Making Sense of Minimum Wage Increases

The purported greatest monetary mind of the century, Alan Greenspan (before his sellout to the Fed), has stated,"Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights." From http://www.safehaven.com/article-4285.htm

Now wait a minute. We have two very important statements from Greenspan before he was Chairman: the first is “there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation” and the second is “Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth.” We are going to look at both those statements, but Wow! The “HIDDEN CONFISCATION OF WEALTH”, now there is a heady statement for you if there ever was one. What does that mean?

Common Sense vs. The Politicization of Money

Let’s take this a step further and apply a little common sense. Think long and hard about the reality of what happens when the Congress increases deficit or regulation. Let’s say that they issue a ruling that says that minimum wage has to be raised in an attempt to “stimulate economy”. The banner is raised, the people applaud, the pressure is on, the companies lobby, the bill goes up for a vote, millions of other pork is attached, and the bill passes and becomes law. Right?

Not exactly, or perhaps a better way to put it would be it’s not the end of the story.

The rest of the story is that companies comply with the new law requirement, as they have no choice, jobs are lost because expenses go up, prices go up to cover losses. Nevertheless, the money the minimum wage maker earns goes no further than it did at the previous level after the first couple of paychecks, and more often than you realize, you actually lose money. Why, because the prices of goods and services, which let’s face it, we all consume, are increased by the companies in order for the companies to be able to absorb the new wage requirement. It sounds greedy of them, but I promise I will show you that it is not greed, but a necessary fact of life.

This next paragraph is very important to remember for future discussion:

In a nutshell, this is the core of the issue; the government has a corner on the money supply, and to answer that second point Greenspan made: The Government can and does use inflation as a hidden tax, selling it to the masses as an increase in their ‘personal profitability’ or in other words – a hand out. When in reality, it's the magic tax from the government’s point of view because nobody understands it and many people want it. Who doesn’t like the idea of something for nothing?

In the case of any number of this type of a bill, it receives resistance mainly by the companies that are affected, as they tell the government this means they will have to raise the prices of manufactured goods or services to cover shortfall, and the masses take another sip of Kool-Aid and say, “this is just big money talking”.

Power yourself back to that 16th Amendment and the Federal Reserve Act, and take a good look at it. Yeah it’s big money all right, but not of the type you are thinking. It is the governmental big business big money talking, not the little ma and pa shop. These people are hungry and they want more taxes. The companies that are “too big to fail” and the government who has to make up shortfall somehow, win back confidence of the voters, improve morale and all the other “dance of the seven veils” items they do to keep us , well… to put it bluntly, quiet. It is the quintessential panacea to the masses.

”We must keep printing money. We must keep taxing wages.” is their Mantra. However, they can’t ALWAYS say they are doing that…especially when the candidate now in office promises he won't.

But…If they raise your income, you pay them more taxes without them ever having to push through a bill for an increase. It makes you feel good, it makes them look good, but I promise you, it is Kool-Aid. I will help you understand this statement in the following subsection, but first let’s take a second to review exactly who the small businesses are and what they do you for you.

According to the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), small businesses:

• Produces roughly half of the private Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and creates, on average, about two-thirds of net new jobs annually.

• Are the greatest sources of new employment in inner cities, comprise more than 99 percent of your local establishments, and carry more than 80 percent of total employment.

• American small business is the world’s second largest economy, trailing only the United States as a whole.

• Employs more than half of private sector employees.

• Ninety percent of small businesses employ fewer than 20 people.

• Small firms represent 99.7 percent of all employers.

• Nearly 16 million people operate a small business as their primary occupation in a year.

• Women-owned firms have grown at around two times the rate of all firms; minority-owned firms have grown at around four times the rate of all firms.

The people who are small business and are affected by this scenario are your Barber Joe, your best friend Sally’s Deli down at the corner where you eat lunch every day, and your neighbor Tom who just started his own landscaping company. You are affected too though, in some cases even worse than small business because you as a wage earner can’t raise any new money on your own without taking a 2nd or even 3rd job. You only have to think about it for a minute or so before you see it, but I promise you, this will make sense because I’m going to play out the whole scenario for you now.

Headline: Congress Today Announced Plan for Minimum Wage Increase

You see the headlines on the front page over morning coffee. The bill to increase minimum wage has been introduced to the Congress at 50 cents an hour. “Well, that’s good.” you think to yourself. “I could sure use that!” You see the headlines the following week as they shout “Companies Lobby Congress for Relief. Says No to Minimum Wage Increases” You just shake your head and think, “Leave it to big business.”

You and your friends hang out at lunchtime that day and say, “These rich companies and their fat cat buddies don’t want to give us a raise, and they’d rather keep us down so they can keep the profits for themselves and make money off the sweat of our backs. The greedy creeps!”

Then on the evening News things are heating up. You sit up with interest as you watch the guy you voted for a several other people line up and run to the podium. “We are here for your benefit,” they cry. “The American people need help and we want you to know that we work for you and WE HEAR YOU! The rich companies have got to pay our poor workers more!” The people in the audience welcome and cheer and rally around with open arms, glad slapping each other and jumping up and down in their spot, because their paycheck is now about to get bigger.

Then the other side climbs up to the podium and screams, “This is partisan politics! This is “tax and spend” policy. This will hurt our economy! In the long run this will hurt you, your kids, and your company!”

“Huh, what?” the people say in return. The booing starts.

You yell at the TV, “Dude! I just need more money! Those guys before you made sense and they just gave me the ‘rah rah’ speech and it made me feel real good! You want me to give a hoot about how my little 50 cent raise is going to hurt the economy!? Are you kidding me? It’s the economy that hurts me, Buddy, and I am done with your partisan politics! So, welcome to the real world Mr. Hoity Toit. I need to feed my kids!” You get disgusted and turn the channel to the baseball game to ease your worried mind.

Yet, have you noticed we still have a hard time getting ahead? Why is that? We as a people are completely unaware that it really goes no further than that ‘rah rah’ speech, because while the money looks bigger on the paycheck, we are still having the same trouble meeting our obligations as we did before, maybe even more. We might walk around with great big question marks hanging over our head and worry weighing heavily on our mind, but we don’t really care to explore it because we are too busy making ends meet. The poor are still with us.

Let’s take a minute to do some fuzzy math.

The bill passed and you are into your 3rd week of your new wage increase. God Bless America. Let’s assume for our little experiment that the average paycheck is taxed at 25%. Your 50-cent raise just became 37.5 cents.

Your best friend Sally at the deli sits down next to you with a stack of letters in her hand as you are eating your sandwich and just starts talking. She tells you that she is worried. Her deli has to pay her 4 full time employees 50 cents more an hour and she is open 7 days a week, so her expenses just went up by $16 dollars a day at a minimum, not including overtime or part time employees, or $112 per week. She says her milk delivery company apparently has the same problem on a larger scale because his employees have to be paid more too and he has 50 employees. This morning, she continues, the deliveryman told her that the milk delivery service is increasing 2 cents a container for delivery. Since she buys 200 containers, 2 cents times 200 containers a week is $4 a week.

She was okay with that at first, but she goes on to say she that she just opened the mail a few minutes ago and now she’s getting scared. It looks like it’s the same with the milk bottling company who supplies the milk delivery company, and the dairy farmers who supply the milk to the bottling company. She lifts up her hand to show you the stack they just sent her; the top one says NOTICE OF INCREASE. She says that the total milk price itself goes up another 5 cents times 200 containers or $10.00 a week. Sally, almost to tears now says that just with those things, her expenses are now $126.00 more a week than they were last week. That’s not all though, it’s the same with the meat sellers, the vegetable grower, her pie maker, her utilities, and everything has to go up to cover losses. All those little amounts are going to add up to about $200.00 a week. “That’s $800 a month!” she exclaims angrily.

Now she is your best friend, you know she only brings in about $800 a week after expenses, and she has the house and the kids. She says she is going to have to do something too so she can feed her kids, because she just lost $200 of that $800 a week because of a 50-cent law. She says, “Some of the other owners were in earlier and it’s the same with the Joe the Barber, Sal the grocer, and Tom the landscaper.

Every company has to pay higher wages and their expenses increase as their suppliers have to raise prices to cover their expenses. They were all talking about how they would have to raise their prices. “None of them want to do it, but gosh, what else can we do? You know Lee died last year he didn’t have life insurance. I have the 3 kids to feed, not to mention my dogs! That house to upkeep. What am I going to do?” she asks, getting misty eyed while she is waving all these increase notices around in the air.

“Uh oh”, you think. You feel real bad for her. She was your best buddy’s wife and she does have it hard, you know that. But did she just tell you that everyone was talking about raising prices? What does that mean for you? You still have to get your haircut, that big tree trimmed and buy food, right? You have an awareness that something just doesn’t bode well that you didn’t when the political posturing was going on, so you decide to check it out.

Taking the Math Home

So let’s say for arguments sake, it’s been a few weeks and you have some actual figures you can add up. How much more has all this has cost you, now that everything has settled down some? You pull out your calculator. That total cost you pay extra for all your goods and services a week is going to be about $20.00 once you figure it all up. Since your actual increase is only 37.5 cents an hour and you work 40 hours a week, your increase actual, after income tax, is $15.00 a week. $15.00 -$20.00 = (-$5.00) right?

Wait a darn minute! Did you just discover that you lost $5.00 a week of income because you are making 50 cents more an hour? You drag butt back to work and start talking about it to your friends there.

They’re a little shocked by what you are saying. Jim says, “If we only got to keep the whole 50 cents, at least we would have gotten a little something maybe.” Jerry nods his head and says “Yeah, man but do you know what Tom told me this morning as he was fixing that tree of mine? He said the government just got 12.5 cents an hour for every single minimum wage worker in America for every hour of work they do and they sold it to us as a benefit even though the word tax increase never passed their lips”…..

Let’s assume there are 10 million workers just like you in this country times 12.5 cents an hour. That’s $1,250,000.00 MORE AN HOUR THE GOVERNMENT IS PULLING IN OFF YOUR WAGES WITHOUT A TAX INCREASE!

You can bet ‘The Fed’ has those presses heating up and they are printing a whole bunch of new money. Money that has a big risk of halving itself once it hits the market, because although it is a “good”; it acts different from other goods. There is little behind it except that you keep your job and that they hope they can actually count on your wages for their windfall or fiat money. What is fiat money again? Fiat Money is intrinsically useless and is used only as a medium of exchange.

Can you hear me now? Do you see it? This is an oversimplification, but you get the point, I’m sure.

Every time anything of this nature occurs, whether it is an increase in Social Security distributions, minimum wage increases, healthcare reforms, welfare increases or pork barrel funding - Americans dependence increases on our government - our desire is for getting a little break for all our effort, yet it goes no further.

No one stops to ask why.

This is the crux of the statist ideology. It is a welfare State mentality, rather than a free enterprise mentality and we continue to become more apathetic the longer this goes on. The proper definition of a statist is the practice or doctrine of giving a centralized government control over economic planning and policy. No wonder they say that free enterprise doesn’t work. It isn’t allowed to work!

We say we are a democratic society, which actually we aren’t, we are a Republic according to our Constitution, and there is a distinct difference between those two forms of government. A democracy is ruled by the majority without protection for the minority at all. What the majority says, goes, unequivocally. A republic however, is meant to CONTROL the majority while ensuring the inalienable rights of ALL people. For this point though, neither of those forms of government function well when ruled by statism, yet we are statist society.

Why, you ask? Simply because we don’t understand what goes into all these monetary laws and amendments and so the government and the candidate’s get to tell us what we don’t know in any form they think will get them what they want. The candidates act like the School Council member running for President, promising anything and everything they can to try to be elected!

If that means that they pass a hidden Magic tax off as a benefit, and we don’t understand what they are saying, then we lose. They get to feed us the definition and we know no better. We don’t understand it and we don’t think we want to take the time to understand.

Apathy feeds dependence and dependence feeds bondage, yet we continue to stare at the headlines with the dull stare of a dairy cow - whose price just increased a little bit.

There are reasons Woodrow Wilson said what he did 6 short years after passing the 16th Amendment and the Federal Reserve Act, and this is one of the major ones.

I read in another part of my study; “The fiat standard cannot do what a well-run, or poorly run gold standard can do, which is not attempt to tailor the money supply to any political constituency's demand. Fiat requires philosopher king-bankers. Commodity money requires mere humans.” It is not a perfect system, as a gold standard specie can still cause havoc. There was a gold standard before the great Depression, and it did not prevent the government from inflating the money supply after the Federal Reserve Act because we became a “mixed currency”. Nevertheless, it controlled them better than Fiat Money.

The printing of money is what caused the "lack of faith" in the governments, and as a result speculative attacks on the currencies through options trading and shorting money, companies, and commodities. People may not know why, but they know whether something feels credible or not.

The solution is as simple as it is complex: disallow the practice of issuing fraudulent money. All circulating currency must be backed by existing gold. This is a gold specie standard. And stop the practice of handing out money willy nilly to the less fortunate, but protect them by law and focus where the issues are, in education, in true job creation, in bringing back the American dream through jobs in America rather than overseas. Do what the UK did in part in going back to the gold standard after the war, just at today’s dollar rather than 1971’s dollar.

We are probably entering into a Depression anyway, choose the bondage we are about to enter to fix the problem, don’t just react to it in a single vote and then run for cover and complain when it didn’t quite turn out the way promised or way worse than expected. Do we really know what affects the Healthcare bill and Cap and Trade will have? We do know that promised money from Stimulus stands at $23.7 TRILLION dollars right now and we do know that if we spent $1,000,000.00 a day every day since the day Jesus was born, we wouldn't YET hit spending of $1 TRILLION dollars. We can't even possibly deal with the kind of money these guys are spending. It will ruin our nation, just as it ruined Rome.

Completely severing state and money would be the best solution but that is probably impossible. However, the Government through private bankers has no business being in the manufacturing of money, other than in punishing fraud. We need somewhere to start this process and personally people way more skilled than I believe that “somewhere” is gold specie.

If you aren't in Washington on 9/12, you are just asking for trouble.

When Will We Believe?

We always think.... "that will never happen in America"

1. What if I had told you in October 2008 before the last presidential election, that before Barack Obama's first 100 days in office the federal government would be in control of both the mortgage and the banking industries? That 19 of America's largest banks would be forced to undergo "stress tests" by the federal government which would determine that they were "insufficiently capitalized" so they must be supervised by the government?

Would you have said, "C'mon, that will never happen in America"?

2. What if I had told you that within Barack Obama's first 100 days in office the federal government would be the largest shareholder in two of the US Big Three automakers - GM, and Chrysler? That the government would kick out the CEO's of these companies and appoint hand-picked executives with zero experience in the auto industry and that executive compensation would be determined not by a Board of Directors but by the government?

Would you have said, "C'mon, that will never happen in America"?

3. What if I had told you that Barack Obama would appoint 32 "Czars", without congressional approval, accountable only to him - not to the voters - who would have control over a wide range of US policy decisions? That there would be a Stimulus Accountability Czar, an Urban Czar, a Compensation Czar, an Iran Czar, an Auto Industry Czar, a Cyber Security Czar, an Energy Czar, a Bank Bailout Czar, and more than a 20 other government bureaucrats with unchecked regulatory powers over US domestic and foreign policy? And that the “Regulatory Czar” (The new gatekeeper between the President and HIS CABINET) believes that it is ok to “abort” children up to the AGE OF TWO (or until they understand that “a tomorrow” existed)? Or that Animals should be given the right to appear in court and that a well trained BORDER COLLIE is more valuable to the country than a retarded child (Read his book “Nudge”)?

Would you have said, "C'mon, that will never happen in America"?

4. What if I had told you that the federal deficit would be $915 billion in the first six months of the Obama presidency - with a projected annual deficit of $1.75 trillion - triple the $454.8 billion in 2008, for which the
previous administration was highly criticized by Obama and his fellow Democrats? That congress would pass Obama's $3.53 trillion federal budget for fiscal 2010? That the projected deficit over the next ten years would be greater than $10 trillion? Or that if all the promises made in the stimulus packages were to come due at once, we would be in hock to the tune of $23.7 TRILLION Instantly? http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25164.html#ixzz0LtdQfpgl

Would you have said, "C'mon, that will never happen in America"?

5. What if I had told you that the Obama Justice Department would order FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high-value detainees captured on the battlefield and held at US military detention facilities in Afghanistan? That Obama would order the closing of the Guantanamo detention facility with no plan for the disposition of the 200-plus individuals held there? That several of the suspected terrorists at Guantanamo would be sent to live in freedom in Bermuda at the expense of the US government?

Would you have said, "C'mon, that will never happen in America"?

6. What if I had told you that the federal government would seek powers to seize key companies whose failures could "jeopardize the financial system"? That a new regulatory agency would be proposed by Obama to control loans, credit cards, mortgage-backed securities, and other financial products offered to the public?

Would you have said, "C'mon, that will never happen in America"?

7. What if I had told you that Obama would travel to the Middle East, bow before the Saudi king, and repeatedly apologize for America's past actions? That he would travel to Latin America where he would warmly greet Venezuela's strongman Hugo Chavez and sit passively in the audience while Nicaraguan Marxist thug Daniel Ortega charged America with terrorist aggression in Central America? That he would diss Israel and not make a fuss over Iran building nukes, killing freedom fighters or N Korea blowing up missile after missile? Or that Hillary Clinton would go to India this week and tell them that “global warming” was all our fault?

Would you have said, "C'mon, that will never happen in America"?

8. What if I were to tell you that the Supreme Court threw away your Miranda Rights in May of this year? http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE54P47120090526

Would you say, "C'mon, that will never happen in America"?

9. What if I were to tell you that the Cap and Trade Bill passed in Congress says that in order for you to sell your house, you must upgrade anything that is not energy starred to the current standards and that you would have to have a government employee enter your home for inspection, and certification to sell your home? What if I told you these upgrades can include your roof, your appliances, your windows and your plumbing and that they MUST be done BEFORE you put your house on the market?

Would you say, "C'mon, that will never happen in America"?

10. What if I were to tell you that the Healthcare Reform bill now in committee says on Pg 22 that the Government will audit books of ALL EMPLOYERS that self insure, that on PG 50 Section 152, Health Care will be provided to ALL non US citizens, illegal or otherwise and that on Pg 170 Lines 1-3 it states that any NONRESIDENT Alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay)? Or that on Pg 239 Line 14-24 it says that government will reduce physician services for Medicaid (Seniors, low income, poor affected) or that on Pg 354 Sec 1177 – it says they will RESTRICT enrollment of Special needs persons and that on PG 427 Lines 15-24 it says they have even the right to mandate programs on orders to end your life. The Government has a say in how your life ends. Or that on Pg 59 HC Bill lines 21-24 it states the Government will have direct access to your banks accounts for funds transfers? Here's the full Health Care bill that sits in the House.

Would you say, "C'mon, that will never happen in America"?

11. Okay, now what if I were to tell you that Obama wants to dismantle conservative talk radio through the imposition of a new "Fairness Doctrine"? That he wants to curtail the First Amendment rights of those who may disagree with his policies via internet blogs, cable news networks, or advocacy ads?

Would you say, "C'mon, that will never happen in America"?

12. What if I were to tell you that the Obama Justice Department wants to limit your Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms? That the federal government wants to reinstate the so-called "assault weapons" ban which would prohibit the sale of any type of firearm that doesn't require the shooter to pull the trigger every time a round is fired? That Obama's Attorney General also wants to eliminate the sale of virtually all handguns, which most citizens choose for self-defense?

Would you say, "C'mon, that will never happen in America"?

13.. What if I were to tell you that the Obama plan is to eliminate states' rights guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment and give the federal government sweeping new powers over policies currently under the province of local and state governments and voted on by the people? That Obama plans to control the schools, energy production, the environment, health care, and the wealth of every US citizen?

Would you say, "C'mon, that will never happen in America"?

14. What if I were to tell you that the president, the courts, and the federal government have ignored the US Constitution and have seized powers which the founders of our country fought to restrict? That our last
presidential election may have been our last truly free election for some time to come? That our next presidential election may look similar to the one recently held in Iran?

I know, I know what you say, "That will never happen in America".

15. What if I told you that there will be even more of this to come in the next few years?

I know what you’d say, "That will never happen in America”.

Well, I’ve got some really bad news for you: It did happen and more of it will happen!!

Please wake up America! Please start now and realize that although it might be too late, we still have a fighting chance if we all get involved! Write and Call your representatives. Go to tea parties. Join a group. Cry out from the rooftops! The camps are next and if we do not believe that, we did not learn our history very well.

Exposing the Congress

Just had to share this.

Grayson is one of Florida's Representatives, not mine, but one of ours.

This man has got to go! He is a jerk!



I think I might just have to set up a new blog doing nothing but these types of constituent encounters. It's time people see how really above us these elected officials are. Seems they forget who hired them!

Hooyah!

CAP and TRADE 20 Talking Points - A Between Post Post

Just finished my study on Cap and Trade. I hope these talking points help you with your Senator. Let it be so! Please call and fax your Senator EVERYDAY!

Most of these are tweetable as well. Others you will have to shorten.

1. Cap and Trade is the largest single welfare bill ever written, again redistributing my paycheck both overseas and here in the US
2. Cap and Trade will require government inspectors to tell me what I must replace to even be able to sell my home. Roof to toilet!
3. Cap and Trade requires every house be registered in a national database as to its energy efficiency which means inspection – who pays?
4. Cap and Trade registery in database leads where exactly? Some newly created agency can tell me I have to upgrade whenever they want? Will you find a way later to fine me?
5. Cap and Trade requires that all Real Estate Appraisers will have to be retrained, and tested, and their schooling paid for by us!
6. Cap and Trade gives even more money to the failed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We're already in a housing crisis, it'll make it way worse!
7. Cap and Trade puts the Full Faith and credit of the US is pledged to interest and principle payments to the guarantee for retrofit and the mortgage. As if FNMA hasn't screwed up enough!
8. Cap and Trade creates Carbon Derivative Options: We are going to allow these to be traded around the world – like CDO’s. We haven't learned? It's even the same damn acronym!
9. Cap and Trade offers grants to take companies overseas because they can no longer justify remaining in the US. Call your Senators!
10. Cap and Trade offers grants to help companies do “market studies” to determine what they can do after CAP and TAX puts them out of business! They ADMIT IT!
11. Cap and Trade is expected to lose 2.5 million jobs a year. Frankly, I think that estimate is quite low - it's always at least double what they say it will be! Call your Senators.
12. Cap and Trade will create a trade war because in order to try to force countries to reduce we will place pressure through the UN according to the Wall Street Journal? Did we elect the UN to be our government?
13. Cap and Trade calls for refusing to import other countries products if they do not comply to our idiocy by 2020. So we can't make it here and we can't buy theirs? Wow.
14. Cap and Trade will increase every single item we buy, exponentially, kill the housing industry – create serious issues for all the foreign countrymen who own property and expect to be able to sell that property….it is a nightmare waiting to happen…the ramifications are literally the most unbelievable that have ever passed through the halls of congress.
15. Cap and Trade will place limits on our energy usage. Could easily go as far as to shut us off during certain hours without warning.
16. Cap and trade builds more agencies, boards and bureaucracies than any bill to date. EVER.
17. Cap and Trade places California standards as Federal building codes on every single State, little nook and cranny in the country. We see how well California manages its agencies, right?
18. Cap and Trade will place requirements on all building code departments in the nation, 3 mandatory full time people, the Inspector, a Health and Human Resources person and One other government agency person. How will Podunk, USA handle the costs? Raise your property tax of course.
19. Cap and Trade is one hidden tax after another. That 2k increase per year in expected additional expenditures? Yeah, I think I would triple it for budgeting purposes.
20. It’s all really simple. We can’t afford the bills they are passing, we can’t continue to “print” our way out of a recession, our debt is currently at nearly 400% of gross domestic product without Cap and Trade, Healthcare Reform, and this NEW new stimulus, Stephanopoulos brought up on Sunday. They are just priming the pump again.

In the Great Depression in 1933 total debt topped out at 300% of GDP. This current financial crisis could be more severe in magnitude and length than the Great Depression and we don’t have the strength or the gold behind us anymore – which is EXACTLY the reason the Senate just today said NO to the Audit of the Federal Reserve! They don’t want us or anyone else to know how much is NOT there against our debt.

I can't stress enough how significant Sunday was as Stephanopoulos led Biden down the primrose path of “stimulus not working” do we need a new stimulus bs. Today Bloomberg reports that an Obama advisors says we need a new stimulus because the other isn’t working. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aStWHJXsvePA

Where Today’s Problems Began, Stage One of Current History

Former President Woodrow Wilson said in 1919,

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit. We are no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

I will tell you more about President Wilson in another blog, but this guy is exactly why we are where we are today and he was a "high socialist". He was the first elected Progressive. In case you don’t know, the Progressive party ushered in Prohibition! You know – the law that outlawed “spirits” (alcohol). That’s also Obama’s party, although he didn’t really say so until AFTER the election. Watch your beer folks - although Obama's gig seems to be more about cigarettes – the hypocrite…but I digress…

I am going to start from the beginning. If I start from the end, I only get half the picture. At the very least, it is a distorted view and it doesn’t give me a way to answer the questions well enough to make sure that people cannot continue to mislead me. Whether my broker, my banker, a congressperson or the president.

So what happened to America? What does it all mean and how do you put it together? It’s tough unless you have a economics/history degree. It’s actually really just common sense when you break it down, but the breaking down is not easy. I tried to break the concepts down to make it considerably easier for you. Mainly I did so because I am concerned that if we don’t get it soon, we are going to be in a big lot of trouble that we cannot even fathom now.

There are basically two sides of the fence, statist ideology and the gold specie which we will get into in a later blog, but whose definitions are:

Statism - The practice or doctrine of giving a centralized government control over economic planning and policy.

Specie – means simply the belief in coin, money in the form of coins (as opposed to paper money or bullion) and comes from phrase in specie "in the real or actual form" within a society. Specie can also be related to the Labor of peoples, which is why it was mandatory that Act 1 of the scheme, of which I am about to tell you be played out first.

As you can easily see, one has a doctrine, a belief system attached and the other is based in actuality of a unit of trade.

I have to give a shout out to my senior year Government teacher, Mr. Hurncane. We did not learn just the basics in that class. We broke out the constitution, we broke it down line by line, we learned what the President thought after their terms (when possible) and we learned the forces that shaped the subsequent amendments. So much, I do not remember, but it is amazing that so much is coming back to me as I am watching what is going on in this country. He had a big hand in shaping my life, made me passionate about protecting our freedoms, and made it a lifelong love affair of all things liberty.

My recent education in order to answer the basic question...what in the hell is going on... taught me a few things I knew but didn’t know - if you get my drift. I learned that it all got its start back in 1913 under Pres. Woodrow Wilson, with a "sky is falling" state of fear created by JP Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Paul Warburg. These three private bankers worked with Wilson (a past Princeton professor) that only bankers had the answer and together they could rule the world one day if he would only pass two pieces of legislation.

Led by McAdoo, the then Secretary Treasurer, we had a ‘sky is falling’ announcement to the Citizens very similar to first Paulson and now Geithner’s today. Let's call it a "created" crisis. Between Wilson and McAdoo, they pressured Congress to pass the 16th Amendment - without ratification of a sufficient number of States, I might add. In case you don’t know which Amendment that is, it is the Amendment that says we have to pay an "Income" Tax.

An interesting side note I uncovered here is that in 2003, a US District Court Judge by the name of James Fox wrote opinion in a Tax Case that said,

“If you examine the 16th amendment carefully, you will find that a sufficient number of States never ratified that Amendment”.

Are we to assume this is still the case, since it was as late as 2003 that this opinion was written? That in reality, there is no “ratified” Amendment 16? Does that mean that current law says not enough States passed the Amendment - effectively meaning that we really do not have to pay Income Tax?

It would at least now appear that is true of most of Obama’s cabinet members, anyway…. Alas, that’s a whole other ball of wax, now isn’t it? I’m not going to go into that, but will leave it to someone else.

As to our history lesson though, Congress passed an Amendment that had been ruled unconstitutional just a few short years prior, by the Supreme Court. It appears that after lying to the public - stating that it had been ratified, and subsequently imposing such tax, they summarily saddled every working man and woman with a new law they weren’t expecting in the way of “Income” Tax.

Then we had the next big blow that same year (beginning to sound familar?), the Bankers helped McAdoo and Wilson with a second bill, this one introduced to Congress in the middle of that year’s Christmas holiday break when most of the House was not present.

Now I don’t know how much you and yours pay attention to the passing of legislation, but that’s dirty politics right there. To hold a vote that important without the individuals that had been elected to represent the rights of their constituents, and therefore were listed as “not present”, is just. plain. wrong.!

As a result of that dirty vote though, the House proceeded to ram through the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. That vote effectively began, in large measure, the adoption of the Statist Ideology and began the move away from the Gold Specie. It developed a mixed money system and they did so because the Bankers felt that they could do a much better job than we could or the majority of the people we elected could do. Not really, that’s just what they said; actually, they just wanted control.

That act was and remains the largest elephant (of several) in the room, this isn’t just an 8000 lb elephant, this thing still fills the house floor and is now so bloated it takes up all the space available between the Capital and Wall Street.

So what is the Federal Reserve Board Act?

Many believe the Federal Reserve Board Act is an unconstitutional act. They are probably more right than wrong. The act created a centralized banking system controlled by an independent board of bankers. This board, the Federal Reserve, gave the broad power to perform such central banking functions as: determining and harmonizing discount rates, defining eligible paper, and controlling the issue of notes (aka “money”).

In other words, they are private bankers who control the money, the supply of money – and in still clearer words, the dips, and rises in the economy. They are not a "Federal" anything!

The discount rate is the interest rate charged to commercial banks and other depository institutions on loans they receive from their regional Federal Reserve Bank's lending facility--the discount window. With three types, primary, secondary and seasonal credit, each with its own rate, overnight loans, shortfall loans and less than stellar backed loans. This also allowed a “mixed Gold Standard” meaning that even though Gold remained the backing and a backdrop of support for money, the “Fed” could and did devalue said money by the printing of more money when so desired by raising or lowering the price of Gold or manufacturing money to purchase government securities (bonds, T Bills, etc).

They passed this off as a “good thing” for the American public. Now the very unfederal Fed could issue and print dollar 'notes' at will based on existing gold stores or by buying your government issued bonds with Monopoly money that it then "loaned" to the American Government. The American Government had to pay interest on that money, that the day before this bill was enacted, it already owned - and then turn around to pay interest to the very unfederal Federal Reserve.

You have to admit though; it is a sweetheart deal for the bankers! Admirable even - but I have to think that giving private bankers control over the issuing of money and the setting of interest could be very diabolical, indeed. In reality, it caused a nation that had virtually no inflation and no debt to become one of terrible inflation and way too much debt.

If we are to break it down into easy to understand terms, the true meaning of the establishment of the fed is simply to say that the government and its people no longer had control of their own money. The bankers seized control, and the government had to borrow money from the bankers for anything they needed, then turn right around and pay back that money, with interest, to finance itself...and the best part is that the bankers get to name the interest rate! Sweet!

This from a government that was relatively flush at the time in spite of the fact there were some Industrial hiccups and who had just passed the law that Americans would be taxed on the money they earn to feed their families. This is a very important piece of this whole deal: Hand in hand with the 16th Amendment the government forced fees on the people that the government collected from the sweat of the backs of worker in order to ensure they had enough to pay the interest on the loans – loans for money that yesterday THEY owned.

And the progressives want us to believe they are for the workers....right.

These banker “gentlemen” put us right back into ownership again in a midnight Christmas vote. We fought a war to overcome unreasonable taxation and to take our country away from the throne, and within a little over 125 years, they put us right back there again, only this time to secure votes.

Mayer Rothschild himself said somewhere around 1800 “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” Mayer Rothschild was a private banker, born by the name of Bauer, Feb 23, 1744 –Sept 19, 1812. He was the founder of the Rothschild family banking empire that would become one of the most successful business families in history. In 2005, he was ranked 7th on the Forbes magazine list of the The Twenty Most Influential Businessmen Of All Time. The business magazine referred to him as a "founding father of international finance”. I would assume he knew wherefrom he spoke.

It was this law that created the nervousness of the early part of the century and in spite of the assurances of the Fed and the government, was the driving force in the Great Depression. We are there again folks. Do not doubt that.

Next blog: So what really is money?

Living in a Zero-Sum Game

As our “sort of like god” President raises himself above nations, earth and men, we the people are pawns in a zero-sum game with the administration, the czars and Congress. We are being played to keep us in a state of fear while they steal our money and our liberty. They tout international crisis, global warming disasters, healthcare crisis, economic crisis, housing crisis, and the end-of-life-as-we-know-it-if-we-don’t-have something-passed-by-the-end-of-the-week, weekly crisis - simply to keep us afraid.

Not only do they tout crises but they tell us they see “gold in them thar hills” and they plainly state that they plan to use these crises that come across their desk to their gain! Not our gain, not America’s gain - theirs!

I don’t know how many of you remember the days of the Cold War, but Russia always complained that they were in a zero-sum game – meaning America always won and they always lost. In fact, they still believe it as they just said as much yesterday about Obama and Lady Mi’s latest apology tour to Russia.

In an article in the news.scotsman.com they wrote “Russian news agency Pravda was less than subtle in an editorial summing up the Obama administration, headlined: "Obama: Deceiver, cheat, swindler, liar, fraudster, con-artist. [I think I am beginning to like Pravda these days!] The root cause of the antagonism is a belief in the Kremlin that relations with the West must inevitably be a "zero-sum" game – every gain for the West is a loss for Russia.”

But wait, didn’t President Clinton declare the inevitable end of ALL zero-sum games in a Wired interview? In 2000, he said “The more complex societies get and the more complex the networks of interdependence within and beyond community and national borders get, the more people are forced in their own interests to find non-zero-sum solutions. That is, win–win solutions instead of win–lose solutions....”

It is possible to play a non-zero-sum game as Clinton, Obama and the progressives believe, but only under one of two circumstances, either you DON’T KEEP SCORE, or the only people you play with are people of equal power who have equal cards in an equally stacked deck!

Let’s think about this for a minute. Let’s take just one country and examine this worldwide non-zero-sum game. Let’s take Venezuela’s Chavez. What a great guy he is! He is taking over all the people’s money, all the oil, the banks (only Friday he took over Spanish-owned Banco de Venezuela giving HIM control over more than one-fifth of bank deposits in the country), demanding the end of the US dollar standard, befriending all good despots, and he took over the Presidency this February - forever.

What’s even more interesting is Venezuela’s history. The people suffered under turmoil until the 1958 overthrow of General Jiminez. The ensuing political calm ended again in 1989 when the people rioted and more than 200 of them were killed in Caracas. The Caracazo was a revolt against an economic austerity program launched by President Perez.

In February 1992, a group of army lieutenant colonels led by Chávez mounted an unsuccessful coup attempt, claiming that the events of 1989 showed that the political system no longer served the interests of the people. A second, unsuccessful coup attempt by other officers followed in November 1992. A year later, their Congress impeached Perez on corruption charges.

Now here is something that might sound familiar to us: deep popular dissatisfaction with the traditional political parties, income disparities, and economic difficulties were some of the major frustrations expressed by Venezuelans following Perez's impeachment. In December 1998, Hugo Chávez won the presidency on a campaign for broad reform, change and an end to corruption. Hmmmm.

Chávez platform called for writing a new constitution for Venezuela. He said the existing political system had become isolated from the people. Voters gave all but six seats to the candidates of Chávez’s movement that first election cycle. The new Constitution’s draft was accepted in a national referendum in 1999. One of the new rules was that a President could serve 2 terms of 6 years each.

As Chávez power and wealth grew, his supporters won the majority of the seats in the 2005 municipal elections, and all 167 seats in the National elections later that same year- after most opposition candidates withdrew one week before the elections over voter secrecy concerns.

The independent election observers from the EU (European Union) and OAS (Organization of American States) stated those elections were marked by record-high abstention and high levels of distrust in electoral institutions. That’s double-speak meaning that the voters were scared stiff to even vote. The reports made specific recommendations to increase transparency and help voters regain confidence in the system. The recommendations weren’t ever implemented.

Chávez proposed to reform his own REFORMED Constitution AGAIN in 2007, including measures that allowed indefinite presidential terms, geographic boundaries reorganization (redistricting), and a redefinition of private property (we get to take yours when we feel like it).
In late 2007, those reforms were narrowly defeated. Angered by his first loss, Chávez stated he might pass many of the changes defeated in the referendum by presidential decree, but instead played his power again (by scaring more people?) and won his referendum 14 months later in February. In the end, the people knew they had lost and just gave up. He took 10 years to take away their will, now he will finish taking their property, their money, and their lives.

Chávez can now be an official despot like Castro, Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-il and his son Kim ll-Sung. He can remain in power. The people of these countries are poor and getting poorer, hungry and getting hungrier while their leaders are rich, fat and powerful and getting more so by the day.

We have to understand that despots rule because the people are afraid of them! The only people in those countries who are happy are those who are in power and their families and friends. How they square what happens to their fellow citizens is simply because it is a zero-sum win and they are winning! Where have we heard that nearly every day this year? That is where we are headed in our country, very quickly with all the legislation coming down the pike, with the czars, the business takeovers, the bank takeovers. It’s the same damn thing!

We really do NOT believe that a dictatorship can happen here in America. I don’t know why we think that because as we are witness, it happens all over the world. Never the less and for some strange reason, we still believe it just can’t happen in America. Our government would never move by force against we the people… Why wouldn’t they if it means they gain control, riches, and all the liberty?

Don’t doubt it. Obama is powerful enough, he is taking the same path as others before him, and like others before him, he is winning while we the people are going to be the ultimate losers in this game. We are in the being played in this zero-sum game, you, me and our kids, along with our culture and liberty will be on the losing end - unless we make winning our second job.

One can only win a non-zero-sum game if you are the ones in power. IF we are the ones who stand to gain, IF we are the ones who are being bailed out because we are TOO BIG TO FAIL, and IF we are the ones who count one whit, we might have a fighting chance. But this particular game benefits no one but Obama and his minions. It is why they had thugs at the polls and didn’t limit the campaigning at the polls, why the White House took over the Census, why they are passing all these major bills and it is why they are on apology tours around the world to our enemies all the while he is thumbing his nose to our allies! We gave it all up, we did near exactly what Venezuela 10 years prior, we voted in a one party rule and none of our usual tactics are working for us to stop them.

Our government is the end all, be all right now to remove us from our rights in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and our Bill of Rights for the sake of progressive party power. They only want to stay in power, to do that they must control all major industry and all money. When they succeed the control of the people of the US will be complete. We are the losers in Cap and Trade, in stimulus and bailouts, we are the losers in Healthcare Reform and we are certainly the losers if he too can be “President forever”.

What does it take for us to see the similarities, to recognize a despot and to know that dictatorships do not work? It only takes knowledge and the will to use it every single day going forward.

Cartoon is the courtesy of my friend Robert Smith, Jr. To see more of his work, check out http://www.robsmithjr.com/! Thanks Rob!

Maybe in a Way, Holder Was Right

Whether or not you believe in God, you must admit there is good sound advice in the pages of the bible. The one that comes to mind in these terrible days is “My people perish for a lack of knowledge.”

I say terrible days because they are terrible. Just the short list of “terrible” is pretty astounding!

• Worldwide Economic “collapse”
• North Korea testing 9 missiles July 4th alone! (Guess they want in on the fireworks?)
• Freedom lovers like Neda slaughtered in the streets of Iran
• A mysterious Swine/Avian/Human Flu threatening to kill 40 a day by summer’s end in the UK
• A Honduran coup (because their President was shredding their Constitution) while our President supports the ousted despot
• Israel losing their country one slice at a time by mainly our President, but also International force
• Sharia Law suddenly becoming the law of the land in the common law based UK, making the Queen a puppet
• The swift loss of our freedoms here in our own country
• Staggering job losses
• More than staggering debt
• The massive loss of our homes
• A created “energy crisis” that will indebt us even further and ruin our ability to compete
• The probable loss of even our own private healthcare so we can insure millions of illegals while you and I get taxed and rationed on our insurance
• A President and Congress that almost seem hell bent on our demise by saddling us with astronomical debt to build overpass bridges for Microsoft and building “monuments to me” buildings for overinflated egos that we cannot possibly fathom nor afford
• Right down to our choice of light bulbs – forcing us to replace safe, cheap bulbs with expensive poisonous ones

Why is all of this happening? I think it is because we lack knowledge. Because knowledge is the only thing that has the potential to set us free. We bought the lies they sold us.

We want sound bites; we want the McDonald’s version of history, economics, and world order. We want to live our lives seeing the issues solved in less than one hour just like on TV and we want to trust the “good guys” will win. We mistakenly believe that the “good guys” just happen to be the ones WE elected to office, regardless of the evidence that is staring us in the face.

We try to tell ourselves it will work itself out. We question our concern. We actually want to believe whatever they tell us, even though our senses are screaming NOT, basically because we want stuff. We want an armchair life to being the quarterback. We want to sit in our easy chair, cloaked in expensive jersey, stuff our faces with pizza while we spit all over the screen as we shout our ‘shoulda, woulda coulda’ directions at the four inch Quarterback inside a tube. Why shouldn't we? After all, that's as American as apple pie, right?

Only problem is, this is not a game. This is not a drill. This is a “Go To Jail. Go Directly To Jail. Do Not Pass Go” card.

Eric Holder, our newest Attorney General called us a nation of cowards. Although he wrongly said those words in reference to race, in our heart of hearts I think we all know that he was half-right. He’s not right in the way he meant it, but through the opposite of what he said. As a whole we are coddled; we are comfortable on our couch and we are afraid to say much about the President because he is the first black President, even though he’s not black; at least not any more so than he is white. We want our life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, yet we want it without a price to us personally - we want it in our armchair. (It's okay if the other guy pays a price though, after all, he chose it, right?)

We are afraid to criticize too much because they might call us a racist. No, no and Hell no! They are the racists for even entering that thought into the equation! This is our Administration we are talking about! This is our country! I don’t care whether the man is white, black, or freaking chartreuse! This is the guy who is running our country right into a deep dark hole with the help of a one party rule Congress and a passel of unelected “officials”. This is Bush dark, peddling the same crap on another day courtesy of Goldman Sachs and company! I am not a racist, but I am a patriot and I want my country back from whatever (party, person or president) is trying to take it away!

We have stopped trusting ourselves and our own brains. We hear statements like “I want to help you” from our politicians, and we want to believe them because we have lost so much trust in ourselves that we think we can’t possibly help ourselves.

Oh, we’ll be macho at our tailgate party, at the bar when we can barely remain seated on the stool and some jerk makes a pass at our wife, or while we sit in our living rooms screaming at the TV, but we aren’t really. We are just posturing. We aren’t macho. We are soft, we are scared, and we are cowering because we want what we want when we want it and we don’t like it when we can’t get it. We see what happened to people like Neda in Iran and we gawk as though we are driving by a gory accident. The real problem is that we don't think it can happen here! Not in America! We think it is sad, but that is all. We should be in front of that White House right now!

We think that maybe, just maybe, big brother is right. Maybe if I just keep my head down when they tell me to, not grumble too much as they indebt every household in America to (currently) a whopping $546,000 apiece in future taxes, if we just allow them to pick our pockets whenever they want – maybe then they can give us what we want. We can keep our job, we get “Free” healthcare, we make sure we have our TV to mesmerize us to doldrums, have ourselves a little vacation, a beer and an iPhone when we want one, and we tell ourselves it’ll be okay. After all, they "say" we made this mess, so we guess we just have to take our lumps.

That is wrong on so many levels, but I truly do believe that every single one of us is guilty of thinking that big brother just might be right - at one moment in time or another - because it is just easier!

It’s isn’t easy starting a revolution, but whether it is easy and comes in a cardboard box and a side of fries within minutes of our order like Honduras', or we have to build another world stone by stone simply doesn’t matter. What matters is that we wake up and realize (finally) that they really only want the rest of our money so they can be hugely, obscenely rich and they can stay in power. We simply get to be the slaves that make it all possible for them.

To do this, they must break us of our wealth, our spirit, our liberty, and our will first. They started with our wealth; they are simultaneously working on our spirit and our liberty. Our will comes next. That means they start taking everything away from those who do not comply - including our armchairs, our electricity, our very ability to sleep in our own beds.

News flash - we already are their slaves; we just haven’t figured it out yet. Or if we have figured it out, we don't want to believe it! The only thing left for them to do is the privation.

If we perish for lack of knowledge, then obviously we survive with it: right? Isn’t that what it means? Perish means to die of violence or privation (death by neglect, denial, devoid of any stimuli), to pass away or disappear, to suffer destruction or ruin. The opposite then is to survive, which means to live after an occurrence, to get along and remain happy, healthy, and unaffected, to pull oneself out of a dangerous, life- threatening situation while others around you die. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that government can help me; they can’t help me to be successful, save myself or to live. In fact, I think government is a lot like TV. While it might on occasion be entertaining, it makes me dull, dimwitted, spoon-fed, unable to fend or think for myself and frankly lackadaisical.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to post a series of articles. We have to gain this knowledge. We have to realize that this is not a “McDonald’s fight”. This is the real thing. We have one of two choices, to perish or to survive. To put it another way, be slaves or free men.

We now have a new fight before us, Obamaminions are laying the groundwork for his third term. He is making his move on the 22nd amendment which is the one that limits a President to two terms. Jose Serrano, D- NY introduced legislation in the house to repeal the 22nd amendment, to take it away, to say it is no longer valid. A grass roots movement is underway (ACORN) to make Obama's third term possible. A beautiful big website is set up for donations to end the 22nd amendment, http://www.end22.com/. (BTW - does it ever concern you that there seems to be NO END to the money to build websites on the other side? Ya think maybe ACORN is spending their 8 frigging billion dollars they were awarded in stimulus to build these websites?)

So the moral of this story is this. The very thing that the Honduras President was ousted for in last week’s coup, is the very thing that Obama is trying to do right now! (Would explain the constant campaign mode.) If we allow this to continue, it does make Holder right and us simply cowards; quite unlike the people of Honduras who were able to peacefully dispose of a budding despot.

Ok. Order up?