities – with at least one of them on the risky list – is deemed a summer camp and subject to state regulation.

Why this should be surprising escapes me. We were trained (for perspective, I'm a "boomer") to train our kids to pass on the training by insisting their children wear bicycle helmets, knee and elbow pads, etc., and even to train their babies that they must submit to being bound,(gagging will come later); tied down in their carseat, or "Mommy will get in trouble".

#3 At one public school in the Chicago area, children have been banned from bringing their lunches from home. Yes, you read that correctly. Students at that particular school are absolutely prohibited from bringing lunches from home. Instead, it is mandatory that they eat the food that the school cafeteria serves. Home-prepared lunches might omit "nutrients" that would further the conditioning to which we are all subjected.

#4 Would you like to have your face scanned and your ID recorded every time you attend a public event? Don’t laugh. The San Francisco Entertainment Commission is actually proposing a new rule which “would require all venues with an occupancy of over 100 people to record the faces of all patrons and employees and scan their ID’s for storage in a database which they must hand over to law enforcement on request.”

Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (AD)

#5 In Delaware, police and state government officials recently tore a basketball hoop right out of a family’s front yard and carted it away because it was “too close” to the street. They even extracted the pole for the basketball hoop out of the ground and took that away too.

#6 In Missouri of all places, two young girls named Abigail and Caitlin Mills were recently taught a lesson on how to be good citizens in the emerging totalitarian control grid going up all over the United States. After a complaint from a neighbor, the city of Hazelwood cracked down on the two girls and told them that they must stop selling girl scout cookies in their own front yard.

#7 As I have written about previously, federal bureaucrats have outlawed the incandescent light bulbs that we all grew up with and will be forcing us to switch over to new CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) light bulbs that are more expensive and that are actually worse for the environment. One new study conducted by scientists in Germany has shown that the new CFL light bulbs that we are being forced to use contain poisonous carcinogens that are likely cause cancer. In fact, the German scientists say that these CFL bulbs should be “kept as far away as possible from the human environment”. "Mercury grenades" are a more correct appellation for the devices. Don't believe it? Read the "instructions" on breakage cleanup.

#8 Many states are aggressively seizing “unclaimed” safe deposit boxes and are selling off the contents and using the money to pay state government bills. In the state of California, they are now going after safe deposit boxes if the owners have had “no contact” with the bank for just 3 years. Other states are being nearly as aggressive. If you have a safe deposit box that you have not opened in a while you need to go check on it right away. No different than "asset forfeiture", which you probably supported, since it was only taking the "ill-gotten gains" of drug dealers, etc. CAUTION: Don't buy too much cold medicine, or you, too, will be so classified, and it won't matter how recently you've accessed your "safety" deposit box (it's only a means of hiding incriminating stuff, anyway, right?).

#9 One Mississippi state judge recently issued an order for state officials to gather and deliver to him the names of every single child that is being homeschooled in the state. The frightening thing is that the judge did this all on his own. Nobody requested this information and there is no case pending for which this information would be required.

#10 The TSA had promised that they were going to stop groping little children at airports, but apparently that is not the case. For example, one 6 year old little girl made headlines recently when a TSA worker touched all of her private areas before allowing her to get on an airplane. Her parents were forced to stand aside and watch this outrage take place. Once again reinforcing that our kids' bodies are not their own, that they MUST allow sexual predators to molest them, and that parents have no power to protect them from the predators.

So what do all of you think about this list?

Ayn Rand, Prophetess?

Many thanx to FreedomWorks

Nuff said.

Some Things You Just Have to See

Like the calendar for the House Ways and Means Committee, Subcommittee on Social Security: http://waysandmeans.house.gov/Calendar/?EventTypeID=149&CatagoryID=4772

On Apr 13, 2011, the Subcommittee will examine the impacts of identity theft, the role of SSNs in abetting identity theft, and options to restrict its use. In addition, the role of the SSN in administering Social Security programs and how the Social Security Administration protects SSNs will be considered, along with legislative proposals to limit the use of SSNs.

Call your ... (ok, "representative") ... and tell him (or her) what limits you'd like to see.

The April 14 hearing will focus on the "progress" made and challenges created by E-Verify, including the potential burdens on employees, employers and the SSA. (How about burdens upon Liberty?) The Subcommittee will examine how the current shortcomings of the system could be improved to ease the verification process during this critical time of job creation. Finally, the Subcommittee will also review other proposals to expand employment eligibility verification, including enhancing the Social Security card with tamper-proof, counterfeit-resistant or biometric features and increasing enforcement through the sharing of taxpayer wage information.

STOP THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Damage Control

They can't hide it anymore. Too many instances, in too many places, too... "public". What to do?
Damage control. Put it right there in front of everybody: Put it on 60 Minutes. If you haven't seen http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7361572n&tag=related;photovideo, it's worth the 14+ minutes.

Essentially, what I've been saying for nearly 8 years (and yes, I'm not the only one), e.g., that foreclosing banks are thieves; that they don't own the Note that their(?) mortgage supposedly secures; that they have no right to "foreclose"; has now been "exposed" by Scott Pelley.

Oh, sure, Courts (especially bankruptcy courts) have, over the last couple of years, have thrown out foreclosures and mortgages for just such reasons, but those were proclaimed (by the thieving class) as occasional mistakes. Besides, the "foreclosees" (victims) are just deadbeats, trying to get something for nothing, right?

But as of of April 3, 2011, everyone should be aware.

Of course, the subliminal message behind 60 Minutes' "exposé was "(psst!) You can settle with your bank...". You know, the bank that doesn't own your note; that has no standing to "foreclose" on you in the first place.

DON'T FALL FOR IT! You CAN challenge them. You CAN make them prove they own, AND HOLD, your note. You CAN make them prove standing.

DO IT! For your children. For your country.