Thomas Jefferson 1779
Ten years from now, Congress is controlled by lobbyists, unions, corporations, federal agencies and power-hungry professional politicians. While stealing our wealth they've wrecked the economy and destroyed individual liberty.
Four angry individuals believe deadly force is justified to restore the Constitution and regain our liberty. If their plan succeeds . . . "the thieves that have stolen our liberty will pay with their lives, or resign, and if the voters agree, professional politicians will be forever barred from serving in Congress."
The Department of Justice begins a vengeful and bloody hunt for the "terrorists," but the hunt itself threatens our remaining liberties. When the first senator is "term-limited," it is clear the terrorists will not soon be caught. They have carefully prepared. They are inside federal law enforcement and they have access to the federal computer system.
Four angry individuals believe deadly force is justified to restore the Constitution and regain our liberty. If their plan succeeds . . . "the thieves that have stolen our liberty will pay with their lives, or resign, and if the voters agree, professional politicians will be forever barred from serving in Congress."
The Department of Justice begins a vengeful and bloody hunt for the "terrorists," but the hunt itself threatens our remaining liberties. When the first senator is "term-limited," it is clear the terrorists will not soon be caught. They have carefully prepared. They are inside federal law enforcement and they have access to the federal computer system.
But is deadly force justified to defend liberty?
Who decides?
When will it be too late?
Who decides?
When will it be too late?
Prologue for the Book
Our nation is in trouble. We are within sight of national bankruptcy with a total collapse of the nation’s economy. The potential disintegration or breakup of our government might well accompany that economic disaster. Why then do politicians on both sides of the aisle encourage the national ignorance and phony arguments that prevent rational analysis of the problem? Are Americans really that ignorant of economics?
Most people seem to believe that the problem can be fixed if we only elect or reelect the right person into the presidency; if only we choose the right leader. But four more years of spending as both Obama and Romney and our present Congress propose will certainly see this nation collapse. Neither they nor Congress proposes meaningful budget cuts. Our $16 trillion deficit will grow under Romney or Obama by $6 trillion in the next four years if everything works as they hope.
And it won’t work as they hope. Today a large part of the world is in a similar plight. Our dollar is a haven of safety as investors move their moneys out of Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and France. But as investors see that we have precisely the same overspending, overpromising problem as the European nations they will cease loaning to us as well. At best Romney and the Republican members of Congress propose insignificant reductions in the massive growth of the budget. Democrats only propose taxing the rich more.
They fail to appreciate that investors are not fools. Nations and individuals will cease buying US treasuries when inflation begins destroy the value of the dollar. That will seem to occur as if a sudden natural phenomena. When it happens we will be past saving. The FED purchase of more long term bonds will be too little too late. No one will trust that manipulated market again until the bond market has naturally cleared itself of the incredibly over priced inventory.
Both Romney and Obama pretend to believe that the US treasury can continue to borrow money at very low interest in spite of the certain and substantial increases in inflation already baked into the pie. Predictable low interest cannot continue, as they damn well know. When inflation forces interest rates to rise, when the FED can no longer keep rates down by buying Treasury Bonds with phony money, then the US Treasury will be forced to default or begin printing currency that is worth less and less every day. Default, perhaps partial default on all national debt, entitlements and obligations will become the only rational answer. Printing money that no one trusts would insure the destruction of the government. National borrowing will no longer be possible at rational interest rates.
This disaster must occur in the near future if we do not put into office a President who will balance the budget now. Not later. Now.
The republicans and democrats now in power owe their political lives to those who fund their reelection and bring them voters. They repay their sponsors with federal contracts, tax breaks and laws that protect those sponsors (unions, government agencies, government contractors (especially military contractors), etc). They are parasites. To maintain themselves in office they are sucking the lifeblood from the economy, destroying our nation and if allowed to stay in office another year or two they will succeed in destroying us.
May 21, 2012
As I was saying before I interrupted myself: The congressional political aristocracy owe their political power to those who fund their reelection and bring them voters. They repay their sponsors with literally trillions of tax dollars in federal contracts, subsidies and tax breaks. They write laws that favor the public and private unions in labor negotiations, that reward government agencies, government contractors, and the corporations and non-profit organizations that own them.
They are parasites. That is not just a figure of speech. Our economy works because of the efforts of a decreasing number of individuals who continue to produce ideas and goods and services in spite of the increasing laws, regulations and taxes that are strangling them. But Congress and those they serve make parasites of us all. They give us choices of course but it is always a matter of choosing to rob or be robbed, tax him not me, my moral choices, not his. Neither of the two major parties will ever leave us to fully own and be responsible for ourselves.
The Constitution once protected us from making such choices. No more. In our democracy, with a government unlimited by a constitution for nearly a century, we are all parasites fighting over which group controls and makes choices for the other.
Such choices are obscene.
We have gone too far. We stand on the edge of a financial and moral disaster. The two-party aristocracy has stacked the deck so that we must choose one party or the other—forever.
And now our nation is bankrupt.
In 2012 the total funds the federal government will take from all sources for all federal expenditures will total $2.5 trillion. But an Obama government or a Romney government will spend more than $3.8 trillion, again producing a deficit of $1.3 trillion. That deficit will be borrowed (our deficit is costing almost $500 billion per year in interest) and it will increase the national debt by the same amount. The debt plus entitlement obligations have already reached an amount that cannot possibly be paid. Interest on our debt is adding to the debt at an accelerating rate. Printing money to pay the bonds will only explode the growth of inflation to an immediate economic disaster.
If we are to survive as a nation we must immediately stop spending money we don’t have and balance the budget now!
And we must start where the spending is most egregious and least needed, our military-industrial-spycraft complex, that pretentious monster masquerading as National Defense.
The U.S Defense budget is larger than the next 16 nations taken together which includes many of our allies. We are not and may never again be under military attack from a nation. China is a major trading partner as is Russia, Japan and Germany. If North Korea attacked they could be removed as a real threat in an afternoon. The only reason for fearing North Korea is their pretended insanity.
The War on Terror is also pretence, on the part of congress and the administration. It is necessary in order to keep the American people frightened and the money flowing to the military contractors and agencies who keep congress in power. The fear of being attacked by Muslims is real enough, but that threat is a product of the use of our military for national empire building and saber rattling to keep reelecting the congressional incumbents.
Iran is the latest threat. Or is it? We have 20 or so military bases as well as warships and nuclear subs immediately surrounding Iran on all sides. They stand ready to obliterate several million innocent people and a thousand bad people at a moments notice. What should a shopkeeper in Tehran think of the U.S.? He is surrounded by U.S. armament. He cannot buy goods for his store or for his family because of the economic sanctions we have on Iran now. And the U.S. recognizes economic sanctions as an act of war. As with Saddam, economic sanctions will have no effect on the rulers. But the weak and sick are dying in Iran and innocent people are hurting. By what right do we demand anything of Iran? It is precisely that presumptuousness of the U.S. that so infuriates so much of the world. We have no right to exert power anywhere except in true self-defense.
Establishing sanctions on Iraq in the years before we invaded resulted in the deaths of close to a million innocent people over a ten year period. It had no effect on Saddam Hussein’s power but it engendered the anger of Muslims everywhere.
We were meddling.
Iraq and now Iran is typical of the idiotic mismanaged poorly planned god awful screw-ups our administration, the pentagon and state department continue to get us into. We had no business being there. But disagreement over body counts aside, 4800 of our troops died, nearly 2000 contractors, more than 30,000 Iraq troops and this does not begin to count the mangled lives and bodies and minds that may never recover. And the win for our team? Remember the talk in the days before the invasion of Iraq? “Democracy will be created in Iraq. What a shining example it will be to the Middle East!” And a few weeks later when Rumsfeld wondered aloud “if we were killing more of the enemy than we were making enemies.”
We were making more enemies!
As a result of our brilliant efforts, Iran and Iraq are building strong ties and now both governments despise the United States. We spent a lot more than 2 trillion dollars constructing a far stronger enemy than Saddam ever was and uniting Muslims throughout the Middle East in their hatred of the U.S. Now our military and political aristocracy pretends to be friends with the new Iraq so our war machine does not look more stupid than necessary. But they do.
The National Defense budget is that area where democrat and republican members of congress cooperate in an orgy of pork-filled spending for votes that all but guarantee their reelection. It is not by chance that every one of the fifty states shares equally in the national defense budget. No matter how stupid it is to build a part of a fighter jet in each of fifty states, it does guarantee the budget will be approved. The companies that produce the tanks, planes, trucks, bombs, uniforms, ships, arms, etc., coordinate with Congress and the Pentagon to spread their manufacturing facilities equally across the states. The real cost of the military budget is in excess of $1 trillion every year and growing.
And not only is it not needed, it is destroying our nation.
The arms must be used to demonstrate the need for them. Not even our government would forever build unneeded weapons with borrowed money. That has contributed to an imperial foreign policy.
Our congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle are quick to demand that we attack our enemies wherever we can produce some. The Middle East has become very productive. Our attacks in that part of the world, including Iraq, have cost the lives of more than a million and maimed and ruined the lives of many more. That has earned us enough enemies to last another fifty years which pleases congress and our military-industrial complex enormously.
What are the words of that song? When will we ever learn? Vietnam didn’t stand a chance against the U.S. and its carpet bombs and Agent Orange. We killed far more of them than they killed of us. But they were defending their homeland and they drove us out. They literally drove us out! Now we trade with them. We should have started there.
We are our biggest enemy. We keep voting for the same people and expecting things to be different this time. But Obama and Romney are interchangeable and Obama and McCain and Bush and Kerry and on and on back into the history of the 20th century; they were all interchangeable because they worked for the two party system. And if Obama is allowed to stay in office or if Romney is elected, within a year or two or three I fear the two party system will finally succeed in destroying our nation.
Most people seem to believe that the problem can be fixed if we only elect or reelect the right person into the presidency; if only we choose the right leader. But four more years of spending as both Obama and Romney and our present Congress propose will certainly see this nation collapse. Neither they nor Congress proposes meaningful budget cuts. Our $16 trillion deficit will grow under Romney or Obama by $6 trillion in the next four years if everything works as they hope.
And it won’t work as they hope. Today a large part of the world is in a similar plight. Our dollar is a haven of safety as investors move their moneys out of Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and France. But as investors see that we have precisely the same overspending, overpromising problem as the European nations they will cease loaning to us as well. At best Romney and the Republican members of Congress propose insignificant reductions in the massive growth of the budget. Democrats only propose taxing the rich more.
They fail to appreciate that investors are not fools. Nations and individuals will cease buying US treasuries when inflation begins destroy the value of the dollar. That will seem to occur as if a sudden natural phenomena. When it happens we will be past saving. The FED purchase of more long term bonds will be too little too late. No one will trust that manipulated market again until the bond market has naturally cleared itself of the incredibly over priced inventory.
Both Romney and Obama pretend to believe that the US treasury can continue to borrow money at very low interest in spite of the certain and substantial increases in inflation already baked into the pie. Predictable low interest cannot continue, as they damn well know. When inflation forces interest rates to rise, when the FED can no longer keep rates down by buying Treasury Bonds with phony money, then the US Treasury will be forced to default or begin printing currency that is worth less and less every day. Default, perhaps partial default on all national debt, entitlements and obligations will become the only rational answer. Printing money that no one trusts would insure the destruction of the government. National borrowing will no longer be possible at rational interest rates.
This disaster must occur in the near future if we do not put into office a President who will balance the budget now. Not later. Now.
The republicans and democrats now in power owe their political lives to those who fund their reelection and bring them voters. They repay their sponsors with federal contracts, tax breaks and laws that protect those sponsors (unions, government agencies, government contractors (especially military contractors), etc). They are parasites. To maintain themselves in office they are sucking the lifeblood from the economy, destroying our nation and if allowed to stay in office another year or two they will succeed in destroying us.
May 21, 2012
As I was saying before I interrupted myself: The congressional political aristocracy owe their political power to those who fund their reelection and bring them voters. They repay their sponsors with literally trillions of tax dollars in federal contracts, subsidies and tax breaks. They write laws that favor the public and private unions in labor negotiations, that reward government agencies, government contractors, and the corporations and non-profit organizations that own them.
They are parasites. That is not just a figure of speech. Our economy works because of the efforts of a decreasing number of individuals who continue to produce ideas and goods and services in spite of the increasing laws, regulations and taxes that are strangling them. But Congress and those they serve make parasites of us all. They give us choices of course but it is always a matter of choosing to rob or be robbed, tax him not me, my moral choices, not his. Neither of the two major parties will ever leave us to fully own and be responsible for ourselves.
The Constitution once protected us from making such choices. No more. In our democracy, with a government unlimited by a constitution for nearly a century, we are all parasites fighting over which group controls and makes choices for the other.
Such choices are obscene.
We have gone too far. We stand on the edge of a financial and moral disaster. The two-party aristocracy has stacked the deck so that we must choose one party or the other—forever.
And now our nation is bankrupt.
In 2012 the total funds the federal government will take from all sources for all federal expenditures will total $2.5 trillion. But an Obama government or a Romney government will spend more than $3.8 trillion, again producing a deficit of $1.3 trillion. That deficit will be borrowed (our deficit is costing almost $500 billion per year in interest) and it will increase the national debt by the same amount. The debt plus entitlement obligations have already reached an amount that cannot possibly be paid. Interest on our debt is adding to the debt at an accelerating rate. Printing money to pay the bonds will only explode the growth of inflation to an immediate economic disaster.
If we are to survive as a nation we must immediately stop spending money we don’t have and balance the budget now!
And we must start where the spending is most egregious and least needed, our military-industrial-spycraft complex, that pretentious monster masquerading as National Defense.
The U.S Defense budget is larger than the next 16 nations taken together which includes many of our allies. We are not and may never again be under military attack from a nation. China is a major trading partner as is Russia, Japan and Germany. If North Korea attacked they could be removed as a real threat in an afternoon. The only reason for fearing North Korea is their pretended insanity.
The War on Terror is also pretence, on the part of congress and the administration. It is necessary in order to keep the American people frightened and the money flowing to the military contractors and agencies who keep congress in power. The fear of being attacked by Muslims is real enough, but that threat is a product of the use of our military for national empire building and saber rattling to keep reelecting the congressional incumbents.
Iran is the latest threat. Or is it? We have 20 or so military bases as well as warships and nuclear subs immediately surrounding Iran on all sides. They stand ready to obliterate several million innocent people and a thousand bad people at a moments notice. What should a shopkeeper in Tehran think of the U.S.? He is surrounded by U.S. armament. He cannot buy goods for his store or for his family because of the economic sanctions we have on Iran now. And the U.S. recognizes economic sanctions as an act of war. As with Saddam, economic sanctions will have no effect on the rulers. But the weak and sick are dying in Iran and innocent people are hurting. By what right do we demand anything of Iran? It is precisely that presumptuousness of the U.S. that so infuriates so much of the world. We have no right to exert power anywhere except in true self-defense.
Establishing sanctions on Iraq in the years before we invaded resulted in the deaths of close to a million innocent people over a ten year period. It had no effect on Saddam Hussein’s power but it engendered the anger of Muslims everywhere.
We were meddling.
Iraq and now Iran is typical of the idiotic mismanaged poorly planned god awful screw-ups our administration, the pentagon and state department continue to get us into. We had no business being there. But disagreement over body counts aside, 4800 of our troops died, nearly 2000 contractors, more than 30,000 Iraq troops and this does not begin to count the mangled lives and bodies and minds that may never recover. And the win for our team? Remember the talk in the days before the invasion of Iraq? “Democracy will be created in Iraq. What a shining example it will be to the Middle East!” And a few weeks later when Rumsfeld wondered aloud “if we were killing more of the enemy than we were making enemies.”
We were making more enemies!
As a result of our brilliant efforts, Iran and Iraq are building strong ties and now both governments despise the United States. We spent a lot more than 2 trillion dollars constructing a far stronger enemy than Saddam ever was and uniting Muslims throughout the Middle East in their hatred of the U.S. Now our military and political aristocracy pretends to be friends with the new Iraq so our war machine does not look more stupid than necessary. But they do.
The National Defense budget is that area where democrat and republican members of congress cooperate in an orgy of pork-filled spending for votes that all but guarantee their reelection. It is not by chance that every one of the fifty states shares equally in the national defense budget. No matter how stupid it is to build a part of a fighter jet in each of fifty states, it does guarantee the budget will be approved. The companies that produce the tanks, planes, trucks, bombs, uniforms, ships, arms, etc., coordinate with Congress and the Pentagon to spread their manufacturing facilities equally across the states. The real cost of the military budget is in excess of $1 trillion every year and growing.
And not only is it not needed, it is destroying our nation.
The arms must be used to demonstrate the need for them. Not even our government would forever build unneeded weapons with borrowed money. That has contributed to an imperial foreign policy.
Our congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle are quick to demand that we attack our enemies wherever we can produce some. The Middle East has become very productive. Our attacks in that part of the world, including Iraq, have cost the lives of more than a million and maimed and ruined the lives of many more. That has earned us enough enemies to last another fifty years which pleases congress and our military-industrial complex enormously.
What are the words of that song? When will we ever learn? Vietnam didn’t stand a chance against the U.S. and its carpet bombs and Agent Orange. We killed far more of them than they killed of us. But they were defending their homeland and they drove us out. They literally drove us out! Now we trade with them. We should have started there.
We are our biggest enemy. We keep voting for the same people and expecting things to be different this time. But Obama and Romney are interchangeable and Obama and McCain and Bush and Kerry and on and on back into the history of the 20th century; they were all interchangeable because they worked for the two party system. And if Obama is allowed to stay in office or if Romney is elected, within a year or two or three I fear the two party system will finally succeed in destroying our nation.
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