Ron Paul’s opinions about cutting the budget are well-known, but on Monday, he got specific: The Texas congressman laid out a budget blueprint for deep and far-reaching cuts to federal spending, including the elimination of five Cabinet-level departments and the drawdown of American troops fighting overseas.
There’s even a symbolic readjustment of the president’s salary to put it in line with the average American salary.
“Our debt is too big, our government is too big, and we have to recognize how serious the problem is,” Paul said during an afternoon speech in Las Vegas ahead of Tuesday’s GOP debate there.
The plan, Paul said, would cut $1 trillion in spending his first year in the White House and create a balanced federal budget by the third year of his presidency.
“All the current candidates and many in Washington, they sort of talk around [the problem],” Paul said. “A lot of people will say, ‘well cutting a trillion dollars in one year is radical.’ Well, I operate under the assumption that the radicals have been in charge for way too long.”
Many of the ideas in Paul’s 11-page Plan to Restore America are familiar from his staunch libertarianism, as well as tea party favorites, like eliminating the Education and Energy Departments. But Paul goes further, proposing an immediate freeze on spending by numerous government agencies at levels from 2006, the last time Republicans had complete control of the federal budget, and drastic reductions in spending elsewhere. The Environmental Protection Agency would see a 30 percent cut; the Food and Drug Administration would see a 40 percent cut; and foreign aid would be zeroed out immediately. He’d also take an ax to Pentagon funding for wars.
Appearing on CNN ahead of the speech, Paul was pressed by Wolf Blitzer on how eliminating about 221,000 government jobs across five cabinet departments would boost the economy. He responded: “They’re not productive jobs,” he said.
“You cut government spending, that money goes back to you. You get to spend the money,” Paul said during his speech. “I am absolutely convinced it is the only road to prosperity.”
Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, food stamps, family support programs and the children’s nutrition program would be block-granted to the states and removed from the mandatory spending column of the federal budget. Some functions of eliminated departments, such as Pell Grants, would be continued elsewhere in the federal bureaucracy.
And in a noticeable nod to seniors during an election year, when Social Security’s become an issue within the Republican presidential primaries, the campaign says that plan “honors our promise to our seniors and veterans, while allowing young workers to opt out.”
The federal workforce would be reduced by 10 percent, and the president’s pay would be cut from $400,000 to $39,336 — a level that the Paul document notes is “approximately equal to the median personal income of the American worker.”
Paul would also make far-reaching changes to federal tax policy, reducing the top corporate income tax rate to 15 percent, eliminating capital gains and dividends taxes and allowing for repatriation of overseas capital without tax penalties. All tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush would be extended.
And like the rest of his GOP rivals, Paul would repeal President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, along with the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform law enacted last year. A longtime Federal Reserve critic, Paul would also push a full audit of the central bank, as well as legislation to “strengthen the dollar and stabilize inflation.”
Spending time at the Federal Reserve was a good learning opportunity for me. It helped me to understand economic philosophies and polices that I had not previously known about.
~ Herman Cain ~
Herman Cain is the Uncle Tom of the Federal Reserve
The drama being milked from the surprise Florida straw poll, that has Herman Cain on top, is just part of the media’s attempt to create another phony conservative to pacify mentally challenged GOP voters. The rush for a "politically correct" challenger to Barry Soetoro and his debauchery of the presidency, knows no bounds. The silly season is in full swing, especially for those Republican Party loyalists in the sunshine state. As any rap brother from Liberty City knows, Herman Cain is an oreo. Such a slur only fuels the national divide, but the real segregate has nothing to do with the pigment of one’s skin, but has everything to do with the cerebral gulf that separates rational thinking from emotional guilt repentance.
The prospects of a black on black presidential race cause multiple organisms in the liberal libido media. How great is it for a country that matures to a level where ethnic color is blind. Let the stark differences in the political ideology between Cain and Obama be the determining factor in casting your vote, so goes the script. Now those right-wingers have their own Frederick Douglass, just ask, Dennis Miller of Monday Night NFL fame. If you believe this trumped up scenario, you must be one of those golden oldies just waiting for your opportunity to vote with your Florida state cousins.
The truth about Herman Cain is that he shares many commonalities with Barack Hussein Obama. Both can deliver a stirring speech, both are establishment corporatist favored candidates, but the factor that ultimately bonds them together, is that each are beholden to their Wall Street masters.
Listen in his own words. Cain can spin the message but he cannot deny his complicity.
How many conservatives really know that Herman Cain’s tenure chairman (1995–96) of the board of directors to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, puts him squarely in opposition to genuine financial and tax reform? What makes this moneyman apologist worthy of all the attention? In a report - Herman Cain, the Federal Reserve shill – cites, "If you want the real headline today it would say, ‘A star is born,’" Matt Towery, the conservative syndicated columnist and CEO of the nonpartisan InsiderAdvantage polling firm, told Newsmax Friday.
Only one of the 29-member focus group initially was a Cain supporter. By evening’s end, however, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, who also served as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, had won an overwhelming majority among those on Luntz’s focus group.
"I have never had this kind of reaction until tonight," said Luntz. "Something very special happened this evening."
Oh golly, is NeoCon Bobby Eberle, Texas Republican Party insider and publisher of GOPusa jumping ship? He writes in Is Cain's Victory a 'Protest Vote'?
"Before Rick Perry entered the race, people asked me what I thought about his candidacy. Without hesitation, I told each person who asked that if Perry ran, it would be a "game changer." It was. Perry vaulted to the top of the polls. He instantly become the front runner. The real question is... why? The answer is because conservatives were looking at the field and could not find "their candidate." Some who wanted an alternative to Romney focused on Michele Bachmann. But when Perry entered, that focus and attention shifted to him. He was now the choice of conservatives.
Game over, right? Wrong. With each passing debate, people are realizing that this race is still wide open. Because of some very poor advice on message and delivery, Perry has stumbled. Conservatives are having a real problem with his stances on some of the issues. So then comes the Florida straw poll. Now, if any of the top candidates were truly strong, then he or she would have won the poll even without massive campaigning. The problem lies in the fact that conservatives are once again scratching their heads and wondering what is going on with the top of the field.
If "none of the above" can win a poll, it means that people like Perry and Romney need to do a better job on the issues. It also means that "none of the above" represents a sizable block of voters who want someone who represents them. But most importantly, "none of the above" gives people an opportunity to hear more about a no-nonsense, conservative. "None of the above" now has a name, and his name is Herman Cain."
No, the nonsense from Eberle* is just another example of the establishment covering their bets. Cain is a bankster wearing a corporate logo and talking a counterfeit conservative jive. His presence on the national scene is often claimed as refreshing. Such characterizations are balderdash. He is not a traditional hard right populist and he certainly does not qualify as a radical reactionary.
Even the Classic Liberal in an article, The Mysterious Herman Cain, registers concerns. "We also know that Herman Cain . . . backed the Wall Street bailout in 2008 (which he called the "recovery plan"), advocated nationalizing the banks, slammed opponents of these programs (the majority of Americans) as "free market purists," and agitated against an audit of the Federal Reserve."
"We Mocked Soviet Central Planning; Why Not Mock America’s Central Planning?"
'Does anyone remember when people in this country used to mock Soviet central planning?' Well, central economic planning is what we have with the Federal Reserve.
Because of the Fed’s official policy to erode the value of our money, combined with its policy of holding interest rates to near zero, we receive almost no return on whatever money we manage to save.
Government loves inflation because inflation rewards borrowers, and the US government is the world’s largest borrower ... Inflation rewards them because they are able to repay their borrowed money with cheaper money.
The Fed’s manipulations and money printing are harming the nation and the world."
So is Herman Cain the newest champion of the conservative cause? Well, you had better rethink such an illusion. His 2005 book titled, They Think You're Stupid, is a Freudian slip if there ever was one.
In an interview with The Root, a Black publication, Cain states,
"TR: How do you plan to take your message to black voters and convince them that the Republican agenda is good for them?
HC: First of all, I have a conservative agenda that is resonating with some Republicans. I separate the label of "Republican" from "conservative." I will run as a Republican in order to get the Republican nomination, but I am a conservative -- I have conservative ideological positions, and my ideas for dealing with problems come from a conservative approach."
Here lies the essential deception of the Cain rhetoric. A true conservative understands the root cause of our countries financial demise; namely, the fraudulent private central bank. If one defends fractional reserve banking and the proliferation of central planning under the auspicious and control of plutocrats, you cannot be an authentic conservative.
They think you are stupid for a very good reason. Most people are brainless dimwits. Those Republican Party stalwarts that swallow the feel good distortion of the Cain privileged version of "common sense", only hear what they yearn for and ignore the actual record of his servitude to the corporate plantation. When focus groups or straw polls eat up the Oreo cookies from an Uncle Tom pitchman, they demonstrate the extent of their own stupidity.
Just view the typical Frank Lutz focus group and hear the extent of the brainwashing culture, from selected voting zombies, in their own lips. Their aspirations for real reform are not misguided, but their trust in another slick ‘empty suit’ is unforgivable. Politics is not a spectator sport; it is blood drenched and tear shedding combat. There is nothing fair in this life nor few things easy about surviving the political shenanigans, all designed to protect the corrupt establishment. People need to internalize a default distrust of any public figure that spreads a populist platform, while serving the fascist corporate government alliance. When your neighbor professes support for a mild modification of the current system, they are proving that Cain’s book is aptly titled.
As a Federal Reserve colleague, Herman Cain knows exactly what he is doing. Obviously, those who voted for him, in the straw poll, (if you can believe the count results) do not. Those who support him for the GOP presidential nomination are ready to vote their own financial future and eternal liberty away.
The site Black and White asks: Who Will Be the First To "Uncle Tom" Herman Cain? It goes on to say, "As we all know, black conservatives are the last group where intolerant attacks are encouraged and justified by the PC left. Should Herman Cain’s presidential campaign gather some serious momentum, the left’s true feelings will come out.’ Well, BATR is a Radical Reactionary paleo-conservative publication and is glad to claim the honor of dispelling the 9-9-9 attempt to slip in a national sales tax.
The phrase "Wall Street" is a representative of the financial community. The only sensible reason for occupying Wall Street is for symbolic purposes. You want to call the public's attention to the problem.
What is the problem?
I contend that the people occupying Wall Street do not understand the problem. If they did, they would be forming picket lines in front of the New York Federal Reserve Bank at 33 Liberty Street. That is where the problem began in 1913. That is where the problem will be solved.
The less well informed will form picket lines in front of the representative agency of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, namely, the Federal Reserve Bank building in Washington, D.C.
The power has never resided there. That is a symbol to deceive the Congress of the United States, which operates under the illusion that it is in charge of the Federal Reserve System because it is nominally in charge of the Board of Governors of the FED, an agency with national sovereignty.
The symbol of this sovereignty is the suffix to its URL: http://www.FederalReserve.gov. The "gov" ID is the mark of sovereignty.
The New York FED is where the decisions are made. Its URL suffix is ".org." That is the mark of its legal incorporation as a private entity.
What is Wall Street? It is a street sign. It is a building. It is the headquarters of the New York Stock Exchange. Outside of the building is a sculptured bull.
In front of the bull these days are picketers. They are making a point. They don't like the financial system. They think that the central core of the financial system is on Wall Street. It isn't.
To understand how the system really operates, imagine that you are at a bull fight.
The matador is a conglomerate of very large banks. Today, there are four of them. They hold about 57% of the banking system's assets.
Who is the bull? Stock market investors. Bond investors. Rich people who think Wall Street is the road to Easy Street.
From time to time over the last 200 years or so, beginning in 1819, this conglomerate has pushed the American economy into a series of booms and busts. The first major bust was in 1819.
The matador has been politically vulnerable on many occasions. It was vulnerable for a decade, 1929 to 1939. The bull got its horns into the matador a few times, not by demonstrations on Wall Street but in the halls of Congress. The government has imposed lots of rules and regulations after every stock market crash. As Dr. Phil asks his guests from time to time, after they have described how they have dealt with some terrible relationship issue: "How's that working for you?"
In the good old days -- pre-Eisenhower -- the head honcho at the FED was the president of the New York FED. The last visibly powerful New York FED president was Beardsley Ruml, who was also the head of Macy's. Ruml was rich, and powerful beyond belief. Wikipedia describes him well.
From 1922-29 he directed the fellowship program of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund, focusing on support for quantitative social and behavioral science. He was an advisor to President Herbert Hoover especially on farm issues. In 1931 he became dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago--a center for quantitative research. He was not popular with the faculty and in 1934 Ruml became an executive of R. H. Macy & Company, parent company of the department store, rising to chairman in 1945. He also served as a director of the New York Federal Reserve Bank (1937-1947), and was its chairman from 1941 until 1946; he was active at the Bretton Woods Conference (1944) that established the international monetary system.
It was Ruml who persuaded the government to impose withholding taxes in 1943, the greatest expansion of revenue since 1914 -- the income tax's first year. Ruml was the real deal.
A few years after Ruml retired, the spotlight shifted to William McChesney Martin, who was Chairman of the Board of Governors. Martin remained in Washington. From then on, the Chairmen of the Board of Governors have received whatever public attention that the FED receives -- as little as the FED can control. That suits the powers behind the throne just fine.
Matadors need assistants to help them kill the bull. The main one is the person who supplies the sword. Who is the sword-maker today? The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). It votes to establish monetary policy. It acts on behalf of the largest banks.
Then there are the picadors. They stick barbed lances into the bull's shoulders. This weakens it by bleeding it. These are the stock brokers.
"Wall Street" is not where the power is. The New York Stock Exchange is arena where the matador and the bulls perform. The bulls are the poor little rich boys and girls who think that they will get richer by turning their money over to stock brokers.
This is the bull fight that really matters. This is the arena in which money is separated from the rubes. This is where the biggest banks make their money. Use Google to up the word "derivatives."
The Occupy Wall Street crowd usually gathers outside the arena. They dream of getting inside someday. They want to be part of the crowd that is inside, cheering. They dream of safe, comfortable retirements. They dream of government jobs. They dream of Easy Street by way of Wall Street. But they do not have the money to get inside the arena. Most of them never will.
Day by day, headline by headline, official government report by official government report, the matador waves his red flag and makes gestures that lure bulls into the trap.
A bull is anyone with money in the stock market. The banks care nothing about the demonstrators outside the New York Stock Exchange. That is not where the money is. That is where the money is extracted.
The bulls keep handing over their money to stock brokers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 11,723 on January 14, 2000. It closed at 11,809 today. In between, the dollar depreciated by over 30%.
The poor souls demonstrating in front of the New York Stock Exchange have never been told that the source of the sword that the matador wields resides at 33 Liberty Street. That is where most of the world's gold is stored. That is where the gold belonging to the United States government -- officially speaking -- is supposed to be stored. It is stored by the senior agency of the banking cartel: a privately owned facility.
Congress will not audit the FED. It will not audit the gold. Yet Congress is officially sovereign, just as the government's gold at 33 Liberty Street officially belongs to the government.
If you want to know how the system works, follow the money -- the real money. Find out where the gold is. Find out who owns it. Find out who can buy it legally. Find out if it has been leased. That is where operational sovereignty resides.
Occupy Wall Street is a side show for the people who will never see their money extracted by the big banks. The rich schnooks who hand money over to stock brokers -- to Wall Street -- are the bulls in this national sport. They will feel the sword. Like any bull that gets replaced for the next grand show, they will never know what kills them.
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