U.S. Intelligence Apparatus: Wasteful, Unecessary, and Dangerous

After the terrible events of 9/11, in which over 3000 Americans perished in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, the federal government began to exploit the fear (sometimes irrational fear) many Americans had of terrorism and expand the power, size and influence of the National Security State. A result of this irrational fear of terrorism, the U.S. intelligence apparatus grew exponentially. In a Washington Post report entitled "Top Secret America" Dana Priest and William M. Arkin document the massive intelligence state that has emerged since 9/11.

Here are some of the findings from the report:

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.
[We] discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.
Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings—about 17 million square feet of space.
Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year—a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

This excerpt alone should alarm many Americans to the civil liberty crushing leviathan that has grown exponentially. As this excerpt shows, counter-terrorism, intelligence and "homeland security" may be just more wasteful rackets.

Historian and economist Robert Higgs further reports on this new racket:

According to retired admiral Dennis C. Blair, formerly the director of national intelligence, after 9/11 “the attitude was, if it’s worth doing, it’s probably worth overdoing.” I submit that this explanation does not cut to the heart of the matter. As it stands, it suggests a sort of mindless desire to pile mountains of money, technology, and personnel on top of an already enormous mountain of money, technology, and personnel for no reason other than the vague notion that more must be better. In my view, national politics does not work in that way.

As Priest and Arkin report, “The U.S. intelligence budget is vast, publicly announced last year as $75 billion, 2 ½ times the size it was on Sept. 10, 2001. But the figure doesn’t include many military activities or domestic counterterrorism programs.” Virtually everyone the reporters consulted told them in effect that “the Bush administration and Congress gave agencies more money than they were capable of responsibly spending.” To be sure, they received more than they could spend responsibly, but not more than they were eager to spend irresponsibly. After all, it’s not as if they were spending their own money.

Robert Higgs continues:

The announced goal is to identify terrorists and eliminate them or prevent them from carrying out their nefarious acts. This is simultaneously a small task and an impossible one. It is small because the number of persons seeking to carry out a terrorist act of substantial consequence against the United States and in a position to do so cannot be more than a handful. If the number were greater, we would have seen many more attacks or attempted attacks during the past decade—after all, the number of possible targets is virtually unlimited, and the attackers might cause some form of damage in countless ways. The most plausible reason why so few attacks or attempted attacks have occurred is that very few persons have been trying to carry them out. (I refer to genuine attempts, not to the phony-baloney schemes planted in the minds of simpletons by government undercover agents and then trumpeted to the heavens when the FBI “captures” the unfortunate victims of the government’s entrapment.)

So, the true dimension of the terrorism problem that forms the excuse for these hundreds of programs of official predation against the taxpayers is small—not even in the same class with, say, reducing automobile-accident or household-accident deaths by 20 percent. Yet, at the same time, the antiterrorism task is impossible because terrorism is a simple act available in some form to practically any determined adult with access to Americans and their property at home or abroad. It is simply not possible to stop all acts of terrorism if potential terrorists have been given a sufficient grievance to motivate their wreaking some form of havoc against Americans. However, it is silly to make the prevention of all terrorist acts the goal. What can’t be done won’t be done, regardless of how many people and how much money one devotes to doing it. We can, though, endure some losses from terrorism in the same way that we routinely endure some losses from accidents, diseases, and ordinary crime.

In another article, Robert Higgs explains why the federal government's efforts to "fight terrorism" are really efforts to monitor and spy on American citizens:

Moreover, the so-called intelligence gathering that the government bankrolls so lavishly is aimed in great part, not at Muslim madmen, but at you and me. The government's banks of super-computers and legions of apparatchiki are busily gleaning data on your telephone calls, Internet messages and Web searches, financial and other business transactions, and virtually everything else that touches your life in a way that can be snatched into data banks by soulless bureaucrats and techno-flunkies. Yet, while every nook and cranny of your privacy is being invaded, at your expense, you are being assured that these official crimes are all legitimate means of protecting you from grave, impending harm. Should we also believe in fairy tales and ghost stories?

The truth of the matter is that you have a greater chance of dying on a government highway than dying as a result of terrorism. If the U.S. intelligence apparatus spending of over $40 billion before 9/11 failed, then it would be sheer folly to increase the funding of intelligence activities that have been proven a failure. Throwing more money at an already broken bureaucratic system will not solve our problems.

Perhaps the responsibility of intelligence gathering should be returned to the military, instead of residing in a intelligence bureaucracy that often has served as the President's personal army. This would immediately save the American taxpayers over $80 and more.

Another solution to this problem would be to recognize that terrorism is best combated by the civilian justice system, instead of the militaristic intelligence apparatus.

As Jacob Hornberger explains, "terrorism is a federal criminal offense. No one can deny that. It has long been listed in the U.S. Code as a crime. That's why terrorists are indicted in U.S. District Court and accorded all the rights and guarantees in the Bill of Rights, just like drug defendants. It's why such famous terrorists as Ramzi Yousef, Zacharias Moussaoui, Jose Padilla, and Timothy McVeigh, to name only a few, were indicted, tried, and convicted in federal court."

Since terrorism is a crime, rather than a "act of war", terrorism should be treated as a crime. The criminal justice system would be better at combating terrorism than executing a foreign policy that antagonizes people into committing acts of terrorism against Americans and having a wasteful intelligence bureaucracy that spies and keeps tabs on the American people.

Peter Schiff on the Debt Ceiling

Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, discusses the debt ceiling nonsense.

Shut Down the Post Office

The United States Postal Service, which is the federal agency that delivers our mail, has recently announced that it is shutting down around 3,700 across America, due primarily to the fact that the USPS is broke and has been in the red for quite some time.

The Postal Service, while being constitutional is nether the less a unnecessary, wasteful and monopolistic federal agency. The Postal Service does not allowing any private company to compete with it. As Jacob Hornberger describes,

What happens if a private-sector business tries to compete against this monopolist? Postal Service officials immediately run to their nearest U.S. Attorney’s office to complain. Some assistant U.S. Attorney then immediately runs to a federal judge, who immediately enters an injunction against the private-sector malefactor, requiring him to shut down his competitive effort.

A country that professes to believe in free market principles should not allow a monopoly such as the Postal Service to exist. Monopolies can only come about successfully by the power of government. A monopoly generated in a free market system is not only economically risky, but is also impossible to exist. This is because in a free market, monopolies will always be dismantled by competition. A free market monopoly cannot prevent new competition from entering the market.

Welfare-statists will argue that the solution is simply more funding for the Postal Service, despite the fact that it constantly loses money and is bankrupt. Instead of feeding this bloated and fat agency with more money from the taxpayers, why not just dismantle the Postal Service and allow private-sector companies to deliver the mail.

As Jacob Hornberger stated:

The free market produces the best of everything, while government enterprises and government-granted monopolies produce the worst of everything. In a free market, the consumer is king and competitors must constantly seek to serve him better in order to keep his business. With government businesses and monopolies, the provider doesn’t have to worry about losing anyone’s business to competitors.

Monopolies have no business in American life. Our heritage is economic liberty, private property, free markets, free enterprise, competition, and consumer sovereignty.

The Debt Crisis and the Future of American Liberty

In the early years of the Republic, Thomas Jefferson proclaim that "To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." Jefferson's arch rival, Alexander Hamilton, had a different view and said that "A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a public blessing." Ultimately, Hamilton's ideas-which ran contrary to the principle of the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution-have prevailed.

Economist and historian Thomas DiLorenzo explains why Hamilton and his followers championed public debt:

Hamilton championed the creation of a large national debt for the sake of having a large national debt. The reason he gave for this was that the owners of the debt would be the more affluent people of the country, who would then be tied to the government and always be supportive of it, just as welfare recipients are today. They would be sure to support future tax increases, he reasoned, to ensure that they would not be shortchanged on their principal and interest.

Once government refuses to live within its' means and pay off its' current debts, it is encouraged to take on more debt. Tom DiLorenzo, in his book Hamilton's Curse: How Jefferson's Arch Rival Betrayed the American Revolution and What it Means for Americans Today further elaborates:

Government debt is every politician's dream: it gives him the ability to buy votes by spending on government programs (with funds raised through borrowing) that will make him popular now, while putting the lion's share of the costs on future taxpayers, who must pay off the debt through taxes. It is the ultimate political something-for-nothing scheme. Furthermore, the costs of servicing the debt are so widely dispersed among the taxpayers that hardly anyone realizes that his taxes are higher because of the debt service.

Because Hamilton's views on public debt, along with his views on the role of government, have prevailed, the United States has become the greatest debtor nation in all of human history. In all of American history, the national debt has only been paid off once by the administration of President Andrew Jackson. The national debt has grown substantially more since then. But it did not happen over night.

And as the above quotes illustrate, the debt crisis is more than just an accounting problem. It is a philosophical problem as well, if not more so. Over the course of the history of the Republic, the American people's attitudes about the proper role of government in a free society has slowly move away from the vision of the Founding Fathers. Instead of embracing a limited, minimal constitutional republic, Americans have come to except an intrusive, destructive and liberty-smashing role for government, more specifically, the federal government.

As Laurence M. Vance notes: "Funding for things like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, farm subsidies, and foreign aid is certainly unconstitutional and needs to be eliminated. But ending these things in their entirety would have a miniscule effect on the federal budget. The problem is the welfare/warfare state."

A majority of Americans have fully embraced the welfare/warfare state. And because Americans have excepted a role for government which goes against the limitations on power set forth in the Constitution, the size, scope and power of government has increase, causing politicians to borrow money from future generations to pay for today's anti-liberty extravagance.

Laurence Vance writes the following:

According to the Heritage Foundation, figures from the Office of Management and Budget show that the greatest expenditures of the federal government in 2010, aside from interest paid on the national debt, are Social Security ($721 billion), national defense ($719 billion), Medicare ($457 billion), income security programs ($363 billion), Medicaid and SCHIP ($284 billion), and unemployment benefits ($194 billion).

Spending in these six categories comes to $2.738 trillion.

The Defense Department, Social Security, and Medicare, are considered to be "non-discretionary" items, meaning that spending on these items must not cease or be cut in large amounts, regardless of their wasteful nature, or their violation of the Constitution.

Social Security and Medicare, both of which are cornerstones of the welfare state, are unconstitutional programs which, in the future, need to be abolished, sooner rather than later. Social Security and Medicare are essentially bankrupt and will soon consume all government spending and the entire economy. What gives the government the right take money for citizen A and give it to citizen B? This is not charity; it is theft. If someone came to your door pointing a gun and demanded that you give him money so he can give it to charity, we would call it theft. Yet, amazingly, we allow the federal government to do just that.

Laurence Vance also notes that all these welfare state programs are "clearly unconstitutional and illegitimate functions of the federal government. It doesn’t matter how popular they are, how many people they have kept out of poverty, how much people have grown to depend on them, or what the alternatives are. They still are not authorized by the Constitution. They still reek of socialism. They still foster dependency. They still aggress against those Americans that object to paying for them. And they still are not part of the proper functions of government. "

Then there is the warfare state.

Since the advent of the Spanish-American War, World War 1, and World War 2, the United States has abandoned the original American foreign policy of noninterventionism and has embraced a foreign policy of empire, interventionism and war. As a result, the budget and the military's role has grown exponentially from merely defending United States territory from invasion by a foreign government, to expanding, patrolling and policing a U.S. global empire.

This American Empire (i.e, warfare state) has made America less safe, less prosperous and less free. Doug Bandow has correctly noted that "many foreigners enjoy being protected at U. S. expense. Alas, Washington's desire to garrison most of the earth's surface helps explain why Uncle Sam is effectively bankrupt. In fact, it's hard to keep track of America's many overseas military installations. By one Pentagon count there are 865 foreign facilities. But that doesn't count bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, which probably pushes the total past 1000."

Why does the United States need to maintain an overseas military empire comprised of over 1000 military installations in order to protect the United States? Why can't the military be brought back to it's proper and constitutional role of defending the United States from invasion by a foreign government? Many Americans will contend that if we dismantle our U.S. global empire, then America will be constantly attacked, invaded, or bullied by other countries or terrorists. This is the typical refrain of "Fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here!" But by maintaining such a military presence around the entire globe, the United States is weaker because military and economic resources are wasted in money and blood losing wars that do not enhance America's defenses.

Jacob Hornberger points out that

Every competent military analyst would tell us that the threat of a foreign invasion and conquest of America is nonexistent. No nation has the military capability of invading and conquering the United States. Not China, not Russia, not Iran, not North Korea, not Syria. Not anyone. To invade the United States with sufficient forces to conquer and “pacify” the entire nation would take millions of foreign troops and tens of thousands of ships and planes to transport them across the Atlantic or Pacific ocean. No foreign nation has such resources or military capabilities and no nation will have them for the foreseeable future.

Therefore, the United States does not need to have a vast military empire or a bloated military budget to defend the United States. We do not need a $1 trillion defense budget to defend America. As Ivan Eland has pointed out numerous times, the United States has a nuclear arsenal that is more than enough for deterring other countries from attacking the United States.

Conclusion

In order for America to solve this debt crisis, Americans must once again embrace the liberties that made this country great and the proper role of government in a free society, which is to protect and promote our God-given natural rights. As Thomas Jefferson observed, "That government is best which governs least."

Here are some quick solutions to America's debt crisis:

1. The federal government must not be allowed to raise the debt ceiling. If this were to occur, this will only encourage more government borrowing, and consequently, more government spending. In fact, as Mark Thornton noted, the debt ceiling needs to be lowered.

2. The federal government must not be allowed to raise taxes. Raising taxes will only slow down economic growth by taking away capital from entrepreneurs who can put these resources to better use than the government. If taxes are to be lowered, these tax cuts must be accompanied by tremendous spending cuts, otherwise, the federal government will be encouraged to borrow more money, which crowds out private borrowing. In fact, the income tax needs to be abolish, along with most other federal taxes. The 16th Amendment needs to be repealed.

3. The federal government must cut spending. This does not mean slowing the rate of growth. Such "spending cuts" are fake. All the nondiscretionary items need to be substantially cut. This includes defense, Social Security and Medicare. Most discretionary spending can be eliminated because most programs in this category are unconstitutional anyway (this is not to say that Social Security and Medicare are constitutional; both Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional). A repeal of the federal welfare/warfare state needs to be a reality sooner rather than later.

4. The Federal Reserve must be prohibited from monetizing the debt. This is a process by which the central bank (i.e., the Federal Reserve) prints more money, then buys Treasury bonds and adds them to the Fed's balance sheet. As a result of this process. the dollar is further devalued, while the federal government is given money to spend on their extravagance. The Fed needs to eventually be audited then abolished.

5. The federal government must protect and respect our natural rights. This means that the federal government must cease all programs that violate our natural rights, especially those protected by the Bill of Rights.

These simple solutions are necessary if America is to avoid fiscal armageddon and reclaim our liberties and our lives from leviathan.

Robert P. Murphy on the Debt Ceiling

 In the following video, Austrian economist Robert P. Murphy discusses the debt ceiling.

Ron Paul to America: The "Cut, Cap, and Balance" Fraud

Congressman Ron Paul has come out against the "Cut, Cap, and Balance Act", his reasons are reprinted below. I will give a more detailed analysis of America's debt crisis soon:

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak against HR 2560, the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act. This bill only serves to sanction the status quo by putting forth a $1 trillion budget deficit and authorizing a $2.4 trillion increase in the debt limit.

When I say this bill sanctions the status quo, I mean it quite literally.
First, it purports to eventually balance the budget without cutting military spending, Social Security, or Medicare. This is impossible. These three budget items already cost nearly $1 trillion apiece annually. This means we can cut every other area of federal spending to zero and still have a $3 trillion budget. Since annual federal tax revenues almost certainly will not exceed $2.5 trillion for several years, this Act cannot balance the budget under any plausible scenario.

Second, it further entrenches the ludicrous beltway concept of discretionary vs. nondiscretionary spending. America faces a fiscal crisis, and we must seize the opportunity once and for all to slay Washington's sacred cows – including defense contractors and entitlements. All spending must be deemed discretionary and reexamined by Congress each year. To allow otherwise is pure cowardice.

Third, the Act applies the nonsensical narrative about a "Global War on Terror" to justify exceptions to its spending caps. Since this war is undeclared, has no definite enemies, no clear objectives, and no metric to determine victory, it is by definition endless. Congress will never balance the budget until we reject the concept of endless wars.

Finally, and most egregiously, this Act ignores the real issue: total spending by government. As Milton Friedman famously argued, what we really need is a constitutional amendment to limit taxes and spending, not simply to balance the budget. What we need is a dramatically smaller federal government; if we achieve this a balanced budget will take care of itself.

We do need to cut spending, and by a significant amount. Going back to 2008 levels of spending is not enough. We need to cut back at least to where spending was a decade ago. A recent news article stated that we pay 35 percent more for our military today than we did 10 years ago, for the exact same capabilities. The same could be said for the rest of the government. Why has our budget doubled in 10 years? This country doesn't have double the population, or double the land area, or double anything that would require the federal government to grow by such an obscene amount.

We need to cap spending, and then continue decreasing that cap so that the federal government grows smaller and smaller. Allowing government to spend up to a certain percentage of GDP is insufficient. It doesn't matter that the recent historical average of government outlays is 18 percent of GDP, because in recent history the government has way overstepped its constitutional mandates. All we need to know about spending caps is that they need to decrease year after year.

We need to balance the budget, but a balanced budget amendment by itself will not do the trick. A $4 trillion balanced budget is most certainly worse than a $2 trillion unbalanced budget. Again, we should focus on the total size of the budget more than outlays vs. revenues.

What we have been asked to do here is support a budget that only cuts relative to the President's proposed budget. It still maintains a $1 trillion budget deficit for FY 2012, and spends even more money over the next 10 years than the Paul Ryan budget which already passed the House.

By capping spending at a certain constant percentage of GDP, it allows for federal spending to continue to grow. Tying spending to GDP creates an incentive to manipulate the GDP figure, especially since the bill delegates the calculation of this figure to the Office of Management and Budget, an agency which is responsible to the President and not to Congress. In the worst case, it would even reward further inflation of the money supply, as increases in nominal GDP through pure inflation would allow for larger federal budgets.

Finally, this bill authorizes a $2.4 trillion rise in the debt limit. I have never voted for a debt ceiling increase and I never will. Increasing the debt ceiling is an endorsement of business as usual in Washington. It delays the inevitable, the day that one day will come when we cannot continue to run up enormous deficits and will be forced to pay our bills.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, while I sympathize with the aims of this bill's sponsors, I must vote against HR 2560. It is my hope, however, that the looming debt ceiling deadline and the discussion surrounding the budget will further motivate us to consider legislation in the near future that will make meaningful cuts and long-lasting reforms

Ron Paul vs Ben Bernanke: Is Gold Money?

In the following video, Congressman Ron Paul once again challenges and smacks down Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about whether or not gold is money.

Israel to attack Iran?

Recently, there has been some buzz going around that Israel is planning to attack Iran sometime soon. It has been reported that CIA operative Robert Baer claimed that Israel will attack Iran:

There is almost “near certainty” that Netanyahu is “planning an attack [on Iran] … and it will probably be in September before the vote on a Palestinian state. And he’s also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict”, Baer explained.

Immediately, people have been asking if the U.S. military should stop such an attack. Robert Baer continues:

 Masters asked Baer why the US military is not mobilising to stop this war from happening. Baer responded that the military is opposed, as is former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who used his influence to thwart an Israeli attack during the Bush and Obama administrations. But he’s gone now and “there is a warning order inside the Pentagon” to prepare for war.

If war should occur, this would produce more blowback against the United States. Even if the United States were to abstain from any overt military intervention (remember there may be some covert intervention), if Israel were to unilaterally attack the Islamic Republic of Iran, the United States would be indirectly implicated because of the U.S. government's continual military and economic aid to the Israeli government. Robert Baer further notes:

It should be noted that the Iranian regime is quite capable of triggering a war with the United States through some combination of colossal stupidity and sheer hatred. In fact, as Baer explained, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard would welcome a war. They are “paranoid”. They are “worried about … what’s happening to their country economically, in terms of the oil embargo and other sanctions”. And they are worried about a population that increasingly despises the regime.

In 2010, Congress overwhelmingly passed, and President Obama signed a bill that placed new economic sanctions against Iran. While such sanctions are promoted as a way to avoid war, in reality, sanctions are a precursor to war. While it commonly believed that sanctions will weaken tyrannical and authoritarian regimes, the opposite happens. Rarely do economic sanctions effect those in power who are targeted. They often bring great harm to the average citizens. Thus, with such negative economic effects that result from such efforts to stifle trade between two countries, the average citizens, whose standards of living are diminished, will inevitably rally towards their leader, even if such leader is authoritarian. Overall, economic sanctions strengthen regimes rather than weakening them. Sanctions are an act of war because sanctions are efforts by governments to prevent certain goods and services from entering a country, thus effecting the economic lives of the average citizens of the country facing the sanctions.

As the great classical liberal (read-libertarian) Frederic Bastiat once said: "When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will."

Of course, economic sanctions won't be the only grievance the Iranian people have against the United States government. The U.S. government has been intervening in the internal affairs of Iran for many years. The first instance came when President Dwight D. Eisenhower had the CIA, along with the British MI6, overthrow the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh and installed the authoritarian Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as dictator of Iran. As the U.S. continued to prop up Pahlavi's tyrannical regime, the Iranian people eventually revolted in 1979 during the Islamic Revolution. Because of U.S. support for Pahlavi's regime, this cultivated some blowback against the United States, in the form of the Iranian hostage crisis.

And now, it appears that United States or the State of Israel will launch a war against Iran. If Israel unilaterally starts a war with Iran, what should the United States do about it? The answer: nothing whatsoever. The U.S. government should adopt a policy of strictly armed neutrality and strategic independence (i.e. noninterventionism). If Israel views that Iran is threatening the security of Israel, then it should be Israel's decision whether or not it wages war. The United Nations, nor the United States government should coerce Israel into doing what is not in their best interest. Therefore let us take to heart the wise words of President George Washington: "Every true friend of this country must see and feel that the policy of it is not to embroil ourselves, with any nation whatever; but to avoid their disputes and their politics; and if they will harass one another, to avail ourselves of the neutral conduct we have adopted."

We should also consider the wise words of Congressman Ron Paul:

We would not tolerate foreign covert operations fomenting regime change in our government. Yet our CIA has been meddling in Iran for decades. Of course Iranians resent this. In fact, many in Iran still resent the CIA's involvement in overthrowing their democratically elected leader in 1953. The answer is not to cut off gasoline to the Iranian people. The answer is to stay out of their affairs and trade with them honestly. If our operatives were no longer in Iran, they would no longer be available as scapegoats for the regime to, rightly or wrongly, blame for every bad thing that happens. As bad as other regimes may be, it is up to their own people to deal with them so they can achieve true self-determination. When foreigners instigate regime change, the new government they institute is always perceived as serving the interest of the overthrowing country, not the people. Thus we take the blame for bad governance twice. Instead we should stay out of their affairs altogether.

With the exception of the military industrial complex, we all want a more peaceful world. Many are hysterical about the imminent threat of a nuclear Iran. Here are the facts: Iran has never been found out of compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) they signed. However, being surrounded by nuclear powers one can understand why they might want to become nuclear capable if only to defend themselves and to be treated more respectfully. After all, we don't sanction nuclear capable countries. We take diplomatic negotiations a lot more seriously, and we frequently send money to them instead. The non-nuclear countries are the ones we bomb. If Iran was attempting to violate the non-proliferation treaty, they could hardly be blamed, since US foreign policy gives them every incentive to do so.

Noninterventionism can be achieved here if we terminate all military and economic aid to Israel, terminate and end all the five wars the United States is engaged in, bring the troops home, stop threatening war with Iran, remove the economic sanctions and pursue peaceful relations and free trade.

I will not join the Anti-Casey Anthony Lynch Mob

When Casey Anthony was acquitted in her trial, many Americans became outraged. Most Americans wanted (and still want) to put her in a government cage or cart her off to the tower to be executed. Some even suggested that she was guilty before they proved it. What ever happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? Apparently that axiom is dead, and now America has embraced a lynch-mob mentality when it comes to the justice system. I cannot help but feel angry and upset that so many Americans have painted a target on her head by making the trial a "national" issue. Why should the people of California or Texas worry about a criminal trial in Florida, especially when most people have no stake in such a trial? Of course, Nasty Nancy Grace pulls out her knives in hopes of killing Casey Anthony herself (yes I am overexaggerating here, but I am trying to make a point here).

Anthony Gregory articulated my sentiments when he stated that "the prosecution in the Anthony case did not make its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Americans should feel a bit safer and freer when a jury does not succumb to the hysteria of the lynch mob and convict someone based only on a little circumstantial evidence, the fact that she lied to the police, and other indictments of her character. It means there are still some people out there who understand how grave it is to damn someone to incarceration or death without 100% certainty that the person is guilty. It means some people out there actually understand the concept of justice."

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am in no way defending or condemning Casy Anthony for what she did, if she did it. I have no stake in that trial.

Judge Napolitano's Open Letter to Speaker Boehner

Earlier this week, Judge Andrew Napolitano extended his thoughts about the debt ceiling and the debt crisis to Speaker of the House John Boehner:

Dear Mr. Speaker, 
When the Founders at the Constitution Conventional in 1787 created the House of Representatives, it was fashioned to act as the voice of the people within the institutional checks and balances of the Federal Government.  That's why the entire House faces reelection every 2 years.  That's why Constitutionally, you don't have to even be a member of Congress to serve as speaker. And that's why the Constitution allows for thousands of members of the House for our current population.  It is the people's house, and the people spoke last November.  They cried out against a government completely out of control.  After President Bush grew the U.S. debt by $7 trillion dollars in 8 years in office, and President Obama added $4 Trillion in just 2 years in office, the people cried out against big-government policies that are sabotaging the economy and taking over our lives.  And because they cried out, you are no longer just John Boehner from Ohio.  You are now the second in line to succeed to the presidency.  You are the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Mr. Speaker, the House of Representatives has just 8 working days left before the August 2nd debt ceiling deadline, and by wide margins in whatever way the question is asked, Americans do not want to see the debt ceiling raised.  They're sick and tired of paying interest on borrowed money; money borrowed in their name.  The Federal Government borrows so much money from so many sources, Mr. Speaker, that no-one knows for sure just how much it owes to its lenders.  It already appears that it has exceeded the legal limit set by the congress at $14.294 trillion, and they actually at this moment in time are closer to $14.5 trillion.  The White House is putting intense pressure on you and on Congress to raise that limit.  The President's apologists have even suggested invoking the 14th amendment to bypass the will of Congress and borrow money without legal authority.  Given the way the White House has run roughshod over your House in the matter of the "not-war" in Libya that our military is still "not" engaged in, the word of the President's lawyers that there is no presidential power in the 14th amendment to borrow money on his own can hardly be trusted.  This is a president who does not regard the Constitution as a limit on the exercise of governmental power.  But the President can only get away with violating the Constitution, Mr. Speaker, if you let him do so.  
If you stand up for the will of the people, you will restrain him.  This is the moment of truth for the Congress, Mr. Speaker.  The scare-mongers and the chicken-littles in DC will tell you that the sky will come tumbling down if the debt ceiling isn't raised, even though your colleagues, Senator Pat Toomey and Rep. Tom McClintock, have introduced legislation that would prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt obligations.
I have two words for you, Mr. Speaker.  Stop it.  That's right, just stop it.  For too long our government has spent beyond its means and in our names, sinking us and generations as yet unborn into deeper and deeper debt.  And you, Mr. Speaker, can stop it.  The President stands with the big-business, big-banks, big-government complex, and against the American people.  He's even prepared to defy the laws of economics.  But the American people are not ignorant as he thinks they are, and you know that.  
Mr. Speaker, you have the opportunity to do something that no standard bearer of small government has ever been able to do in our modern era; get the government to live within its means.  You can do it by standing firm with your colleagues in the Congress who are leading the call for change.  You can stop it.  You can force the Federal Government to make the difficult decisions to bring itself within its means and begin to loosen the chains of debt that have been foisted on our country by a centuries worth of progressive big-government architects.  End it this summer, Mr. Speaker.  Stop it.  Tell the President, "not a penny more."  Stand up for the American people, bring government within its means, and begin the restoration of our republic.
If you do this Mr. Speaker, if you restrain the federal beast, you will become one of history's great champions and heroes of freedom.  If you don't, we'll all go through this again the next time a president wants to spend beyond the government's means and chain us all down to more debt.  
Mr. Speaker, don't let us down.
-Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

Progressive Blogger gets it wrong

Earlier this week, the great historian/economist Tom Woods has been debunking some criticism from an anti-capitalist (see part 1 and 2, more debunking shall come). She provides a link to her blog via Twitter, so I figured that I would check it out to see what she believes. I also found that she has some grammatical errors and spelling errors, which kinda irks me (but I should be no judge because I do it too sometimes). I shall proceed to challenge her views, but I will not dig deep into them.

She claims that she is a progressive (no surprise), and stated the following: "To me Freedom is very important but so is Social Justice...then Free Market, Budget Accounting etc secondary...that is to me our Government's primary purpose is to Ensure Domestic Tranquility and Promote (enhance) the common wealfare and then worry about efficient managment..Goverment cannot be run as a business.." This is a typical sentiment of progressives. She of course puts safety over liberty. Government's primary purpose is to protect and promote individual liberty, that is, our God-given natural rights. Plus, she assumes that government must "take care of us" if it is to "provide for the common welfare". From what I gather, government-mandated social justice is more important to her than liberty.

She continues: "Our Founding Fathers created our Government within the concept and theory of balance. Balancing Power, balancing opportunities, maintaining the sacredness of individual rights balanced equally among all so that no one can infringe upon the rights of others, again a balanced concept." I don't really understand what she is fully stating here, but our Founders created a constitutional republic that was biased toward liberty and decentralization, rather being based on balance.

She further states that "In opposing extremism, I oppose extreme Captialism as well as extreme Communism or Socialism." But as I noted in a earlier blog post, this middle-of-the-road policy always leads to socialism. When the government intervenes into the market economy, the governmental intervention messes with the natural flow of the market, which causes some economic problems. For example, having a central bank printing money adds cheap credit on the market, which bamboozles businesses into thinking they have more money in savings, when they do not. Thus they invest money into long-term projects that will not be completed or be profitable, thus recessions and depressions are created. Eventually, the government intervenes again to correct the problem it created itself through the previous intervention, and this process repeats itself until the entire market economy is controlled and planned by the government. This is the great flaw in this progressive's belief that government and the market economy can be balanced.

She then gives a more outrageous statement: "to me our American Constitution, Declaration of Independence have many socialistic elements in it since our Founding Fathers were very skeptical about the concentration of power and wealth together. For this purpose Taxation was created to excercise a check on this type of corporatist power." There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution or the Declaration of Independence that even suggest socialism. The U.S. Constitution was specifically designed to protect liberty, and that includes economic liberty. That is why Article 1, Section 8, which outlines the only powers that the federal government may exercise, mentions nothing about government control of the economy. Plus, many of the grievances in the Declaration of Independence were against the corrupt and anti-capitalist system of British mercantilism. To say that these documents endorse socialism is a great folly. In fact, a majority of the Founders (with the exception of Alexander Hamilton and his Federalist followers) can be considered pro-free market capitalist libertarians. The Founders feared  the concentration of power, not wealth. And taxation was created at the federal level to fund a strong national defense to protect the country from a foreign government (keep in mind that the federal government had no income tax until 1913. During this time, the federal government was funded by low revenue tariffs and the sale of federal land). Taxation was not created to check "corporatist power".

Another flawed statement she makes is as follows: "For our Founding Fathers TRUE INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM in the form of THE BILL OF RIGHTS can only be assured by an effective Government protecting and acting as referee between the success of the ONE to the success of the MANY...and the protection of those who fail or are made to fail by unforseen uncontrolled circustances. " The government under the U.S. Constitution was never designed to violate the rights of the minority in favor of the majority, nor was it designed to pick those who win and those who lose. The natural rights that are enshrined in the Constitution are to be enjoyed by everybody, regardless of one's wealth. True individual liberty means that the government allows everyone to exercise their God-given natural rights to the greatest extent as possible, so long as individuals do not use their rights to infringe upon the rights of others. In her statement, she envisions us living under a leviathan welfare-state that would forcefully take wealth from those who earned it to those who have not earned it.

I could go on and on, but she has so many false claims that it would take too much time to answer them all. I applaud Tom Woods for his knowledge of TRUE American history, and for his patience in dealing with people who insist on repeating the lies they learned in school.

Rand Paul to the Feds: We have a Spending Problem!!

On July 6, 2011, Senator Rand Paul took to the Senate floor to discuss the Federal Government's addiction to spending and its' relation to the debt ceiling.

Here is the full text (Thanks to Campaign for Liberty):

On Aug. 2, the United States will face a debt ceiling. I'm one who thinks we should be debating it every day, every week until we find a solution. But in order to find a solution, we have to first admit we have a problem. We have a significant problem.
Raising the debt ceiling is something sort of like not paying your credit card bill and then saying to the credit card company, I want to just increase my limit. We have been doing that year after year, decade after decade. Both parties have done it. This isn't just one party's problem. It’s both parties' problem; it’s the country’s problem.
How big is the problem? We are spending $10 billion a day. Of that $10 billion, we are borrowing $4 billion a day. Spending $100,000 a second and we're borrowing $45,000 a second.
Senator DeMint the other day said it was like a drug addiction. You know, to get better from a drug addiction, the first thing you have to admit is ‘I'm addicted.’
You have to admit you have a problem. That's what's going on here. We have to admit as a country we have a problem. Then we get into this debate, each side seems to have a different position. Is the problem that we're spending too much or is the problem that we're taxing too little?
You can look at the numbers and you can actually come up with an objective answer. The answer is that we're spending too much. And you can look at it in terms of what is spending as a percentage of our gross domestic product? What is spending as a percentage of our economy?
Well, spending under Clinton and under bush for about 16 years was about 19 percent and 20 percent of our GDP. What is it now? It's about 25 percent of our GDP. So under any objective standard we're spending more than we were previously.
Now, some would argue, they say the bush tax cuts caused this. If we could just get rid of the Bush tax cuts. We're just not taxing people enough. If you look at the numbers, the numbers don't bear out. The numbers are that basically in 1987 revenue was about 18 percent of GDP.
In 1995, revenue was about 18 percent of GDP. In 2003, Bush passed the tax cuts, congress passed these tax cuts. In 2006, revenue was still at about 18 percent of GDP. Now right now revenue is under 15 percent, so revenue has gone down in 2008, 2009, and 2010.
What happened in 2008? A severe recession, the worst recession since the Great Depression. When we have less people working, we have less people paying taxes. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Bush tax cuts.
They happened in 2003, revenue stayed steady at 18 percent which it has historically for 60 years until 2007, 2008, the recession hits, revenue goes down. So we have a lack of revenue, but if you raise rates, you won't get more revenue.
If you want more revenue, to try to balance our books, you need an economy that employs more people. You need a growing economy. It's all about getting out of the recession. But that's why some of us fear raising rates now because we think that will harm us and make it more difficult to come out of a recession.
Well, many on the other side say well, the rich need to pay more. They think the rich are not paying enough. They think if the rich would pay more, we could get out of this.
We have to once again look at the facts. There is a resolution on the floor now that the Democrats are promoting, and it says that the rich -- the people who make more than $1 million a year that they earn or bring in 20 percent of the nation's economy.
That's true, but they pay 38 percent of the income tax. So the question is, are the rich paying enough? They bring in 20 percent of the income and they are paying 38 percent of the revenue. I don't know.
The other question is if you just stick it to the rich and say let's make the rich pay more, what will that do to the rest of us? Do you think we'll have more jobs or less jobs if we tax people more? The question is also will you get more revenue or less revenue if you do this?
Historically, no matter what the rates have been, we bring in about 18 percent of GDP. For example, back in the 1950's, we had tax rates as high as 70 percent on the wealthy. When we did, we brought in 18 percent of the GDP. When Reagan came in, he lowered tax rates to 28 percent for the upper limit. We still brought in 18 percent of GDP.
The difference was when we brought in lower rates, we brought in a booming economy, more jobs and we expanded the number of people paying taxes. You expand the tax base. Now, we get back to the impasse, there is an impasse up here. The other side says the rich must share more of the burden. There is a way to do it without raising taxes.
There is ultimately a compromise that I think brings both sides together, gets beyond the debt ceiling, and if they would talk about it, if we would have a debate down here or an informal discussion, we could fix this tomorrow.
If you want the rich to share more of the burden, ask them to pay for their Medicare. I see no reason why the wealthy shouldn't pay the full cost of Medicare. Ask the rich to take less in Social Security benefits.
If you means test Social Security benefits, if you say if you're a wealthy person, guess what? We don't have enough money to give you what we said we were going to give you, and you would have to take less, I'm perfectly willing to accept that.
So there are ways that you can do it without damaging the economy. I think raising taxes damages the economy and damages jobs for the working class. We tried this before, about ten years ago we said let's get those rich people. They put a special tax on yachts.
Guess who it hurt? The guy making $40,000 a year building the yachts lost his job. The rich went to the Caribbean and bought their yacht somewhere else. It doesn't work, it's not good for the economy, it hurts the working class to raise taxes.
But if you want to say the rich need to absorb more of the burden, simply have the rich pay more for their benefits or get less benefits. I'm willing to accept that, many Republicans are. It is the compromise.
Republicans aren't willing to raise taxes, Democrats want to raise taxes. Where do we compromise? Come together and say that the rich can absorb more of the burden by paying more for their benefits or getting less benefits.
This is a compromise that would work. We could actually get together and raise the debt ceiling. I have said I will vote to raise the debt ceiling if and only if we decide to do something different in this Congress.
Congress really has done a poor job. You wonder why congress has a 14 percent approval rating. It's because they have been a poor steward with your money. A poor steward. The Congress has not done a good job watching over your money. They have been profligate spenders.
So I think in order for the American people to believe that we're going to do a better job, we need a new rule, we need a Balanced Budget Amendment.
So I will propose along with other enters to raise the debt ceiling contingent upon a Balanced Budget Amendment that we balance our budget by law.
Now, some have said well, let's just promise to cut spending over the next 10 years. Let's raise the debt ceiling $2 trillion, we'll promise cut spending $2 trillion. The problem is we're not very believable because we haven't kept our word in the past and we can't bind the next Congress.
The next Congress will be elected by a new set of people. They will come up here and they don't have to go by what we're promising. If we amend the Constitution, though, the next Congress will be bound by this and the next Congress would have to live within its means.
I think this is very important. It is becoming a consensus in our country that says the debt is a real problem. I think the two sides could come together, Republican and Democrat, and say this is how we would work it out.
But I think it means significant cuts in federal spending. I think it means statutory caps, meaning that government should have to live within its means each year, and then I think we need to amend the Constitution.
But if the Democrats say they have to have that the rich pay more somehow, let's have the rich pay more for their benefits. That's ultimately the compromise. I think you can get the vast majority of Republicans to agree to that, Democrats could agree to that, we could fix the problem and the American people would be amazed that we got together, we fixed the problem and we moved on. That's what needs to happen. It's not happening in this body.
This body needs to debate the debt ceiling. We need to come up with a solution. We need to move on. We have not had one committee hearing about the debt ceiling. We haven't passed a budget in two years. We haven't passed an Appropriation bill in two years. We aren't doing what we're supposed to be doing up here.
The American people say they want results. They want us to at least have a debate up here. We don't have to agree on everything, but let's debate, admit what the problem is and move forward. But instead, we get obfuscation and we get let's talk about something that's not really pertinent to what our problems are.
We have to, like the drug addict, admit we have a problem. Our problem is spending. It's not a taxation problem. It's not a revenue problem. We have less revenue because we're in a recession. We have a spending problem and the numbers are clear as day, and I would say to this body and to the American people let's balance our budget.
Raise the debt ceiling, but let's go ahead and have a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, and I hope we will recognize those problems and move forward.

Blowback: U.S. Interventionism helps Al Qaeda

Since the beginning of the unconstitutional "war on terror"(and perhaps the time before 9/11), U.S. military adventurism into the Middle East has made the problem of terrorism worse, not better. Explains Anthony Gregory in a blog for the Independent Institute: "Obama’s war is actually empowering al-Qaeda, as the terrorist group is reportedly looting weaponry from Libyan rebels. This is in addition to the fact that U.S.-supported rebels themselves have admitted to having ties to al-Qaeda. This would make the undeclared war in Libya only the latest to benefit America’s no. 1 terrorist enemy. The Iraq war, according to many experts, was a great boon for al-Qaeda, which used the massive U.S. military presence as a recruiting tool. There were practically none of these people in Iraq until after the U.S. invaded."

This situation in Libya, along with the failures of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan clearly demonstrates that U.S. interventionism, especially in the Middle East creates blowback. Blowback is a term that describes the unintended consequences of military interventionism overseas. One of the worst forms of blowback is terrorism, especially suicide terrorism. The 9/11 attacks are a clear example of blowback.

Many Americans, especially neoconservatives, will rationalize that the 9/11 attacks came out of nowhere and that the 9/11 terrorists attacked us because they "hate our freedom, our culture, our way of life." Congressman Ron Paul once remarked that "To dismiss terrorism as the result of Muslims hating us because we're rich and free is one of the greatest foreign-policy frauds ever perpetrated on the American people."

Jacob Hornberger notes that "the 9/11 terrorists did not attack New York and Washington because of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, or any other religion. They attacked because they were retaliating for the horrible things that the U.S. government had done to people in the Middle East, most of whom happen to have been Muslims."

Hornberger further explains the reasons (which Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda stated themselves) why the United States was attacked on 9/11:

Well, how about the intentional and deliberate killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. If you want to read the sordid details on how that took place, go to this page on The Future of Freedom Foundation’s website or, better yet, purchase and read a copy of Joy Gordon’s new book Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions.
The U.S. Empire killed those kids with one of the most brutal systems of economic sanctions in history. Since 99 percent of the population of Iraq is Muslim, the odds are that 99 percent of those dead Iraqi children were Muslim.
Now, that’s not to say that the U.S. government killed those children because they were Muslim. It’s simply to say that the kids they killed in Iraq were Muslims.
Why did they kill those children? Because they hoped that Saddam Hussein would leave office rather than continue to watch his own people die from the sanctions. They were using the Iraqi children as the means by which to pressure him into relinquishing power in favor of a U.S.-approved ruler.
The strategy didn’t work. Saddam let the children die, as did the U.S. government, year after year after year....Adding fuel to the fire was the U.S. government’s unconditional flow of foreign-aid largess to the Israeli government; the stationing of U.S. troops, most of whom had to have been Christians and Jews, on the holiest lands in the Muslim religion--Mecca and Medina; and the illegal no-fly zones that were being used to kill even more Iraqis.

Given that the foreign policy of the United States in the Middle East is based on this program of stationing troops in Middle East territory, toppling certain leaders while installing others, giving Middle Eastern tyrants American taxpayer dollars through foreign aid, strengthening and supporting authoritarian regimes that oppress their people, bombing, invading, and occupying Arab countries, one can easily understand the motive many Muslims have at trying to attack and kill Americans. Of course I am not justifying the terrible things that terrorists or insurgents do to American citizens, soldiers and property. I am merely stating the reasons why so many Muslims hate the United States and their motivations for wanting to attack the United States and its' citizens.

Anthony Gregory further describes our irrational foreign adventurism in the Middle East:

And although the Afghanistan war is widely seen as an anti-al-Qaeda war (it continues on with the rationale that the 100 or so members of the terror group who still reside in that country need to be wiped out, at a cost of about 1,000 U.S. troops and $300 million annually per al-Qaeda fighter) even in Afghanistan, the U.S. response to 9/11 has probably been in al-Qaeda’s interests. As Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA bin Laden Unit argues in his book Imperial Hubris, the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan was always a completely counterproductive strategy in stopping terrorism, since the major way bin Laden rallied material support and manpower for his crusade against America was by pointing out the U.S. occupations of Muslim countries, these occupations being the main impetus behind the terrorism in the first place...Osama bin Laden is dead, but he is still winning his war. This was all part of his plan, after all. He wanted the U.S. out of the Muslim lands in the very long run. But to achieve this, he knew America would have to bleed itself dry, and that this could never happen at the hands of Muslim suicide killers alone. Instead, the U.S. would have to overstretch its military forces and pour trillions of dollars of resources into a completely futile attempt to “democratize” the Middle East and stamp out terrorists in the most ineffective and profligate manner imaginable. Getting the imperial forces bogged down in a sand trap in Afghanistan worked in defeating the Soviets. Maybe it could work against the Americans. This was the whole idea.

 And now it appears that a war in Yemen has emerged, almost out of the blue. The New York Times reported the following: "Central Intelligence Agency is building a secret air base in the Middle East to serve as a launching pad for strikes in Yemen using armed drones, an American official said Tuesday.
The construction of the base is a sign that the Obama administration is planning an extended war in Yemen against an affiliate of Al Qaeda that has repeatedly tried to carry out terrorist plots against the United States." Anthony Gregory further explained the reason for the shoebomber plot back in December of 2009: "Wasn’t Yemen implicated in the (foiled) shoebomber plot of Christmas 2009? In fact, history didn’t begin then, either. Eight days before that terror plot fizzled, the U.S. bombed Yemen, using cluster bombs (those weapons that are so evil when Gaddafi uses them but which the U.S. government has long embraced in its wars), killing dozens of civilians, including 21 children. At the time, this was falsely reported as a bombing conducted by Yemeni security forces, as the Yemeni and American governments agreed to deceive their populations about who was behind them. A month later Obama lied, saying he had no intention of sending U.S. troops there, when some were already there."

Bruce Fein, author of the book American Empire: Before the Fall (an absolute must read for all patriots), quotes Joseph Schumpeter about the essence of empire and imperialism, an essence that seems to permeate U.S. foreign policy, especially in the Middle East:

For it is always a question, when one speaks of imperialism, of the assertion of an aggressiveness whose real basis does not lie in the aims followed at the moment but an aggressiveness in itself. And actually history shows us people and classes who desire expansion for the sake of expanding, war for the sake of fighting, domination for the sake of dominating. It values conquest not so much because of the advantages it brings, which are often more than doubtful, as because it is conquest, success, activity. Although expansion as self-purpose always needs concrete objects to activate it and support it, its meaning is not included therein. Hence its tendency toward the infinite unto the exhaustion of its forces, and its motto: plus ultra. Thus we define: Imperialism is the object-less disposition of a state to expansion by force without assigned limits.Our analysis of historical material show[s]: First, the undoubted fact that object-less tendencies toward forceful expansion without definite limits of purpose, nonrational and irrational, purely instinctive inclinations to war and conquest, play a very great role in the history of humanity. As paradoxical as it sounds, innumerable wars, perhaps the majority of all wars, have been waged without sufficient reason.


In order to stop aiding Al-Qaeda through our foreign policy, the United States government must terminate all these wars in the Middle East, bring our troops home, and defend this country from genuine threats (which are almost nonexistent). The current U.S. foreign policy of interventionism and perpetual war has done more harm than good. As Congressman Ron Paul stated: "It is time to consider a sensible non-interventionist foreign policy as advised by our Founders and authorized by our Constitution. We would all be better off for it."

Middle-of-the-road Policy leads to Socialism

In discussing economics, people are often only given two choices of which economic system we may have. According to mainstream pundits, economists, and politicians, we must choose between complete government control of the economy, or a balance between the market and government control of the market (this system is called interventionism, or the mixed economy). People are never really given the choice of free-markets. Those who choose an economic system of interventionism often reassure supporters of the free-market that they don't endorse or support socialism (that is, government control and ownership of all major industries in a country). But as the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained, this middle-of-the-road policy will eventually lead to socialism: "The middle-of-the-road policy is not an economic system that can last. It is a method for the realization of socialism by installments....if the trend of this policy will not change, the final result will only in accidental and negligible points differ from what happened in the England of Attlee and in the Germany of Hitler."

Mises further explained how a simple step towards interventionism could lead to total government control of the economy: 

The interventionists emphasize that they plan to retain private ownership of the means of production, entrepreneurship and market exchange. But, they go on to say, it is peremptory to prevent these capitalist institutions from spreading havoc and unfairly exploiting the majority of people. It is the duty of government to restrain, by orders and prohibitions, the greed of the propertied classes lest their acquisitiveness harm the poorer classes. Unhampered or laissez-faire capitalism is an evil. But in order to eliminate its evils, there is no need to abolish capitalism entirely. It is possible to improve the capitalist system by government interference with the actions of the capitalists and entrepreneurs. Such government regulation and regimentation of business is the only method to keep off totalitarian socialism and to salvage those features of capitalism which are worth preserving. On the ground of this philosophy, the interventionists advocate a galaxy of various measures. Let us pick out one of them, the very popular scheme of price control.

The government believes that the price of a definite commodity, e.g., milk, is too high. It wants to make it possible for the poor to give their children more milk. Thus it resorts to a price ceiling and fixes the price of milk at a lower rate than that prevailing on the free market. The result is that the marginal producers of milk, those producing at the highest cost, now incur losses. As no individual farmer or businessman can go on producing at a loss, these marginal producers stop producing and selling milk on the market. They will use their cows and their skill for other more profitable purposes. They will, for example, produce butter, cheese or meat. There will be less milk available for the consumers, not more. This, or course, is contrary to the intentions of the government. It wanted to make it easier for some people to buy more milk. But, as an outcome of its interference, the supply available drops. The measure proves abortive from the very point of view of the government and the groups it was eager to favor. It brings about a state of affairs, which?again from the point of view of the government?is even less desirable than the previous state of affairs which it was designed to improve.

Now, the government is faced with an alternative. It can abrogate its decree and refrain from any further endeavors to control the price of milk. But if it insists upon its intention to keep the price of milk below the rate the unhampered market would have determined and wants nonetheless to avoid a drop in the supply of milk, it must try to eliminate the causes that render the marginal producers' business unremunerative. It must add to the first decree concerning only the price of milk a second decree fixing the prices of the factors of production necessary for the production of milk at such a low rate that the marginal producers of milk will no longer suffer losses and will therefore abstain from restricting output. But then the same story repeats itself on a remoter plane. The supply of the factors of production required for the production of milk drops, and again the government is back where it started. If it does not want to admit defeat and to abstain from any meddling with prices, it must push further and fix the prices of those factors of production which are needed for the production of the factors necessary for the production of milk. Thus the government is forced to go further and further, fixing step by step the prices of all consumers' goods and of all factors of production?both human, i.e., labor, and material?and to order every entrepreneur and every worker to continue work at these prices and wages. No branch of industry can be omitted from this all-round fixing of prices and wages and from this obligation to produce those quantities which the government wants to see produced. If some branches were to be left free out of regard for the fact that they produce only goods qualified as non-vital or even as luxuries, capital and labor would tend to flow into them and the result would be a drop in the supply of those goods, the prices of which government has fixed precisely because it considers them as indispensable for the satisfaction of the needs of the masses.

But when this state of all-round control of business is attained, there can no longer be any question of a market economy. No longer do the citizens by their buying and abstention from buying determine what should be produced and how. The power to decide these matters has devolved upon the government. This is no longer capitalism; it is all-round planning by the government, it is socialism.

Th more government intervenes in the economy, the more our economy will slid toward a system of total government control of the economy. This is a flaw that the interventionists themselves will never acknowledge, for it would halt their quest for power over the lives and liberty of the people. 

(A special thanks to Bob Wenzel of EconomicPolicyJournal.com for the quotes)

Laurence Vance on the Fair Tax

In this video, Laurence M. Vance, author of the book Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State, explains his views of the Fair Tax.

Books I will be reading soon

As soon as I order them from Amazon, I plan to read the following two books:

1. Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State by Laurence M. Vance
2. Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty by Ivan Eland

Bring back American Liberty! The State of our Republic and Liberty

On July 4th, 1776, a band of American Patriots placed their lives, fortunes and sacred honor on the line to take on the most powerful empire of that time: the British Empire. The Founders wrote a Declaration of Independence that stated their reasons for their secession against the British Empire. Anthony Gregory outlines and summarizes the grievances of the American colonists: "The Americans rebelled for freedom from their motherland because they had believed that their liberties had been seriously undermined by the British government. The government had levied taxes on them without their consent -- on some items, as high as a couple percent. The government had searched and seized their property on the basis of unreasonably broad warrants called 'Writs of Assistance.' The government was elevating the military above the civil law. The government was forcing the American people to finance its global empire. The government was sending forth bureaucrats to regulate and tax the American people. Do you see a trend here?"

The Founding Fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson, understood that our rights are not special privileges granted to us by government, but rather that our rights are natural and God-given; that by virtue of being a human being created by God, he has endowed us with certain natural rights that no government can take away. The Declaration of Independence boldly states: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." And then in the next sentence, the Founding Fathers basically stated what the proper role of government in a free-society is supposed to be: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Jacob Hornberger further states the importance of the ideas behind the Declaration of Independence: "Every person, Jefferson said, has been endowed with certain fundamental, inherent rights. These rights don't come from government and, therefore, people don't need to be beholden to government for them. People's rights are endowed in them by nature and God. What is the role of government? Jefferson observed that people call government into existence for the sole purpose of protecting the exercise of these natural, God-given rights. And when government becomes destructive of this end -- when it infringes upon or destroys people's rights, the people have the right to ditch the government -- alter or even abolish it and replace it with a government that is limited to its rightful role of servant whose job is to protect the exercise of people's rights. The Declaration was the most radical political statement in history. It not only rattled government officials of that time, it continues to do so even today, especially those government officials who are unable to accept the notion that they are mere servants and that the citizenry are their masters."

But as it stands today, it seems that the American Republic, along with the U.S. Constitution that our Founding Fathers created are both dead. The U.S. government has in essence replaced the British Empire. While the American colonists did not have the parasitic welfare-ponzi scheme programs back then, they did protest a British government that regulated and taxed them to support a militaristic empire, war finance, imperial security and the anti-capitalist economic system of mercantilism. The British government had violated the property rights of the American colonists by allowing British troops to write their own search warrants, which were called "Writs of Assistance".

The U.S. government currently runs an American Empire comprised of 700-1000 military bases, an astronomically large military budget that makes our military weaker, a military-industrial-complex,  perpetual war and going abroad in search of monsters to destroy. The U.S. government persecutes our economic freedom by foisting a welfare-regulatory-complex that regulates almost every aspect of our economic lives, steals our wealth from our pockets and gives it to those who have not earned it. The taxes that Americans have to put up with today are comparatively higher than the taxes that the American colonists protested. The Founding Fathers would be completely repulsed by the existence of an income tax, which they would view as legalized theft. The U.S. government assaults our constitutionally-protected civil liberties with the 4th Amendment killing Patriot Act, which authorizes warrant less searches and seizure (called national security letters), military commissions that avoid the Constitution during unconstitutional wars, torture, and indefinite detention. The U.S. government devalues our money by forcing Americans to accept rapidly depreciating pieces of paper that we equate to wealth. The U.S. government also assaults our Constitution by charging head-first into unconstitutional wars, building a large and parasitic welfare-regulatory-taxation-complex, violating states' rights and the 10th Amendment, expanding the powers of the Presidency beyond its' constitutional box, and expanding its ability to write any wrong, tax any event, regulate any behavior, and fight any war it wants.

If the Founding Fathers saw the state of America, they would be shocked that we the people have thrown away the American Republic and replaced it with a socialist, imperialist, interventionist, and statist monster known as Leviathan. As Jacob Hornber notes, "Americans have rendered under Caesar the things that belong to God, especially in the area of voluntary charity and the moral duty that people have to honor their parents and to care for others. "

Can we as Americans reclaim the ideas of the War for American Independence and turn the tide of statism in America? While the battle may seem impossible to win, it can be done. We must be ever vigilant in defending our natural rights and liberties from an oppressive government, and we must have faith that God will change the hearts of those in government to respect and protect our rights and liberties under a uniform rule of law and follow the U.S. Constitution as the Founding Fathers (aside from Hamilton and his nationalistic Federalist party) understood it.

The mess we are in can be cleaned up. But only if our government terminates all the wars we are engaged in around the world, bring our troops home, repeal the welfare-regulatory-taxation-complex, abolish violations of civil liberties (which can be found in laws such as the Patriot Act), and respect and protect our personal and economic freedoms, which are basically our natural rights given to us by God. Only then can America reclaim what made this country the greatest country on earth: liberty.

Happy Fourth of July everyone.

Where was Patrick Henry on the 4th of July?

Writes Carris Kocher:

     On March 23, 1775 when Patrick Henry made this declaration at St. John’s Church in Richmond, the delegates to the Second Virginia Convention were considering his resolution “That this colony be immediately put into a state of defense….” His words were effectual, the resolution was adopted, and on July 17, 1775, they elected Patrick Henry as the first Commander-in-Chief of all Virginia forces.
Then the following spring Henry was again elected to the highest office – this time as the first governor of the independent Commonwealth of Virginia, sworn in on July 5, 1776.
Under Patrick Henry’s leadership, Virginia had declared its independence in early May 1776, and sent instructions to her delegates in Philadelphia to introduce a resolution for a national declaration. So, on June 6, 1776, Richard Henry Lee introduced to the Continental Congress a resolution for independence. On July 4th, 1776, Patrick Henry was preparing to serve as Virginia’s first governor.

A Message to my Fellow Americans: Welfare-Warfare Statism is not Freedom!

Writes Jacob Hornberger about the 4th of July: " the 'freedom' that Americans today celebrate is opposite to the freedom that our American ancestors celebrated when they celebrated Independence Day every year. The reason I put the word in quotations is because I personally don’t consider it to be genuine freedom, but the fact is that most Americans today do.
Today, Americans define freedom as the extent to which the government is taking care of them, providing for them, and keeping them safe and secure from the likes of drug lords, terrorists, illegal aliens, and communists.

Consider the welfare state: Government provides people with retirement (Social Security), health care (Medicare and Medicaid), education (public schooling and education grants), farm subsidies, community grants, and many other programs that entail the government’s use of force to take money from whom it belongs in order to give it to people to whom it does not belong.

Consider the warfare state: 700-1000 military bases in some 130 countries, invasions, wars of aggression, undeclared wars, bombings, occupations, sanctions, embargoes, kidnapping, rendition, assassination, kangaroo tribunals, and the like. In a word, empire.

Consider the drug war, whereby the government wields the power to incarcerate people for ingesting non-approved substances, a 4-decade war that continues to wreak death, destruction, and corruption.

Consider the regulated society, in which governments at all levels regulate the most minute aspects of people’s lives, especially within the context of the so-called war on terrorism.

Consider the Federal Reserve and paper money, which involve a never-ending inflationary debasement of the value of people’s money in order to finance ever-burgeoning welfare-warfare state spending and debt.

Consider the income tax and the IRS, which suck money out of the pockets of those who have earned it in order to give it to those who haven’t earned it.

All this is considered 'freedom' by modern-day Americans."