Why Google+ Really Wants You to Use Your Real NameBy Ed Oswald, PCWorld Aug 29, 2011 3:36 PM
A lot has been made of Google’s so-called “real-name” policy when it comes to Google+, and recent comments from Google Chair Eric Schmidt seem to indicate the search giant has no intentions on softening its stance.
Schmidt reportedly told NPR’s Andy Carvin that Google+ was built as an “identity service.” Essentially, Google wants you to use your real name because it needs that information for future efforts that are based on your identity. Did Google really just get into the social networking game to amass more information about you? I think so.
Think about it: Your social networking profile is a treasure trove of personal information. It says a lot about who you are and what you may like (or dislike) at any given point. One of Google’s primary businesses is advertising: that information is invaluable in this industry. The more highly targeted the ad, the more likely you’re going to click on it.
Google Chair Eric SchmidtDon’t expect any sympathy from Google, either. If you don’t like the company’s policies, don’t sign up for Google+, says Schmidt. “It's obvious for people at risk if they use their real names, they shouldn't use G+,” Carvin paraphrases Schmidt. There you have it: Google will not change its real-names policy. Period.
Google’s Moves on Social Networking?
Schmidt’s blunt tone certainly comes across as if the company is tiring of the debate and aims to put it to rest once and for all. It also makes it seem as if the company isn’t in Google+ for the right reasons, though: your data is constantly mined for the Google’s benefit, and not to change the way social networking is done in a positive way.
Maybe I had too high expectations for a service from a company whose mantra used to be “Don’t be evil.” But now I feel as if I need to keep in the back of my head that Google could be using every word of what I say to try to sell me something, or to build an ever increasingly more comprehensive virtual picture of my real self.
A little tinfoil hat? Maybe. But in this day and age, I think it’s a valid concern: Online privacy seems to have taken a backseat to profiteering and data collection, and that stinks.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/239091/why_google_really_wants_you_to_use_your_real_name.html
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Rick Perry Supported HillaryCare
Texas Governor Rick Perry has been among the most vocal critics of President Obama’s health care reform initiative, and of Mitt Romney’s preceding health care program in Massachusetts. But in 1993, while serving as Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Perry praised the efforts of then-first lady Hillary Clinton to reform health care, a precursor to Obama’s health care reform efforts.
In a letter to Clinton, who is now U.S. Secretary of State, Perry wrote: “I think your efforts in trying to reform the nation’s health care system are most commendable.”
“I would like to request that the task force give particular consideration to the needs of the nation’s farmers, ranchers, and agriculture workers, and other members of rural communities,” Perry continued, noting his administration’s focus on economic development for rural Texans. “Rural populations have a high proportion of uninsured people, rising health care costs, and often experience lack of services.”
“Again, your efforts are worthy,” Perry concluded, ”and I hope you will remember this constituency as the task force progresses.”
The plan Clinton’s task force ultimately presented called for universal health care along with a federal mandate for employers to provide health insurance for their employees.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/30/rick-perrys-camp-defends-1993-hillarycare-praise/#ixzz1WYI0KVNP
This Just About Says It All
President Obama’s uncle had Social Security ID
By Dave Wedge and Laurel J. Sweet
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
President Obama’s accused drunken-driving uncle — who was busted after a near collision with a Framingham cop — has had a valid Social Security number for at least 19 years, despite being an illegal immigrant ordered to be deported back to Kenya, the Herald has learned.
The president’s 67-year-old uncle, Obama Onyango, has had a valid Massachusetts driver’s license and Social Security number since at least 1992, said Registry of Motor Vehicles spokesman Michael Verseckes.
Onyango, whose sister, Zeituni Onyango, made headlines when it was revealed she was an illegal immigrant living in public housing in South Boston, was wobbly legged, “slurring” and had “red and glassy eyes” when he was pulled over at 7 p.m. Wednesday on Waverly Street in Framingham.
A marked cruiser pulled him over just past the Chicken Bone saloon, about a mile from Onyango’s single-family home. Onyango, the half-brother of the president’s father identified in some press accounts as “Uncle Omar,” initially denied drinking but admitted having “two beers” after police said they smelled booze on his breath, according to a police report.
“It was clear that he was moderately unsteady on his feet,” Framingham Officer Val Krishtal wrote.
Onyango’s white Mitsubishi SUV was pulled over after the vehicle made a sudden right turn in front of a cruiser at a stop sign, causing Krishtal to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision. Onyango blew a .14 on the Breathalyzer and continually interrupted the officer, the report states.
“(Onyango) spoke English well, albeit with a moderate accent. I detected what I believed to be some slurring as he spoke,” Krishtal wrote.
Onyango was ordered held without bail on a federal immigration warrant after his arraignment Thursday in Framingham District Court. Court papers show he was the subject of a previous deportation order. He was being held in the Plymouth House of Correction last night.
Mike Rogers, a spokesman for Cleveland immigration attorney Margaret Wong, who is representing Onyango, said he “wouldn’t know how” Onyango obtained a Social Security number. Wong is the same lawyer who represented the president’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, in her fight to win asylum last year. Reached at her apartment in a South Boston public housing complex yesterday, Zeituni Onyango said of her brother’s arrest: “Why don’t you go to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C., and ask your president? Not me.” She then hung up on a reporter.
The bust came just days after another illegal immigrant was charged with running down and killing a 23-year-old man in Milford.
Asked about the issue yesterday, Gov. Deval Patrick said: “You know my stance: Illegal is illegal. We need comprehensive immigration reform.”
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1362374
By Dave Wedge and Laurel J. Sweet
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
President Obama’s accused drunken-driving uncle — who was busted after a near collision with a Framingham cop — has had a valid Social Security number for at least 19 years, despite being an illegal immigrant ordered to be deported back to Kenya, the Herald has learned.
The president’s 67-year-old uncle, Obama Onyango, has had a valid Massachusetts driver’s license and Social Security number since at least 1992, said Registry of Motor Vehicles spokesman Michael Verseckes.
Onyango, whose sister, Zeituni Onyango, made headlines when it was revealed she was an illegal immigrant living in public housing in South Boston, was wobbly legged, “slurring” and had “red and glassy eyes” when he was pulled over at 7 p.m. Wednesday on Waverly Street in Framingham.
A marked cruiser pulled him over just past the Chicken Bone saloon, about a mile from Onyango’s single-family home. Onyango, the half-brother of the president’s father identified in some press accounts as “Uncle Omar,” initially denied drinking but admitted having “two beers” after police said they smelled booze on his breath, according to a police report.
“It was clear that he was moderately unsteady on his feet,” Framingham Officer Val Krishtal wrote.
Onyango’s white Mitsubishi SUV was pulled over after the vehicle made a sudden right turn in front of a cruiser at a stop sign, causing Krishtal to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision. Onyango blew a .14 on the Breathalyzer and continually interrupted the officer, the report states.
“(Onyango) spoke English well, albeit with a moderate accent. I detected what I believed to be some slurring as he spoke,” Krishtal wrote.
Onyango was ordered held without bail on a federal immigration warrant after his arraignment Thursday in Framingham District Court. Court papers show he was the subject of a previous deportation order. He was being held in the Plymouth House of Correction last night.
Mike Rogers, a spokesman for Cleveland immigration attorney Margaret Wong, who is representing Onyango, said he “wouldn’t know how” Onyango obtained a Social Security number. Wong is the same lawyer who represented the president’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, in her fight to win asylum last year. Reached at her apartment in a South Boston public housing complex yesterday, Zeituni Onyango said of her brother’s arrest: “Why don’t you go to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C., and ask your president? Not me.” She then hung up on a reporter.
The bust came just days after another illegal immigrant was charged with running down and killing a 23-year-old man in Milford.
Asked about the issue yesterday, Gov. Deval Patrick said: “You know my stance: Illegal is illegal. We need comprehensive immigration reform.”
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1362374
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Twelve Year Old's Green Tea Stand Shut Down
Massachusetts State Police Shutdown Twelve-Year-Old’s Green Tea Stand
Well it’s not exactly lemonade but it’ll do. Christopher Carr’s twelve-year-old stepson had set up a smoothie and green-tea stand near their house when they moved back to the States after the earthquake in Japan. After they’d set up shop, Christopher took his daughter back inside to get some lunch, leaving his son to manage things at the stand.
“After my daughter finished eating and as we approached the end of our street where the drink stand was, I could see from afar that the sign was pulled up and put away, the cooler was shut with everything which we had so carefully arranged on the tray table put away, and my stepson was huddled up and sitting on the rail, staring out between his knees at the ocean.
“What happened?” I asked when I got down there. I wondered if he had gotten discouraged that no one was buying his drinks or maybe that no one could understand his accent. Or maybe he was just lonely down there by himself.
“The police told me to pack up and go home,” he said. Or, more accurately I discovered after making a few phone calls, the town police swung by and wished him good luck, and then afterwards, “someone in brown” came by and made my stepson stop selling drinks at the end of our street, because this required a permit, and my stepson did not have a permit to sell drinks.
After hearing a little more from my stepson and talking to the town police, I discovered that it was the Massachusetts State Police that broke up our lemonade stand. After attempting several times to contact the State Police, I reached only answering machines. Apparently, having someone on call on weekends is not in the Massachusetts State Police’s budget (but breaking up lemonade stands is somehow cost-effective).
This may be the first case of state police shutting down a kid’s green-tea stand, but the list of lemonade stands being closed down by various government agencies is long and growing.
Lemonade stand shutdowns may not be the same violation of liberty that no-knock botched SWAT raids or the incarceration of innocent people are, but they reflect the same mentality. It’s the mentality that needs reforming. No simple task.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/08/25/massachusetts-state-police-shutdown-twelve-year-olds-green-tea-stand/
Well it’s not exactly lemonade but it’ll do. Christopher Carr’s twelve-year-old stepson had set up a smoothie and green-tea stand near their house when they moved back to the States after the earthquake in Japan. After they’d set up shop, Christopher took his daughter back inside to get some lunch, leaving his son to manage things at the stand.
“After my daughter finished eating and as we approached the end of our street where the drink stand was, I could see from afar that the sign was pulled up and put away, the cooler was shut with everything which we had so carefully arranged on the tray table put away, and my stepson was huddled up and sitting on the rail, staring out between his knees at the ocean.
“What happened?” I asked when I got down there. I wondered if he had gotten discouraged that no one was buying his drinks or maybe that no one could understand his accent. Or maybe he was just lonely down there by himself.
“The police told me to pack up and go home,” he said. Or, more accurately I discovered after making a few phone calls, the town police swung by and wished him good luck, and then afterwards, “someone in brown” came by and made my stepson stop selling drinks at the end of our street, because this required a permit, and my stepson did not have a permit to sell drinks.
After hearing a little more from my stepson and talking to the town police, I discovered that it was the Massachusetts State Police that broke up our lemonade stand. After attempting several times to contact the State Police, I reached only answering machines. Apparently, having someone on call on weekends is not in the Massachusetts State Police’s budget (but breaking up lemonade stands is somehow cost-effective).
This may be the first case of state police shutting down a kid’s green-tea stand, but the list of lemonade stands being closed down by various government agencies is long and growing.
Lemonade stand shutdowns may not be the same violation of liberty that no-knock botched SWAT raids or the incarceration of innocent people are, but they reflect the same mentality. It’s the mentality that needs reforming. No simple task.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/08/25/massachusetts-state-police-shutdown-twelve-year-olds-green-tea-stand/
ARE WE FED UP YET?
Guitar Frets: Environmental Enforcement Leaves Musicians in Fear.
By ERIC FELTEN
Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company's manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. "The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier," he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.
It isn't the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service have come knocking at the storied maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played, and essential jazz-boxes such as Charlie Christian's ES-150. In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name "United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms."
The question in the first raid seemed to be whether Gibson had been buying illegally harvested hardwoods from protected forests, such as the Madagascar ebony that makes for such lovely fretboards. And if Gibson did knowingly import illegally harvested ebony from Madagascar, that wouldn't be a negligible offense. Peter Lowry, ebony and rosewood expert at the Missouri Botanical Garden, calls the Madagascar wood trade the "equivalent of Africa's blood diamonds." But with the new raid, the government seems to be questioning whether some wood sourced from India met every regulatory jot and tittle.
It isn't just Gibson that is sweating. Musicians who play vintage guitars and other instruments made of environmentally protected materials are worried the authorities may be coming for them next.
If you are the lucky owner of a 1920s Martin guitar, it may well be made, in part, of Brazilian rosewood. Cross an international border with an instrument made of that now-restricted wood, and you better have correct and complete documentation proving the age of the instrument. Otherwise, you could lose it to a zealous customs agent—not to mention face fines and prosecution.
John Thomas, a law professor at Quinnipiac University and a blues and ragtime guitarist, says "there's a lot of anxiety, and it's well justified." Once upon a time, he would have taken one of his vintage guitars on his travels. Now, "I don't go out of the country with a wooden guitar."
The tangled intersection of international laws is enforced through a thicket of paperwork. Recent revisions to 1900's Lacey Act require that anyone crossing the U.S. border declare every bit of flora or fauna being brought into the country. One is under "strict liability" to fill out the paperwork—and without any mistakes.
It's not enough to know that the body of your old guitar is made of spruce and maple: What's the bridge made of? If it's ebony, do you have the paperwork to show when and where that wood was harvested and when and where it was made into a bridge? Is the nut holding the strings at the guitar's headstock bone, or could it be ivory? "Even if you have no knowledge—despite Herculean efforts to obtain it—that some piece of your guitar, no matter how small, was obtained illegally, you lose your guitar forever," Prof. Thomas has written. "Oh, and you'll be fined $250 for that false (or missing) information in your Lacey Act Import Declaration."
Consider the recent experience of Pascal Vieillard, whose Atlanta-area company, A-440 Pianos, imported several antique Bösendorfers. Mr. Vieillard asked officials at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species how to fill out the correct paperwork—which simply encouraged them to alert U.S. Customs to give his shipment added scrutiny.
There was never any question that the instruments were old enough to have grandfathered ivory keys. But Mr. Vieillard didn't have his paperwork straight when two-dozen federal agents came calling.
Facing criminal charges that might have put him in prison for years, Mr. Vieillard pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of violating the Lacey Act, and was handed a $17,500 fine and three years probation.
Given the risks, why don't musicians just settle for the safety of carbon fiber? Some do—when concert pianist Jeffrey Sharkey moved to England two decades ago, he had Steinway replace the ivories on his piano with plastic.
Still, musicians cling to the old materials. Last year, Dick Boak, director of artist relations for C.F. Martin & Co., complained to Mother Nature News about the difficulty of getting elite guitarists to switch to instruments made from sustainable materials. "Surprisingly, musicians, who represent some of the most savvy, ecologically minded people around, are resistant to anything about changing the tone of their guitars," he said.
You could mark that up to hypocrisy—artsy do-gooders only too eager to tell others what kind of light bulbs they have to buy won't make sacrifices when it comes to their own passions. Then again, maybe it isn't hypocrisy to recognize that art makes claims significant enough to compete with environmentalists' agendas.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576530520471223268.html
By ERIC FELTEN
Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company's manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. "The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier," he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.
It isn't the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service have come knocking at the storied maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played, and essential jazz-boxes such as Charlie Christian's ES-150. In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name "United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms."
The question in the first raid seemed to be whether Gibson had been buying illegally harvested hardwoods from protected forests, such as the Madagascar ebony that makes for such lovely fretboards. And if Gibson did knowingly import illegally harvested ebony from Madagascar, that wouldn't be a negligible offense. Peter Lowry, ebony and rosewood expert at the Missouri Botanical Garden, calls the Madagascar wood trade the "equivalent of Africa's blood diamonds." But with the new raid, the government seems to be questioning whether some wood sourced from India met every regulatory jot and tittle.
It isn't just Gibson that is sweating. Musicians who play vintage guitars and other instruments made of environmentally protected materials are worried the authorities may be coming for them next.
If you are the lucky owner of a 1920s Martin guitar, it may well be made, in part, of Brazilian rosewood. Cross an international border with an instrument made of that now-restricted wood, and you better have correct and complete documentation proving the age of the instrument. Otherwise, you could lose it to a zealous customs agent—not to mention face fines and prosecution.
John Thomas, a law professor at Quinnipiac University and a blues and ragtime guitarist, says "there's a lot of anxiety, and it's well justified." Once upon a time, he would have taken one of his vintage guitars on his travels. Now, "I don't go out of the country with a wooden guitar."
The tangled intersection of international laws is enforced through a thicket of paperwork. Recent revisions to 1900's Lacey Act require that anyone crossing the U.S. border declare every bit of flora or fauna being brought into the country. One is under "strict liability" to fill out the paperwork—and without any mistakes.
It's not enough to know that the body of your old guitar is made of spruce and maple: What's the bridge made of? If it's ebony, do you have the paperwork to show when and where that wood was harvested and when and where it was made into a bridge? Is the nut holding the strings at the guitar's headstock bone, or could it be ivory? "Even if you have no knowledge—despite Herculean efforts to obtain it—that some piece of your guitar, no matter how small, was obtained illegally, you lose your guitar forever," Prof. Thomas has written. "Oh, and you'll be fined $250 for that false (or missing) information in your Lacey Act Import Declaration."
Consider the recent experience of Pascal Vieillard, whose Atlanta-area company, A-440 Pianos, imported several antique Bösendorfers. Mr. Vieillard asked officials at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species how to fill out the correct paperwork—which simply encouraged them to alert U.S. Customs to give his shipment added scrutiny.
There was never any question that the instruments were old enough to have grandfathered ivory keys. But Mr. Vieillard didn't have his paperwork straight when two-dozen federal agents came calling.
Facing criminal charges that might have put him in prison for years, Mr. Vieillard pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of violating the Lacey Act, and was handed a $17,500 fine and three years probation.
Given the risks, why don't musicians just settle for the safety of carbon fiber? Some do—when concert pianist Jeffrey Sharkey moved to England two decades ago, he had Steinway replace the ivories on his piano with plastic.
Still, musicians cling to the old materials. Last year, Dick Boak, director of artist relations for C.F. Martin & Co., complained to Mother Nature News about the difficulty of getting elite guitarists to switch to instruments made from sustainable materials. "Surprisingly, musicians, who represent some of the most savvy, ecologically minded people around, are resistant to anything about changing the tone of their guitars," he said.
You could mark that up to hypocrisy—artsy do-gooders only too eager to tell others what kind of light bulbs they have to buy won't make sacrifices when it comes to their own passions. Then again, maybe it isn't hypocrisy to recognize that art makes claims significant enough to compete with environmentalists' agendas.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576530520471223268.html
Another Trooper That Should Be Fired
Class action suit says Florida Highway Patrol illegally tickets motorists who warn others about speed traps
Tampa, Florida -- When the Florida Highway Patrol pulls someone over on the highway, it's usually because they were speeding.
But Eric Campbell was pulled over and ticketed while he was driving the speed limit.
Campbell says, "I was coming up the Veterans Expressway and I notice two Florida Highway Patrol Cars sitting on the side of the road in the median, with lights off."
Campbell says he did what he always does: flashed his lights on and off to warn drivers coming from the other direction that there was speed trap ahead.
According to Campbell, 60 seconds after passing the trooper, "They were on my tail and they pulled me over."
Campbell says the FHP trooper wrote him a ticket for improper flashing of high beams. Campbell says the trooper told him what he had done was illegal.
But later Campbell learned that is not the case. He filed a class action suit which says "Florida Statue 316.2397" -- under which Campbell was cited -- "does not prohibit the flashing of headlights as a means of communications, nor does it in any way reference flashing headlights or the use of high beams."
However, the FHP trooper who wrote the ticket either didn't know or didn't care. "You could tell in his voice he was upset," Campbell says. "He was professional, he wasn't rude... but you could tell he was irritated."
However, the lawsuit says the FHP is well aware they are wrongfully applying the state law and they are doing it as a means of generating revenue. In 2005, a court order was even issued saying the state law doesn't prohibit the flashing of vehicle headlights.
Campbell isn't the only one. Since 2005, FHP records show more than 10,429 drivers have been cited under the statute.
In addition to seeking the refund of the $100 ticket, the lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $15,000.
Campbell says he felt as if the trooper thought it was a personal affront. According to Campbell, the trooper did not like the fact somebody was ratting him out.
The Florida Highway Patrol says it can't comment because of the pending lawsuit.
Campbell says FHP had no right to ticket him or anyone under the current law and he adds the agency is not being honest when it says it doesn't write tickets to increase revenue or punish people, but rather to get the motorist to slow down on the highway. If that were true, Campbell says the FHP should be delighted with him, because drivers did slow down before troopers could give them a ticket.
The suit evolved out the fact that Campbell says "I don't like what the government is doing especially now when most people have a hard time affording gas and now they have to defend themselves against a made up charge that doesn't exist."
RIGHT ON, RIGHT ON, RIGHT ON!!!!!!!!!!!
Tampa, Florida -- When the Florida Highway Patrol pulls someone over on the highway, it's usually because they were speeding.
But Eric Campbell was pulled over and ticketed while he was driving the speed limit.
Campbell says, "I was coming up the Veterans Expressway and I notice two Florida Highway Patrol Cars sitting on the side of the road in the median, with lights off."
Campbell says he did what he always does: flashed his lights on and off to warn drivers coming from the other direction that there was speed trap ahead.
According to Campbell, 60 seconds after passing the trooper, "They were on my tail and they pulled me over."
Campbell says the FHP trooper wrote him a ticket for improper flashing of high beams. Campbell says the trooper told him what he had done was illegal.
But later Campbell learned that is not the case. He filed a class action suit which says "Florida Statue 316.2397" -- under which Campbell was cited -- "does not prohibit the flashing of headlights as a means of communications, nor does it in any way reference flashing headlights or the use of high beams."
However, the FHP trooper who wrote the ticket either didn't know or didn't care. "You could tell in his voice he was upset," Campbell says. "He was professional, he wasn't rude... but you could tell he was irritated."
However, the lawsuit says the FHP is well aware they are wrongfully applying the state law and they are doing it as a means of generating revenue. In 2005, a court order was even issued saying the state law doesn't prohibit the flashing of vehicle headlights.
Campbell isn't the only one. Since 2005, FHP records show more than 10,429 drivers have been cited under the statute.
In addition to seeking the refund of the $100 ticket, the lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $15,000.
Campbell says he felt as if the trooper thought it was a personal affront. According to Campbell, the trooper did not like the fact somebody was ratting him out.
The Florida Highway Patrol says it can't comment because of the pending lawsuit.
Campbell says FHP had no right to ticket him or anyone under the current law and he adds the agency is not being honest when it says it doesn't write tickets to increase revenue or punish people, but rather to get the motorist to slow down on the highway. If that were true, Campbell says the FHP should be delighted with him, because drivers did slow down before troopers could give them a ticket.
The suit evolved out the fact that Campbell says "I don't like what the government is doing especially now when most people have a hard time affording gas and now they have to defend themselves against a made up charge that doesn't exist."
RIGHT ON, RIGHT ON, RIGHT ON!!!!!!!!!!!
Thursday, August 25, 2011
In Debt To Whom???
THEN:
The Makers of the Constitution foresaw the need of a national capital. The city of Washington, the District of Columbia, became the capital in 1800. There the work of the government is centered. Congress is given complete charge and control over it. Its residents have no vote. They, alone, of all the people in the United States, must obey laws, with the making of which, they have had nothing to do. They elect no representative to Congress; neither do they elect any city or district officer.
The money, which you use in all your business affairs, is made according to laws passed by Congress. Congress controls the printing of paper money, as well as, the coining of gold and silver money and the smaller coins of nickel and copper.
United States money, in the form of bills, is usually accepted, as equal to gold, in any civilized country. That is because the government keeps enough gold in the United States treasury, and in the banks, to meet all demands on it, for redeeming the paper money.
Congress alone may have money coined. No state may do so.
It is interesting to read the printing on several different kinds of bills . . . a "green-back" or United States note, a federal reserve note, a gold certificate, and a national bank note, perhaps, given by a bank in your own city.
One of these guarantees that the holder will be given the amount of the bill, in gold coin, upon demand; andin fact, gold can be obtained for any of them.
With the power of Congress, to have money made, goes its power to punish those who make false money. To make any coins or bills or stamps, in imitation of those, of the United States, is counterfeiting. Even if it cost a gang of counterfeiters twenty-five cents to make a coin, to pass for a dime, this would be counterfeiting and severely punishable in the United States courts.
References:
"THE CONSTITUTION OF OUR COUNTRY" By Frank A. Rexford
SUPERVISING CIVICS IN THE SCHOOLS OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK by Clara L. Carson, Chairman Of The Civics Department Of Wadleigh High School, City Of New York Copyright 1924, by AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOW:
On December 23, 1913, the U.S. Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, placing control of this nation's money into the hands of a private corporation. In 1920, the 66th Congress passed the Independent Treasury Act.
In 1921, the United States abolished the U.S. Treasury.
This allowed all United States money in the private Federal Reserve Banks to be kept separate from Federal Reserve Notes. To wit:
"That, if any moneys or bullion, constituting part of the trust funds or other special funds heretofore required by law to be kept in Treasury offices, shall be deposited with any Federal reserve bank, then such moneys or bullion shall by such bank be kept separate and distinct from the assets, funds, and securities of the Federal Reserve Bank and be held in the joint custody of the Federal Reserve Agent and the Federal Reserve Bank;"
From 1913, until 1933, under the authority of the U.S. Congress, a private corporation held control of this nation's GOLD. The U.S. paid interest on the use of their own gold, with more and more of its gold, ultimately ending in bankruptcy.
Inevitably, the bankers foreclosed.
On March 9, 1933, the U.S. declared bankruptcy, as expressed in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Executive Orders 6073, 6102, 6111, and 6260.
President Roosevelt declared a National Emergency that made it unlawful for any citizen of the United States to own gold. Our bankrupt nation went into receivership and reorganized in favor of it's creditor and new owners, a private corporation of international bankers. (Since 1933, what is called the "United States Government" is a privately owned corporation of the Federal Reserve/IMF.)
Without a word of truth to the American people, all our good faith and credit was pledged as the surety for the debt by the same Congress who created the mechanism that allowed it to occur.
Those exercising the offices of the several States, in equal measure, knew such "De Facto Transitions" were unlawful and unauthorized, but sanctioned, implemented, and enforced the complete debauchment and the resulting "governmental, social, industrial economic change" in the "De Jure" States, and in United States of America.
References:
Public Law 94-564 Legislative History, pg. 5936, 594531 U.S.C.A. , 31431 U.S.C.A., 5112C.R.S. , 11-61-101C.R.S. 39-22-103.5
They were and are now under the delusion that they can do, both, directly and indirectly, what they were absolutely prohibited from doing. - Federalist Papers No. 44, Craig vs. Missouri, 4 Peters 903
On June 5, 1933, Congress passed HJR-192. House Joint Resolution 192 was passed to suspend the gold standard and abrogate the gold clause in the national constitution. Since then no one in America has been able to lawfully pay a debt. This resolution declared:
". . . Whereas the holding or dealing in gold affect the PUBLIC INTEREST, [STATE-Corporate Interest] and are therefore subject to proper regulation and restriction: and whereas the existing emergency has disclosed that provisions of obligations which purport to give the obligee a RIGHT TO REQUIRE PAYMENT in gold or a particular kind of coin or currency . . . ARE INCONSISTENT WITH THE DECLARED POLICY OF CONGRESS IN THE PAYMENT OF DEBTS . . . PAYMENT in gold or a particular kind of coin or currency, or in an amount in money of the united States measured thereby, IS DECLARED TO BE AGAINST PUBLIC POLICY: . . . AND . . . EVERY OBLIGATION, HERETOFORE OR HEREAFTER INCURRED, SHALL BE DISCHARGED upon payment, dollar for dollar, in any coin or currency which, at the time of payment, is legal tender for public and private debts . . ."
"All coins and currencies of the United States (including Federal Reserve Notes and circulating notes of Federal Reserve banks and national banking associations) heretofore, or hereafter, coined or issued, SHALL BE LEGAL TENDER for all debts, public and private, public charges, taxes, duties, and dues, . . . " - House Joint Resolution 192, 73d Congress, Sess. I, Ch. 48, June 5, 1933 (Public Law No. 10 ).
Note: "payment of debt" is now against Congressional and "public policy" and henceforth, "Every obligation . . . Shall be discharged."
As a result of HJR-192, and from that day forward (June 5, 1933), no one in this nation has been able to lawfully pay a debt or lawfully own anything. The only thing one can do, is tender in transfer of debts, with the debt being perpetual. The suspension of the gold standard, and prohibition against paying debts, removed the substance for our common law to operate on, and created a void as far as the law is concerned. This substance was replaced with a "PUBLIC NATIONAL CREDIT SYSTEM" where debt is "LEGAL TENDER" money.
The Federal Reserve calls it "monetized debt."
HJR-192 was implemented immediately. The day after President Roosevelt signed the resolution, the treasury offered the public new government securities, minus the traditional "payable in gold" clause.
The Judiciary branch of government has the power to correct this fraud upon the people.
Yet, On May 23, 1933, Congressman, Louis T. McFadden, brought formal charges against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank system, the Comptroller of the Currency and the Secretary of the United States Treasury for criminal acts.
The petition for Articles of Impeachment was, thereafter, referred to the Judiciary Committee, and has yet to be acted upon.
In 1965 Congress passed the "Coinage Act of 1965" completely debasing the Constitutional Coin; (gold & silver, i.e. Dollar), U.S. vs. Marigold, 50 U.S. 560, 13 L. Ed. 257.
At the signing of the Coinage Act on July 23, 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson stated, in his Press Release that:
"When I have signed this bill before me, we will have made the first fundamental change in our coinage in 173 years. The Coinage Act of 1965 supercedes the Act of 1792. And that Act had the title: An Act Establishing a Mint and Regulating the Coinage of the United States."
"Now I will sign this bill to make the first change in our coinage system, since the 18th Century. To those members of Congress, who are here on this historic occasion, I want to assure you that in making this change from the 18th Century we have no idea of returning to it."
In 1967, in a brazenly unconstitutional act, Congress repudiated its obligation to redeem silver certificates in silver coin or bullion.
In the book, "Pieces of Eight," Dr. Edwin Vieira writes:
"On June 24, 1968 the United States, finally, abandoned the silver standard applicable since Queen Anne's proclamation of 1704, and embraced a system of fiat bills of credit (e.g. alleged currency) based on irredeemable, legal tender, Federal Reserve Notes and debased, legal tender, clad coinage, never to be declared as lawful money of the United States."
Through misguided trust, our duly elected sworn public officials took our lawful currency and changed it to unconstitutional bills of credit (irredeemable Federal Reserve Notes), which continues to circulate only because of the public's continuing, misplaced confidence in these notes. The word "legal tender" on today's notes are not a magic incantation; they impart NO intrinsic value to money, nor do they entitle the bearer to exchange these notes for lawful specie. They are a throwback to feudal days when the sovereign could, and did, issue a proclamation declaring what was to be used as "money" whenever he wanted to debase the circulating medium.
INSCRIPTIONS ON FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES
1913 . . . TO . . . 1934
"Redeemable in Gold on demand at the United States Treasury or in Lawful money, at any Federal Reserve Bank." "Will pay to the bearer on demand one dollar."
1934 . . . TO . . . 1968
"This note is legal tender for all debts public and private and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury, or any Federal Reserve bank." "Will pay to the bearer on demand one dollar."
1968 . . . TO . . . 1998
"This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private"
THERE IS NO PROMISE TO PAY, NOR IS A NOTE A DOLLAR!!
And the New $100 "off center" Franklin bill issued in 1998 and the other "off center" bills issued since are no longer even against a Federal Reserve Bank, the Seal is that of the Federal Reserve System . . .
Welcome to the "System" . . . !!!
US currency (notes, bills of credit) was always to be redeemable in United States specie currency; first issued 76 years after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, which only mandates gold and silver coin as currency in substance, not form.
Early Federal Reserve Notes were redeemable, but over the years, the wording on these notes regarding the promise and obligation has been gradually changed untill 1968. Since that time our "monetized debt" money offers NO OBLIGATION AND THEY PROMISE NOTHING!!!!
Since 1913, there has been more than just a gradual and accelerating erosion of the alleged dollar's purchasing power in our society. For the privilege of using these notes of private corporate debt as our "money", we were absolved from the responsibility of paying our debts at law.
We were placed in the position of having the "benefit" of limited liability for payment of debt under the jurisdiction of Admiralty/Maritime law (the law merchant/commercial jurisdiction, UCC) in all controversies.
For the privilege of using monetized debt, we also lost the rights secured to us by our Organic Constitutions, both National and State.
Under the law, merchant, you have no rights. We are now using as "lawful money", worthless notes of private corporate debt, backed by our own credit that we can't own, and for this "privilege" we are held to compelled performance under the statutes . . .
To make it simple, as long as this nation's lawful currency is notes of private corporate debt, (bills of credit . . . money backed by no substance) it will remain impossible to ever repay a debt, thereby keeping us and our posterity in debt into perpetuity.
Has Thomas Jefferson's prophecy come to pass? Under the contrived bankruptcy we have lost the right to challenge the constitutionally of the statutes.
We have lost our law . . .
We can own nothing . . .
We have become slaves of the corporation on the land we once owned . . .
And . . . our children are waking up homeless on the continent their forefathers conquered.
http://www.barefootsworld.net/prophesy.html
The Makers of the Constitution foresaw the need of a national capital. The city of Washington, the District of Columbia, became the capital in 1800. There the work of the government is centered. Congress is given complete charge and control over it. Its residents have no vote. They, alone, of all the people in the United States, must obey laws, with the making of which, they have had nothing to do. They elect no representative to Congress; neither do they elect any city or district officer.
The money, which you use in all your business affairs, is made according to laws passed by Congress. Congress controls the printing of paper money, as well as, the coining of gold and silver money and the smaller coins of nickel and copper.
United States money, in the form of bills, is usually accepted, as equal to gold, in any civilized country. That is because the government keeps enough gold in the United States treasury, and in the banks, to meet all demands on it, for redeeming the paper money.
Congress alone may have money coined. No state may do so.
It is interesting to read the printing on several different kinds of bills . . . a "green-back" or United States note, a federal reserve note, a gold certificate, and a national bank note, perhaps, given by a bank in your own city.
One of these guarantees that the holder will be given the amount of the bill, in gold coin, upon demand; andin fact, gold can be obtained for any of them.
With the power of Congress, to have money made, goes its power to punish those who make false money. To make any coins or bills or stamps, in imitation of those, of the United States, is counterfeiting. Even if it cost a gang of counterfeiters twenty-five cents to make a coin, to pass for a dime, this would be counterfeiting and severely punishable in the United States courts.
References:
"THE CONSTITUTION OF OUR COUNTRY" By Frank A. Rexford
SUPERVISING CIVICS IN THE SCHOOLS OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK by Clara L. Carson, Chairman Of The Civics Department Of Wadleigh High School, City Of New York Copyright 1924, by AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOW:
On December 23, 1913, the U.S. Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, placing control of this nation's money into the hands of a private corporation. In 1920, the 66th Congress passed the Independent Treasury Act.
In 1921, the United States abolished the U.S. Treasury.
This allowed all United States money in the private Federal Reserve Banks to be kept separate from Federal Reserve Notes. To wit:
"That, if any moneys or bullion, constituting part of the trust funds or other special funds heretofore required by law to be kept in Treasury offices, shall be deposited with any Federal reserve bank, then such moneys or bullion shall by such bank be kept separate and distinct from the assets, funds, and securities of the Federal Reserve Bank and be held in the joint custody of the Federal Reserve Agent and the Federal Reserve Bank;"
From 1913, until 1933, under the authority of the U.S. Congress, a private corporation held control of this nation's GOLD. The U.S. paid interest on the use of their own gold, with more and more of its gold, ultimately ending in bankruptcy.
Inevitably, the bankers foreclosed.
On March 9, 1933, the U.S. declared bankruptcy, as expressed in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Executive Orders 6073, 6102, 6111, and 6260.
President Roosevelt declared a National Emergency that made it unlawful for any citizen of the United States to own gold. Our bankrupt nation went into receivership and reorganized in favor of it's creditor and new owners, a private corporation of international bankers. (Since 1933, what is called the "United States Government" is a privately owned corporation of the Federal Reserve/IMF.)
Without a word of truth to the American people, all our good faith and credit was pledged as the surety for the debt by the same Congress who created the mechanism that allowed it to occur.
Those exercising the offices of the several States, in equal measure, knew such "De Facto Transitions" were unlawful and unauthorized, but sanctioned, implemented, and enforced the complete debauchment and the resulting "governmental, social, industrial economic change" in the "De Jure" States, and in United States of America.
References:
Public Law 94-564 Legislative History, pg. 5936, 594531 U.S.C.A. , 31431 U.S.C.A., 5112C.R.S. , 11-61-101C.R.S. 39-22-103.5
They were and are now under the delusion that they can do, both, directly and indirectly, what they were absolutely prohibited from doing. - Federalist Papers No. 44, Craig vs. Missouri, 4 Peters 903
On June 5, 1933, Congress passed HJR-192. House Joint Resolution 192 was passed to suspend the gold standard and abrogate the gold clause in the national constitution. Since then no one in America has been able to lawfully pay a debt. This resolution declared:
". . . Whereas the holding or dealing in gold affect the PUBLIC INTEREST, [STATE-Corporate Interest] and are therefore subject to proper regulation and restriction: and whereas the existing emergency has disclosed that provisions of obligations which purport to give the obligee a RIGHT TO REQUIRE PAYMENT in gold or a particular kind of coin or currency . . . ARE INCONSISTENT WITH THE DECLARED POLICY OF CONGRESS IN THE PAYMENT OF DEBTS . . . PAYMENT in gold or a particular kind of coin or currency, or in an amount in money of the united States measured thereby, IS DECLARED TO BE AGAINST PUBLIC POLICY: . . . AND . . . EVERY OBLIGATION, HERETOFORE OR HEREAFTER INCURRED, SHALL BE DISCHARGED upon payment, dollar for dollar, in any coin or currency which, at the time of payment, is legal tender for public and private debts . . ."
"All coins and currencies of the United States (including Federal Reserve Notes and circulating notes of Federal Reserve banks and national banking associations) heretofore, or hereafter, coined or issued, SHALL BE LEGAL TENDER for all debts, public and private, public charges, taxes, duties, and dues, . . . " - House Joint Resolution 192, 73d Congress, Sess. I, Ch. 48, June 5, 1933 (Public Law No. 10 ).
Note: "payment of debt" is now against Congressional and "public policy" and henceforth, "Every obligation . . . Shall be discharged."
As a result of HJR-192, and from that day forward (June 5, 1933), no one in this nation has been able to lawfully pay a debt or lawfully own anything. The only thing one can do, is tender in transfer of debts, with the debt being perpetual. The suspension of the gold standard, and prohibition against paying debts, removed the substance for our common law to operate on, and created a void as far as the law is concerned. This substance was replaced with a "PUBLIC NATIONAL CREDIT SYSTEM" where debt is "LEGAL TENDER" money.
The Federal Reserve calls it "monetized debt."
HJR-192 was implemented immediately. The day after President Roosevelt signed the resolution, the treasury offered the public new government securities, minus the traditional "payable in gold" clause.
The Judiciary branch of government has the power to correct this fraud upon the people.
Yet, On May 23, 1933, Congressman, Louis T. McFadden, brought formal charges against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank system, the Comptroller of the Currency and the Secretary of the United States Treasury for criminal acts.
The petition for Articles of Impeachment was, thereafter, referred to the Judiciary Committee, and has yet to be acted upon.
In 1965 Congress passed the "Coinage Act of 1965" completely debasing the Constitutional Coin; (gold & silver, i.e. Dollar), U.S. vs. Marigold, 50 U.S. 560, 13 L. Ed. 257.
At the signing of the Coinage Act on July 23, 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson stated, in his Press Release that:
"When I have signed this bill before me, we will have made the first fundamental change in our coinage in 173 years. The Coinage Act of 1965 supercedes the Act of 1792. And that Act had the title: An Act Establishing a Mint and Regulating the Coinage of the United States."
"Now I will sign this bill to make the first change in our coinage system, since the 18th Century. To those members of Congress, who are here on this historic occasion, I want to assure you that in making this change from the 18th Century we have no idea of returning to it."
In 1967, in a brazenly unconstitutional act, Congress repudiated its obligation to redeem silver certificates in silver coin or bullion.
In the book, "Pieces of Eight," Dr. Edwin Vieira writes:
"On June 24, 1968 the United States, finally, abandoned the silver standard applicable since Queen Anne's proclamation of 1704, and embraced a system of fiat bills of credit (e.g. alleged currency) based on irredeemable, legal tender, Federal Reserve Notes and debased, legal tender, clad coinage, never to be declared as lawful money of the United States."
Through misguided trust, our duly elected sworn public officials took our lawful currency and changed it to unconstitutional bills of credit (irredeemable Federal Reserve Notes), which continues to circulate only because of the public's continuing, misplaced confidence in these notes. The word "legal tender" on today's notes are not a magic incantation; they impart NO intrinsic value to money, nor do they entitle the bearer to exchange these notes for lawful specie. They are a throwback to feudal days when the sovereign could, and did, issue a proclamation declaring what was to be used as "money" whenever he wanted to debase the circulating medium.
INSCRIPTIONS ON FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES
1913 . . . TO . . . 1934
"Redeemable in Gold on demand at the United States Treasury or in Lawful money, at any Federal Reserve Bank." "Will pay to the bearer on demand one dollar."
1934 . . . TO . . . 1968
"This note is legal tender for all debts public and private and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury, or any Federal Reserve bank." "Will pay to the bearer on demand one dollar."
1968 . . . TO . . . 1998
"This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private"
THERE IS NO PROMISE TO PAY, NOR IS A NOTE A DOLLAR!!
And the New $100 "off center" Franklin bill issued in 1998 and the other "off center" bills issued since are no longer even against a Federal Reserve Bank, the Seal is that of the Federal Reserve System . . .
Welcome to the "System" . . . !!!
US currency (notes, bills of credit) was always to be redeemable in United States specie currency; first issued 76 years after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, which only mandates gold and silver coin as currency in substance, not form.
Early Federal Reserve Notes were redeemable, but over the years, the wording on these notes regarding the promise and obligation has been gradually changed untill 1968. Since that time our "monetized debt" money offers NO OBLIGATION AND THEY PROMISE NOTHING!!!!
Since 1913, there has been more than just a gradual and accelerating erosion of the alleged dollar's purchasing power in our society. For the privilege of using these notes of private corporate debt as our "money", we were absolved from the responsibility of paying our debts at law.
We were placed in the position of having the "benefit" of limited liability for payment of debt under the jurisdiction of Admiralty/Maritime law (the law merchant/commercial jurisdiction, UCC) in all controversies.
For the privilege of using monetized debt, we also lost the rights secured to us by our Organic Constitutions, both National and State.
Under the law, merchant, you have no rights. We are now using as "lawful money", worthless notes of private corporate debt, backed by our own credit that we can't own, and for this "privilege" we are held to compelled performance under the statutes . . .
To make it simple, as long as this nation's lawful currency is notes of private corporate debt, (bills of credit . . . money backed by no substance) it will remain impossible to ever repay a debt, thereby keeping us and our posterity in debt into perpetuity.
Has Thomas Jefferson's prophecy come to pass? Under the contrived bankruptcy we have lost the right to challenge the constitutionally of the statutes.
We have lost our law . . .
We can own nothing . . .
We have become slaves of the corporation on the land we once owned . . .
And . . . our children are waking up homeless on the continent their forefathers conquered.
http://www.barefootsworld.net/prophesy.html
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Rick Perry Fervently Supported the TARP Bailouts in 2008
Posted by Paul Krugman on August 16th, 2011
Back in October of 2008 when the financial crisis had reached it’s peak as far as fearmongering and sensationalism were concerned, Rick Perry was still the Chairman of the Republican Governor’s Assocation, a position which he held until a few days ago. After the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, of which the Troubled Asset Relief Program(TARP) was a part of, failed to pass in the House in its first vote, Rick Perry teamed up with Joe Manchin, who was then the head of the Democratic Governor’s Assocation. Perry and Manchin wrote and sent a letter to Pelosi, Boehner, Reid, and McConnell on October 1st, 2008 urging them to come together and pass the $800 billion bailout, which ended up costing trillions.
Perry even went as far as lambasting members of Congress on their inability to pass the bailout. After the House initially voted against the bailout, Perry went on the attack on behalf of the bailout. The Houston Chronicle reported, on September 30, 2008, days before the bailout passed in an article titled, “Perry slams Washington for Bailout Failure”,
AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry, saying he’s “sick and tired” of the partisan gridlock in Washington, slammed the federal government on Tuesday for failing to agree on a rescue of the U.S. financial markets.
“Washington needs to get over the partisan bickering,” Perry said. “They’ve got their work cut out, but one of them is to get over the initial behind their names and start being Americans first and quit being Democrats and Republicans.”
Rick Perry now claims that supporting the TARP bailouts in 2008 was a mistake. He claims that being the Chief of Staff of Al Gore’s campaign in 1988 was a mistake too. Not too long ago–actually less than a year ago–there was a huge conservative movement that kicked fiscally irresponsible members of the House and Senate out of office for voting for the TARP Bailouts and the stimulus package. This is the movement that Rick Perry hopes to co-opt so that he can win the 2012 GOP nomination for President.
http://www.unelected.org/rick-perry-fervently-supported-the-tarp-bailouts-in-2008
Back in October of 2008 when the financial crisis had reached it’s peak as far as fearmongering and sensationalism were concerned, Rick Perry was still the Chairman of the Republican Governor’s Assocation, a position which he held until a few days ago. After the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, of which the Troubled Asset Relief Program(TARP) was a part of, failed to pass in the House in its first vote, Rick Perry teamed up with Joe Manchin, who was then the head of the Democratic Governor’s Assocation. Perry and Manchin wrote and sent a letter to Pelosi, Boehner, Reid, and McConnell on October 1st, 2008 urging them to come together and pass the $800 billion bailout, which ended up costing trillions.
Perry even went as far as lambasting members of Congress on their inability to pass the bailout. After the House initially voted against the bailout, Perry went on the attack on behalf of the bailout. The Houston Chronicle reported, on September 30, 2008, days before the bailout passed in an article titled, “Perry slams Washington for Bailout Failure”,
AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry, saying he’s “sick and tired” of the partisan gridlock in Washington, slammed the federal government on Tuesday for failing to agree on a rescue of the U.S. financial markets.
“Washington needs to get over the partisan bickering,” Perry said. “They’ve got their work cut out, but one of them is to get over the initial behind their names and start being Americans first and quit being Democrats and Republicans.”
Rick Perry now claims that supporting the TARP bailouts in 2008 was a mistake. He claims that being the Chief of Staff of Al Gore’s campaign in 1988 was a mistake too. Not too long ago–actually less than a year ago–there was a huge conservative movement that kicked fiscally irresponsible members of the House and Senate out of office for voting for the TARP Bailouts and the stimulus package. This is the movement that Rick Perry hopes to co-opt so that he can win the 2012 GOP nomination for President.
http://www.unelected.org/rick-perry-fervently-supported-the-tarp-bailouts-in-2008
Why the Mainstream Media is Ignoring Ron Paul
Posted by Paul Krugman on August 16th, 2011
After Ron Paul placed 2nd in the Iowa Straw Poll on Saturday only losing to Michele Bachmann by 152 votes, which ended up being less .9%, the national media completely “blacked out” Ron Paul from the airwaves. If this was a primary or a caucus, there would have been a recount! Even after Bachmann hired a Grammy award winning country musician to come perform at the straw poll and even after she bused in fans of the musicians and forced them to vote for her before they could view the show, she barely edged out Ron Paul and was touted as a frontrunner.
Now why would these pathetic excuses for journalists purposely go out of their way to black out Congressman Paul? Well, consider what would happen if Ron Paul became President. The pointless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya would end and the media would have nothing to sensationalize as far as foreign threats go. The unemployment rate would fall and the economy would soar giving the media nothing to talk about as far as the economic crisis goes.
The fearmongerers you see on news stations are nothing more than parasites, who are incapable of creating anything of value. They feed on suffering and destruction and then relate stories of suffering and destruction to you. They are nothing more than second handers who would be jobless were it not for death, politics, and natural disasters.
The braindead talking heads on various media networks and their masters are obviously afraid of Ron Paul and they will never impart any fairness towards Ron Paul because unlike Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry, he will not bow down the system.
http://www.unelected.org/why-the-mainstream-media-is-ignoring-ron-paul
After Ron Paul placed 2nd in the Iowa Straw Poll on Saturday only losing to Michele Bachmann by 152 votes, which ended up being less .9%, the national media completely “blacked out” Ron Paul from the airwaves. If this was a primary or a caucus, there would have been a recount! Even after Bachmann hired a Grammy award winning country musician to come perform at the straw poll and even after she bused in fans of the musicians and forced them to vote for her before they could view the show, she barely edged out Ron Paul and was touted as a frontrunner.
Now why would these pathetic excuses for journalists purposely go out of their way to black out Congressman Paul? Well, consider what would happen if Ron Paul became President. The pointless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya would end and the media would have nothing to sensationalize as far as foreign threats go. The unemployment rate would fall and the economy would soar giving the media nothing to talk about as far as the economic crisis goes.
The fearmongerers you see on news stations are nothing more than parasites, who are incapable of creating anything of value. They feed on suffering and destruction and then relate stories of suffering and destruction to you. They are nothing more than second handers who would be jobless were it not for death, politics, and natural disasters.
The braindead talking heads on various media networks and their masters are obviously afraid of Ron Paul and they will never impart any fairness towards Ron Paul because unlike Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry, he will not bow down the system.
http://www.unelected.org/why-the-mainstream-media-is-ignoring-ron-paul
The Truth About Rick Perry
The Truth about Rick Perry, The Texan Flimflam man
American Thinker
June 18, 2011
Rick Perry, as was Bush before him and Romney is today, is a slick, chameleon politician who changes his colors for the times. Rick Perry is a former Democrat, Al Gore's state chairman in 1988, a big government type who used an executive order to try to force Texas children entering 6th grade to be injected with Gardasil, a drug to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Mandated -- sound conservative to you?
Rick Perry supports open borders with Mexico and protects illegal immigrants. As Governor, Perry supported and signed the Texas Dream Act. Opposed by Republicans, the bill provided state funding for illegal immigrants to attend state colleges. As Perry has been quoted, “The message is simple. Educacion es el futuro, y si se puede."
Rick Perry is against any kind of border fence or wall along the Mexican border. Consistently citing barriers with Mexico as counter productive to economic growth, he calls the idea of a border fence, “cost prohibitive”.
Pharmaceutical companies love Rick Perry. Not only did mega-pharma company Merck hire his chief of staff as a lobbyist, but Governor Perry also issued an Executive Order that made vaccines against the human papilloma virus mandatory for sixth grade girls in Texas. By a crazy coincidence, the vaccine Perry forced upon Texas’ daughters just happens to be manufactured by Merck. Governor Perry has since flip-flopped on the issue and now says he regrets that decision.
Eminent Domain is a phrase Governor Perry appears to like. One of the main criticisms against him is his $175 million dollar idea for a Texas Trans-Corridor. Often called a NAFTA superhighway, the project was cancelled due to protests from Texas citizens who called it a blatant land grab. 6,000 miles of Texas highway, plus all the land needed to accommodate railroads, power lines and other necessary infrastructure.
The Texas Emerging Technology Fund is another issue being used this week to attack Rick Perry. Created in 2005 by Governor Perry, the program gave millions in taxpayer money to help new technology start-ups in Texas. But as this week’s Wall Street Journal revealed, much of that money ended up going to Perry’s political campaign contributors.
Rick Perry endorsed Al Gore for President in 1988. For a Republican candidate for President, that’s not a plus. (Remember this is right after 8 years of Reagan)
Last but not least, Rick Perry used to be a Democrat. Yes, as the Al Gore endorsement might suggest, Rick Perry is a former registered Democrat. Adding to his list of flip-flops, Perry switched parties in 1989.
Karl Rove recruited opportunistic Perry to switch parties so Perry could win Agricultural Commissioner as a Republican in 1990. Rick Perry is a Trojan Horse for statism cloaked in Tea Party rhetoric and Christian Bible talk buzzwords.
American Thinker
June 18, 2011
Rick Perry, as was Bush before him and Romney is today, is a slick, chameleon politician who changes his colors for the times. Rick Perry is a former Democrat, Al Gore's state chairman in 1988, a big government type who used an executive order to try to force Texas children entering 6th grade to be injected with Gardasil, a drug to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Mandated -- sound conservative to you?
Rick Perry supports open borders with Mexico and protects illegal immigrants. As Governor, Perry supported and signed the Texas Dream Act. Opposed by Republicans, the bill provided state funding for illegal immigrants to attend state colleges. As Perry has been quoted, “The message is simple. Educacion es el futuro, y si se puede."
Rick Perry is against any kind of border fence or wall along the Mexican border. Consistently citing barriers with Mexico as counter productive to economic growth, he calls the idea of a border fence, “cost prohibitive”.
Pharmaceutical companies love Rick Perry. Not only did mega-pharma company Merck hire his chief of staff as a lobbyist, but Governor Perry also issued an Executive Order that made vaccines against the human papilloma virus mandatory for sixth grade girls in Texas. By a crazy coincidence, the vaccine Perry forced upon Texas’ daughters just happens to be manufactured by Merck. Governor Perry has since flip-flopped on the issue and now says he regrets that decision.
Eminent Domain is a phrase Governor Perry appears to like. One of the main criticisms against him is his $175 million dollar idea for a Texas Trans-Corridor. Often called a NAFTA superhighway, the project was cancelled due to protests from Texas citizens who called it a blatant land grab. 6,000 miles of Texas highway, plus all the land needed to accommodate railroads, power lines and other necessary infrastructure.
The Texas Emerging Technology Fund is another issue being used this week to attack Rick Perry. Created in 2005 by Governor Perry, the program gave millions in taxpayer money to help new technology start-ups in Texas. But as this week’s Wall Street Journal revealed, much of that money ended up going to Perry’s political campaign contributors.
Rick Perry endorsed Al Gore for President in 1988. For a Republican candidate for President, that’s not a plus. (Remember this is right after 8 years of Reagan)
Last but not least, Rick Perry used to be a Democrat. Yes, as the Al Gore endorsement might suggest, Rick Perry is a former registered Democrat. Adding to his list of flip-flops, Perry switched parties in 1989.
Karl Rove recruited opportunistic Perry to switch parties so Perry could win Agricultural Commissioner as a Republican in 1990. Rick Perry is a Trojan Horse for statism cloaked in Tea Party rhetoric and Christian Bible talk buzzwords.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion From Fed
Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits.
By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress.
Foreign Borrowers
It wasn’t just American finance. Almost half of the Fed’s top 30 borrowers, measured by peak balances, were European firms. They included Edinburgh-based Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, which took $84.5 billion, the most of any non-U.S. lender, and Zurich-based UBS AG (UBSN), which got $77.2 billion. Germany’s Hypo Real Estate Holding AG borrowed $28.7 billion, an average of $21 million for each of its 1,366 employees.
The largest borrowers also included Dexia SA (DEXB), Belgium’s biggest bank by assets, and Societe Generale SA, based in Paris, whose bond-insurance prices have surged in the past month as investors speculated that the spreading sovereign debt crisis in Europe might increase their chances of default.
The $1.2 trillion peak on Dec. 5, 2008 -- the combined outstanding balance under the seven programs tallied by Bloomberg -- was almost three times the size of the U.S. federal budget deficit that year and more than the total earnings of all federally insured banks in the U.S. for the decade through 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
21,000 Transactions
Any new rescues by the U.S. central bank would be governed by transparency laws adopted in 2010 that require the Fed to disclose borrowers after two years.
Fed officials argued for more than two years that releasing the identities of borrowers and the terms of their loans would stigmatize banks, damaging stock prices or leading to depositor runs. A group of the biggest commercial banks last year asked the U.S. Supreme Court to keep at least some Fed borrowings secret. In March, the high court declined to hear that appeal, and the central bank made an unprecedented release of records.
Data gleaned from 29,346 pages of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and from other Fed databases of more than 21,000 transactions make clear for the first time how deeply the world’s largest banks depended on the U.S. central bank to stave off cash shortfalls. Even as the firms asserted in news releases or earnings calls that they had ample cash, they drew Fed funding in secret, avoiding the stigma of weakness.
‘Larger Than TARP’
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), which in 2007 was the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, borrowed $69 billion from the Fed on Dec. 31, 2008. Among the programs New York-based Goldman Sachs tapped after the Lehman bankruptcy was the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, or PDCF, designed to lend money to brokerage firms ineligible for the Fed’s bank-lending programs.
Michael Duvally, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs, declined to comment.
The Fed’s liquidity lifelines may increase the chances that banks engage in excessive risk-taking with borrowed money, Rogoff said. Such a phenomenon, known as moral hazard, occurs if banks assume the Fed will be there when they need it, he said. The size of bank borrowings “certainly shows the Fed bailout was in many ways much larger than TARP,” Rogoff said.
TARP is the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, a $700 billion bank-bailout fund that provided capital injections of $45 billion each to Citigroup and Bank of America, and $10 billion to Morgan Stanley. Because most of the Treasury’s investments were made in the form of preferred stock, they were considered riskier than the Fed’s loans, a type of senior debt.
Full Article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-trillion-in-fed-s-secret-loans.html
By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress.
Foreign Borrowers
It wasn’t just American finance. Almost half of the Fed’s top 30 borrowers, measured by peak balances, were European firms. They included Edinburgh-based Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, which took $84.5 billion, the most of any non-U.S. lender, and Zurich-based UBS AG (UBSN), which got $77.2 billion. Germany’s Hypo Real Estate Holding AG borrowed $28.7 billion, an average of $21 million for each of its 1,366 employees.
The largest borrowers also included Dexia SA (DEXB), Belgium’s biggest bank by assets, and Societe Generale SA, based in Paris, whose bond-insurance prices have surged in the past month as investors speculated that the spreading sovereign debt crisis in Europe might increase their chances of default.
The $1.2 trillion peak on Dec. 5, 2008 -- the combined outstanding balance under the seven programs tallied by Bloomberg -- was almost three times the size of the U.S. federal budget deficit that year and more than the total earnings of all federally insured banks in the U.S. for the decade through 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
21,000 Transactions
Any new rescues by the U.S. central bank would be governed by transparency laws adopted in 2010 that require the Fed to disclose borrowers after two years.
Fed officials argued for more than two years that releasing the identities of borrowers and the terms of their loans would stigmatize banks, damaging stock prices or leading to depositor runs. A group of the biggest commercial banks last year asked the U.S. Supreme Court to keep at least some Fed borrowings secret. In March, the high court declined to hear that appeal, and the central bank made an unprecedented release of records.
Data gleaned from 29,346 pages of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and from other Fed databases of more than 21,000 transactions make clear for the first time how deeply the world’s largest banks depended on the U.S. central bank to stave off cash shortfalls. Even as the firms asserted in news releases or earnings calls that they had ample cash, they drew Fed funding in secret, avoiding the stigma of weakness.
‘Larger Than TARP’
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), which in 2007 was the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, borrowed $69 billion from the Fed on Dec. 31, 2008. Among the programs New York-based Goldman Sachs tapped after the Lehman bankruptcy was the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, or PDCF, designed to lend money to brokerage firms ineligible for the Fed’s bank-lending programs.
Michael Duvally, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs, declined to comment.
The Fed’s liquidity lifelines may increase the chances that banks engage in excessive risk-taking with borrowed money, Rogoff said. Such a phenomenon, known as moral hazard, occurs if banks assume the Fed will be there when they need it, he said. The size of bank borrowings “certainly shows the Fed bailout was in many ways much larger than TARP,” Rogoff said.
TARP is the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, a $700 billion bank-bailout fund that provided capital injections of $45 billion each to Citigroup and Bank of America, and $10 billion to Morgan Stanley. Because most of the Treasury’s investments were made in the form of preferred stock, they were considered riskier than the Fed’s loans, a type of senior debt.
Full Article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-trillion-in-fed-s-secret-loans.html
Mises on the Business Cycle
Mises on the Business Cycle
August 21, 2011 by Dennis Sperduto
The economic and financial events of the last few weeks indicate that the economies of the United States and most of Europe remain quite weak, if not in outright recession. This situation comes after unprecedented fiscal and monetary “stimuli” by many governments that were strongly supported and recommended by the large majority of the economics profession, media commentators, and politicians. And of course, with economic conditions showing renewed weakness, the mainstream calls for additional stimuli of even larger magnitudes. The mainstream is unable or unwilling to abandon its Keynesian foundation, a system of thought that has been shown by many individuals associated with the Austrian School to be one of the great retrogressions in scientific economic thought in modern times.
Given current economic conditions, it is especially worthwhile to reexamine “The Causes of the Economic Crisis,” the title of which comes from an address delivered by Ludwig von Mises in February 1931 in central Europe. The cogency and logic of Mises’s argument is in stark contrast to the Keynesian analysis supported by almost the entire mainstream economics profession. How far the mainstream has to travel to reach the level of understanding that Mises possessed in 1931 is amazing and deeply troubling, and indicative of a profession approaching intellectual bankruptcy. And the vast majority of politicians remain what they have generally always been: liars, thieves, and murderers, driven by a desire to control other individuals and their property through coercion. Reproduced below are a few of the last paragraphs of Mises’s 1931 address.
The severe convulsions of the economy are the inevitable result of policies which hamper market activity, the regulator of capitalistic production. If everything possible is done to prevent the market from fulfilling its function of bringing supply and demand into balance, it should come as no surprise that a serious disproportionality between supply and demand persists, that commodities remain unsold, factories stand idle, many millions are unemployed, destitution and misery are growing and that finally, in the wake of all these, destructive radicalism is rampant in politics.
The periodically returning crises of cyclical changes in business conditions are the effect of attempts, undertaken repeatedly, to underbid the interest rates which develop on the unhampered market. These attempts to underbid unhampered market interest rates are made through the intervention of banking policy—by credit expansion through the additional creation of uncovered notes and checking deposits—in order to bring about a boom. The crisis under which we are now suffering is of this type, too. However, it goes beyond the typical business cycle depression, not only in scale but also in character—because the interventions with market processes which evoked the crisis were not limited only to influencing the rate of interest. The interventions have directly affected wage rates and commodity prices, too.
And
All attempts to emerge from the crisis by new interventionist measures are completely misguided. There is only one way out of the crisis: Forgo every attempt to prevent the impact of market prices on production. Give up the pursuit of policies which seek to establish interest rates, wage rates and commodity prices different from those the market indicates. This may contradict the prevailing view. It certainly is not popular. Today all governments and political parties have full confidence in interventionism and it is not likely that they will abandon their program. However, it is perhaps not too optimistic to assume that those governments and parties whose policies have led to this crisis will some day disappear from the stage and make way for men whose economic program leads, not to destruction and chaos, but to economic development and progress.
http://blog.mises.org/18157/mises-on-the-business-cycle/
August 21, 2011 by Dennis Sperduto
The economic and financial events of the last few weeks indicate that the economies of the United States and most of Europe remain quite weak, if not in outright recession. This situation comes after unprecedented fiscal and monetary “stimuli” by many governments that were strongly supported and recommended by the large majority of the economics profession, media commentators, and politicians. And of course, with economic conditions showing renewed weakness, the mainstream calls for additional stimuli of even larger magnitudes. The mainstream is unable or unwilling to abandon its Keynesian foundation, a system of thought that has been shown by many individuals associated with the Austrian School to be one of the great retrogressions in scientific economic thought in modern times.
Given current economic conditions, it is especially worthwhile to reexamine “The Causes of the Economic Crisis,” the title of which comes from an address delivered by Ludwig von Mises in February 1931 in central Europe. The cogency and logic of Mises’s argument is in stark contrast to the Keynesian analysis supported by almost the entire mainstream economics profession. How far the mainstream has to travel to reach the level of understanding that Mises possessed in 1931 is amazing and deeply troubling, and indicative of a profession approaching intellectual bankruptcy. And the vast majority of politicians remain what they have generally always been: liars, thieves, and murderers, driven by a desire to control other individuals and their property through coercion. Reproduced below are a few of the last paragraphs of Mises’s 1931 address.
The severe convulsions of the economy are the inevitable result of policies which hamper market activity, the regulator of capitalistic production. If everything possible is done to prevent the market from fulfilling its function of bringing supply and demand into balance, it should come as no surprise that a serious disproportionality between supply and demand persists, that commodities remain unsold, factories stand idle, many millions are unemployed, destitution and misery are growing and that finally, in the wake of all these, destructive radicalism is rampant in politics.
The periodically returning crises of cyclical changes in business conditions are the effect of attempts, undertaken repeatedly, to underbid the interest rates which develop on the unhampered market. These attempts to underbid unhampered market interest rates are made through the intervention of banking policy—by credit expansion through the additional creation of uncovered notes and checking deposits—in order to bring about a boom. The crisis under which we are now suffering is of this type, too. However, it goes beyond the typical business cycle depression, not only in scale but also in character—because the interventions with market processes which evoked the crisis were not limited only to influencing the rate of interest. The interventions have directly affected wage rates and commodity prices, too.
And
All attempts to emerge from the crisis by new interventionist measures are completely misguided. There is only one way out of the crisis: Forgo every attempt to prevent the impact of market prices on production. Give up the pursuit of policies which seek to establish interest rates, wage rates and commodity prices different from those the market indicates. This may contradict the prevailing view. It certainly is not popular. Today all governments and political parties have full confidence in interventionism and it is not likely that they will abandon their program. However, it is perhaps not too optimistic to assume that those governments and parties whose policies have led to this crisis will some day disappear from the stage and make way for men whose economic program leads, not to destruction and chaos, but to economic development and progress.
http://blog.mises.org/18157/mises-on-the-business-cycle/
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Americans: Paupers and Debtors
Paupers In The Land Our Forefathers Conquered
A long time ago, in an America now far, far away, the majority of the American people owned the land that they live on. The term "my land" actually meant something back then. But today that has fundamentally changed. Now the majority of the American people owe on the land that they live on. In fact, most of them owe big money to the giant corporate banking interests that control the mortgage industry. So how did the American people come to be debtors and paupers in the land that our forefathers conquered? Today when someone says that they "bought a house" what they really mean is that they have signed up for 30 years (or more) of bloated mortgage payments which they care barely afford. As you will see below, the percentage of residential mortgage debt to total home equity (housing net worth) in the United States continues to rise at a staggering pace. In fact, thanks to the housing crash, for the first time in American history residential mortgage debt far surpasses the total home equity owned by all Americans. So what does that mean? It means that the big corporate banks have more of an interest in America's homes than we do now.
So how are we getting our land taken from us?
Well, you can thank rampant inflation and the housing bubble.
Back in 1980, the United States was pushing up towards a total of $1 trillion in total residential mortgage debt. It took us over 200 years to get to that point as a nation.
By 1990, the United States approximately doubled that amount and was sitting at about $2 trillion in total residential mortgage debt.
By the year 2000, the United States had just about $5 trillion in total residential mortgage debt.
By 2008, the United States had over $10 trillion in total residential mortgage debt.
Do you notice a trend?
In just the past 30 years the amount of residential mortgage debt in the United States has increased tenfold.
Meanwhile, thanks to the housing crash, home equity has taken a nosedive. As you can see from the chart below, total residential mortgage debt in the U.S. now far exceeds total home equity....
So what does this mean? It means that the banks have more of a financial interest in America's homes than we do. It means that we are quickly becoming paupers and debt slaves.
As you can see from the chart below, back in 1945 total home equity as a percentage of home value was extremely high (80%). Home equity exceeded total residential mortgage debt by about a 4 to 1 margin. But today total residential mortgage debt exceeds home equity and the situation is rapidly becoming worse....
We were all told to buy into the system and we could live the American Dream. We were told to get a "good job" with one of the big global corporations and we were told to get a mortgage so that we could build up equity. Well, that has turned out great for most of us, hasn't it?
The reality is that the system so many of us trusted is dying. We are now at the point where the system cannot provide jobs for millions of us anymore. If unemployment continues to soar as it has, millions more of us will find ourselves destitute and homeless on the continent our forefathers conquered....
So how did all of this happen?
Back in 1913, the U.S. Congress gave control over U.S. currency to the Federal Reserve. Since that time, the value of the U.S. dollar has slowly been eroded. $1.00 in 1914 (the year after the Federal Reserve was established) had about the same buying power as $21.59 in 2010. That means that the U.S. dollar has lost over 95 percent of its purchasing power since then.
So the accumulated wealth that our parents and grandparents hand down to us is being constantly devalued. The only way to keep up with rising prices on land and on everything else is to go out into the system to get more of the "currency" that is controlled and manipulated by the Federal Reserve and the big corporate banks. But what most of us don't realize is that the game is rigged to slowly transfer the wealth of the nation over to them.
The house always wins in the end.
Thanks to the greed and stupidity of the American people, we have accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world. It was a fun party while we were piling up all the debt, but now the bankers have us where they want us.
If only we had listened to those among our founding fathers who warned us about this trap.
For example, the words of Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Taylor dated May 28th, 1816 ring more true today than they ever have....
And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
The truth is that the American people are being swindled and most of them don't even realize it. The wealth of America is slowly being transferred to the big banks. All of the interest that we pay month after month after month makes them rich.
The financial system of the United States is broken. But until the U.S. economy totally collapses most Americans will not realize it. By then it will be far too late.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/paupers-in-the-land-our-forefathers-conquered
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Rick Perry's Amendment's
Seven ways Rick Perry wants to change the Constitution
By Chris Moody
Rick Perry has many ideas about how to change the American government's founding document. From ending lifetime tenure for federal judges to completely scrapping two whole amendments, the Constitution would see a major overhaul if the Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate had his druthers.
Perry laid out these proposed innovations to the founding document in his book, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington. He has occasionally mentioned them on the campaign trail. Several of his ideas fall within the realm of mainstream conservative thinking today, but, as you will see, there are also a few surprises.
1. Abolish lifetime tenure for federal judges by amending Article III, Section I of the Constitution.
The nation's framers established a federal court system whereby judges with "good behavior" would be secure in their job for life. Perry believes that provision is ready for an overhaul.
"The Judges," reads Article III, "both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office."
Perry makes it no secret that he believes the judges on the bench over the past century have acted beyond their constitutional bounds. The problem, Perry reasons, is that members of the judiciary are "unaccountable" to the people, and their lifetime tenure gives them free license to act however they want. In his book, the governor speaks highly of plans to limit their tenure and offers proposals about how to accomplish it.
"'[W]e should take steps to restrict the unlimited power of the courts to rule over us with no accountability," he writes in Fed Up! "There are a number of ideas about how to do this . . . . One such reform would be to institute term limits on what are now lifetime appointments for federal judges, particularly those on the Supreme Court or the circuit courts, which have so much power. One proposal, for example, would have judges roll off every two years based on seniority."
2. Congress should have the power to override Supreme Court decisions with a two-thirds vote.
Ending lifetime tenure for federal justices isn't the only way Perry has proposed suppressing the power of the courts. His book excoriates at length what he sees as overreach from the judicial branch. (The title of Chapter Six is "Nine Unelected Judges Tell Us How to Live.")
Giving Congress the ability to veto their decisions would be another way to take the Court down a notch, Perry says.
"[A]llow Congress to override the Supreme Court with a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate, which risks increased politicization of judicial decisions, but also has the benefit of letting the people stop the Court from unilaterally deciding policy," he writes.
3. Scrap the federal income tax by repealing the Sixteenth Amendment.
The Sixteenth Amendment gives Congress the "power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration." It should be abolished immediately, Perry says.
Calling the Sixteenth Amendment "the great milestone on the road to serfdom," Perry's writes that it provides a virtually blank check to the federal government to use for projects with little or no consultation from the states.
4. End the direct election of senators by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.
Overturning this amendment would restore the original language of the Constitution, which gave state legislators the power to appoint the members of the Senate.
Ratified during the Progressive Era in 1913 , the same year as the Sixteenth Amendment, the Seventeenth Amendment gives citizens the ability to elect senators on their own. Perry writes that supporters of the amendment at the time were "mistakenly" propelled by "a fit of populist rage."
"The American people mistakenly empowered the federal government during a fit of populist rage in the early twentieth century by giving it an unlimited source of income (the Sixteenth Amendment) and by changing the way senators are elected (the Seventeenth Amendment)," he writes.
5. Require the federal government to balance its budget every year.
Of all his proposed ideas, Perry calls this one "the most important," and of all the plans, a balanced budget amendment likely has the best chance of passage.
"The most important thing we could do is amend the Constitution--now--to restrict federal spending," Perry writes in his book. "There are generally thought to be two options: the traditional 'balanced budget amendment' or a straightforward 'spending limit amendment,' either of which would be a significant improvement. I prefer the latter . . . . Let's use the people's document--the Constitution--to put an actual spending limit in place to control the beast in Washington."
A campaign to pass a balanced budget amendment through Congress fell short by just one vote in the Senate in the 1990s.
Last year, House Republicans proposed a spending-limit amendment that would limit federal spending to 20 percent of the economy. According to the amendment's language, the restriction could be overridden by a two-thirds vote in both Houses of Congress or by a declaration of war.
6. The federal Constitution should define marriage as between one man and one woman in all 50 states.
Despite saying last month that he was "fine with" states like New York allowing gay marriage, Perry has now said he supports a constitutional amendment that would permanently ban gay marriage throughout the country and overturn any state laws that define marriage beyond a relationship between one man and one woman.
"I do respect a state's right to have a different opinion and take a different tack if you will, California did that," Perry told the Christian Broadcasting Network in August. "I respect that right, but our founding fathers also said, 'Listen, if you all in the future think things are so important that you need to change the Constitution here's the way you do it'.
In an interview with The Ticket earlier this month, Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said that even though it would overturn laws in several states, the amendment still fits into Perry's broader philosophy because amendments require the ratification of three-fourths of the states to be added to the Constitution.
7. Abortion should be made illegal throughout the country.
Like the gay marriage issue, Perry at one time believed that abortion policy should be left to the states, as was the case before the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade. But in the same Christian Broadcasting Network interview, Perry said that he would support a federal amendment outlawing abortion because it was "so important...to the soul of this country and to the traditional values [of] our founding fathers."
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/seven-ways-rick-perry-wants-change-constitution-131634517.html
By Chris Moody
Rick Perry has many ideas about how to change the American government's founding document. From ending lifetime tenure for federal judges to completely scrapping two whole amendments, the Constitution would see a major overhaul if the Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate had his druthers.
Perry laid out these proposed innovations to the founding document in his book, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington. He has occasionally mentioned them on the campaign trail. Several of his ideas fall within the realm of mainstream conservative thinking today, but, as you will see, there are also a few surprises.
1. Abolish lifetime tenure for federal judges by amending Article III, Section I of the Constitution.
The nation's framers established a federal court system whereby judges with "good behavior" would be secure in their job for life. Perry believes that provision is ready for an overhaul.
"The Judges," reads Article III, "both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office."
Perry makes it no secret that he believes the judges on the bench over the past century have acted beyond their constitutional bounds. The problem, Perry reasons, is that members of the judiciary are "unaccountable" to the people, and their lifetime tenure gives them free license to act however they want. In his book, the governor speaks highly of plans to limit their tenure and offers proposals about how to accomplish it.
"'[W]e should take steps to restrict the unlimited power of the courts to rule over us with no accountability," he writes in Fed Up! "There are a number of ideas about how to do this . . . . One such reform would be to institute term limits on what are now lifetime appointments for federal judges, particularly those on the Supreme Court or the circuit courts, which have so much power. One proposal, for example, would have judges roll off every two years based on seniority."
2. Congress should have the power to override Supreme Court decisions with a two-thirds vote.
Ending lifetime tenure for federal justices isn't the only way Perry has proposed suppressing the power of the courts. His book excoriates at length what he sees as overreach from the judicial branch. (The title of Chapter Six is "Nine Unelected Judges Tell Us How to Live.")
Giving Congress the ability to veto their decisions would be another way to take the Court down a notch, Perry says.
"[A]llow Congress to override the Supreme Court with a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate, which risks increased politicization of judicial decisions, but also has the benefit of letting the people stop the Court from unilaterally deciding policy," he writes.
3. Scrap the federal income tax by repealing the Sixteenth Amendment.
The Sixteenth Amendment gives Congress the "power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration." It should be abolished immediately, Perry says.
Calling the Sixteenth Amendment "the great milestone on the road to serfdom," Perry's writes that it provides a virtually blank check to the federal government to use for projects with little or no consultation from the states.
4. End the direct election of senators by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.
Overturning this amendment would restore the original language of the Constitution, which gave state legislators the power to appoint the members of the Senate.
Ratified during the Progressive Era in 1913 , the same year as the Sixteenth Amendment, the Seventeenth Amendment gives citizens the ability to elect senators on their own. Perry writes that supporters of the amendment at the time were "mistakenly" propelled by "a fit of populist rage."
"The American people mistakenly empowered the federal government during a fit of populist rage in the early twentieth century by giving it an unlimited source of income (the Sixteenth Amendment) and by changing the way senators are elected (the Seventeenth Amendment)," he writes.
5. Require the federal government to balance its budget every year.
Of all his proposed ideas, Perry calls this one "the most important," and of all the plans, a balanced budget amendment likely has the best chance of passage.
"The most important thing we could do is amend the Constitution--now--to restrict federal spending," Perry writes in his book. "There are generally thought to be two options: the traditional 'balanced budget amendment' or a straightforward 'spending limit amendment,' either of which would be a significant improvement. I prefer the latter . . . . Let's use the people's document--the Constitution--to put an actual spending limit in place to control the beast in Washington."
A campaign to pass a balanced budget amendment through Congress fell short by just one vote in the Senate in the 1990s.
Last year, House Republicans proposed a spending-limit amendment that would limit federal spending to 20 percent of the economy. According to the amendment's language, the restriction could be overridden by a two-thirds vote in both Houses of Congress or by a declaration of war.
6. The federal Constitution should define marriage as between one man and one woman in all 50 states.
Despite saying last month that he was "fine with" states like New York allowing gay marriage, Perry has now said he supports a constitutional amendment that would permanently ban gay marriage throughout the country and overturn any state laws that define marriage beyond a relationship between one man and one woman.
"I do respect a state's right to have a different opinion and take a different tack if you will, California did that," Perry told the Christian Broadcasting Network in August. "I respect that right, but our founding fathers also said, 'Listen, if you all in the future think things are so important that you need to change the Constitution here's the way you do it'.
In an interview with The Ticket earlier this month, Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said that even though it would overturn laws in several states, the amendment still fits into Perry's broader philosophy because amendments require the ratification of three-fourths of the states to be added to the Constitution.
7. Abortion should be made illegal throughout the country.
Like the gay marriage issue, Perry at one time believed that abortion policy should be left to the states, as was the case before the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade. But in the same Christian Broadcasting Network interview, Perry said that he would support a federal amendment outlawing abortion because it was "so important...to the soul of this country and to the traditional values [of] our founding fathers."
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/seven-ways-rick-perry-wants-change-constitution-131634517.html
Monday, August 8, 2011
Monday, August 1, 2011
Must Watch Video
Patriot Guard Riders Drown Out Westboro Baptist Church Protesters
These Patriot Guard Riders are GREAT.
Every VETERAN and every PATRIOT that believes in and loves these UNITED STATES please watch and remember why we keep fighting to keep our Constitutional Rights!!
These Patriot Guard Riders are GREAT.
Every VETERAN and every PATRIOT that believes in and loves these UNITED STATES please watch and remember why we keep fighting to keep our Constitutional Rights!!
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