is like removing half a cancer and hoping it will not grow back
https://www.panarchy.org/rozeff/panarchist.html
(2009)
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Reform of Current Government
Posted by M. C. on June 28, 2022
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: cancer, Government | Leave a Comment »
How Governments Expropriate Wealth with Inflation and Taxes
Posted by M. C. on June 28, 2022
Government does not give excess reserves as social programs. Government takes away from existing and future wealth of the economy via currency printing, taxation, spending and debt, but math never works for those who believe extractive and confiscatory policies will work.
RE: The Janet Yellen reference below. The WSJ used to treat her every utterance as wisdom from God. A trip to the comments section revealed the readers weren’t fooled.
https://mises.org/wire/how-governments-expropriate-wealth-inflation-and-taxes
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen admitted that the chain of stimulus plans implemented by the US administration helped create the problem of inflation. “Inflation is a matter of demand and supply, and the spending that was undertaken in the American Rescue Plan did feed demand,” Yellen admitted. Of course, Yellen went on to say that the spending was appropriate due to the collapse of the economy as governments were trying to prevent a recession.
This reminds us of a few of the problems of disproportionate government intervention and the negative impact on the middle class. The misguided massive lockdowns were imposed by the government. Countries that had strict testing, like South Korea and other Asian and European countries, kept the economy working and the pandemic under control. However, the problem is larger and deeper. Central banks and governments have exhausted all demand-side policies at the expense of the middle class by eroding real wages and deposit savings.
Even worse, governments created a larger inflationary spiral by maintaining all “pandemic relief” packages even after the reopening, well beyond the recovery. They expected a spectacular aggregate demand increase and they got it. Now the result is higher inflation and lower economic growth. But government size and deficit spending remain.
Everything that government spends is paid by you. There is no free money. Even for the recipients of benefits in constantly depreciated currency. Inflation, the tax on the poor.
Governments do not avoid recessions through spending, they simply make the accumulated problems larger by constantly adding debt that central banks monetize via quantitative easing. This uncontrolled increase in M3 money supply (a broad money proxy) leads to asset inflation first and everyday goods price inflation afterwards. Both consequences lead to inequality and a constant deterioration of the purchasing power of the currency, making salaries in real terms lower.
Central-planned money creation is never neutral. It disproportionately benefits the first recipients of money, government and those with assets and debt, and negatively impacts those with a monetary salary and some savings in cash deposits, which dissolve over time. No socialist excel spreadsheet can erase the fact that massive deficit spending financed with newly created money destroys the poor and the middle class. They may say that government spending goes to social programs that benefit the poor, but that does not happen. Social programs in a constantly devalued currency become irrelevant, inefficient, and worthless while at the same time the wrongly named welfare state condemns a substantial proportion of the population to being hostage clients of government plans.
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Governments, inflation, Janet yellen, Taxes, wealth | Leave a Comment »
A Victory for Life and Liberty
Posted by M. C. on June 28, 2022
written by ron paul
Whatever your views on the subject, Constitutionaly RP is correct regarding states responsibility.
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2022/june/27/a-victory-for-life-and-liberty/
The Supreme Court undid one of its worst mistakes last week when it overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision declaring a constitutional right to abortion. The Constitution reserves to the states the authority to write and enforce laws regarding murder. Since the question of whether or not to legalize abortion revolves around whether abortion is murder, it is not a federal issue. Roe was thus an illegitimate usurpation of state authority.
The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision last week will not stop the federal government from using the tax dollars of those who believe abortion is murder to fund abortion and family planning both in the United States and abroad. Those opposed to abortion, and in favor of constitutional government, must continue their efforts to end all federal funding of abortion.
Some state governments, such as in Texas and Mississippi, have adopted laws against abortion that are “triggered” after Roe is overturned. Now, additional pro-life state legislators and activists are no doubt planning to push other states with pro-life majorities to pass legislation outlawing abortion.
States where the majority favor legal abortion are no doubt planning to pass pro-abortion legislation. Some of these states will pass laws providing enhanced financial support for lower-income women to receive abortions. Pro-abortion activists are also planning to provide help to women from states where abortion is outlawed to travel to a state where they can legally “terminate” their pregnancies.
Pro-lifers should not respond to pro-abortion state laws by trying to pass an unconstitutional law making abortion a federal crime. Instead, they should work to change attitudes and build a culture of life. One way to do this is by supporting crisis pregnancy centers. These centers help pregnant women in difficult situations see that there are alternatives to abortion. Sadly, the crisis pregnancy centers are among the “woke” mob’s targets for cancellation. If the left were truly “pro-choice” they would not try to shut down privately run pro-life pregnancy centers.
Many libertarians believe that outlawing abortions violates a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. However, the nonaggression principle, which is the philosophic foundation of libertarianism, prohibits committing acts of aggression. Murder is certainly an act of aggression. Therefore, even though all humans have a right to bodily anatomy, this does not justify abortion.
No one ever asked an expectant mother, “how’s the fetus?” Instead, people ask about the baby. This implicitly acknowledges the unborn child’s humanity and thus the child’s right to live. The denial of this right has warped our constitutional system. More importantly it has contributed to the devaluing of human life that is the root of much of America’s moral crisis. A society that devalues life will not respect liberty. Therefore, all who value liberty must protect the right to life. This does not just include ending abortion. It also includes rejecting the militaristic foreign policy that kills innocents in the name of “freedom and democracy.”
Just as pro-life conservatives should be antiwar, progressives should reject the violence government commits against its own citizens via taxation, income redistribution, and the fiat money system that robs average Americans to benefit politicians and elites. Rejecting the use of force, including government force, will lead to a society that values and protects our lives, liberty, and property.
Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
Please donate to the Ron Paul Institute
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Constitutional right, Liberty, Life, Roe v. Wade | Leave a Comment »
Durham Played You For A Fool!
Posted by M. C. on June 28, 2022
John Durham and Bill Barr finally ran out of the clock on Spygate. Why are you surprised?
Notice that (then) AG Bill Barr promises justice for the Russia Hoax while at the very same time excluding Obama and Biden as subjects of the Durham investigation.
That’s the moment that you should have known: the fix is in.
https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/durham-played-you-for-a-fool
It’s the summer of 2022 — and where are all those Durham indictments you were promised? And where’s that much-discussed Durham report? Do you know that you’ve been played for a fool yet — or are you still watching Fox News? Maybe you need another year to figure out the entire game. Maybe you still believe Bill Barr! Didn’t that legendary windbag tell us that the wheels of justice grind very slow but justice is coming?
Let’s turn back the clock two years — in case you forgot what AG Bagpipes promised the American public.
Newsmax @newsmax“The attorney general is saying that Americans will recognize some names under investigation as a part of US attorney John Durham’s ongoing investigation. But the attorney general is saying those names won’t include Obama or Biden.” @EmeraldRobinson reports.
June 10th 202033 Retweets83 Likes
Indictments are coming!
People will know the names of these people!
Criminal prosecutions! Not just a report!
Notice that (then) AG Bill Barr promises justice for the Russia Hoax while at the very same time excluding Obama and Biden as subjects of the Durham investigation.
That’s the moment that you should have known: the fix is in.
The entire “tick tock” narrative that followed was brought to you (mostly) by Fox News and Bill Barr.
People ask me all the time how I knew — all the way back in the early months of 2020 — that the Durham investigation was a sham. (What do I mean by a sham —you ask?
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Bill Barr, John Durham, Russia Hoax | Leave a Comment »
It’s Time to Shut Down the Ukraine Money Spigot
Posted by M. C. on June 28, 2022
The Ukraine war project is costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
By Jordan Schachtel
The Dossier
And it’s quite likely that none of this money “for Ukraine” will actually in any way benefit your average Ukrainian citizen. As the great Ron Paul once explained, “foreign aid [in its current form] is taking money from poor people in this country and giving it to rich people in poor countries.”
The US and EU-financed Ukraine war project has become entirely unsustainable, and the propping up of one side of an inter slavic turf war is burning money at such a rate that it’s making the Afghanistan adventure look like the minor leagues.
The Volodymr Zelensky-led administration is now demanding over $5 billion dollars a month just to cover the costs of its government, which includes the many bureaucrats and government employee salaries. That’s over $60 billion a year just to finance the operating costs of its government, which has historically been ranked the most corrupt in all of Europe.
This latest demand comes in addition to the estimated $100 billion in recent European and American dollars already allocated to propping up its collapsing military.
The Ukrainian military is being routed in the field, and now losing badly to the Russian military, which has successfully employed old-school industrial warfare to vacuum up territory that provides Moscow with port access. Time is no longer on the side of Kiev, which continues to lose territory, and has failed to chalk up a significant battlefield victory for many weeks.
Similar to the trillions in “pandemic expenditures,” the costs related to the war have officially entered sunk costs territory. The Ukrainian military is on its heels, and it has no hope of independently regaining territory from Russia. Thankfully, there is no appetite in the West for direct confrontation, which could lead to a World War 3-like outcome.
I am not convinced that any sum of money and arms thrown at Ukraine, regardless of how much of that money actually finds its way to the battlefield, can fix this geopolitical reality. And for the American taxpayer, it is simply not worth the endeavor.
And it’s quite likely that none of this money “for Ukraine” will actually in any way benefit your average Ukrainian citizen. As the great Ron Paul once explained, “foreign aid [in its current form] is taking money from poor people in this country and giving it to rich people in poor countries.”
Not a penny of American taxpayer dollars, let alone a prospective price tag of hundreds of billions, should be spent to finance a foreign turf war and subsidize a broken and corrupt government.
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Money Spigot, Ukraine, Volodymr Zelensky | Leave a Comment »
TGIF: Parents Should Govern Their Kids’ Education
Posted by M. C. on June 28, 2022
Sotomayor also writes: “If a State cannot offer subsidies to its citizens without being required to fund religious exercise, any State that values its historic antiestablishment interests more than this Court does will have to curtail the support it offers to its citizens.” I ask: so what’s wrong with that? Government has no business subsidizing people. If it wants them to have more money, cut and abolish taxes.
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-parents-should-govern-ed/
How clear are these opening words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”?
Judging by the U.S. Supreme Court’s many ventures into this area, we’d have to say not very clear at all. There’s a lesson in that. Constitutions don’t interpret themselves. People do, and the line between interpreting and making law is not as bright as we’re told.
The latest Court decision in the matter, Carson v. Makin, is instructive in that regard. The 6-3 decision — Republican appointees made up the majority, Democratic appointees the minority — struck down Maine’s exclusion of religious schools from a program that provides tax-funded tuition assistance to all parents who live in school districts that do not provide “free, public” secondary education. That’s over half the districts. Maine, according to the Court, is the most rural state in the country. Who knew?
Under the program, those parents can spend the money at another district’s school or at an academically accredited “nonsectarian” private school. The plaintiffs, two families, argued that this restriction violates both the Free-exercise clause and the establishment clause of the First Amendment, along with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The U.S. district and appellate courts had sided with the state.
The six justices of the majority held that the exclusion of sectarian schools violated the guarantee of the free exercise of religion despite the fact that religion permeated the regular curriculum. (Remember, these were state-approved schools academically.) But the minority justices said the exclusion violated the prohibition on the establishment of religion because the money would go to schools that used it to teach their particular faiths. It was establishment clause v. free-exercise clause.
So who is right? Can that question be answered? Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion and the dissenting opinions by retiring Justice Stephen Breyer and Justice Sonia Sotomayor point to many Court precedents that seem to support their conflicting positions. But the precedents aren’t much help because one can always say that an earlier case differed in an important way from the current one.
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Carson v. Makin, Education, Parents, sectarian schools | Leave a Comment »
NYT ‘Bombshell’ – CIA Massively Engaged On-Ground In Ukraine
Posted by M. C. on June 27, 2022
In another case of who is leaking and why, the New York Times has revealed that the CIA is heavily involved in training and advising Ukraine in its war with Russia. As former CIA official Larry Johnson writes, this is a very selective leak from the US government. So we need to read between the lines to answer why. Also today…one day before NATO’s Madrid summit the talk is all about escalation.
A few short weeks ago Ukraine was mopping the floor with Russian troops but our military hadnt a clue about what Ukrainian troops were doing with U$ $upplied money and weapon$. Now we are told the CIA is running the show, US special forces are fighting Russians and Ukraine is getting it’s ass kicked. The only bombshells the NYT prints are what the CIA tells them to print.
Are we getting set up for a US bail-out or more printed money, more MIC weapons and massive US escalation?
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: bombshell, CIA, NYT, Ukraine | Leave a Comment »
Brzezinski’s Proxy War Playbook
Posted by M. C. on June 27, 2022
In 1998, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbiegnew Brzezinski told Le Nouvel Observateur that the CIA “knowingly increased the probability” that the Russians would invade Afghanistan by covertly supporting the Mujahideen before the Soviet invasion.
Mujahideen, sired by Bin Laden and the CIA, evolved into Al Qaeda and ISIS.
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/brzezinskis-proxy-war-playbook/
In 1998, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbiegnew Brzezinski told Le Nouvel Observateur that the CIA “knowingly increased the probability” that the Russians would invade Afghanistan by covertly supporting the Mujahideen before the Soviet invasion. Later in that same interview, Brzezinski claims that this covert intervention caused the end of the Soviet Union:
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.” Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
In July 2014, almost six months after the Maidan Revolution and Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea, Brzezinski hinted at a similar plan for Ukraine, although he couched it in defensive terms. He wrote on the Atlantic Council’s blog:
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: CIA, Mujahideen, proxy war, Zbiegnew Brzezinski | Leave a Comment »
Why Sanctions Always Fail
Posted by M. C. on June 27, 2022
The Enemy Always Adapts.
The misplaced belief in the efficacy of sanctions as a weapon may partly be traced to what is generally considered to have been their greatest triumph, the British blockade of Germany in world war 1 that supposedly starved the Germans into submission, a “very perfect instrument” in Keynes’ words. But as the late great Norman Stone pointed out, German food shortages were almost entirely due to government mismanagement, although the blockade, as usual, provided a convenient scapegoat.
https://spoilsofwar.substack.com/p/why-sanctions-always-fail
Early in the Ukraine war, President Biden boasted on twitter that thanks to “unprecedented” sanctions, the “Russian economy is on track to be cut in half” and the ruble had been reduced to “rubble.” All instruments of economic warfare had been deployed against Ukraine’s invader, from the freezing of central bank reserves to sanctions on Russian cats. Today, the cats may be still at home, but the ruble is at a seven year high, Russian interest and inflation rates are headed downwards, and industrial production is ticking up. Meanwhile Russian forces steadily advance in Ukraine.
Objective: “Hunger, Desperation, Overthrow of Government.”
All this represents a much larger defeat for sanctions than is usual in such offensives. In a memo on Cuban sanctions back in 1960 a state department official named Lestor Mallory described the purpose of such measures with unusual frankness (the memo was of course secret.) The aim, he wrote, was “..to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” Twenty years later, again cloaking honesty in classification, the CIA intelligence directorate studied the record and concluded that “economic sanctions…have not met any of their objective” and had furthermore strengthened the regime, providing Castro with “a scapegoat for all kinds of domestic problems.” That pattern has endured: hardship for the sanctioned population, as exemplified by the half-million toll on Iraqi children during the 1990s, or the ongoing mass hunger in Afghanistan, while the ruling elite escapes unscathed and diverts any possible local disaffection among the immiserated populace in the direction of the sanctioning powers. This time around, the effect of sanctions has of course been double-edged. Not only has the Russian economy not collapsed, the sanctioneers, principally the Europeans, are themselves in an accelerating economic downslide, marked by rising inflation, in particular the catastrophic energy costs consequent on sanctions against Russian oil and gas.
Sanctions Work Just Like Bombing – Badly.
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Desperation, Hunger, Overthrow of Government, Russia, sanctions, Ukraine | Leave a Comment »
EU Leaders Prepare for Russia Turning Off Gas Supply
Posted by M. C. on June 27, 2022
Germany is already facing a gas crisis as supplies have been reduced due to Western sanctions
You have to be an idiot not to have foreseen this. Which makes it a typical US foreign policy result.
Then again by the EU obeying US commands it encourages the dumb bastards to increase dependency on US taxpayer paid for “free government help”. “Sure you can have US foreign aid as long as you use the part you don’t divert to Swiss bank accounts to buy US made weapons and allow more US bases.”
Yah, that is how US foreign aid works.
European leaders on Friday discussed the possibility of Russia cutting off gas to the entire bloc and asked the European Commission to come up with ways to deal with the scenario.
The EU has banned the import of Russian coal and agreed on a phased ban of Russian oil, with exemptions for Hungary. But the bloc can’t afford to ban Russian gas due to its heavy reliance on the commodity.
The Western sanctions campaign against Moscow has largely backfired on Europe as it is facing soaring energy prices, which Russia is profiting from. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is already facing a gas crisis as Russia has somewhat reduced supply. If the situation gets worse in Germany, the next step would be rationing.
According to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Russia has cut gas supplies either wholly or partially to 12 EU member states. Moscow cut off some members entirely, including Bulgaria and Poland, over their refusal to pay for gas in rubles, a policy Russia enacted to shield its currency from sanctions and in retaliation for the US and EU targeting Russia’s use of the dollar and euro.
Earlier this month, Russia’s Gazprom reduced the flow of gas in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which connects Russia and Germany, by 40% due to Western sanctions. A piece of equipment needed for a repair on the pipeline is stuck in Canada due to sanctions on Russia.
Countries that have been cut off entirely by Russia, such as Bulgaria, have turned to their neighbors for help. But this winter, the EU’s gas demands will be much higher. For now, as there is a lack of any real plan, EU leaders are calling on Europeans to reduce their energy use.
Be seeing you
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: EU, Gas Supply, Russia | Leave a Comment »
MCViewPoint 