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Came by to check the board out, RIP Baggy's Board. Good luck to all.
Extremely undervalued
Especially with gold making a big move upward.
This is trading approximately 95% below value.
I am in at $1.47 valued at more than $100. Don't believe me go research it yourselves. Nice little gem here, IMVHO.
My current holdings:
FSM, GPL, MUX, BBSRF
Institutional holders of FSM
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FSM/holders?p=FSM
Back atcha GB, I trust all is well with yous guys also.
Yepper gloomy more than ever. Short the banks and hold on to your seats
G'day n4te0ne,
Yes, I went through the 'process' of starting the board, but GB and DA were the backbone.
Good luck to ALL
Hiya DA,
Just stopped by checking in on y'all. Don't want to clutter up your board. I'll be back in another year or so to check in again
G'day,
Most don't know me, a few may remember me. I trust you are all doing well. I haven't traded or looked at any charts for quite some time. I took a look at the DJIA 6 month chart this evening. I see an inverted cup and handle forming. If the DJIA doesn't hold 15600 the bottom is going to fall out.
Be careful out there and excuse me if I am just pointing out the obvious.
LOL ..... I am still gloom and doom
Bozzo AKA Bagman
Ron Paul opening statement & questions Ben Bernanke... video
Financial Services Hearing July 22 2010
Just Say No..... Article from THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR
By Shawn Macomber on 7.20.10 @ 6:08AM
Amidst economic collapse, Thomas Woods challenged readers in his 2009 book Meltdown, as TAS associate editor W. James Antle, III aptly put it, "to embrace fairly radical notions about the New Deal, the Federal Reserve and the government's role in the economy." Now, with a gonzo federal government nudging -- someone send Cass Sunstein a quarter -- ever-increasing numbers of Americans towards a serious apprehension of centralized power, Woods returns with Nullification, a provocative and enlivening new tome spelling out the historical, constitutional, and moral arguments for states simply rejecting unconstitutional laws the federal government attempts to impose. "I wanted to write a book explaining what nullification is and justifying what it does," Woods explained to TAS during an interview at the Mises Institute booth shortly before he gave a rousing FreedomFest lecture on the topic, "and also to create a ready resource for people to combat the inevitable smears from the drones and zombies."
TAS: How did Nullification come about?
Thomas Woods: I'm interested in political decentralization as a way of bridging ideological divides, even if I realize that for most on the left federal supremacy is like their bread and butter.… Still, the Kirkpatrick Sales of the left do exist -- people who favor farmers markets and say things like 'Small is Beautiful' -- and there is a growing number on the right who also feel the political scale has gotten too big. That is what needs to be cultivated on both sides. It can be done. You know, I bet I could find some Vermonters who basically want to let Vermont be Vermont.
TAS: There is a pretty healthy, or at least brash and noisy, home-rule/secessionist movement in Vermont.
TW: Yeah, they're an example of it. And obviously in Vermont those ideas have nothing to do with racism or slavery.
TAS: It has to do mostly with big box stores and SUVs, far as I can tell.
TW: Right. So they have their priorities, I have my priorities. Why shouldn't we each pursue our own priorities rather than clawing at each other every four years to see who gets to impose a single view on the whole country? That's the idea behind nullification. It's fascinating to me how easily demonized this position is. There's nothing in the apportionment of powers that has any necessary connection with racism or oppression… but when you challenge federal power a lot of people who support that power want to shout at you about lunch counters and have that be the end of it. These aren't left/right issues, though. It should be a structural question: Do you want to live in an imperial society or a self-governing one?
That's not to say states can't use power badly. Of course they can! But at least you have some recourse when they do. Nobody can control Washington, D.C. This is obvious. Everybody who voted for Obama thinking anything would change -- it's the same damn thing! State legislatures are not a huge improvement, but they're some improvement.
TAS: Nullification, as you explain in detail, is not radical in a historical context, but would you agree it might seem radical to a lot of people in a contemporary context?
TW: Yeah, it does, because it is the excluded possibility. The possibilities we usually get are, 'Should the federal government do this or should it do that?' The question is never, 'Should the federal government have a policy on this?' or 'Why can't states set their own education polices?' Everything in America is now immediately referred to people we have zero control over, civics text platitudes to the contrary notwithstanding.
TAS: At the same time, we have a bipartisan problem in this country whereby people are generally only interested in abuse of power and civil liberties when their party is out of power. Those who spent the eight years of the Bush administration praising dissent and obstruction did a pretty quick about-face once Obama was elected, and we could obviously have used some of this tea party skepticism much earlier in Bush's term. In light of that, how likely really is a long-term, trans-partisan movement to decentralize federal power?
TW: It's hard to say because there is some kind of psychological hold party affiliation seems to possess on the human mind. People want to be part of something. They don't want to be on the outside or be viewed as outliers. There are people who are going to favor decentralization because Bush is in power or because Obama is in power, but not as a general way of living. Perhaps as a sense of political helplessness grows -- the more people realize no matter how much they oppose some crazy thing the federal government wants to do the federal government does it anyway -- they might come to the default position that living on a scale smaller than a single 309 million person unit might at least give them a prayer of influence.
TAS: There's obviously some concern about this catching on when 'tenther' -- i.e. someone who believes in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution -- becomes an increasingly popular liberal slur.
TW: That's so stupid. The historical record is 1000 percent on the side of people who support the Tenth Amendment. It just shows how out to lunch these people are. Thomas Jefferson was the original tenther. Is that really the argument they want to have? If you hate Thomas Jefferson, please, please, please come out and tell the country that. None of them have the guts.
TAS: Is the scope of what the federal government attempted under both Bush and Obama since this economic crisis began, often against mainstream public opinion, made people more open to concepts like nullification?
TW: Well, sure. The crazier the federal government gets, the easier it is to propose alternatives and be listened to. Whether you ultimately agree with the thesis of my book or not, I don't think anyone will finish it and say, 'Well, that was just insane.' Unfortunately, for a long time in our current political environment if you didn't fall somewhere within this little three-inch area between Mitch McConnell and Hillary Clinton, then you were, by definition, crazy. It becomes easier to turn that argument around on people when you can say, 'Wait, you're calling me crazy? They're the ones who are proposing the following twelve insane things. But I'm crazy because I say, "Maybe we should have a chance to opt out"'?
TAS: One last question: Regarding your previous book, Meltdown, I'm curious, are things now better, worse, or as bad as you thought they'd be when you finished writing that book?
TW: It could have been worse. I'm not sure how. [Smiles.] I'm thinking of Young Frankenstein -- 'It could be worse, could be raining!' I didn't realize the Obama deficits would be quite so bad as they are, but the rest of it -- I can't say I'm shocked. They have managed to hold on to and continue the narrative of 'We, the government, are just innocent bystanders in all of this, except for the failure to regulate enough under the last guy.' Even that Obama has abandoned a little bit since the campaign trail where he just kept saying, 'Deregulation, deregulation, deregulation.' Probably because people started to ask, 'What specific deregulation?' They tried Gramm-Leach-Bliely for awhile, but it wasn't really completely applicable, and if you dig too deep people find out Clinton and Biden supported it. Now it's more like, 'It was a failure to be proactive.' Of course! After the fact anyone can say, 'If we hadn't let this happen, it wouldn't have happened.' So what does that mean for the future? At least there is, thanks to the Internet, a competing version of events people can access. In 1975 we wouldn't have had that. People don't have to just pick between the narratives of the New York Times and the Washington Post anymore.
TAS: Has the growing skepticism of the public toward government during a time of economic crisis surprised you at all?
TW: I'm surprised, frankly, more people didn't swallow the line -- 'This is regrettable, but we have to do this to save the system from collapse.' People were against those bailouts from the beginning. And that was amazing because that line was being pushed on the public so vigorously, by so many sources, and anyone who disagreed was denounced as a total ignorant hick. Yet people defiantly held to that skepticism. And that truly does give me hope that maybe people are tuning those voices out and things will get better.
Shawn Macomber is a contributing editor to The American Spectator.
Hiya, never, good to type at-cha,
Interest free money. The way it was intended to be. Such radical ideas we have.
Watch em folks... he's a fairly dangerous man
An important piece of information I neglected to point out....
The state currencies would be INTEREST FREE. Regulated state by state with no CENTRAL CONTROL.
Hiya ticket,
The "printed" money would be backed by a commodity. Every state has some commodity which it could base it's currency on. Maybe even a basket of commodities.
Lumber, gold, silver, oil, coal, hog bellies .... etc. They would not be fiat currencies.
Good to see you ticket.
Glad to see nullification has sparked some debate.
Prior to the 50 states seceding an agreement could be reached, by those 50 states, or at least 2/3rds in agreement for a NEW federal government and where it might be located. Some kind of fund to ensure our military would still be the best in the world. Even stronger than today would get my vote.
How do we pay for social security and other entitlements? Our federal reserve prints money out of nowhere, why could the states not do the same. Competing currencies would be a good thing. The strongest would survive.
Would state and local taxes increase? Most assuredly, but that would be localized and easier controlled by the citizens of that locality and state.
It would take a few years before the dust settled. This is really not that radical of an idea. It was/is what the founders intended.
Good to see you also P.C.
Thomas Woods has a libertarian world view. In my opinion, he is a very sharp individual and I happen to agree with most (not all) of what he stands for.
As for Susan, I don't know what her agenda might be. Maybe a divide and conquer mindset?
I may have said this before, on this board, but my dream would be for all 50 states to secede from the union. All on the very same day. This would leave the corrupt Washington politicians with nothing, no power, no money and most importantly no job
All 50 states would still have a government, their state officials. Would there be some backlash and hard times, yes undoubtedly. Secede on Monday and have a constitutional conference on Tuesday. This the only way to to get our country back, states reclaiming their sovereignty. The cesspool in DC can not be repaired, it's far beyond that, IMHO.
I know this will not happen, unless a force from above, deems it so. I pray for our country to return to it's constitutional roots. If it's meant to be it will happen.
We are a very slippery slope and all I see, at this point, is freezing rain coming. I can dream, hope and pray for a miracle. Who knows..... stranger things have happened.
This post should get some laughs but it's from my heart.
Dr. Thomas Woods...... videos, shree of em
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, When is the Next AIG to Fall?
Got an hour to kill... Mark Faber video.
Torch of Freedom...Memorial Day Tribute.
Back at-cha ticket
Good to see you also 96.
Welcome to more 1984
Is The Consumer Protection Bill Just One Huge Governmental Subversion Of Privacy Ploy?
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/25/2010 12:38 -0500
* Consumer protection
* Fail
* Federal Reserve
* Financial Regulation
If anyone has been curious why the Fed, banks and politicians have all been pushing for the "consumer protection" portion of the Financial Regulation bill, it appears we may have the answer. As CNSNews.com reports, the bill "would create the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and empower it to “gather information and activities of persons operating in consumer financial markets,” including the names and addresses of account holders, ATM and other transaction records, and the amount of money kept in each customer’s account. The new bureaucracy is then allowed to “use the data on branches and [individual and personal] deposit accounts … for any purpose” and may keep all records on file for at least three years and these can be made publicly available upon request." Goodbye privacy, hello 1984.
More from CNSNews:
Shelby slammed the new consumer bureaucracy, saying that it was meant not to protect consumers but to “manage” them by monitoring their behavior.
“Mr. President, make no mistake, behind the veil of anti-Wall Street rhetoric is an unrelenting desire to manage every facet of commerce under the guise of consumer protection.
“They may be interested in protecting consumers, but they are more interested in managing them,” Shelby said.
Shelby also criticized the idea that Americans need government to watch over their every financial move, saying that it was better to allow people the freedom to make their own choices and fail than to never allow them the freedom to choose at all.
“Mr. President, I have faith in the American people and their ability to make good choices,” said Shelby. “Granted, we do not always choose well. But I believe that a poor choice freely made is far superior to a good choice made for me.”
Shelby further said that the ability of the Federal Reserve to collect such detailed information about the most basic of financial transactions was the beginning of an effort by government to regulate every financial action of every American citizen.
“This new consumer bureaucracy is intended by its architects in the Treasury to begin the process of financial regulation with the intent of changing the behaviors of the American people,” said the senator.
Shelby appears to be correct. The bill allows the bureau to collect any and all information on any person operating in the financial markets.
As it reads: “[T]he Bureau shall have the authority to gather information from time to time regarding the organization, business conduct, markets, and activities of persons operating in consumer financial services markets.”
And the punchline:
In other news, communist, and other, dictators everywhere are now copying the US constitution and laws verbatim, in their own attempts to recreate the biggest centrally planned, communist regime ever seen.
Where in the hell is the outrage over this????? We've become a herd of sheep. Oh please help me BIG government I'm so a-scared. We have evolved into a bunch of ignorant timid fools. Sad but true.......bozzo
Just a few of today's headlines:
US Prepares for Largest Battle in Afghanistan...
NKorea bracing, severing all ties with South....
New Chinese aggression..
Israel drill raises tensions...
OBAMA ADMIN. FAVORS GLOBAL DEAL TO INCREASE BANK CAPITAL... CBSNEWS
POLL: Americans Pessimistic, Dissatisfied with Washington...
MOODY'S: Debt Level, Spending Pose Risk to America's Aaa Credit Rating...
Obama admin backs Vatican's immunity claim in pedophile cases...
OBAMA TO SEND 1,200 TROOPS TO MEX BORDER...
Jamaica: 60 dead in battle with drug gang...
Pushy fliers may show up in TSA's database; Feds keeping records of people who make screeners feel 'threatened'...
REDISTRIBUTION VICTORY: PRIVATE PAY PLUMMETS, TAXPAYER HANDOUTS SOAR...
Banks Are Downgraded by Bondholders as Two-Year Swaps Soar: Credit Markets Bond investors aren’t waiting for ratings companies to act before downgrading BNP Paribas SA, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and the rest of the world’s biggest financial institutions...
IMF: Spain must make wide ranging reforms, weak recovery...
Romanians protest wage and pension cuts...
Obama’s Health Care Rationing Czar...
Fear Returns to the Markets...
Doubts on European Central Bank Amid Crisis...
Germany Drafts Wider Ban on Speculative Trades...
Regulators Seek Global Capital Rule...
Israel Mounts Air Strikes on Gaza After Attacks...
I could go on and on. I just have a feeling that things are coming to a head and soon. When the treasury bonds bubble burst, war with Iran or North Korea, European Union crumbles, terrorist attack on American soil, passage of Cap and Trade, States of the Union going bankrupt, more bailouts foreign and domestic, stock market crashes below 5000......
Gloom and doom is back...lol. Hope everyone is doing well and
preparing.
May God bless us all,
bozzo
Brazil and China eye plan to axe dollar
By Jonathan Wheatley in São Paulo
Published: May 18 2009 18:24 | Last updated: May 18 2009 23:31
Brazil and China will work towards using their own currencies in trade transactions rather than the US dollar, according to Brazil’s central bank and aides to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president.
The move follows recent Chinese challenges to the status of the dollar as the world’s leading international currency.
Mr Lula da Silva, who is visiting Beijing this week, and Hu Jintao, China’s president, first discussed the idea of replacing the dollar with the renminbi and the real as trade currencies when they met at the G20 summit in London last month.
An official at Brazil’s central bank stressed that talks were at an early stage. He also said that what was under discussion was not a currency swap of the kind China recently agreed with Argentina and which the US had agreed with several countries, including Brazil.
“Currency swaps are not necessarily trade related,” the official said. “The funds can be drawn down for any use. What we are talking about now is Brazil paying for Chinese goods with reals and China paying for Brazilian goods with renminbi.”
Henrique Meirelles and Zhou Xiaochuan, governors of the two countries’ central banks, were expected to meet soon to discuss the matter, the official said.
Mr Zhou recently proposed replacing the US dollar as the world’s leading currency with a new international reserve currency, possibly in the form of special drawing rights (SDRs), a unit of account used by the International Monetary Fund.
In an essay posted on the People’s Bank of China’s website, Mr Zhou said the goal would be to create a reserve currency “that is disconnected from individual nations”.
In September, Brazil and Argentina signed an agreement under which importers and exporters in the two countries may make and receive payments in pesos and reals, although they may also continue to use the US dollar if they prefer.
An aide to Mr Lula da Silva on his visit to Beijing said the political will to enact a similar deal with China was clearly present. “Something that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago is a real possibility today,” he said. “Strong currencies like the real and the renminbi are perfectly capable of being used as trade currencies, as is the case between Brazil and Argentina.”
In what was interpreted as a sign of Chinese concern about the future of the dollar, the governor of China’s central bank proposed in March that the US dollar be replaced as the world’s de-facto reserve currency.
In an essay posted on the People’s Bank of China’s website, Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s governor, said the goal would be to create a reserve currency ”that is disconnected from individual nations” and modelled on the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing rights, or SDRs.
Economists have argued that while the SDR plan is unfeasible now, bilateral deals between Beijing and its trading partners could act as pieces in a jigsaw designed to promote wider international use of the renminbi.
Any move to make the renminbi more acceptable for international trade, or to help establish it as a regional reserve currency in Asia, could enhance China’s political clout around the world.
Central banks may need more power for financial stability
Sun May 17, 2009 3:03pm EDT
NO!!! what we need is for YOUR central banks to cease operations.....bozzo
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Central banks might need more power to oversee banks if they are to play a larger role in maintaining financial stability in the post-crisis world, a Bank for International Settlements (BIS) report said on Sunday.
The report also said central banks should examine issues such as the make-up of policymaking bodies, their independence, voting habits and finances as their role evolves.
"The current global financial crisis could well have ... important implications for central banks, particularly with respect to their role in fostering financial stability," said the report, by the Central Bank Governance group.
"If central banks are to play a key role in dealing with systemic risk when applying a more macroprudential approach, they may also need to have closer oversight of systemically significant institutions."
But the report said there was no magic bullet for arranging central bank governance to deal with the new challenges, as their roles as well as political and economic conditions differ from each other.
"What is suitable for one country will not be for another. Hence, setting down a single set of best practices is not feasible."
Financial stability, for its part, would be difficult to codify in central bank objectives, as it is not as simple as naming a range for consumer price growth as an inflation target.
"Financial stability is ... somewhat incomplete as a guiding light for policy actions and as a basis for accountability," it said.
"Financial stability is not an absolute objective -- most economists would agree that financial variables should be flexible, and should change, and sometimes sharply. The question is by how much and in what circumstances."
Global policymakers have agreed that more comprehensive and cooperative financial supervision is one of the key lessons of the financial crisis, and the European Union has agreed a blueprint to create two new bloc-wide oversight bodies giving central banks a bigger say.
The BIS report said accountability and independence also have to be solved when thinking of central bank governance.
"One of the most challenging tasks in central bank design is to organize the governance structure in a manner that permits policymakers to meet their macroeconomic stabilization objectives while remaining accountable for their actions."
The group in charge of the report was chaired by Guillermo Ortiz, Governor of the Bank of Mexico, and included policymakers from many major central banks, including Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, European Central Bank Vice-President Lucas Papademos and U.S. Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn.
(Reporting by Sakari Suoninen; Editing by Victoria Main)
Mises Daily by Robert P. Murphy | Posted on 5/15/2009 12:00:00 AM
With all of the comparisons between President Obama and FDR, and especially all of the "lessons" we are told about the Great Depression, fans of the free market need a single volume to get up to speed as well as to educate their interventionist friends. I have written such a book in the newly released The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal.
In another venue I gave an infocommercial for the book for the general reader, but in the present essay I will explain the book's relevance for the Austrian reader.
Picking Up Where Rothbard Left Off
The first question that springs to mind — and many potential readers have indeed emailed me this — is to wonder, "What's in your book that's not in Rothbard's America's Great Depression?"
As with any economic history from an Austrian perspective, obviously I consulted Rothbard's scholarship for those topics that he had covered. In particular, my chapter on Herbert Hoover draws most of its statistics and quotes from Rothbard's work.
Unfortunately, as great as Rothbard's book is, he ends with the Hoover administration. So I extend the Austrian analysis to explain the failures of the New Deal. For example, the official unemployment rate in 1938 averaged 19 percent. Inasmuch as Roosevelt was sworn in five years earlier in 1933, this is a rather damning indictment of the New Deal as a recovery program. All previous US depressions (or "panics") had been long gone five years after the trough, and yet here we have the unemployment rate at 19 percent under the alleged savior of capitalism.
The next step in the argument is for the apologist for FDR to claim that Hoover handed over the worst economy in US history, and hence it's not surprising that things recovered more slowly under the New Deal.
Ah, not so fast. I dispose of that counterobjection by digging up Canadian unemployment statistics from the 1930s. Comparing them year by year with the official US figures, I discovered the following interesting factoid: From 1930 to 1933, the US unemployment rate averaged 3.9 points higher than the Canadian rate. Yet from 1934 to 1941, the US rate averaged 5.9 points higher. (Both rates tended to fall over time from their 1933 peaks, but Canada's fell faster.)
Why is this significant? It shows that not only did the US economy recover from depression under FDR more sluggishly than at any other point in US history, but it also recovered more sluggishly compared to Canada's experience during the Great Depression itself. What else do we need to do to show that the New Deal did not "get us out of the Depression"?
Damn Lies and Statistics?
The astute reader may have wondered why I kept using the odd term "official" in reference to US unemployment rates in the section above. The answer is that FDR's fans dispute the unemployment rates listed in, say, the Historical Statistics of the United States. In other words, in my book I use the government's own records as to what the unemployment rates were during the 1930s, mainly because I didn't want a skeptical reader to think I was relying on something from a Cato fellow's econometric model. No, my arguments about the awful "recovery" under FDR are based on the official numbers told by the same government that preaches the success of the New Deal.
Yet if you are going to use the numbers put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you should be careful, because leftist economists and historians will say you are lying. The controversy centers around the status of workers who had "make-work" jobs (through the WPA, etc.) under the New Deal. The "official" government numbers do not count those people as truly being employed, whereas if you did count them, then obviously the unemployment rate would drop a lot more due to the New Deal. For example, the unemployment rate would get back into the high single digits by 1937 (before shooting up again) if you remove WPA workers from the ranks of the "unemployed."
So which unemployment series is correct? This is a somewhat philosophical question; Bob Higgs says that there is no objectively "right" answer, it rather depends what you are using the series for. If the issue is to assess the plight of Americans and gauge how bad the human suffering was during the 1930s, then it would be misleading to say that 19 percent of the workforce had no job during 1938. After all, these people weren't starving because they were getting government checks.
On the other hand, if you are trying to assess the ability of the New Deal to restore soundness to the American economy, then surely it is relevant that the private sector was incapable of finding useful employment for 19 percent of the workforce in 1938, five full years into the New Deal. That is also the "official" number that the BLS and other government websites will show you if you look up historical unemployment rates. It is perfectly fine to use that number as an indication of just how sluggish recovery was under FDR. After all, there wasn't a massive WPA program during prior depressions (or "panics").
Let's use an analogy to make the point: Imagine that in the last days of his presidency, George W. Bush declared a new policy. His spokespeople explained, "It is rather misleading to say that the unemployment rate in October 2008 was 6.6 percent, because that implies millions of Americans are destitute. But in fact they are all receiving generous assistance from the government in various forms. If we say that their 'job' is filling out the paperwork for unemployment claims, then the true unemployment rate is more like 0.4 percent. Those are the people who truly have no source of income, and need to be helped."
Would any left-liberal sign on to that rationale? Of course not. Now, there is no objectively hard and fast line between a "real" government-provided job versus a "phony" job such as "filling out unemployment forms." In fact, a purist could note that all government jobs are artificial and not indicative of true productive value for consumers, since their compensation is derived through involuntary taxation.
But even for more mainstream economists, who consider government-school teachers to have jobs just as legitimate as private-school teachers, it is still not an open-and-shut case how to classify Americans who were on make-work rolls during the 1930s. They weren't being "hired" because of a dire need to plant more trees or build more schools, but rather they were getting checks first, and then the "jobs" were invented as an afterthought.
Conclusion
Besides the application of Austrian economic analysis to the broad sweep of events during the Great Depression, my new book also draws on some of the truly shocking anecdotes that Burt Folsom and other historians have found. For example, there is a letter from a Democratic party boss telling a woman that if she wants to stay on the WPA rolls, she needs to make a campaign contribution. At the risk of sounding clichéd, I can honestly report that my book presents a side of the New Deal that Americans were not taught in school.
Video: The trial of Henry Kissinger
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2815881561030958784
The Constitution: A Politically-Incorrect Guide
Posted on 17 November 2008
by David Gordon, Mises.org
Kevin Gutzman gives his readers much more than they had a right to expect. The “Politically Incorrect Guide” series in which his book appears aims at a popular audience: its goal is to correct commonly held myths of leftist propaganda.
Gutzman eminently fulfills this goal, but his book cannot be called an elementary work. Quite the contrary, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution is a major contribution to American constitutional history.
Gutzman is a leading authority on the Virginia ratification debates on the Constitution, and he uses his research to great effect. He has been much influenced by the pioneering originalist scholar Raoul Berger, but he strengthens and extends Berger’s views.
The principal thesis of the book is that the Jeffersonian, states’ rights understanding of America’s founding and the Constitution is correct. When the American colonies assembled in the Continental Congress and adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776, they did not create a new nation, Abraham Lincoln to the contrary notwithstanding.
The very word “Congress” shows this. “The Congress was, as Massachusetts John Adams put it, a meeting place of ambassadors. In fact, the word congress had always denoted assemblies of the representatives of sovereigns - as in the case of the Congress of Westphalia in the seventeenth century” (p. 10). The Declaration said that the colonies were now states, i.e., independent governments. “In the Declaration’s culminating fourth section, Congress declared the colonies to be ‘free and independent states’ and claimed for them the right to do everything that free countries could do” (p. 11).
Nor did the Articles of Confederation change matters. Each state retained full sovereignty over all matters not “expressly delegated” to the United Sates. True enough, the Articles spoke of “Perpetual Union”; but as Gutzman astutely notes, the “fact that their union had no set end date, in part because the length of the war could not be foreseen, was denoted by calling it ‘perpetual.’ (In those days treaties between European states often purported to be ‘perpetual.’ This did not mean that neither side could bring a treaty agreement to an end, but that there was no built in sunset provision)” (p. 12). Further, in the Treaty of Paris that ended the war, George III mentioned each of the colonies by name, acknowledging them to be “sovereign and independent States” (p. 10).
Gutzman has made a strong case that, prior to the adoption of the Constitution, the states were not subordinated to a national government. One might allege on the other side that the states were not represented abroad by separate ambassadors, but this is far outweighed by the considerations our author adduces. He now confronts the principal challenge to his thesis: did the Constitution change matters? Was the United States no longer an alliance of states but instead a unified nation?
As Gutzman makes clear, some delegates to the Philadelphia Convention certainly wished to change the nature of the American system. Instead of the usual split between nationalists and their opponents, however, Gutzman maintains that there were three parties in the convention: “The first was the monarchist party, the chief exemplar of which was New York’s Alexander Hamilton. The monarchists were intent on wiping the states from the map and substituting one unitary government for the entire continent … The second party consisted of nationalists, people who - without ever avowing admiration for the monarchical form - wanted to push centralization as far as could reasonably be hoped … Finally, there was a cohort in the Convention of members insistent on proposing a reinforcement of the central government while maintaining the primary place of the states in the American polity - a truly federal, rather than national government” (pp. 22–24).
Gutzman rightly points out that neither of the two nationalist parties got its way. Madison, the “Father of the Constitution”, wanted the federal Congress to have the power to veto state legislation, but this proposal was rejected. So far, our author has given a standard account, but now comes his key interpretive move.
He maintains that crucial to understanding the meaning of the Constitution were the intentions of the delegates to the ratifying conventions. These delegates, after all, were the people whose votes established the Constitution as legally binding. Gutzman concentrates on the Virginia convention, and he places great stress on one point.
The Virginia delegates looked on the new Constitution with great skepticism, fearing that it would become a tool for the federal government to crush the states. To placate opponents such as Patrick Henry, the leaders of the pro-ratification forces, who included Governor Edmund Randolph, the proposer of the nationalist Virginia Plan at Philadelphia, had to make a concession. They had to agree that the powers of the new Congress were limited to those “expressly delegated” in the Constitution. The delegates repudiated in advance any move by the new authorities to expand their powers beyond this. Further, they wrote into their ratification statement the right to withdraw from the new government, if it exceeded its proper powers.
Gutzman contends that because this understanding was part of Virginia’s instrument of ratification, no stronger central government can claim Virginia’s authorization. And since it would be senseless to think that the Constitution gives the federal government more power over some states than others, the Virginia restrictions apply to all the states.
This is the Jeffersonian view of the Constitution. Gutzman’s great contribution is to show that the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799, the key statements of the Jeffersonian position, restated the understanding of the Virginia ratifying convention. Contrary to the Federalist opponents of the Resolutions, Jefferson and Madison did not act as innovators in 1798; and their position cannot be dismissed as merely one of several competing interpretations. It was firmly based on the legally valid Virginia ratification instrument.
Gutzman summarizes his main contention in this way:
“Most history and legal textbooks say that Jefferson and Madison invented the idea of state sovereignty. But … they only argued for what the founders had already understood to be true about the sovereign states from the beginning, even if some of the founders(the nationalist and monarchist wings) wanted to change that understanding.” (p. 73)
However sound the Jeffersonian understanding of the Constitution, it of course has not prevailed in subsequent American history. Gutzman assigns federal judges a large share of the responsibility for the transformation of the original understanding; and one judge in particular arouses his critical scorn. The judge in question is the foremost of all federalist judges, Chief Justice John Marshall. To my surprise, Gutzman does not center his attack on Marbury v. Madison. He is critical of Marshall’s reasoning, but “[d]espite what most legal scholars will tell you, ‘judicial review’ was uncontroversial before Marbury v. Madison” (p. 78). I wish that Gutzman had addressed the arguments to the contrary advanced by L. Brent Bozell in his neglected The Warren Revolution. I do not say Bozell is right, but his case against judicial review merits a response.
For Gutzman, Marshall’s chief sin is not judicial review but his repudiation of the Jeffersonian understanding of the limits of federal power. In McCulloch v Maryland, Marshall “wrote that while the Articles of Confederation had specified that Congress had only the powers it was ‘expressly delegated,’ the Constitution included no such language, so no such principle applied to it. This was an extraordinary argument, given that Marshall himself and other Federalists … had assured their ratification colleagues that this very principle of limited federal power … was implicit in the unamended Constitution even before the Tenth Amendment was adopted” (p. 91).
Given his Jeffersonian views, it comes as no surprise that Gutzman thinks the Southern states acted fully within their rights when they seceded from the Union in 1861. “The Federalists always insisted during the ratification debates - knowing that they had to win support for the Constitution - that the states were individual parties to a federal compact. Spelling out the logic of the compact, three states - Virginia, Maryland, and Rhode Island - explicitly reserved (in the act of ratifying the Constitution) their right to secede from the Union” (p. 122).
As always, Gutzman makes a strong argument, but on one minor point I think he is mistaken. He says that one “legacy of Dred Scott v. Sandford was that after 1857, virtually any Republican candidate was sure to beat Buchanan for president in 1860 - which would almost certainly mean the dissolution of the Union (p. 120; see also p.160). But Buchanan was not a candidate for president in 1860. Suppose the Democratic Party had not split. Is it a foregone conclusion that Lincoln would have defeated Stephen A. Douglas?
One final example of Gutzman’s constitutional iconoclasm must here suffice. The Supreme Court has used the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as its principal instrument to eviscerate state sovereignty. Various decisions of the Court have held, e.g., that the Amendment applies the restrictions of the Bill of Rights to the states.
Gutzman rejects this view in the most radical way possible. He holds that the Fourteenth Amendment was never legally adopted. Congress required the Southern states to ratify the Amendment as a condition for readmission to the Union. But this is blatantly illegal: if the legislatures who “ratified” under duress were not already valid representatives of existing state governments, their votes had no legal effect. Our author concludes: “Thus, the Fourteenth Amendment was never constitutionally proposed to the states by Congress and never constitutionally ratified by the states, and yet today it stands (after the Constitution’s structural provisions) as the most significant part of the American legal system” (p. 133).
Gutzman has made a very strong case for his Jeffersonian understanding of the Constitution. A critic might challenge him on the grounds that we need not today care about how the Constitution was understood by its eighteenth century ratifiers. But Gutzman could in response say that this is what was legally enacted; those who favor other views of government should not attempt to attain their goals through misreadings and distortion of the constitutional text.
David Gordon, senior fellow of the Mises Institute, is editor of the quarterly Mises Review
Interesting site IMO.....
http://www.redalert.wnd.com/
The true deficit of the federal government as measured by the U.S. Treasury according to generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP methods, was $5.1 trillion in 2008, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Bush administration on a cash basis, and the GAAP negative net worth of the U.S. exceeds $65.5 trillion, an amount that exceeds the gross domestic product of the world.
"We can't keep on just borrowing from China," Obama told the Rio Rancho audience. "We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children's future with more and more debt."
This frame of mind is a bit late, don't ya think!!! What a$$holes these people are....bozzo
Who, Me? Yes You!
by Peter Schiff
When, during the invasion of Iraq, the United States Government issued its famous deck of playing cards with the 52 arch villains of the Iraqi police state, Saddam Hussein’s face adorned the Ace of Spades. If the Obama Administration wanted to engage in a similar public relations campaign for the real estate crisis, the top card should be reserved for Alan Greenspan.
Yet in a speech this Tuesday before the National Association of Realtors, Sir Alan “the-bubble-blower” claimed that his low interest rate policies in the early and middle years of this decade had no effect on mortgage rates or real estate prices. As a result, he claims no responsibility for the subprime mortgage crisis. But even current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who shared interest rate policy responsibility as governor of the New York Fed during the Greenspan regime, recently admitted that overly accommodative policy helped inflate the bubble. So what does Greenspan know that everyone else doesn’t?
His primary defense is that mortgage rates were a function of long-term interest rates which were simply not responding to the movement in short-term rates, which he did control. While it is true that the flow of capital from foreign creditors with excess dollars did keep long rates low despite rising short rates, this “conundrum” was not the leading factor in the housing bubble. Although rates on thirty-year fixed rate mortgages are based on long-term bonds, by 2005 such loans had become an endangered species. The housing bubble was all about adjustable-rate mortgages with 1–7 year teaser rates primarily based on the Fed funds rate.
The rock bottom teaser rates, permitted by the 1% Fed funds rate, were the primary reason that many home buyers were able to qualify for mortgages they couldn’t otherwise afford, and in turn, to bid up home prices to bubble levels. By pushing down the cost of short-term money, the Fed enabled homebuyers to make big bets on rising real estate prices. Without the Fed’s help, few borrowers would have “qualified” for these risky mortgages and real estate prices never would have been bid up so high.
Greenspan expresses exasperation now, as he did then, that his careful nudging of interest rates higher by quarter-point increments did not translate into corresponding increases in long-term rates. Unfortunately, according to Greenspan, the markets would not cooperate with his wise guidance, and to his dismay, mortgage rates fell despite his best efforts. As they say in Texas, this dog will just not hunt. If the “measured pace” of his quarter-point hikes were too slow to produce the desired effect, why didn’t Greenspan jack up the pressure? With interest rates far below the official inflation rate for many years during the bubble, he certainly had plenty of room to maneuver. The claim that he was unhappy with the results of his rate hikes, despite his having done nothing to adjust that policy, is ridiculous.
In addition to his colossal errors on interest rate policy there were many other ways Greenspan blew air into the real estate bubble. One example was what the market called the “Greenspan put.” By creating the perception in word and deed (since proven accurate) that the Fed would backstop any major market or economic declines, lenders became more comfortable making risky loans. In an often-quoted 2004 speech, Greenspan went so far as to actively encourage the use of adjustable-rate mortgages and praised home equity extractions for their role in contributing to economic growth. In fact, rather than criticizing homeowners for treating their houses like ATM machines, he often praised the innovative ways in which such homeowners were “managing” their personal balance sheets. Greenspan was as much a proponent of leverage for homeowners on Main Street as he was for bankers on Wall Street.
The bottom line is that Greenspan fathered the housing bubble and now he refuses to acknowledge kinship of his wayward child. His denial of responsibility is an act of stunning bravado, and is a testament to his ability to turn even the simplest of situations into an impenetrable tangle of theories and statistics. The private sector jokers who now hold top dishonors in our pack of economic villains are easily trumped by the Maestro. The fact that Greenspan still has any credibility shows just how little understanding the general public, including Wall Street and the media, actually have about this crisis.
Home-school graduates mark milestone in life
By John Lowman
The Facts
Published May 17, 2009
LAKE JACKSON — Inquisitiveness, liberty and freedom from government are key to the human condition, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul told members of the Brazosport area home-school graduates Saturday.
Paul addressed 14 graduates of various home-school backgrounds in a standing-room-only First Baptist Church sanctuary in Lake Jackson. Students entered the sanctuary to “Pomp and Circumstance” and walked out to Casting Crown’s “Lifesong.”
“It’s very important we encourage home-schooling and make sure it’s always legal, and our governments never decide they know best,” Paul said. “Too often, our government would like to be the parent. Home-schoolers know exactly who’s responsible for education, and that’s the parent.”
Americans should be allowed the freedom to study, worship and raise families as they please, he said.
“Have a sense of values,” Paul said. “That comes from family. That comes from church. That comes from community. Life is precious. Life and liberty are a gift of God. If we do not put the effort in to protect those liberties, we can lose them. The Constitution and our government are to protect our liberties. Ultimately, you will have to invest some time protecting liberty.”
Home-schooled students often know more about the U.S. Constitution than public-educated ones, and they sometimes have the advantage of a more Christian background, Paul said. Respect for God’s law and man’s law are both important, he said.
So is having the freedom to ask questions.
“If there was one thing I could give you ... The most important thing to have is inquisitiveness,” he said, mentioning education, the economy, politics and world affairs. “Wonder how the world works. Opportunities abound in the information age. There’s good and bad in just about anything.”
Paul encouraged graduates to pursue a higher education, but stressed finding something they enjoy doing in life, not just working for money.
Class of 2003 graduate and Brazosport Christian School teacher Lauren Wallace urged seniors to follow God’s guidance even if it might not be what they thought it should be. Her comments echoed the class motto — don’t follow where the path leads: Rather, go where there is no path and leave a trail behind.
“If you’re passionate about God, you can trust those passions because they are for God,” Wallace said. “Don’t be surprised when God brings an opportunity, and don’t be afraid to step out in faith and take that opportunity. You must be opened to opportunities outside what you have planned for your life.”
Class of 2009 speaker Kalyn Murphy compared life to hunting with her father, trusting him and following his footsteps. God’s direction usually is in a quiet voice and not an earth-shaking revelation, she said.
“Learn to follow Christ closely ... ” Murphy said. “Learn to trust your heavenly father. God never promises that the path will be easy. However, he does promise he will be with us. This life is not about us. ... Today, we have a choice to make — strike out on our own leaving God behind or listening to the still, small voice.”
Graduates include Murphy, Jarad Ryan Bowling, Alysha Rae Eyestone, Monica Abigail Mendoza, Tiffani Ree Foley, Timothy Luke Hester, Nathanael Isaiah Kidd, Rebekah Mallory Grace Kidd, Russell Zachary Langham, C. Ryan Leigon, Juliana Elizabeth Moore, Shelby L'Rae Thomas, Rachel Nicole Willis and Lesia Diane Wimberley.
Payton Moore was master of ceremonies as Pastor Rick Hester delivered the invocation. Boy Scouts of America Troop 394 presented the American, Texas and Christian flags before Lesia Wimberley sang “With All My Heart” accompanied by pianist Brad Wimberley.
A Powerpoint presentation showed slides of each graduates’ life, accompanied by sometimes-moving comments by family members.
Secession.....
By William Buppert
I often get mail from readers inquiring on what to do to advance the cause of secession in their respective locales. So I’d like to discuss a few ideas on how it has worked in the past and how it may work in the future. I would first dispose of the canard that it is traitorous or unpatriotic to consider this. Do you suppose our rulers in DC abide by the rule of law, see the Constitution (I prefer the DI) as a bedrock document and seek to respect the real diversity in America (not the silly race, class & gender motif)? That diversity is the vast gulf in tolerance for levels of government as opposed to governance. Government is the command and control apparatus to manipulate people through coercion and violence. The distinction is that governance can occur in a minarchist or stateless realm because it runs the gamut from forms of external control to the personal controls of one’s own nature and relationship in society. Positive self-governance is the ability not only to do right by yourself but use your self-interest to serve others e.g., a business or voluntary work in a community and do them no harm. You have to ask whether your own philosophical ideas emanate from law or party; from conviction or the desire to get ahead at other people’s expense. You have to pry out the deeper recesses of who you are to divine what your motivations are in your community. If you conclude that in order for you to get ahead in life, you must use the vicious power of government to achieve this, secession may not fit you. The new regime in town will see that your needs are answered…for a while. Until they run out of money or create a state so suffocating that 1984 looks like a resort lifestyle.
The first task is to educate yourself on the ideas that would inspire such radical measures as secession. From whence does your conviction come? In a previous essay, I recommended a number of books on the subject. I would also add Thomas Naylor’s thin tome, Secession, as a great primer on the whole notion. There are a rather small number of books that deal directly with the secession issue. Yet, if we look at the vast number of books published since 1750 which deal with the precursors and history of both the First (1775–83) and Second (1860–65) American Revolutions the books start to increase tremendously which tangentially or directly deal with the notion.
Simply the words Declaration of Independence seem rather descriptive now, don’t they? To wit:
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levey war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
We were not asking for a Declaration of Dependence wishing to increase the size and weight of the British yoke, we were putting a petition to the world that we would no longer be shackled like draft animals to a system of government that had become overbearing, tyrannical and cruel in the violence it visited on men who wished to be at the helm of their own destinies.
The Constitution was then penned and approved but it left plenty to be desired in a Founding document. Those who actively engage in Constitution worship may want to turn away from the remainder of this paragraph. The Constitutional Convention was a political coup held in secret behind closed doors. The delegates were sent to amend the Articles of Confederation, not abolish them. The resulting document so terrified the Anti-Federalists that they immediately pressed for the Bill of Rights to put the brakes on what they perceived to be a pernicious concentration of power in the central government. Patrick Henry at the time referred to the Federalists as Consolidationists who wished to turn the states into mere administrative departments of the central government. Alexander Hamilton had managed to consign liberty and freedom to the dustbin of history as soon as the ink was drying on the new documents. So a careful consideration of secession should not be restricted to the primary and secondary source documents for the Constitution but all the literature and actions which took place prior to and after its adoption.
I have mentioned before that a mastery of the logic and rhetoric of the Anti-Federalists is powerful medicine in the coming conflicts. They speak eloquently to the decentralist and devolutionist impulses. I especially enjoy the acid-tongued Brutus.
So how does the American central government feel about secession? They like it as long as it is happening to other nations. The US State Department is now the champion of a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine and the American government was not shy about the applause it offered the fifteen states that calved from the moribund USSR a generation ago or calls to free Tibet from Chinese occupation but the American state is not at all thrilled at the prospect of its own partition and break-up in the near future. Yet the US State Department has not shied from its positions on other states’ right to secede:
"The Secretary and other members of the Administration have expressed concern to Chinese officials that the anti-secession law may be counterproductive"…
Imagine if the Soviet Union had collapsed in 1989–91 and these united States insisted that all fifteen of the states that fell away from and seceded from the USSR had to stay or else. Yet the American government insists that Kosovo secede from Yugoslavia proper protected under NATO’s skirts but South Ossetia better not secede from the American-Israeli satellite of Russian Georgia.
Thomas Franck, one of the five international law experts asked by the Canadian government to consider certain issues regarding a hypothesized secession of Quebec, wrote that:
"It cannot seriously be argued today that international law prohibits secession. It cannot seriously be denied that international law permits secession. There is a privilege of secession recognized in international law and the law imposes no duty on any people not to secede. While international law does not foreclose on the possibility of secession, it does provide a framework within which certain secessions are favored or disfavored, depending on the facts. The key is to assess whether or not Kosovo meets the criteria for the legal privilege of secession."
A privilege granted by whom? So it appears our rulers are quite conflicted when it comes to the recognition of secession on the world stage. We need to leverage this schizophrenia.
Remember the golden rule when it comes to successful resistance, rebellion and secession: grievances are exploited whether real or perceived. Every state in the increasingly reluctant Union has their own respective beefs with the central government ranging from taxation to the environment to energy policy. In your state or region, the key to successful monkey-wrenching of the system is to start small and witness to friends, family and neighbors of the injustices and inequities you feel the denizens of Mordor are doing to you and yours where you live. For the Austrians among you, witty explanations of the evils of central planning and the ills of government interference in the economy through taxation and regulation will yield great benefits for the right audience. It is your job to awaken folks from their collectivist fever-dreams.
Taxes too high? US Forest Circus wolf reintroduction programs reducing your elk populations? Local timber industry destroyed due to the EPA? Agricultural subsidies destroying farm yields and family farms through perverse pricing schemes? Helium reserves for WWI dirigibles? Insolvency of the Socialist Security System? The list for agitation and substantive reasons to divorce the DC Mob are too numerous to list and I leave it to your imagination. The point is that the nurturing of grievances is an important step in shaping and influencing the way people think in your community. Essentially, no one knows more about your neighborhood and environs than you and the potentates in DC are in this case the ultimate know-nothings. Leverage this cognitive dissonance to your advantage.
Think about the Gandhian-style non-compliance which occurred at Jarbridge, NV in 2000 when a Federal agency tried to ply their mischief. It apparently got to where Federal employees were denied victuals and lodging in local towns. Good old-fashioned shaming and shunning.
By the way, writing letters to your Feral (sic) Congress-critters to beg for the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the Bill of Rights (among others) to be recognized is a waste of time. They will not yield the benefits they reap as rulers in their nests in DC. Something happens when they are there for more than a year and you will never get the smell out. They will ignore you or worse. Ignore them.
If you see fit to organize local Committees of Correspondence and Safety as our First American Revolutionary forebears did, modern communication techniques and sousveillance will make it very interesting indeed.
Local action is required for local results. I share with Lew Rockwell an increasing skepticism of any political action having a meritorious result in the causes of freedom and liberty but you must take your own counsel.
Isn’t secession the ultimate vote in a supposed democracy?
"They can jail us. They can shoot us. They can even conscript us. They can use us as cannon fodder in the sod. But – But we have a weapon more powerful than any in the whole arsenal of their British Empire – and that weapon is our refusal. Our refusal to bow to any order but our own, any institution but our own.
Our friends in the Royal Irish Constabulary would like to shut me up. Oh yes, jail me again, shoot me, who knows? And I'd like you to send them a message. If they shut me up, who'll take my place?" ......Michael Collins
May 16, 2009
William Buppert [send him mail] and his homeschooled family live in the high desert in the American Southwest.
When society can vote/elect for themselves "free stuff", in doing so, they are no longer FREE!!!!! What government gives, it can take away.
Cartoon predicts the future 50 years ago.