we’ll soon have more wealth taken from us in order to pay for people to take more wealth from us.
Writes Conor Sen
“The aim is to improve access to post-secondary school for those who need it most: lower-income students for whom college or vocational training can be the decisive factor in their economic future. The president has said he wants the United States to lead the world by 2010 in the proportion of college graduates, a position the country had long held; it now ranks seventh for the 25 to 34 age group. He has also called for every American to attend a post-secondary institution.”–Washington Post
Didn’t we try this with homeownership? And how’d that turn out?
Rockwell’s law: maybe young people would be better off saving $200k instead of pumping it into state-sponsored brainwashing!
Below is my response to a thoughtful and noteworthy response from Mason over at RIGHT of left:
Thanks for the kind words. I find little disagreement with your response. I see the debate over direct taxation (as justified as it is) as a distraction to a more important and underlying debate. The means by which the government extracts wealth from us is not nearly as important as the way, and in what magnitude, it is allocated.
I firmly believe that individuals are far more able to efficiently allocate scarce resources than government. Any and all attempts by the government to stand in the way of voluntary transactions between individuals — through government spending, regulation, or currency manipulation — distorts the market resulting in misallocation of resources (ex. excessive home building). Money and resources are diverted from useful and productive sectors of the economy into wasteful ones. Central planners (government) no matter how smart or savvy, are incapable of determining the proper allocation of these resources. Only individuals, through mutually beneficial transactions, guided by market based prices, are able to properly and justly determine what is useful and what is not.
This issue will not be sufficiently addressed until the issue of our money and the people who control it (federal reserve) are confronted, and we return to a sound market based currency. Only then will their be a restriction on the ability of the government to confiscate and squander the hard earned wealth of individuals.
As for Ron Paul: Tthey called him a loon because he predicted, long before the vast majority of others in Washington, that we were headed for a crash of the housing market to be followed by a recession. They called him a loon because he called for sound money that cannot be inflated at the will of government. They called him a loon because he predicted, before the Iraq war had even started, that it would be a quagmire costing much more (in resources and lives) and lasting much longer than initially anticipated. They called him a loon for wanting to abolish the IRS, the department of education, and other bloated, inefficient government departments. They called him a loon because he believes that the market, through countless voluntary transactions is a vastly more efficient and just means of allocating resources than government central planning. The debate over his lunacy has ended. He was right, they were wrong.
Ron Paul introduced legislation aimed at shedding some light on the unaccountable actions of the Fed: HR 1207 Federal Reserve Transparency Act. Whether or not it would have significant impact or not, i don’t know, but the fact that so many congresspeople — democrats and republicans — have refused to support it, is pretty astounding to me.
Some serious changes need to be made, and fiddling with the tax code isn’t going to do it.
Do some research for yourself:
Fluoride Action Network
The Fluoride Deception
Then consider contacting the city regarding your water supply. The city of Monroe, according to their 2007 water quality report, adds fluoride to the water supply.
Chlorine is then added for disinfection
(we carefully monitor the amount of chlorine, adding
the lowest quantity necessary to protect the safety of
your water without compromising taste). At this point,
the water is filtered through layers of fine coal and
silicate sand. As smaller, suspended particles are removed,
turbidity (an optical quality of the water) disappears
and clear water emerges. Finally, fluoride (used to fight
tooth decay) and a corrosion inhibitor (used to protect
distribution system pipes) are added before the water
is pumped to sanitized, underground reservoirs, water
towers, and into your home or business.
Here’s a trailer for a film about the perversion of our food supply:
How much do we really know about the food we buy at our local supermarkets and serve to our families?
In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that’s been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of e coli–the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.
Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farm’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising — and often shocking truths — about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.
I believe the government does more than simply consent; they are the enablers. A good example of this enabling is H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 that has been introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauo whose husband, Stan Greenberg, works for Monsanto, the multinational agricultural biotech corporation.
As with all government regulation, it protects the interests of large corporate entities by attempting to squash small local competition. More here on this bill.
Though it’s still a bit early, as he notes, Manuel Lora reviewed his earlier predictions of the Obama administration.
- End the wars of military conquest [Fail]
- End the war on drugs [CA drug raids: Fail]
- Eliminate the nuclear arsenal [Smoke and mirrors from Hillary: Fail]
- End the Wall Street corporatist machine and its plutocracy [Even more Krugmanian Keynesianistic state-corporatism: Fail]
- Abolish the PATRIOT Act [Fail]
- Close Guantanamo [A mixed bag; Guantanamo is more of a symptom than a disease.]
- End executive privileges and executive orders [Rooseveltian Lincolnism: Fail]
- Cuddle with baby seals [Can't confirm or deny]; and last, but not least
- Solemnly swear to uphold the constitution (and uphold it) [Epic fail]
As of today, it has been six years since the United States invaded Iraq. In his latest article, Laurence Vance reminds us of some uncomfortable facts that many Americans would rather just brush under the rug and be done with. If only it were that simple.
Vance points out that the war should have been an issue in this last years presidential election, but really wasn’t. And how “many Democrats only opposed the war because it was a Republican war… And now that Obama is president, no one from either party seems to mind that he wants to send 17,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.”
Some statistics Vance noted in his article include:
The financial cost of the war: What was supposed to have been $50 billion turned into almost a trillion dollars, with 12 billion being spent fighting the war EACH MONTH last year. And the cost of deploying one soldier to Iraq a year: $390,000.
The Iraqi death count: The latest estimate was around 1 million, not counting the additional millions of Iraqis who are wounded, disabled, displaced, homeless, refugees, widows, or orphans.
Destruction to the lives of American soldiers & families: “Many thousands of U.S. soldiers have been severely wounded. Hundreds of these have had limbs amputated. Untold numbers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.”
American soldier death count: 2,317 by the third year. 3,218 by the forth. 3,992 by the fifth. And now up to 4,259. And, Vance points out that “although the total number of American deaths per year is falling, there are two ways in which American deaths are rising: military suicides and the war Afghanistan. There were more American soldiers who killed themselves in January of this year than died fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military suicides are not only up for the fourth year in a row, they are at the highest level they have ever been.” And that ”the number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan is now up to 666.”
Vance concludes with a quote William Lloyd Garrison once said: “The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.”
From Robert Higgs’ recent article.
In my mind’s eye, I envision a street fair – one of those happy community gatherings at which sellers of handcrafted ceramics, funky clothing, herbal remedies, fresh vegetables, and edible delicacies congregate to display their wares for the strolling customers, who chat amiably with the stall-keepers and with one another. Suddenly, amid horrified shrieks and the roar of a giant engine, a truck plows through this placid setting, scattering twisted debris and broken bodies in its wake. Finally, after wreaking a hundred-yard swath of death and devastation, the truck stops, and the driver, Ben Bernanke, climbs down from the cab.
“People, people,” he exhorts them in a calm, world-weary voice, “do not panic. I am here to assess the damage and make recommendations for reforms that will prevent a recurrence of this unfortunate and wholly unforeseen act of God.” Whereupon he proceeds to lay out his assessment and recommendations, always speaking in the same quiet, unemotional voice. The stunned and wounded survivors gaze at him in astonishment. “He’s a madman,” one cries out.
Though I firmly believe that the ultimate blame for the real estate bubble lies in the Federal Reserve and US monetary policy, the Clinton administration, ACORN, and Barack Obama share in the responsibility, and are likely the cause of the bubble forming specifically in the housing market. Here is some of the evidence:
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