JUNKIE NATION

By James Craig Green

 

America is addicted to Government - and it's debt - like a junkie to heroin.

Bankers create unlimited new money for loans to "stimulate" the economy. Deceptively-labeled "anti-drug" laws finance an out-of-control gang and illegal drug culture, like Prohibition financed Al Capone. Americans today worship the false gods of prosperity without effort, endless “free” benefits at the expense of everyone else and the upside-down idea that you are responsible for everyone else, but not yourself. More and more, once-productive businesses have become wards of the State, hoping to exploit bailouts while foisting their losses off on the public.

A 2008 article in the Denver Post titled Big Government Benefits the West, clearly showed what is wrong with America today. Attempting - but failing - to make the case that the West gets many benefits from Washington, the authors completely ignored the fact that these benefits are funded mostly by escalating and unsustainable public debt - the most dangerous narcotic in America's history. Furthermore, since 1995, my state (Colorado) has paid more to the federal government than it has received. This is a net loss, not a gain. I continue to be astounded by the sloppy thinking and lack of honest accounting when it comes to promoting government benefits to the public, which magically seem to be "free." As you can see in the Wikipedia article below (scroll to table) in 2007, Colorado - A Net Loser - paid $45.4 billion in federal taxes, while collecting only $34.8 billion in federal spending.

See: FED TAXES VS SPENDING IN COLORADO 

The American Republic was created from the 1787 U.S. Constitution, as modified in 1791 by an elegant Bill of Rights. It strove to protect individuals from the democratic tyranny of the mob, but tragically during the twentieth century succumbed to the most politically successful idea of all time – the seductive scourge of the “public interest.” Since its founding, the federal government of the United States has continually usurped and expanded the limited powers granted to it by the Constitution. From the Civil War, to the New Deal, to today’s unprecedented monetary inflation and military adventurism, the narcotic of easy government money has corrupted business and American society with a seemingly endless free lunch mentality.

See PRIVATE PROPERTY PUBLIC PLUNDER

America's military spends more than the next 13 countries combined. By what insane logic is this called "defense?"

See: US MILITARY SPENDING

America is addicted to government, growing out of control. Government spending, like any narcotic, feels good at first, but the pain of withdrawal doesn't come until later, as during the 2008-2009 financial collapse, from which our economy has yet to recover. Although many people think those evil free markets are the culprits, government has massively escalated both control of and subsidies to private business interests for more than a century. Every war, skirmish, depression and recession in living memory has been an excuse for government to grow, without admitting its enabling (and destructive) role. Big government is big "business," but not the entrepreneurial kind sustained by markets. No, this kind of "business" supports a bloated (mostly non-defensive) military-industrial complex about which President - formerly General - Eisenhower warned us, along with other corporate welfare and fantasy-based entitlement programs. Some popular pundits, including our economically - and reality - challenged President, call this the "private sector." What part of "tax, control, subsidize and confiscate" do they not understand?

By subsidizing and controlling industries while promising Americans prosperity with little or no effort, the U.S. Government was already worse than broke before the recent meltdown - and the current President. The recent housing crisis was largely caused by the expansion of credit by the Federal Reserve, the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act and Congress' aggressive arm-twisting of bankers to loan money to people who couldn't pay it back. Government-created companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contributed to the illusion that "easy" credit was somehow sustainable. This was powerfully documented - and refuted - in Thomas Sowell's 2009 bestseller, "The Housing Boom and Bust."

See THE HOUSING BOOM-BUST


ENTER OCCUPY AMERICA 

It is ironic that those most concerned with the sustainability of the planet ignore or eschew the sustainability of the private economy that provides the wealth that supports us all, including ALL government jobs and programs. In short, without a competitive, robust private sector based on market-driven economics, government could not exist. Similarly, those who publicly claim to support free markets are too often interested in government contracts, subsidies and protection from competition, rather than market risk and true sustainability. The real strength of markets, beside their innovation, adaptability and productivity, is their ruthless, indiscriminate risk of failure. When government provides banks, insurance, mortgage, auto and other companies with (combined) trillion dollar bailouts, free markets should be the last thing to blame. Unfortunately, the media - among the worst junkies of all - rarely make this link. To anyone with half a brain, this shouldn't be surprising.

Instead of being worshipped like rock stars and courted for freebies, politicians should be constrained, mistrusted and carefully watched by everyone, because their job is to spend other people's money taken by force. This LEGAL kind of crime is far more destructive than other "criminal" elements, who seem like amateurs by comparison to this political class. They should be held to a much higher standard than any private citizen, because No One (with rare exceptions) can be trusted with political power. Throughout history, such power, in each and every form and government, has been continually expanded and abused by almost everyone who held it. I had hoped that America was better than that, but the exponential growth of government during our lifetimes is nothing less than depressing. The junkies are in charge of the rehab center. For these reasons, an important reform would be to limit members of Congress to one term at a time - in other words, no re-election of ANY member - ever, without sitting out at least one term before running again. Career politicians are the problem; not the solution. Of course, this would take a constitutional amendment - which means most Americans would have to want it. Perhaps the next Depression will provide ample incentives...

See SUBORDINATE ACTS

Despite constitutional checks and balances including the Bill of Rights, the federal government has broken the chains that used to bind it repeatedly since its founding. Long ago, businessmen learned they could make more money - with less risk - by creating government-supported businesses than suffering the risk of loss in the marketplace. Government-business partnerships bring out the worst in both public and private sectors - demanding more public spending while reducing the productive incentive of businesses with government contracts.

The U.S. Constitution - even after 27 amendments - STILL describes a government limited to a few tasks, with none of the massive government interventions taking place today. The "general welfare" clause - the subject of many Supreme Court cases - has morphed into the specific welfare of well-connected groups (like banks, unions and auto companies) and away from the American Republic's founding principles limited only to policies that benefit all. Only by reducing the size and influence of the consuming public (government) sector and freeing up the productive (private) sector without subsidy, while emphasizing freedom and private property rights protection, can American government begin to find its rightful place again.

I'm not going to hold my breath...

Make government what it ought to be, and it will support itself –Thomas Paine

 

EXPANDING COVERT WARFARE MAKES US LESS SAFE

by Congressman Ron Paul

Earlier this month we learned that the Obama Administration is significantly expanding the number of covert Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) agents overseas. From just a few hundred DIA agents overseas today, the administration intends to eventually deploy some 1,600 covert agents. The nature of their work will also shift, away from intelligence collection and more toward covert actions. This move signals a major change in how the administration intends to conduct military and paramilitary operations overseas. Unfortunately it is not a shift toward peace, but rather to an even more deadly and disturbing phase in the “war on terror.” Surely attacks on foreign countries will increase as a result of this move, but more and more the strikes will take place under cover of darkness and outside the knowledge of Congress or the American people. The move also represents a further blurring of the lines between the military and intelligence services, with the CIA becoming more like a secret military unto itself. This is a very troubling development. In 2010, I said in a speech that there had been a CIA coup in this country. The CIA runs the military, the drone program, and they are in drug trafficking. The CIA is a secretive government all on its own. With this new expanded Defense Intelligence Agency presence overseas it will be even worse. Because the DIA is operationally under control of the Pentagon, direct Congressional oversight of the program will be more difficult. Perhaps this is as intended. The CIA will be training the DIA in its facilities to conduct operations overseas. Much of this will include developing targeting data for the president’s expanding drone warfare program. Already the president has demonstrated his preference for ever more drone attacks overseas. In Pakistan, for example, President Obama has in his first four years authorized six times more drone strikes than under all eight years of the Bush Administration. Nearly three thousand individuals have been killed by these drones, many of those non-combatants. President Obama said recently of Israel’s strikes against the Palestinians in Gaza, "No country on Earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.” This announcement by the administration amounts to precisely that: the US intends to rain down ever more missiles on citizens overseas. I believe what the president says about Israel is true everywhere, so what about those overseas who live in fear of our raining missiles? How will they feel about the United States? Is it not possible that we may be inviting more blowback by expanding the covert war overseas? Does that make us safer? An exhaustive study earlier this year by Stanford and New YorkUniversity law schools found that US drone strikes on Pakistan are “damaging and counterproductive,” potentially creating more terrorists than they kill. Its recommendations of a radical re-appraisal of the program obviously fell on deaf ears in the administration. Thousands of new DIA spies are to be hired and placed undercover alongside their CIA counterparts to help foment ever more covert wars and coups in foreign lands. Congress is silent. Where will it all end?

STRANGE ENCOUNTERS WITH RELIGION, CULTURE AND GENETICS

by James Craig Green


In 1957, when I was 12 years old growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I raised my hand in response to a preacher's question in the Baptist Church I attended. I don't remember how long I had been going to church regularly, but it was probably no more than a couple of years.

At the end of the preacher's sermon, he said something like, "Now, all of you who raised your hands, please come up here in front of the congregation." I walked up, and the next thing I knew was that my baptism was scheduled for a couple of weeks later.

I went home to my mother - the finest Christian woman I ever knew - and told her that I did not understand what happened and did not want to commit to the baptism. She said she would talk to the preacher. The next thing I knew, the preacher was in my living room, trying to convince my mother and me that I should go through with it.

I was a naive, fun-loving kid in the sixth grade, who once asked a girl at school to dance on a rock n' roll music day. She said, "No, it's against my religion."

She went to my church.

My father never talked about religion while I was around. So, with an agnostic father and Christian mother, my first ever crisis of consciousness was a manipulative Baptist preacher. I was poorly equipped to explain why I didn't want to be baptized, so I finally said "yes."

At the front of the main hall of my church, there was a curtain behind the podium where the preacher spoke. I didn't know what was behind the curtain. On the day of my baptism, the curtain was open, revealing a large tank of chest-high water behind a glass front, with steps down into the water on each side. So, those of us who were to be baptized walked down the steps into the tank one at a time. The preacher gently leaned me back until my head was underwater - said some words, then brought me back upright. After my immersion, I walked up the steps out of the water tank, and the preacher was ready for his next soul.


AFTERMATH

Although the preacher was polite and physically gentle, I was so turned off by the whole experience - especially the manipulative way he led me into his baptism trap without knowing what was going on - that I left the church - and it's god - that day and never went back. I have now lived 55 of my 67 years without god, and haven't missed him one bit. In fact, I thank my lucky stars that my mother did not make me go back to church or to embrace god, because she loved me, respected my intelligence and saw in me the inherent goodness she taught me. 

As I grew up, my mother often praised her god and favorite preacher Billy Graham, as both had a wonderful, positive impact on her life. But, unlike the preacher who baptized me, she never pushed me into something I firmly rejected. She allowed me to develop into my own person, for which I will be forever grateful.

Growing up in Albuquerque on the Rio Grande - a 300 year-old-city where even Texans like us were welcome - I flourished with new friends of different races, religions and cultures. Once I entered college in 1963, I became more aware of this diversity and the growing civil rights movement in the mid sixties.

I grew up with Christian, Jewish, Hispanic and other friends, including a delightful Japanese-American co-worker at Orange Julius, who invited me to my first beer kegger. I was surprised when a black girl was elected homecoming queen at the University of New Mexico in the late sixties, but I was also glad to live in a city - predominantly white and hispanic - where that could happen. Spending four years in the Air Force after college (1969-1973) further broadened my cultural base, including a year in Diyarbakir, Turkey, west of the Ural Mountains that separated the Soviet Union from Turkey.

Diyarbakir is an ancient walled city with origins in the Bronze Age (about 2400 BC), long before Jesus Christ was born. It is on the Tigris River in what used to be called Mesopotamia, about 300 miles upstream of Baghdad, Iraq. Some sections of ancient Roman aqueducts still exist - or at least they did 40 years ago when I was there. I will never forget walking down narrow streets in the oldest sections of Diyarbakir, where I could almost touch the walls on both sides of the street at the same time. It was like old pictures in bibles and movies about Ali Baba, ancient Jerusalem and the Arabian Nights. The walls around the older part of the city are second in size and extent only to the Great Wall of China.

Diyarbakir, Turkey

Walls of Diyarbakir


My Soccer Ball

Since I had a brand-new, leather soccer ball and our radar site had the only green grass athletic field within hundreds (maybe thousands) of square miles, I attracted the attention of the Turkish soldiers who guarded the outside perimeter of the base. Turkish "insult" laws - particularly harsh against non-Turks - meant the outside perimeter of our based was guarded by a detachment of Turkish soldiers under the command of a Turkish Lieutenant. If an American soldier shot a Turk - even one sneaking into the base to steal something - it would cause an international incident. All our vehicle drivers were Turks also, for the same reason.

So, I had a chance to know some Turkish soldiers, who were great soccer players - including their English-speaking, well-educated Lieutenant. At that time, many Turkish enlisted men were forced into military service by a draft, and few spoke English. However, one of the guards was one of the best soccer players I had ever played against. This was saying something, since the University of New Mexico where I went to college had two South American teams, one African team, one Asian team AND two American teams, who played in the intramural leagues. Although I played soccer at the time, I was no match for these guys, who had played soccer all their lives. This was a kind of diversity-training I had not anticipated, both at home and abroad.

Playing soccer with the Turks was a great experience. They even invited me to go into Diyarbakir and see the local team play... on bare dirt, of course. My base commander let the local soccer team in town use our grass baseball field to practice for the regional championships in some distant city where they had grass fields. Some of the local players had never played on grass before.

Back to Work

At the US Air Force Spacetrack Radar station near Diyarbakir, I worked 12 hours midnight to noon for several days, took a break, and then worked noon to midnight. Late night shifts, when none of the "day weenies" were around to harass us, I developed a particularly close bond with my crewmates - a racially and culturally diverse lot. One of my friends, another second lieutenant like me, was from Puerto Rico. I didn't know Puerto Rican citizens could serve in the U.S. military, until then. My favorite chess-playing partner was a very intelligent black staff sergeant from Georgia, with a degree in mortuary science - the first person with whom I ever had serious philosophical discussions. Little did I know then that my great-grandfather, John Robert Green, was born on a farm near Atlanta in 1844, and fought in the Civil War, losing his two brothers. I was surprised to find many enlisted men in the Air Force with college degrees.

Billy, a young black airman from Detroit, was like a kid brother to me, because we both had the same weird sense of humor, and both liked the song "Bill" sung by Marilyn McCoo of the Fifth Dimension, famous for "The Age of Aquarius." Billy looked a lot like Billy Davis, Jr., another member of the group and Marilyn's husband. Billy and I both thought Marilyn was gorgeous.

On Christmas day, when we had to work our normal 12-hour shift, all but one of the crew decided to wear civilian clothes that day, instead of our uniforms. We showed up at the mess hall together for Christmas dinner in slacks, coats and ties, and dined as a group for the first time; then walked over to the satellite control building together for work. It was a small way of rebelling against conformity. None of us were ever criticized, much less disciplined, for this - probably because the top brass didn't have to work that day and had no idea what we had done.

I probably would have never served in the military, missing out on opportunities to make such diverse friendships - strengthened by the stress of geographic isolation - had it not been for the Vietnam war and its draft. It encouraged me to join ROTC in college, become an officer, and choose a military career field that 1) had no jobs in Southeast Asia, 2) made use of my engineering degree, and 3) prepared me for a career in the aerospace industry after the Air Force. Though I switched from mechanical to civil engineering later, two out of three was great... and no one ever took a shot at me.


TODAY

Although the church and its god have not been part of my life for 55 years now, I have friends of many religions, races and nationalities, including many divergent political and other views. I don't consider myself an atheist - someone who denies the existence of god - but prefer the term "agnostic," since I have no need to criticize other people's beliefs that are different than mine. More importantly - it is futile to try to prove that something DOESN'T exist - a fool's errand at best. I tend to shy away from some Christians and/or Republicans who think "agnostic" means wishy-washy, or confused.

There is nothing "confused" about rejecting a belief system without having to "prove" it wrong. I don't like people who constantly push their religion, morality, or politics down my throat, and I do not do this to others. Life is too short to hate - or reject - people just because they are different, or don't entertain all my beliefs.

However, I do enjoy healthy discussions - even heated arguments - among people with different points of view and beliefs - as long as discussions are polite and respectful. The two most liberating things in my life were my rejections of god (age 12) and government (about age 30) as dieties. I don't need to cram my beliefs down other people's throats, so I don't hang around people who would inflict their dogma on me, without having the courtesy to ask my permission first. One of my crewmates in Diyarbakir was a non-practicing Catholic, with whom I compared and contrasted our similar, but also different, experiences growing up. Although Catholics tend to be more open-minded and tolerant than Baptists, they are expected to take part in a lot of boring rituals that always seemed silly to me.

My late wife Kay had a very close friend, Taz, at Metro State College who was a Muslim. She had her own business, and often traveled from Denver to Vancouver, Canada for her work. Her husband, also Muslim, was a professor at Metro State. After Kay died, I went to Taz for a while for facial treatments and haircuts, mostly because she and Kay were such good friends. I enjoyed reminiscing about our different experiences with Kay, and it was a good way to relieve the stress of Kay's death.


ANCESTRY

Despite my agnosticism, I treasure my Judeo-Christian roots, including hundreds of years of Southern Baptists in the U.S. descended from British pilgrims, to my DNA-tested genetic past from hundreds, or thousands, of years ago.

Only within the last few years have I become interested in genealogy, so I joined Ancestry.com. Below is a link to my pedigree, which to my surprise, includes more than two dozen lines going back to the 1600's in America (look for red "1600 club" on yellow flag, beginning 7 or more generations back). But, my more recent British-Scots-Irish stock was probably hundreds of years -  maybe a millenium or two - removed from the Middle East.

I was delighted to receive an email from a Canadian woman whose father had almost identical DNA blood markers to mine. He was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia (where Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 to start World War I). I also received an email from a Franklin Green in Kentucky with similar DNA markers to mine. It was fascinating - and surprising - to find that a Canadian woman's dead father from Sarajevo was more closely related to me (genetically) than a still-living man in Kentucky with my same last name.

To me, it is interesting stuff like this that makes life worth living...


Pedigree of James Craig Green

THE PROBLEM WITH GOVERNMENT

Revised 12-8-2012

by James Craig Green

“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” – Frederic Bastiat

Throughout history, governments of the world have often ruled their citizens with an iron hand, using plunder, extortion and every conceivable kind of murder to keep them in line. Apparently, millions of people today think that “democratic” governments, in which a minority of citizens is allowed to vote for a few government “leaders,” have grown beyond the obvious and destructive tyranny that characterized monarchies and other forms of totalitarian dictatorship in the past.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

SEE: THE TRAGEDY OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Just about everybody, at one time or another, complains about government. But, almost no one understands what the REAL problem with all government is, and why, on balance, government always creates more (and worse) problems than it solves. This can never be changed by politics - the ongoing charade that people are in control of those who enslave them.

The main problem with government is that it is based on aggressive force - like the Mafia - except the Mafia doesn’t pretend to represent everyone, least of all the majority who never gave its consent to be governed. Today's governments are world champions of plunder, extortion, and destruction (PED). As legal organized crime, government makes the Mafia look like amateurs by comparison. Sadly, too many believe that because a handful of government officials are elected “democratically,” their plunder, extortion and destruction are excused, or at least necessary. The most common - and fraudulent - phrase to convey these excuses is the “Public Interest.”

The “Public Interest” is the magic phrase, like “Open Sesame,” that allows virtually anyone in a democracy to become a special interest, supposedly deserving of some freebie from the government at the expense of everyone else. Anyone can run to a legislator, with a self-interested proposition disguised to be in the “public interest,” to easily inflict any manner of tyranny on his fellow citizens. This often includes government subsidies to business (promoted by chambers of commerce, government contractors and unions). These special interests, who are "more equal than others," enjoy government benefits and the ability to influence and regulate the nonviolent lifestyles of others and inflict their prohibition of anything they deem to be offensive.

Multiple election frauds recently committed by Obamites in blue states are Exhibit A. When 5-8 percent more votes are cast than registered voters in some precincts, and you hear nothing on the national news... you can be pretty sure the American Republic is dead.

SEE:  PRIVATE PROPERTY PUBLIC PLUNDER

The second biggest problem with government (arguably for some, the first) is that it bestows billions of dollars of benefits on people who do not deserve them. No one who receives or is assigned to allocate money, property or other resources belonging to others will ever spend that money as carefully or as thoughtfully as those who earn it or benefit from its investment. If your investment broker constantly skims money from your account, without higher gains, you can fire him by switching investment companies. But with government, your complaints will put you on lists with terrorists and other criminals, as a danger to the state. Bureaucrats who lose, malinvest or waste taxpayers' money almost never lose their jobs. Such waste is too often a recipe for increased taxpayer funding next year. So, the perverse incentive is to continue it, with little risk to the incompetents, thieves and parasites who maintain the fraudulent idea of "public service." 

Because it is based on PED, government cannot act responsibly with other people’s money. I didn’t say will not, may not, would not or should not - I said CANNOT. This is because it pretends to represent them, when only a small minority of them voted for the political winners in the electoral charade. In other words, a majority of citizens is never directly represented... at least not at the national level, where dollars are printed with abandon to keep incumbents in office.

SEE: THE PROBLEM WITH DEMOCRACY

Neither can anyone else represent such a diverse collective, but there are practical limits on private abuses that don’t apply to government. The lack of real, practical limits on government power, abuse of that power, corruption, fraud and tyranny all derive from one simple, undeniable fact:

GOVERNMENT IS FUNDED - AND ITS RULES IMPLEMENTED - BY FORCE

Worst of all, this legalized theft and tyranny is condoned, justified, apologized for and patriotically promoted by the vast majority of people who have been brainwashed into believing that government, on balance, produces positive benefits in the creation of wealth.

It doesn’t - and never has.

It has always been a drain on society, for a privileged few. Modern democracies have simply replaced the divine right of kings with the divine right of mobs, where your neighbors can become tyrants with enough savvy manipulation of the system. No one voted for the vast armies of unelected bureaucrats who enjoy guaranteed lifetime jobs and generous pensions at the expense of the taxpayer. Nor, can they be fired for incompetence or sloth in most cases.

Government appears to produce "freebies" without any (or little) cost, because their true costs are hidden and confused - jumbled up within a labyrinth of laws, regulations, promises and misunderstandings. We’ve all read and listened to media reports how reducing taxes hurts people, and how raising taxes produces all kinds of benefits. For business to operate this way, only gross revenues - but no costs - would be reported to shareholders and the public. This is normally called fraud, but not when done by government.

It is incredible and outrageous that so many people buy these stupid, erroneous, one-sided arguments, promoted constantly by government apologists everywhere. Perhaps the most confusing thing is that the most vocal of “anti-government” Republicans are not anti-government at all, as they usually benefit directly from ever-growing sums of government money. George Orwell (author of “1984" and “Animal Farm”), if he were alive to describe all this, might say something like, “Theft is freedom, taxes are profit and war is good for your children.” Of course, any politician who wants to get elected today must speak in such gibberish, so as to attract the maximum number of unthinking voters to his cause or candidacy.

Government always makes promises it can’t keep, as the political process demands it. The intoxication of lifetime benefits from taxpayers encourages legislators to promise things people want, while pretending it can produce the money to pay for such things without net cost, effort or loss. The myth of government is its naive perception as an endless wealth machine, which it is not. On the contrary, government in every society or country is the greatest enemy of its own people and the largest drain on their national wealth. But, because there are so many government programs offering freebies at the expense of freedom, a nation of junkies continues to allow - and even encourage it.

SEE: WHO BENEFITS AND PAYS FOR GOVERNMENT?

Today, the U.S. government chases its citizens to tax them all over the world, no matter in which country they make money or reside. However, other countries tax their citizens only for income made in those countries. This produces the worst of all worlds for the U.S. taxpayer - foreign visitors can make money here without being taxed by the U.S., but U.S. citizens cannot enjoy the same benefit for money made overseas. Some smart businessmen realize it may be better to become a citizen of another country, and just visit to do business in the U.S.

Ironically, the U.S. is a great tax haven for everyone but Americans! This is why raising taxes on rich Americans can never produce more than about 20-22 percent of GDP - and even then only for short periods. The rich can simply leave, retire or donate large portions of their wealth to charity instead of letting it be confiscated by government. This is why the maximum income tax rate in the year I was born (1945) was 94% and is now 35% - without materially affecting average revenue at 19% of GDP - as shown in the graphic below.


                   (CLICK GRAPH TO ENLARGE)



The rich have too many options, and are too smart to let government confiscate their wealth - which they can accomplish LEGALLY in most cases. The law has aways favored the wealthy - especially in the modern welfare state, which has always protected them first. The poor are driven into dependency, sloth and depression by fraudulent government promises of prosperity without effort. This magical thinking has produced generations of victims who chose the easy way out, which turns out to be the worst thing for them. Many will not survive the next, most severe economic downturn, which is now inevitable.

Just about anyone can be bought by government by throwing freebies at them, at taxpayer’s expense, and here’s the juicy part: you will not go to jail for accepting the government’s gifts to you. However, refuse to pay for someone else’s freebies, and you instantly become an enemy of the state, deserving all its criticism and brutality.

Sadly, the U.S. Constitution - elegantly designed to prevent the democratic free-for-all of American government that exists today - has been neutered, like an obnoxious dog, so it is no longer effective in protecting any minority, especially the individual, from the mob. The uncontrollable democratic tyranny of majority rule has replaced the limited Republic of James Madison, and is destroying the America we have known and loved with the dangerous narcotics of government freebies, dependency and public debt which have long passed sustainable levels.

SEE: UNCHAIN BUILDERS - MADISON  

Ironically, today’s neoliberals sell their brand of tyranny through the mantra of an ever-expanding welfare state. Just as ironic, today’s neoconservatives fight for every scrap of government handouts they can get, as everyone knows government is the very best client for business. It appears to have a stabilizing influence over the risky ventures of the marketplace, because it commands people to do things they would not voluntarily choose to do. This seems like a good idea when talking about controlling axe murderers and child molesters, but generations of government-educated idiots continue to promote the fantasy that government can produce prosperity or a net gain without effort. All it “produces” is hidden taxes, inflation and escalating debt that is, and will continue to be, foisted on our children, grandchildren and their descendents - until corrected by economic collapse.

Of course the collapse, as usual, will again be blamed on Laissez-Faire Capitalism - something absent from the U.S.for more than a lifetime.

SEE: CONFUSION ABOUT RIGHTS 

If neoliberals really believed their mantras, they would pass a law raising the minimum wage to one million dollars per year for everyone. However, if stated this bluntly, no one would take them seriously. Few seem to realize that the same silly logic and extreme consequences from this minimum wage law are the same as for current, more modest proposals. Only the numbers are different, while the poor and uneducated suffer from the unintended consequence of not qualifying for work because their skills are not worth the minimum wage. Of course, union members have long since used the minimum wage - which does not affect them - as a means of reducing competition for their labor.

I notice the spelling checker in this program has the word “neoconservative” in its database, but does not recognize the word “neoliberal.” How revealing: Too many folks seem to think that wonderful Latin word for freedom ("libertas") somehow still represents what the modern liberal wants, instead of the tyrannical democratic socialist welfare state s/he clamors for with every breath. No amount of government is too much government for a neoliberal. Tragically, neoconservatives are only slightly less tyrannical in their outlook, choosing corporate welfare instead of welfare to the poor. Both are destructive. Neoconservatives fall way behind neoliberals when it comes to personal freedom and alternative lifestyles that offend them, however. The ongoing destruction of the American Republic is big business for those politically connected, at the expense of others. After Roosevelt but before Obama, Republicans grew government faster than Democrats, as shown by the graphic below, which I researched and published in 2009:

                            (CLICK GRAPH TO ENLARGE)
 

Today of course, U.S. government debt exceeds $16 trillion, with ANNUAL deficits exceeding a trillion dollars in each of the last four years. Apparently, Obama's 2008 campaign promise to cut deficits in half was a joke, as they increased by more than half.

   

"Law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice."
– Frederic Bastiat

If neoconservatives really believed their bluster, they would immediately demand that the federal government be cut back to its constitutional limits. But wait! That would eliminate their sweet deals as government contractors – selling lots of overpriced, worthless stuff to governments who don’t have to worry about how to pay for it (since the Fed can just print more dollars). The irony of all ironies is that conservatives still fancy themselves as believing in free markets, which they haven't since long before President Roosevelt was elected in 1933. When bloated military budgets are called “defense” when their true purpose is war, and by subsidizing tyrants of every persuasion, anyone with a clear head would break down hysterically laughing, if the consequences of this stupidity were not so tragic. Egypt and Syria, of course - beneficiaries of billions of dollars in U.S. freebies - are such good friends to the U.S. that they contributed Osama Bin Laden and his insane terrorists who flew planes into buildings on 9/11/2001.  

There is nothing remotely related to freedom in any liberal or conservative political agenda today. Both groups of headless horsemen congratulate themselves on being in “control” of government, while deluding themselves into believing they will somehow be protected from the angry mob when the freebies stop flowing.

With record levels and escalating rates of public and private debt, it’s only a matter of time before the system of national government we know in the U.S. self destructs. If the poor think they are in bad shape today, wait until the freebies dry up.

Many otherwise reasonable people in democratic countries (like today's U.S.) sincerely believe that government produces positive good, and at worse is a necessary evil. This is because the benefits of government freebies appear obvious to all who can see them, but the costs are hidden or assigned to some other entity. For example, in 1913, the U.S. Congress created the Federal Reserve, a private banking cartel, and bestowed on it Congress’s constitutional power to regulate the nation’s money supply. This, and the creation of the income tax (previously declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court) in the same year financed the U.S. to enter World War I, which had been fought to a stalemate by all sides. If ever there was a stupid war, it was World War I, the results of which almost demanded the rise of a dictator like Hitler to produce World War II, plus an oppressive welfare/warfare state thereafter.

The rest, as they say, is history...


"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" - P.J. O'Rourke
 

NEW AMERICAN SOCIALISM

by Porter Stansberry
The S&A Digest
Stansberry and Associates Investment Research

11/18/2012

No one knows what to call it…

That's part of the problem. It's difficult to criticize something that doesn't yet have a proper name.

You can't just call our economic system "socialism." It's not. There's a profit motive and private ownership of nearly all assets. Socialism has neither of these. Besides, far too many people have become far too rich in our system to simply label it "socialism."

If you have ever traveled to an actual socialist country – with a power grid that never works, little public sanitation, petty graft at every turn, and endemic, horrifying poverty – you realize our system and real socialism aren't the same at all.

Our system isn't truly capitalism either, though. The State intervenes in almost every industry, often in a big and expensive way. With government at all levels making up more than 40% of GDP, it's fair to say we live in a State-dominated society.

And we share other, disturbing similarities with typical socialist states. Not all of them are economic. The most frightening similarity between the U.S. and classic totalitarian socialist states is the mutual investment in and appreciation of violent coercion. The U.S. has a huge standing army – by far the most powerful in the world. It fights aggressive foreign wars.

And it fights violent domestic wars: U.S. prisons are bulging with a large percentage of the population. But the overwhelming majority of U.S. prisoners have never committed a violent crime.

One hallmark of a totalitarian, socialist government is a large penal system. At its peak, prior to World War II, the Soviet Union's "gulag" system incarcerated roughly 800 out of every 100,000 residents. Today, the U.S. incarcerates roughly 743 people out of every 100,000 residents – a total of 2.3 million inmates.

Including people currently on parole, more than 7 million people are in the American criminal justice system – one out of 31 adults. Roughly 70% of federal prisoners are violent offenders. The number of drug-related prisoners has increased 12-fold since 1980. The U.S. has the world's largest prison population. Incarceration rates run seven times higher than in similar countries, like Canada, Australia, and the European Union nations.

Most of my readers probably aren't familiar with this violent side of America's culture. It's the poor who suffer the most from these aspects of American life. It is their children who are sent to foreign wars. It is their children who get sent to prison.

Likewise, as with all socialist experiments, it is the poor who suffer the worst economic outcomes, too. It is their cash savings that get wiped out by inflation. It is their jobs that disappear when regulations reduce capital investment or government debt crowds out private capital in the markets.

If the poor knew the first thing about economics, they wouldn't keep voting for socialist politicians and their programs. Alas, they don't even know the basics.

The poor in America, like the poor everywhere, still believe you can rob Peter to pay Paul. They still believe their "leaders" are trying to serve their best interests. It is a sad hoax. What has really happened is clear: Bamboozling the poor has become a way of life for American politicians. And the poor's willingness – even eagerness – to embrace the resulting economic slavery is the linchpin of our system.

But it's not only the poor who have become addicted to the system. Businessmen like Warren Buffett embrace it, too – despite its limitations and taxes. Buffett calls it the "American System." He says it's the greatest system for creating wealth the world has ever seen.

We're not so sure.

Yes, it certainly makes it easy for big businessmen like Buffett to become wealthy. But those same benefits don't accrue to the society at large. For example… even though the value of America's production has soared over the last 40 years and asset prices have risen considerably, our debts have grown even more.

When you adjust for debt and inflation, you discover America hasn't gotten richer at all. Yes, we have become more affluent. And yes, some individuals have gotten vastly richer. But taken as a whole, when you add back the debts we've racked up, the country hasn't gotten richer at all. Since the end of the gold standard in 1971, real after-tax wages, per capita, stagnated. On average, we haven't gotten any richer at all in 40 years…

What happened over the last 40 years?

Why did so many people rush so eagerly into debt? Why did they borrow more and more to buy the same things at ever-higher prices – again, and again, and again? And why do people in America continue to work, day after day, for jobs that offer no opportunity and declining real wages? Most important, how did a few people end up getting so rich from this merry-go-round economic system that never takes us anywhere?

To answer this question, we need only answer one core question: Who benefits?

Whose wealth and power increases with inflation? Whose stature in society grows alongside the government? Who profits from increased spending on wars, prisons, and social programs that are doomed to fail? And most of all… who profits from an explosion in debt?

A certain class of people has the power to not only protect itself from these policies but to profit as well. These people have used the last 40 years to produce massive amounts of paper wealth. And they are now desperately trying to convert those paper accounts into real wealth, which explains the exploding price of farmland and precious metals.

This explosion of wealth at the top of the "food chain" is the main feature of what I call New American Socialism. It's a system fueled by paper money, the constant expansion of debt, and a kind of corruption that's hard to police because it occurs within the boundaries of the law.

Like the European and totalitarian socialism of the last 100 years, New American Socialism harnesses the power of the State to grow and maintain production. Like in traditional socialism, the poor pay the costs of New American Socialism. But unlike socialist systems of the past, this new American version has one critical improvement…

In the New American Socialism, the power of the system produces private profits. In this way, it provides a huge incentive to entrepreneurs and politicians to work together on behalf of the system. This is what keeps the system going. This is what keeps it from collapsing upon itself. And this, unfortunately, is why the imbalances in the world economy will continue to grow until the entire global monetary system itself implodes…

New American Socialism began with the policies of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1933, FDR seized all the privately held gold in the U.S. and began creating the massive government programs necessary to implement socialism. To give you some idea of how much the federal government grew during FDR's reign, remember federal spending made up 3% of GDP in 1930 – a level that had been fairly consistent for most of America's history. Almost immediately after his election, he tripled federal spending to more than 10% of GDP. And by the time he died in office, federal spending reached 44% of GDP – an all-time high.

As everyone should know by now, the promises of socialism aren't affordable. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is inefficient and kills Peter's incentives. The result is usually economic stagnation, depression, and eventually a crisis that frees people from the government's confiscatory repression. Because America was the only large economy standing after World War II, it took much longer than usual for the problems of socialism to appear in our economy. Also, the government scaled back many of FDR's policies during the post-war boom. In winning the war, we also won a generation of economic spoils.

All this changed in the 1960s. Lyndon Johnson had delusions of government-led grandeur. His ideas of a "Great Society" and "Model Cities," along with an expensive foreign war (Vietnam), were a recipe for massive new debts and an increasing role for government in all aspects of American life.

These policies led to an acute funding problem in 1971 because the debts of socialism couldn't be financed with gold-backed money. It was far too expensive. And so we began a new kind of socialism… the New American Socialism.

What happened in 1971? The size of America's government deficits forced us to abandon gold. After World War II, the U.S. dollar became the world's reserve currency. In exchange for placing the dollar at the center of the world's economy, we made a solemn promise to always exchange the U.S. dollar for gold at $35 an ounce. Nixon broke that promise, calling our creditors "global speculators" and telling them to go pound sand.

This move away from gold severed the fundamental tie between our economy and our money. Without the link to gold, bank reserves could be created by fiat. And they were. This led to a huge expansion of our money supply and our debts.

The power to use this debt and to control the creation of new money is the most powerful factor in our economy. The government can now create unlimited amounts of credit to control the U.S. economy. This bestows favored status on certain companies – notably banks. This lies at the core of our economy's structure. It is how fiat money privatizes the benefits of New American Socialism.

Most Americans simply don't understand how our historic tie to gold made it impossible for the banking system to grow beyond clear boundaries. Gold limited the amount of currency in circulation, which, in turn, restricted how much money banks could lend. Under the gold standard, the maximum total debt-to-GDP ratio was limited to around 150%. But as soon as we broke the tie to gold, our total debt-to-GDP ratio began to grow. It's now close to 400%.

Without the tie to gold, the amount of economic mischief our government could engineer became practically limitless. No social goal was too absurd… no war too expensive… and no government insurance scheme too patently self-serving not to finance.

Today, New American Socialism has spread like a cancer throughout our country, afflicting industry after industry. Like a cancer, once it infects an industry, it metastasizes from company to company in that sector. Suddenly, businesses cannot function without massive government aid. These corporate wards of the State weigh down the rest of our economy… making us weaker and less competitive and dragging us further into debt.

Keep in mind, this New American Socialism I'm talking about isn't called socialism at all. It goes by many names. It's been called "compassionate conservatism." It's been called "joint public-private enterprise." It's been called "government insurance."

I've been studying it for many years – finding it in one company after another. I've actually preferred having it in many of the stocks I've recommended over the years because it tends to be good for investors. That's the most insidious thing about New American Socialism: It's a form of socialism that leaves the profit motive in place.

That's why the New American Socialism has grown decade after decade. That's why it continues to be heavily promoted by almost every mainstream media outlet and both political parties. It leads to a kind of corruption I believe will be impossible to stop without a full-scale economic collapse…

Socialism always destroys the poor because it robs them of social mobility and makes it impossible for them to protect themselves from the predations of the powerful. Historically, its damage has been limited because eventually socialism so disrupts an economy that even the rich and the powerful suffer. That's what's so dangerous about this New American Socialism. It doesn't subject the rich to any depravation at all. It does just the opposite. The New American Socialism retains the profit motive for the rich and the well connected. In this new model, only the poor suffer. The rich are always protected.

It's capitalism for the rich, without any risks… and socialism for the poor, without any rights.

Regards,

Porter Stansberry

ENTER THE DRAGON - WITH BASSETS

by James Craig Green

You might think from the title this is about two unrelated subjects, but both are about applied philosophy. In short, I learned some of the most useful philosophy of my life from Bruce Lee and the Basset Hounds and other dogs my late wife Kay and I trained over more than a quarter-century training dogs together.

Kay and I got our first Basset Hound in 1972 as a pet for the kids. But, like heroin, we ended up with as many as eight at one time, and a total of more than 20 dogs, maybe as many as 25. When Kay died of cancer in 1998, we had but one dog, a Basset, left, as we had already decided to get out of most dog activities.

In about 1976 or so, we joined a tracking training class taught by our friend Carole-Joy Evert, a neighbor in Littleton, Colorado where our kids grew up. Tracking is a sport that contains some of the elements of search and rescue, such as dogs following human scent in the field by using their superior sense of smell to hunt. A couple of years earlier, Kay had taken two or three of our Bassets to obedience class, and got very interested in that activity as a sport by the American Kennel Club (AKC).

In both obedience and tracking, we found an extreme amount of dogma in dog training experts who had never trained a stubborn hound before. One obedience trainer, who had Doberman Pinscers, kept saying "this will work, I guarantee it," as each and every thing he tried failed. It didn't take Kay long to find trainers/teachers who knew something about the hound temperament. Scenthounds like Basset Hounds were bred to hunt together in packs, but not to be micromanaged in their behavior like some herding breeds, for example. Most dog trainers at the time practiced behavior modification, which is a very rigid, mechanical method to reinforcing specific behaviors by reward and punishment. It works best with dogs who are very willing to please their masters. Unfortunately, most Basset Hounds are anarchists - which drives many dog trainers almost crazy. But, Kay and I loved their independent sprirt and the challenge of treating them as living, thinking equals instead of slaves or robots.

To make a long story short, in both sports (obedience and tracking) we found that positive reinforcement worked better than punishment, but especially in tracking. After an insightful 1977 seminar with Glen Johnson, a famous Canadian tracking judge, trainer and teacher, we began to branch out on our own.

One of the first things we learned is that Johnson's rigid approach, which worked with his German Shepherds and other high energy, obedient dogs, didn't work for the hounds. Through trial and error, we learned that our hounds were easily distracted, and didn't like finding the articles like gloves and scarves on the track. Although we changed some of his teaching, as long as we trained tracking dogs, we continued to apply many lessons taught to us by Glen Johnson.

So, we revamped our whole approach to tracking and other dog training activities...


ENTER THE DRAGON

Bruce Lee, the famous martial artist and movie star, was born in 1940, which on the Chinese calendar was the year of the dragon. The calendar recycles a dozen animals to represent ancient Chinese beliefs that people born in particular years are supposed to have certain personality traits in common. Although I studied Tai Chi and many western philosophies for many years, I never thought about any connection between philosophy and dog training. I forget when but one day, a light bulb went off in my head connecting Bruce Lee's experience breaking from the traditional, dogmatic, never-changing beliefs of ancient martial arts with my dog training experience.

In Bruce Lee's famous 1973 film "Enter the Dragon," he used the movie to explain his philosophy of life - including his radical new approach to martial arts - to both western and oriental audiences. After being a fan of Bruce Lee for years, it finally dawned on me that his break from the rigid, dogmatic religion that was ancient Chinese martial arts was similar to what Kay and I had discovered in our dog training. Our approach involves constant change in response to every new reality, as opposed to following some grand plan months after it has repeatedly failed to achieve our goals.

After training tracking dogs for several years with limited success, we essentially started all over again from scratch, because the never-changing, dogmatic beliefs we were taught didn't work for our dogs. So, we came up with a new philosophy - which I call "Small Successful Steps." Although our Canadian tracking mentor Glen Johnson had inspired us with many new ideas in 1977 when we took his two-day seminar in Golden, Colorado, we hadn't yet connected all the dots.

Like Bruce Lee's break with the traditional, dogmatic approach to martial arts, we broke with tradition and decided to train week-to-week instead of following the same plan for several weeks. As with learning any skill, sometimes what you expect the dog to do and what he actually does are very different. Many of my friends in the tracking community seemed to rigidly apply their dogma on how to train a dog the same way over and over again, without effectively correcting mistakes soon enough. Kay and I learned that our dogs began improving by leaps and bounds, once we decided not to apply the same old rigid program week-to-week and month-to-month. Our great breakthrough was listening to our dog telling us what worked, and what didn't.

Essentially, our training approach evolved into changing the training plan after every training sesson, if necessary. Unlike the rigid plans made weeks ahead of time, which often resulted in dogs getting more and more frustrated week after week with their escalating failures, our new plan included observing and correcting small problems immediately before progressing to the next step. This often meant GOING BACK to an earlier phase of training where the dog was having success, and then working slowly through the problem until it had been solved. Many of my friends failed dozens of tracking tests without ever passing, for their unwillingness to change their training approach. But, most of my friends who stayed with the sport for more than a few years eventually learned some variation of what I am describing, though some breeds have to be trained differently than others.

Hounds and Terriers, for example, are often very stubborn, and don't give a damn what you want. Unlike Border Collies, some German Shepard and other working/herding dogs, they were not bred to require constant instructions from their human handlers to do their job. For example, if you've ever watched a Border Collie herding trial, you will see the dog lives on frequently-changing commands, by whistle, voice or arm motions, to change their behavior instantly. In other words, they work like robots. This is exactly what a sheepherder wants to control flocks of sheep, but different breeds have different skillsets resulting from different breeding and training goals. Owning a Border Collie was one of the delights of my life, as they are exciting, energetic, and always moving. I used to say "The difference between night and day is not enough to describe the difference between a Border Collie and Basset Hound." But, Basset Hounds and some other breeds were not selected for obeying their owners, so much as working to solve problems on their own. Therefore, in our experience training Bassets in tracking, we learned that "Less is More."


CONCLUSIONS

When Kay and I learned to LET THE DOG TRAIN US, rather than impose our desires by force from the top down, our success in tracking dog training exploded. Each week, we would evaluate the dog's performance, determine if we should do something different, and make changes if necessary before the next training session. Sounds simple, but not if you've been taught that you have to do the same thing over, and over, and over... no matter what. Sometimes, if we decide we have a frustration or temperament problem, the best approach is to not track for a while, maybe even several weeks. I recently applied this appoach to helping my old friend Carol Makowski in Boulder, Colorado with her Basset bitch Crystal. We had trained intensively last spring, and we both thought Crystal was ready to pass a tracking test. But, she failed two or three tests, so we took a summer break. This fall, with minimal training over about three or four training sessions, Crystal earned her TD title with a motivated, near-perfect performance! Less really WAS more!

Below are links for the tracking articles I wrote over six years as the Tracking Columnist for TALLY HO, the Basset Hound Club of America monthly magazine. I stopped training dogs after Kay died, but continued to judge tracking tests for many years, retiring from that sport in 2009.

My TALLY HO training articles (some co-authored by Kay) over six years are listed below.

(The last three summarize our philosophy from a quarter-century of dog training):

Craig's Dog Tracking Articles


"Simplify - eliminate the non-essential"
--Bruce Lee


Craig
November 2012

THE TRAGEDY OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

by James Craig Green


The tragedy of American Democracy is that the founding fathers rejected it more than 200 years ago for good reasons, but "the people" and their favorite self-serving politicians cheerfully brought it back.

For two decades now, I have written about how fundamentally different the American Revolution was from the French Revolution. America was founded on limited government, individual freedom and respect for individual rights. The French Revolution was founded on almost pure democracy, which led to the Guillotine, the Reign of Terror and finally, the emperor Napoleon. "Collective rights" are no rights at all, because the majority can outvote any individual. The Soviet Union, Communist China and the Cuba of Fidel Castro are what you get when collective rights are enshrined into law as superior to individual rights.

As I discussed in April 2011's post UNCHAIN THE BUILDERS 4, the American Republic was NOT based on democracy, but has unfortunately devolved into one. It took more than 200 years of corrupting history, but now the U.S. has become a democracy, since there are more people who are net takers from government than net payers, as I explained in THE PROBLEM WITH DEMOCRACY (June 2011).

Thomas Jefferson, who was in France at the time the U.S. Constitution was being created, understood as well as his fellow Virginian James Madison, the dangers of democracy:

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not

once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny

Democracy may be the most addicting - and most destructive - narcotic ever invented. It allows people who contribute nothing to dominate those who produce everything. This is why at least since 2004 (according to the Tax Foundation), the majority of Americans vote for a living, as I explained in May 2011's  WHO BENEFITS AND WHO PAYS FOR GOVERNMENT?. The 2007 Tax Foundation study described there, based on tax and spending data for all levels of government ending in 2004, shows how three-fifths of Americans receive more than they contribute to American government. This is pure democracy in action, as Thomas Jefferson perceptively warned against at the beginning of the American Republic more than two centuries ago.

As I have stated many times, the best example of a democracy is a lynch mob - only one dissenting vote.

Have you ever wondered why America's Founders REJECTED democracy in the Presidency and the Senate, but only allowed it in the House of Representatives? One brilliant insight into this question was provided by James Madison, drafter of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and fourth President of the United States. In  FEDERALIST NO. 10 , Madison clearly explained, as he called it, the "mischiefs of faction." By this term, he meant majorities tyrannizing minorities. This was precisely why he recommended a democratic House of Representatives, but NOT a democratic Senate, nor a democratically-elected President. Each of these were supposed to be immune to the majoritarian passions of the mob. Unfortunately, the Senate's structure was converted to a democratic form in 1913, with the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. The rejection of direct democracy by the founders was also exhibited in the Electoral College which elects the President.

To say American Government was founded on democracy is one of the most damaging but widespread myths about the federal government. Of the three branches of the federal government:

1. Legislative (Congress, consisting of the House and Senate)
2. Executive (The President, chosen by the electoral college), and
3. Judicial (Supreme Court, appointed by the President, ratified by the Senate),

...only one half of one branch was created as a democracy. Arguably, this may be thought of as only one-sixth of the federal government as the founders' originally intended it to be.

Democracy-Gone-Wild

Today, the mob is in control of everything. Since at least 2004 (shown by the Tax Foundation study), more people receive net benefits from government than they contribute. This was what Jefferson meant by his famous quoted above... The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

Democracy is destroying America, because those who, on balance, produce useful goods and services can have their income, production and assets stolen by those who don't. By on balance, I mean that the majority who receives more from government than it contributes, as explained in WHO BENEFITS AND WHO PAYS FOR GOVERNMENT, has no incentive to cut government spending. This is destroying America from within. The best current proof of this is annual budget deficits for the federal government that exceed ONE AND ONE HALF TRILLION DOLLARS. That's EVERY year, not a lump sum over several years. This is called Bankruptcy elsewhere, but to the feds and their large contingent of dependents (most Americans), such language is considered impolite at least, and treasonous at worst.

American government has accrued AT LEAST 50 TRILLION DOLLARS of public debt in our lifetimes, with Republicans, Democrats and those who voted for them directly to blame. Since only about one-out-of-five Americans elect the President and Congress, the 80 percent who don't continue to be screwed at an alarming rate. I should note that the 50 TRILLION DOLLAR figure is a low estimate, generated by former Comptroller General of the U.S. David Walker. A much higher estimate of 120 TRILLION DOLLARS, published by the Cato Institute, reflects even more insanity by U.S. Governments and their most ardent supporters.

We should be ashamed of ourselves for letting it get this bad...

MY APOLLO 13 CONNECTION

by James Craig Green


Today is the 42nd anniversary of the launch of Apollo 13, the ill-fated mission in which Astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert would have lost their lives but for the outstanding work by their NASA ground support teams. This was the mission, later made into a movie with Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell, in which one whole side of their command vehicle blew out, forcing them to return to Earth from the Moon without landing. I'll never forget Tom Hanks' quote in the movie after shutting down all unnecessary systems to save battery power - Gentlemen, we just put Isaac Newton in the driver's seat. He meant, of course, that periodic course corrections would not be possible in this mode, relying only on Sir Isaac Newton's laws of gravity and motion while coasting. Few people seem to realize that Newton's magnificent laws, which survived intact for more than two centuries before Einstein's relativity, were not good enough to get to the moon and back without an occasional course correction.

Wikipedia article on Apollo_13

In the spring of 1970, I was a second lieutenant in the Air Force, stationed at Eglin Air Force Base near Fort Walton Beach, Florida. I had graduated from the University of New Mexico in February 1969 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, working as an orbital analyst for the Air Defense Command. I was getting ready to spend a year in southeastern Turkey at a remote satellite-tracking ground station west of the Ural Mountains near the Soviet Union.

I didn't know it then, but a dozen years later, in 1982, I would meet Jack Swigert in my first campaign as a Libertarian candidate for U.S. Congress in Colorado's brand-new 6th Congressional District.

Jack, a national hero after Apollo 13, was a lifelong bachelor, a real gentleman and the Colorado Republican Party's candidate for Congress in the newly-formed district. The Democrat was Steve Hogan, city councilman from the City of Aurora. Then, there was little ole' me... soon to garnish a whopping two percent of the vote just for showing up.

Little did I know I would have the opportunity of a lifetime, participating in several televised debates and many other joint public meetings, more than a dozen public appearances in all.

Jack Swigert was a shoe-in within a congressional district where the Republican would obviously win by a two-to-one margin over the Democrat. However, early in the campaign, he was diagnosed with cancer and tragically died two months after his election.

Of course, I never had a chance to win the election, but my intent was to promote my libertarian philosophy of free markets, a defensive foreign policy and massive reductions in government spending, opposed vigorously by most Democrats and Republicans. Fortunately for me, Jack was not the least bit threatened by my presence, so I enjoyed a forum over several months to present my entire political philosophy on an equal footing with the two major party candidates. It was the opportunity of a lifetime.

My most fond memory during the campaign was near its end, when Jack showed he had been listening to me. I just about fell out of my chair when he said, in response to a question about national defense: When it was called the Department of War, its purpose was defense. Now that it's called the Department of Defense, its purpose is war. I couldn't have imagined another Republican candidate (without the popularity and media presence of an astronaut) saying this without suffering severe criticism from his Republican colleagues during the Reagan years. But, everyone knew Jack was going to win, so I was never a threat.

I was saddened to hear of Jack's death in January 1983, and attended his funeral service at the Catholic Church on South Monaco in Denver. When I walked in, one of Jack's campaign volunteers who I had gotten to know during the campaign took me up to the VIP section, and sat me down right behind Alan Shepard, the first American in space and the only one of the original Mercury astronauts to walk on the moon.

It was not an appropriate time to glad-hand famous people or take pictures. At his graveside, I gave Jack my first salute in a decade.

Next time you go to Denver International Airport, you may want to visit Jack's life-sized statue in the middle of Concourse B. I'll never forget the national hero who generously allowed me to participate in so many debates with him and criticize both Republicans and Democrats in 1982.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Swigert


Rest in Peace, Jack...

FORMER NASA SCIENTISTS BLAST AGW

Posted by James Craig Green from Anthony Watts' website, Watts Up With That?

Advocates of the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) hypothesis will not be pleased to see the following letter and list of signatures, which have been a long time coming. Thanks to my friend Terry Donze for forwarding this, to Anthony Watts and Alan Cheetham for their excellent websites and the Heartland Institute for its tireless efforts to promote honesty and sanity in science.

My previous UPDATED ARTICLE on the subject of AGW described the excellent work of Anthony Watts and Alan  Cheetham, prior to the current NASA blockbuster shown below.


March 28, 2012

The Honorable Charles Bolden, Jr.
NASA Administrator
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. 20546-0001

Dear Charlie,


We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.

The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.

As former NASA employees, we feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate. We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject. At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.

For additional information regarding the science behind our concern, we recommend that you contact Harrison Schmitt or Walter Cunningham, or others they can recommend to you.

Thank you for considering this request.


Sincerely,

(Attached signatures)

CC: Mr. John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for Science

CC: Ass Mr. Chris Scolese, Director, Goddard Space Flight Center

Ref: Letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, dated 3-26-12, regarding a request for NASA to refrain from making unsubstantiated claims that human produced CO2 is having a catastrophic impact on climate change.

/s/ Jack Barneburg, Jack – JSC, Space Shuttle Structures, Engineering Directorate, 34 years

/s/ Larry Bell – JSC, Mgr. Crew Systems Div., Engineering Directorate, 32 years

/s/ Dr. Donald Bogard – JSC, Principal Investigator, Science Directorate, 41 years

/s/ Jerry C. Bostick – JSC, Principal Investigator, Science Directorate, 23 years

/s/ Dr. Phillip K. Chapman – JSC, Scientist – astronaut, 5 years

/s/ Michael F. Collins, JSC, Chief, Flight Design and Dynamics Division, MOD, 41 years

/s/ Dr. Kenneth Cox – JSC, Chief Flight Dynamics Div., Engr. Directorate, 40 years

/s/ Walter Cunningham – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 7, 8 years

/s/ Dr. Donald M. Curry – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Leading Edge, Thermal Protection Sys., Engr. Dir., 44 years

/s/ Leroy Day – Hdq. Deputy Director, Space Shuttle Program, 19 years

/s/ Dr. Henry P. Decell, Jr. – JSC, Chief, Theory & Analysis Office, 5 years

/s/Charles F. Deiterich – JSC, Mgr., Flight Operations Integration, MOD, 30 years

/s/ Dr. Harold Doiron – JSC, Chairman, Shuttle Pogo Prevention Panel, 16 years

/s/ Charles Duke – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 16, 10 years

/s/ Anita Gale

/s/ Grace Germany – JSC, Program Analyst, 35 years

/s/ Ed Gibson – JSC, Astronaut Skylab 4, 14 years

/s/ Richard Gordon – JSC, Astronaut, Gemini Xi, Apollo 12, 9 years

/s/ Gerald C. Griffin – JSC, Apollo Flight Director, and Director of Johnson Space Center, 22 years

/s/ Thomas M. Grubbs – JSC, Chief, Aircraft Maintenance and Engineering Branch, 31 years

/s/ Thomas J. Harmon

/s/ David W. Heath – JSC, Reentry Specialist, MOD, 30 years

/s/ Miguel A. Hernandez, Jr. – JSC, Flight crew training and operations, 3 years

/s/ James R. Roundtree – JSC Branch Chief, 26 years

/s/ Enoch Jones – JSC, Mgr. SE&I, Shuttle Program Office, 26 years

/s/ Dr. Joseph Kerwin – JSC, Astronaut, Skylab 2, Director of Space and Life Sciences, 22 years

/s/ Jack Knight – JSC, Chief, Advanced Operations and Development Division, MOD, 40 years

/s/ Dr. Christopher C. Kraft – JSC, Apollo Flight Director and Director of Johnson Space Center, 24 years

/s/ Paul C. Kramer – JSC, Ass.t for Planning Aeroscience and Flight Mechanics Div., Egr. Dir., 34 years

/s/ Alex (Skip) Larsen

/s/ Dr. Lubert Leger – JSC, Ass’t. Chief Materials Division, Engr. Directorate, 30 years

/s/ Dr. Humbolt C. Mandell – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Program Control and Advance Programs, 40 years

/s/ Donald K. McCutchen – JSC, Project Engineer – Space Shuttle and ISS Program Offices, 33 years

/s/ Thomas L. (Tom) Moser – Hdq. Dep. Assoc. Admin. & Director, Space Station Program, 28 years

/s/ Dr. George Mueller – Hdq., Assoc. Adm., Office of Space Flight, 6 years

/s/ Tom Ohesorge

/s/ James Peacock – JSC, Apollo and Shuttle Program Office, 21 years

/s/ Richard McFarland – JSC, Mgr. Motion Simulators, 28 years

/s/ Joseph E. Rogers – JSC, Chief, Structures and Dynamics Branch, Engr. Directorate,40 years

/s/ Bernard J. Rosenbaum – JSC, Chief Engineer, Propulsion and Power Division, Engr. Dir., 48 years

/s/ Dr. Harrison (Jack) Schmitt – JSC, Astronaut Apollo 17, 10 years

/s/ Gerard C. Shows – JSC, Asst. Manager, Quality Assurance, 30 years

/s/ Kenneth Suit – JSC, Ass’t Mgr., Systems Integration, Space Shuttle, 37 years

/s/ Robert F. Thompson – JSC, Program Manager, Space Shuttle, 44 years/s/ Frank Van Renesselaer – Hdq., Mgr. Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters, 15 years

/s/ Dr. James Visentine – JSC Materials Branch, Engineering Directorate, 30 years

/s/ Manfred (Dutch) von Ehrenfried – JSC, Flight Controller; Mercury, Gemini & Apollo, MOD, 10 years

/s/ George Weisskopf – JSC, Avionics Systems Division, Engineering Dir., 40 years

/s/ Al Worden – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 15, 9 years

/s/ Thomas (Tom) Wysmuller – JSC, Meteorologist, 5 years

OBAMA'S PRETZEL LOGIC

On April 5, 2012, Peter Schiff wrote an excellent article explaining why President Obama is so confused, befuddled and so completely WRONG about how economies work. While spouting leftist dogma that resonates with most Democrats and many Republicans, the President continues to display his ignorance of economics shared by many, if not most, Americans. It's called OBAMA'S PRETZEL LOGIC.

Here's an excerpt:


While it is true that the American middle class rose in tandem with her economic might, it was the success of the country’s industrialists that allowed the middle class to arise. Capitalism unleashed the productive capacity of entrepreneurs and workers, which brought down the cost of goods to the point that high levels of consumption were possible for a wider cross section of individuals. While Henry Ford, as Obama noted, paid his workers well enough to buy Ford cars, those high wages would never have been possible, or his products affordable, if not for the personal innovation he, and other American industrialists, brought to the table in the first place.


The economists that Obama follows believe that business will only create jobs once they know consumers have the money to buy their products. But just as wet sidewalks don’t cause rain, consumption does not lead to production. Rather, production leads to consumption. Something must be produced before it can be consumed.

 
Once again, I encourage you to read Peter Schiff's excellent article in its entirety, OBAMA'S PRETZEL LOGIC.
 
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did, because it is spot on.


You can also buy Peter's recent book, HOW AN ECONOMY GROWS AND WHY IT CRASHES (which I have recommended here before) on Amazon.com. Earlier this year the book stimulated a multi-week discussion on market economics in my friends Ari Armstrong and Amanda Muell's LIBERTY IN THE BOOKS monthly discussion group in Denver (scroll down to see Peter's book).

Yours in Liberty,

Craig