Behaving Like An Adult

Adults have to make hard choices sometimes.

A favorite trick of Democrats is to run fake Libertarian candidates, in order to divide the conservative vote – and thus keep progressives in office.

In November, people can choose to be an adult, or they can choose to be a useful idiot.

ScreenHunter_3428 Oct. 07 10.37

About Tony Heller

Just having fun
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

173 Responses to Behaving Like An Adult

  1. GregB says:

    Do you mean keep progressive democrats or progressive republicans in office? There is virtually no difference, except for vacuous talking points.

    • There is a huge difference.

      • Gail Combs says:

        But not as big as there should be.

        100 years and they still have not repealed the Federal Reserve fleecing Act though Congressman McFadden (R) and Ron Paul both have tried.

        • Andy DC says:

          The Federal Reserve has done a masterful job of running the country on red ink for 30 years and deluding us into believing that deficits don’t matter. The only question is when the whole pyramid scheme collapses under its own weight.

          Gail, when do you think that will happen? I don’t think it is a matter of “if”, it is a matter of “when”.

        • Gail Combs says:

          Andy,

          Hopefully after I am dead. I suggest as background:
          April 8, 2011 What are the preconditions for Hyperinflation?

          Hyperinflation and Gold’s Parabolic Rise
          we are now starting the hyperinflationary phase in the USA and many other countries. And this will all start in 2014. What will be the trigger? The answer is simple – the fall of the US dollar.

          Hyperinflation is a currency event. It does not arise as a result of increase in demand but as the inevitable consequence of a collapsing currency. When a country for an extended period lives above its means and prints money which it can never pay back, the rest of the world will punish the country and its currency. It took the US over 200 years to reach a debt of US$8 trillion. Since Bernanke became chairman of the Fed in 2006, US debt has more than doubled to $17 trillion. That is an incredible ‘achievement’ and the beginning of the parabolic rise of US debt not by tens of trillions but by 100 of trillions of dollars. This is no different to the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe and a completely natural consequence of what is happening now.

          The Euro which is a rubbish currency is up 8% against the dollar since July and over 65% since 2000. So even against another weak currency, the dollar is losing ground rapidly. And in real terms which of course is gold, the dollar has lost 98% since the creation of the Fed in 1913.

          You can add John Williams: The Real Unemployment Rate: 22%?Not 8.1%
          (wwwDOT)financialsense.com/financial-sense-newshour/guest-expert/2012/05/08/john-williams/the-real-unemployment-rate-the-coming-fiscal-cliff

          The International Monetary Fund is well aware of the problems and recommended a 10% across the board Wealth Confiscation scheme last year to get us back to where we were when Obummer started office. The International Monetary Fund Lays The Groundwork For Global Wealth Confiscation
          (wwwDOT)forbes.com/sites/billfrezza/2013/10/15/the-international-monetary-fund-lays-the-groundwork-for-global-wealth-confiscation/

          I think the BRIC countries with their amassed gold are planing to pull the rug out from under the US dollar pyramid scheme rather soon.

          They have been saber rattling lately, and have set up a rival International Bank and the idiots in Washington have exported our technologies and factories to India and China. At this point they really do not NEED the USA any more so it will be when they decide.

          China has been setting-up agreements with other countries that cut out the US Dollar as middleman.

          Mar 23, 2012: Australia-China currency swap really is a big deal

          From the Reserve Bank about 3.20pm, news of the first bilateral currency swap that China has done with an advanced Western country.

          “Today, the Reserve Bank of Australia signed a bilateral local currency swap agreement with the People’s Bank of China (PBC). The agreement allows for the exchange of local currencies between the two central banks of up to $A30 billion or CNY 200 billion. It is for an initial period of three years and can be activated by either party.

          “The main purposes of the swap agreement are to support trade and investment between Australia and China, particularly in local-currency terms, and to strengthen bilateral financial co-operation. The agreement reflects the increasing opportunities available to settle trade between the two countries in Chinese renminbi (RMB) and to make RMB-denominated investments. It follows the decision by the Chinese authorities last November to allow convertibility between Australian dollars and Chinese yuan in the interbank market in China.”

          That agreement on convertibility last November was the first with a major Western economy and the sixth globally (the rest were with Malaysia and Hong Kong, which is a region in China).

          China has reached agreements on swaps with about 20 countries, but Australia is the biggest and most advanced economy to sign up. …..

          I wrote this several years ago and I do not see any reason to change my opinion.
          ………….
          Americans seem to think “American Business” is OWNED by Americans. It is not. While we worried about our jobs being shipped overseas, our American corporations were sold off to foreign interests. Now the USA faces a manufactured crisis worse than the 1933 depression. It is deliberately handicapped by foreign corporate ownership, massive government red tape, poor US education and a government intent on passing legislation designed by the Corporate & banking cartels to further cripple the US. The corporate owned mass media keeps our attention away from the real problems and possible solutions. Meanwhile the banks and multinational corporate cartels quietly put into action their plans to steal all that is left to steal, the land from under our feet.

          As we try to fix the fiscal mess, the United States might be able to make a come back if we can keep the banking/corporate cartel from taking our land. The bill to do so passed the House and is headed for the Senate under the guise of “Food Safety.” The WTO “harmonized” laws in other countries have been very successful in bankrupting independent farmers allowing corporations to snap up farmland cheaply.

          I am amazed that the US government, in the midst of the worst financial crises ever, is content for short-selling to drive down the asset prices that the government is trying to support….The bald fact is that the combination of ignorance, negligence, and ideology that permitted the crisis to happen still prevails and is blocking any remedy. Either the people in power in Washington and the financial community are total dimwits or they are manipulating an opportunity to redistribute wealth from taxpayers, equity owners and pension funds to the financial sector. ~ Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts250209.htm

          Now we know, it is a shearing of the sheeple with more to come and while the sharks in this country tear it apart the killer whales are circling at a distance waiting for the appropriate moment to take advantage of the weakness of the USA.

          Stewart Dougherty, a specialist in inferential analysis, says it is now “statistically impossible for the United States to pay its obligations”. (wwwDOT)silverbearcafe.com/private/08.09/metastasis.html

          Whether you blame the leveraged buyout feeding frenzies of the 80’s or the World Trade Organization “Free Trade” agreement of the 90’s the result is the same America has been quietly sold off piece by piece. This is a sampling of the industries with over 50% foreign ownership, according to Source Watch

          http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Foreign_ownership_of_U.S._corporations

          * Sound recording industries – 97%
          * Commodity contracts dealing and brokerage – 79%
          * Motion picture and sound recording industries – 75%
          * Metal ore mining – 65%
          * Wineries and distilleries – 64%
          * Database, directory, Book and other publishers – 63%
          * Cement, concrete, lime, and gypsum product – 62%
          * Engine, turbine and power transmission equipment – 57%
          * Rubber product – 53%
          * Nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing – 53%
          * Plastics and rubber products manufacturing – 52%
          * Other insurance related activities – 51%
          * Boiler, tank, and shipping container – 50%
          * Glass and glass product – 48%
          * Coal mining – 48%
          (wwwDOT)sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Foreign_ownership_of_U.S._corporations

          A real eye opener isn’t it. But it gets worse. The Department of Homeland Security says 80% of our ports are operated by Foreigners and they are buying and running US bridges and toll roads. (wwwDOT)alabamaeagle.org/issues.asp?action=form&formID=2105&recordID=131006

          Up for grabs at the negotiating table is worldwide privatization and deregulation of public energy and water utilities, postal services, higher education and state alcohol distribution controls; a new right for foreign firms to obtain U.S. Small Business Administration loans; elimination of a list of specific U.S. state laws about land use, professional licensing and consumer protections, and extreme deregulation of private-sector service industries such as insurance, banking, mutual funds and securities. (wwwDOT)commondreams.org/views03/0305-02.htm

          Statistics (courtesy of Bridgewater) showed in 1990, before WTO was ratified, Foreign ownership of U.S. assets amounted to 33% of U.S. GDP. By 2002 this had increased to over 70% of U.S. GDP. http://www.fame.org/HTM/greg%20Pickup%201%2010%2003%20report.htm

        • Andy DC says:

          Gail,

          You have more or less confirmed my worst fears. Meanwhile as we head off a cliff, all the alarmists can talk about is throwing literally trillions more down the drain for mitigating “climate change” or whatever. I can’t imagine anything more frivolous.

          I believe there are recent developments that are going to drive us quickly over the cliff. There are huge numbers of baby boomers that are retiring, as we all expected, but a relatively new development is many prescription drugs that are extending life. While 20 years ago, people were living from 60-80, now a huge number of us are living from 85-95. That is great, but how are we going to support so many people living for so long? Also these seniors are never going to vote for anyone who threatens their benefits and they do vote in huge numbers.

          Another factor is the crush of new immigration, people who think they are entitled to free education, health care, social services, legal services, cell phones, cable TV, etc. It is my impression that the increase in new immigration has increased exponentially over recent years and is completely out of control.

          People who are dependent on some type of Government benefit or employment are quickly becoming the majority. Those people are never going to vote to cut their pay. The system we now have is perfectly designed for a huge economic catastrophe.

          I think the Founding Fathers were wise to restrict voting to property owners. If you allow the non-productive to determine our economic policy, it is a sure road to ruin. Nothing very profound about that.

          Andy

        • tom0mason says:

          Gail,
          In your following piece (which has no reply button) you reference
          (wwwDOT)alabamaeagle.org/issues.asp?action=form&formID=2105&recordID=131006
          and
          (wwwDOT)commondreams.org/views03/0305-02.htm
          as a source of you figures, neither of these resolve to usable sites when the [.] is re-inserted.
          Do you have other references?

        • Acres of Statuary says:

          Tom: here’s the wayback machine’s last copy.

          https://web.archive.org/web/20131207015630/http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0305-02.htm

          You can look up the other page at archive.org too.

        • there is no substitute for victory says:

          In that case Gail I suggest that you find a place that you would rather live and move there forth with. There have already been to many false Conservatives like Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Richard Murdock, and Todd Akin to last me two lifetimes and every time one of these disasters win a GOP Primary election another leftist Democrat is elected to the US Senate. Tony is right. 66 or even 51 Senators that we can make common cause with is 1000 times better than one or two weaklings who may agree with you or me on every issue, but who are unable to pass anything but gas, little less pass legislation or redress grievances. It reminds me of Oliver Cromwell’s speech to the Long Parliament.

          “It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

          Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

          Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!”

          http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play?p=youtube+we+have+met+the+enemy+and+he+is+us&vid=b97f431d26d1673111c1b6f0ada5b46d&l=6%3A59&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DVN.608038082317780420%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D2MPPaBtTSy4&tit=WE+HAVE+MET+THE+ENEMY+AND+HE+IS+US.+-+Walt+Kelly&c=1&sigr=11atdhc5g&sigt=11g7tql4k&ct=p&age=0&hsimp=yhs-fh_lsonsw&hspart=avg&type=ie.10.w8.hp.17-03.us.avg._._&tt=b

        • rishrac says:

          Everybody that goes shopping knows that there is already real inflation. Second, how do you think the US is going to pay for all the bonds the Chinese have been buying to keep our government afloat? Without out this borrowing the money the Chinese have, the US would have to be printing wads of money. And one day we will have to. You’ll need a very big credit card to buy a loaf of bread.

      • Mat Helm says:

        Yes there is. One will continue our slow but sure descension into hell, while the other will do so faster. Hopefully pushing it to a tipping point while I still have strength enough to fight.

        Voting for the likes of McCain, Romney, or in my case this Nov, Tillis, is basically the same as being a frog in a pot of water on the stove….. Nice n warm….

      • GoneWithTheWind says:

        I agree there is a difference. If Mitt Romney or even the far left nut McCain had won instead of Obama then we would much more slowly be moving to the Marxist socialist left. And that is the problem that most conservatives have with Republicans. They are marginally better then the more radical leftist Democrats but not much. If Romney were to run in 2016 and were elected do you believe he would actively seek to reverse Obamacare or crack down on the border? Do you think he would appoint special prosecutors to investigate the long list of criminal and Mafia like actions by most of our cabinet level appointes and their minions? Of course he wouldn’t. What he would do is play nice and compromise with the Marxist/socialist Democrats and move us slowly ever more inexorably to the left. Bigger government, union control, higher taxes, more jobs moving offshore, more illegal aliens moving in, did I mention higher taxes, more regulations, more appeasing the AGW crowd, more money and control ceded to the UN, and higher taxes…
        My solution is not the easy one and that is elect the crazy communist bitch (oops can I say that?), let her do her left wing damage and startle/wake up the sleeping population to what is going on. Otherwise by the time the citizens do wake up it will be too late. Watch and see what Obama and a lame duck congress does to us after the election. Watch and see what the Republicans do not do after they take over the Senate in 2015. Do you really think the establishment Republicans are going to fix this, to turn it around?

        • Gail Combs says:

          NO!

          Both major political parties used the media to build the perception of opposing positions on key issues, while all the while building consensus on issues that were critical to social change. These people who want a Global Socialist Government are pros at manipulating people.

          We know thanks to Eustace Mullins and his research on the Federal Reserve, that when the Federal Reserve Act did not pass the first time TPTB fielded a third party candidate to guarrantee the democrats “the party of the people” would win. They then had a DEMOCRAT instead of a Republican sponsor the bill and changed it to look pallatable. As Warburg said, The idea was just to get the bill passed “we can change it later guys”

          Actually TPTB backed ALL three candidates but they wanted to switch control from the republicans to the democrats to dupe the people into think there was a “change” and the “new bill” was NOT the old bill. We have been paying for that mistake ever since.

          The same thing was done to get the World Trade Organization ratified. It was first floated by Daddy Bush and flopped so then it was handed to Clinton who charmed Congress into ratifying it by making false statements and promises.

          It will be a very up hill battle and I do not think we will be allowed to vote for anyone who is not already in the bankers pockets. I have been trying to get people to wake up to what is actually going on. I use the Bankers and Federal Reserve as a starting point because No one, Marxist or Constitutionalist likes to be ripped off by the bankers especially once they realize the bankers lend out counterfeit money and get you labor and property in return.

          The key to understanding what is happening is to understand fractional reserve banking and how it concentrates wealth and power into the hands of a very few who then use it to gather the reins of control.

          January 29, 1989
          New York Times:
          LEVERAGED BUYOUTS: AMERICAN PAYS THE PRICE

          ….These days, corporations seem to exist for the investment bankers…. In fact, investment banks are replacing the publicly held industrial corporations as the largest and most powerful economic institutions in America…. THERE ARE SIGNS THAT A VICIOUS spiral has begun, as each corporate player seeks to improve its standard of living at the expense of another’s. Corporate raiders transfer to themselves, and other shareholders, part of the income of employees by forcing the latter to agree to lower wages. [This is why Romney flopped as a candidate. He was shown to be a corporate raider.]

          The Network of Global Corporate Control, Explanations:
          http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/4217:the-network-of-global-corporate-control#14127222135391&action=collapse_widget&id=15944

          http://www.globalresearch.ca/bankers-rule-the-world-the-network-of-global-corporate-control/28235

          http://21stcenturywire.com/2013/10/03/whistleblower-karen-hudes-how-the-global-elite-rule-the-world/

          Actual Paper: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025995#s3

          G. Edward Griffin hit the nail on the head when he said:

          ….They [the bankers] are using this river of wealth to acquire power over you and me and our children.

          They are spending it to acquire control over the power centers of society. The power centers are those groups and institutions through which individuals live and act and rely on for their information. They are literally buying up the world but not the real estate and the hardware, they’re buying control over the organizations, the groups and institutions that control people. In other words, to be specific, they are buying control over politicians, political parties, television networks, cable networks, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, wire services, motion picture studios, universities, labor unions, church organizations, trade associations, tax-exempt foundations, multi-national corporations, boy scouts, girl scouts, you name it. Make your own list of organizations and you will find that this is where those people have been for many decades spending this river of wealth to acquire operational control particularly over those institutions and individuals, those organizations that represent opposition to themselves. That’s a critical area for expenditure on their part.

          I am assuming everyone understands what fractional reserve banking is, other wise a good article explaining it is
          Origins of the Fractional Reserve system

          Here is a short but good history on the bankers take over
          The Money Machine

          and another good explanation and history
          The History of The Banking Industry

          Also a short essay: The Origin of Basic Value Foundation on Money

          For a real rundown on the history of money, download the pdf of the History of Money by Elgin Groseclose at the Mises Institute. The book is sadly out of print, but still available via pdf: http://mises.org/books/money.pdf

          Also there is a very short essay: The Origin of Basic Value Foundation on Money

          Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) made a major contribution to the theory of money with the publication of his book, The Theory of Money and Credit (1912). he followed this path-breaking book with what has proven to be one of the most important essays in the history of economic theory: “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” (1920). In it, he argued that without capital markets based on private ownership, socialist central planners are economically blind. They cannot know either the economic value or the price of capital goods. Therefore, they cannot know which resources should be allocated to meet the desires of consumers, including the State itself

          MUST READ:
          Foreword by Yuri Maltsev …

          In this essay, “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth,” Mises examines Marxism’s most fundamental claims. In doing so, Mises exposes socialism as a utopian scheme that is illogical, uneconomic, and unworkable at its core. It is “impossible” and must fail because it is devoid of economic rationale; it provides no means for any objective basis of economic calculation and thus no way to assign resources to their most productive uses. In 1920, howeverthe enthusiasm for socialism was so strong, especially among Western intellectuals, that Mises’s short and insightful masterpiece was either not understood or deliberately distorted by his critics.

          “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” is available:
          http://mises.org/econcalc.asp

          As the pro-socialist and millionaire economics textbook author Robert Heilbroner finally admitted in The New Yorker in 1990, “Mises was right.”

        • Gail Combs says:

          Tony, my comment got kicked into moderation because of too many links.
          Thanks in advance for fishing it out.

          The links are important so I wanted them ‘live’

      • Sheldon says:

        “There is a huge difference”

        NOT in the areas that count the most in the long run.

        Getting it Right
        7 Ways Republicans and Democrats are exactly the same

        http://rare.us/story/7-ways-republicans-and-democrats-are-exactly-the-same/

        Here are 7 big reasons there’s no difference between establishment Democrats and Republicans:

        1. Both support endless war. It’s been more than a decade since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and America’s entanglements are far from over. Though Bush is remembered as the consummate hawk, Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama has used his time in office to start or maintain additional wars in Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia. Now, he wants to add Syria to the list. My generation can barely remember peace—and there’s no end in sight for a foreign policy with devastating human and financial costs.

        2. Both engage in out-of-control spending. Yes, deficit spending has accelerated under Barack Obama. But you know what? There was also a massive acceleration under Bush. The fact is, debt is a bipartisan problem, and neither party is innocent. With $17 trillion of debt (and rapidly counting) as the consequence of decades of bipartisan irresponsibility, the time has passed for pointing fingers and dubbing a slightly slower rate of spending growth a “historic cut.”

        3. Both ignore our most basic rights. CNN recently asked “When can a government kill its own people?” but for President Obama and some old guard GOP leaders like Sen. John McCain, that question has already been answered: Pretty much whenever it’s convenient. In fact, the U.S. government has already assassinated a 16-year-old American citizen by drone strike, killing a boy who was neither accused nor suspected of any crime.

        4. Both have no respect for the rule of law. Obama swept into office promising a new attention to the rule of law after years of (correct) complaints that Bush often ignored it. “I take the Constitution very seriously,” he maintained to a nation weary for lawfulness. Bush and his GOP Congress were rightly critiqued for rampantly flouting the Constitution, especially the 4th and 5th Amendments (rights to privacy and a fair trial). But as Gitmo remains open, the NDAA makes indefinite detention a possibility for any American, and the list of NSA abuses reaches absurd proportions, Obama’s campaign promise is overdue for a death certificate.

        5. Both are bought and paid for by big business. You know what’s the best original idea in politics today? Making politicians wear suits like NASCAR drivers, which display their biggest corporate sponsors. Democrats and Republicans alike would be plastered with logos. So is it any wonder that many of these same businesses get massive favors from the government at taxpayers’ expense? DC spends upwards of $100 billion on corporate welfare annually, not to mention huge one-off expenditures like the bailouts.

        6. Both care most about their own power. President Obama recently joked, “That’s the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want.” And while he was just kidding around, his humor was in line with the bipartisan presidential mindset. In the recent State of the Union address, the President announced his intention to continue expanding the power of the Executive at Congress’ expense. Republicans were duly upset at this power grab, but historically GOP Presidents have actually averaged slightly more executive orders than Democrats have.

        7. Both have a long record of expanding government and shrinking liberty. Finally, take a look at the big picture:

        Our government is reading our emails and monitoring our calls.

        It gropes us at the airport, wants to keep track of our cars, and plans to subject us to random security sweeps at concerts and train stations.

        We can’t decide for ourselves what to consume, whether to buy insurance, or who to marry.

        All our income until mid-April goes directly to the government.

        America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and minorities are subject to unfair, disproportionate punishment.

        Is this really the land of the free?

        In 2014, it’s very difficult to answer that question in the affirmative. But it’s easy to see that partisanship isn’t the answer—and neither is bipartisan big government. As America moves toward a new, liberty-friendly policy consensus, let’s toss this outdated left vs. right rivalry and focus on the real fight:

        Washington vs. us.

        • Gail Combs says:

          “….let’s toss this outdated left vs. right rivalry and focus on the real fight:

          Washington vs. us….”
          Correct. Top Senate Democrat: bankers “own” the U.S. Congress

        • phodges says:

          Gail…that pretty much sums up the whole thread. I am really don’t understand how that is not completely transparent to everyone.

          “There are two ways to conquer a nation. One is by war, the other is by debt.”- John Adams

          Our nation was lost with the advent of the FED in 1913. All you will ever get is more debt, and more wars for the bankers.

      • alibertarian2 says:

        Remember how HillaryCare was rejected, and led to the first Republican House in 40 years? Americans are willing to ingest socialist utopia, but only if it comes slowly, bite by bite; a little socialism to themselves, more to their children, and yet more to their grandchildren. Republicans are necessary to this process.

        Republicans are the brakes to the runaway train that would otherwise crash and burn at every tight turn if the Democrats were always in power. Republicans are necessary to the establishment of the socialist utopia, because they rarely repeal Big Government, they just impose more chunks of government upon us that are smaller than those that Democrats would impose. Republicans voted for the laws making sure that you use the proper light bulbs throughout your house. They will not repeal carbon taxes, they will just make them smaller.

        This more surely leads to the socialist utopia that leftists want. Do you want to punish the generation that continues to feed coal to the steam engine that lead us into socialist utopia, or do you want more punishment to fall on our grandchildren?

      • Poptech says:

        Progressive Republicans passed Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act etc… and almost got Cap and Trade and Amnesty Part 2 passed.

        • alibertarian2 says:

          Regarding:

          in response to stevengoddard:

          There is a huge difference.

          Progressive Republicans passed Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act etc… and almost got Cap and Trade and Amnesty Part 2 passed.

          Pointing to some of the similarities between Democrats and Republicans does not disprove Steven’s claim. But the following does prove his claim to be true:

          There are rather large and important differences between the two parties in federal spending. Check the National Taxpayer’s Union to find that House Democrats scored an average of 21%, Senate Democrats scored an average 9%, while House Republicans scored 75%, and Senate Republicans 81%.

          Also make sure you are around when the next Supreme Court Justice nominee comes up for a vote in the Senate. I’m sure the next “the Constitution is a living document” nominee by Obama will be unanimously affirmed by all Republicans.

          No difference on repeal-and-replace the First Amendment, as the Democrats just tried in the Senate?

          No difference on Keystone pipeline?
          Carbon credits and taxes?
          The first vote in Congress on TARP?
          Role of government in education?
          Race and gender hiring preferences?

        • Poptech says:

          Oh, I was told that SCOTUS appointments was the reason to vote for progressive Republicans

          How is that John Roberts appointment working out?

    • Ed Martin says:

      There is virtually no difference at all… after a good lobbyist goes to work and the sweet smell of $$$$$$$$$$ fills the air.

      http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRJywOEJmfjH2en1RxhwsWPuoFS-7rWI5pIEopVF-VPiJUuMB5d

      https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/106-1999/s105

      http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GKfYK8Fwez0/TasJ4tVjP-I/AAAAAAAAAPk/83eqNnCKrcg/s1600/glb.jpg

      The final bill was passed by the Senate 90-8, and by the House 362-57. This legislation was signed into law by President William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton on November 12, 1999.

      https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/106-1999/s354

      https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/106-1999/h570

       
      The Road to America’s Ruin
      “The regulation of derivatives transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary. Regulation that serves no useful purpose hinders the efficiency of markets to enlarge standards of living.” – Alan Greenspan, chairman, Federal Reserve, 1987-2006

      Bill Clinton, impeachment fresh on his mind, signed it into law on November 12, 1999. Here’s what he had to say about it at the signing: “You heard Senator Gramm characterize this bill as a victory for freedom and free markets. And Congressman LaFalce characterized this bill as a victory for consumer protection. And both of them are right. And I have always believed that one required the other.”

      http://bulk.resource.org/gpo.gov/papers/1999/1999_vol2_2080.pdf

      Chris Dodd, March, 2007:
      “I am proud to have had Tom’s and the Chamber’s support on some of the most important pieces of legislation with which I have been associated. Laws like the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act; the Y2K litigation reform act; the Class Action Fairness Act; the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which has helped bring our financial services sector into the 21st century; and the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, which in the aftermath of 9/11 has played a crucial role in keeping our economy strong.”

      http://crooksandliars.com/files/uploads/2008/05/countdown-gramm-mccain.jpg

      http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSQj0i-E2w0E-2lR_rNn6BB39TfUyd7f-w2L4BES9vcUXF2Dv7i

      http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/09/24/facts_about_billionaires_data_from_the_2014_wealth_x_and_ubs_billionaire.html

      Wealth-X is a Singapore based intelligence service company that keeps track of the world’s Ultra High Net Worth individuals (UHNW) and funnels profitable investments to them. UBS sponsored the study and is the same huge Swiss bank that paid off Senator Phil Gramm for repealing the Glass Steagall Act. It’s repeal allowed Wall Street banks to engage in unlimited gambling with depositors money and was a major contributor to the 2008 banking collapse. 

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BylSmcGIEAQjo8l.jpg

      http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h52/Tiktaalik/ReaganGrammBoots777.jpg

      While still a congressman, he co-sponsored President Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981, which launched the era of growing inequality that we live in, and increased government deficit spending to then-record highs.

      Gramm’s long been a handmaiden to Big Finance. In the 1990s, as chairman of the Senate banking committee, he routinely turned down Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt’s requests for more money to police Wall Street; during this period, the sec’s workload shot up 80 percent, but its staff grew only 20 percent. Gramm also opposed an sec rule that would have prohibited accounting firms from getting too close to the companies they audited—at one point, according to Levitt’s memoir, he warned the sec chairman that if the commission adopted the rule, its funding would be cut. And in 1999, Gramm pushed through a historic banking deregulation bill that decimated Depression-era firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firms—setting off a wave of merger mania.

      But Gramm’s most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry—friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career—came on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered dead—even by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. “Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it,” says a congressional aide familiar with the bill’s history.

      It’s not exactly like Gramm hid his handiwork—far from it. The balding and bespectacled Texan strode onto the Senate floor to hail the act’s inclusion into the must-pass budget package. But only an expert, or a lobbyist, could have followed what Gramm was saying. The act, he declared, would ensure that neither the sec nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) got into the business of regulating newfangled financial products called swaps—and would thus “protect financial institutions from overregulation” and “position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century.”

      It didn’t quite work out that way. For starters, the legislation contained a provision—lobbied for by Enron, a generous contributor to Gramm—that exempted energy trading from regulatory oversight, allowing Enron to run rampant, wreck the California electricity market, and cost consumers billions before it collapsed. (For Gramm, Enron was a family affair. Eight years earlier, his wife, Wendy Gramm, as cftc chairwoman, had pushed through a rule excluding Enron’s energy futures contracts from government oversight. Wendy later joined the Houston-based company’s board, and in the following years her Enron salary and stock income brought between $915,000 and $1.8 million into the Gramm household.)

      But the Enron loophole was small potatoes compared to the devastation that unregulated swaps would unleash

      Today, thanks to some rules and regulations, CDS is about half of what it was. There are about seventeen trillion in CDS still there, still able to wreak havoc.

      • alibertarian2 says:

        Regarding:

        There is virtually no difference at all… after a good lobbyist goes to work and the sweet smell of $$$$$$$$$$ fills the air.

        There are rather large and important differences between the two parties in federal spending. Check the National Taxpayer’s Union to find that House Democrats scored an average of 21%, Senate Democrats scored an average 9%, while House Republicans scored 75%, and Senate Republicans 81%.

        Also make sure you are around when the next Supreme Court Justice nominee comes up for a vote in the Senate. I’m sure the next “the Constitution is a living document” nominee by Obama will be unanimously affirmed by all Republicans.

        No difference on repeal-and-replace the First Amendment, as the Democrats just tried in the Senate?

        No difference on Keystone pipeline?
        Carbon credits and taxes?
        The first vote in Congress on TARP?
        Role of government in education?
        Race and gender hiring preferences?

        Regarding:

        the same huge Swiss bank that paid off Senator Phil Gramm for repealing the Glass Steagall Act. It’s repeal allowed Wall Street banks to engage in unlimited gambling with depositors money and was a major contributor to the 2008 banking collapse.

        Gramm didn’t have to be paid off, any more than Democrats are paid off by their union thugs. Gramm is a free-market guy and Democrats are pro-union, and were before the donations arrived.

        The collapse of the financial system was caused, fundamentally, by the government.

        “There is almost universal agreement that the fundamental cause of the
        crisis was the combination of a credit boom and a housing bubble.” — Viral V. Acharya & Matthew Richardson (2009): CAUSES
        OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS, Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society,
        21:2-3, 195-210 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08913810902952903)

        “All told, after adding the SEC’s new data to our original estimates, there were approximately 28 million subprime and Alt-A loans outstanding on June 30, 2008, before the financial crisis, with a value of approximately $4.8 trillion [held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]. This was half of all mortgages in the United States.” (emphasis added) — http://www.american.com/archive/2011/december/why-the-left-is-losing-the-argument-over-the-financial-crisis

        “Forcing TARP funds on all banks did not restore confidence in the industry. It destroyed confidence as the market concluded that all banks must now be in trouble because all banks were receiving funding and presumed to have needed and wanted it. You may have forgotten that prior to TARP, and even a month after the Lehman bankruptcy, markets had declined but were still behaving reasonably well, except for those financial institutions that were having liquidity issues. With the announcement of TARP, isolated liquidity issues turned into a tsunami impacting all banks and all industries. It precipitated a dramatic drop in the stock market, froze trading and the capital markets, magnified and extended the market collapse, damaged the reputations of many financial institutions who did no wrong…” (emphasis added) — The Financial Crisis: Why the Conventional Wisdom Has It All Wrong, Richard Kovacevich, Cato Journal, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Fall 2014).

    • Ed Martin says:

      When a good lobbyist with lots of money gets involved, there is no difference between the two political parties. See…

      https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/106-1999/s105

      http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GKfYK8Fwez0/TasJ4tVjP-I/AAAAAAAAAPk/83eqNnCKrcg/s1600/glb.jpg

      The final bill was passed by the Senate 90-8, and by the House 362-57. This legislation was signed into law by President William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton on November 12, 1999.

      https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/106-1999/s354

      https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/106-1999/h570

       
      The Road to America’s Ruin
      “The regulation of derivatives transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary. Regulation that serves no useful purpose hinders the efficiency of markets to enlarge standards of living.” – Alan Greenspan, chairman, Federal Reserve, 1987-2006

      Bill Clinton, impeachment fresh on his mind, signed it into law on November 12, 1999. Here’s what he had to say about it at the signing: “You heard Senator Gramm characterize this bill as a victory for freedom and free markets. And Congressman LaFalce characterized this bill as a victory for consumer protection. And both of them are right. And I have always believed that one required the other.”

      http://bulk.resource.org/gpo.gov/papers/1999/1999_vol2_2080.pdf

      Chris Dodd, March, 2007:
      “I am proud to have had Tom’s and the Chamber’s support on some of the most important pieces of legislation with which I have been associated. Laws like the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act; the Y2K litigation reform act; the Class Action Fairness Act; the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which has helped bring our financial services sector into the 21st century; and the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, which in the aftermath of 9/11 has played a crucial role in keeping our economy strong.”

    • Ed Martin says:

      Billionaires have 1000% more cash this year, sitting on it, not putting it to work which creates employment.

      http://crooksandliars.com/files/uploads/2008/05/countdown-gramm-mccain.jpg

      http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSQj0i-E2w0E-2lR_rNn6BB39TfUyd7f-w2L4BES9vcUXF2Dv7i

      http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/09/24/facts_about_billionaires_data_from_the_2014_wealth_x_and_ubs_billionaire.html

      Wealth-X is a Singapore based intelligence service company that keeps track of the world’s Ultra High Net Worth individuals (UHNW) and funnels profitable investments to them. UBS sponsored the study and is the same huge Swiss bank that paid off Senator Phil Gramm for repealing the Glass Steagall Act. It’s repeal allowed Wall Street banks to engage in unlimited gambling with depositors money and was a major contributor to the 2008 banking collapse. 

  2. darrylb says:

    For both parties, but in particular the democratic party, serving constituents is not the primary goal, serving oneself and maintaining and ideology is the primary goal.
    A huge majority of U.S. citizens would like to see congressional term limits, Has anyone seen a bill introduced to that effect.
    However, for the first time I am going to vote totally the party line. Things have gotten just too skewed.

    • Gail Combs says:

      Unfortunately you are correct. Back to voting for the ‘lesser of two evils’ SIGHhhhhhh

      • Thomas Englert says:

        Wouldn’t the foreign ownership of US business create a strong incentive to maintain the US economy?

        I wouldn’t want my investments to crash.

        • Gail Combs says:

          No
          Most of those factories have been packed up and shipped overseas – literally I used to folk dance with a guy whose company did the packing.

  3. Pathway says:

    Article V convention of the states is the only long term solution.

    • there is no substitute for victory says:

      A vote for a Libertarian Party or for an Independent Party candidate is nothing more nor is it anything less than a deliberate vote for the policies of the Democrat Party and that party’s leader, Barrack Obama.

      In case any of you good people want to know how this country has fallen so low, so fast go back to 1992 when Tea Party minded Americans put a oaf named Bill and his Lady Macbeth, HILLARY CLINTON in the White House with only 40% of the American Peoples’ vote.

      If it wasn’t for that big eared Texan Ross Perot splitting the Conservative vote in 1992 Hillary Clinton would still be living in Little Rock, Arkansas and handling last will and testament legal work for Seasoned Citizens. It is like Pogo the Possum and Walt Kelley use to say, “I have met the enemy and he is us!” The Ross Perot Presidential Candidacy BTW is responsible for its own giant sucking sound. That sound is our country getting sucked down the Independent Party toilet.

    • Gail Combs says:

      Michael Bloomberg should either have his US citizenship stripped or be tossed in jail:

      US Constitution:

      Article I, Section 9, Clause 8:

      No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.

      Can’t get any blunter than that can we?

  4. Steven, I wrote a response to your post that got longer and longer, and finally I had to just chuck it. The bottom line is that you’re writing from a perspective that the paramount objective is the preservation of one’s family. I don’t think like that. While I have almost never voted for Libertarians, and have no plans to do so in the future, I do sometimes choose to boycott a vote in which both or all candidates are evil. This choice is predicated on the belief that my first allegiance is to God. I put Him first, and then I trust that He has a plan, not only for me but for my family as well.

    And I try always to be mindful that elections are for the world’s governments, but we don’t need those governments to be moral in order for God’s will and plan to be fulfilled. (If we did, it never would be!) Sorry if that comes across to you as childish; if so, I don’t suppose there’s much more I could tell you that would change your mind. But I just wanted you to know my reasoning, so that you wouldn’t think that I haven’t thought it through or was just jumping to a half-baked conclusion.

    The real bottom line is that in voting, as in everything else, we must serve God first, humanity (including our family) second, and ourselves not at all. After all, it is His Kingdom, and He is in charge of defending it.

    RTF

  5. stpaulchuck says:

    52% will choose to be useful idiots (again)

  6. Goddard: “Adults have to make hard choices sometimes.”
    Progressives: “We were told there would be no math!”

  7. KTM says:

    In specific races, a 3rd party candidate can decide the outcome of the election (Bush/Gore/Nader in Florida, 2000). In Kansas right now the Democrat candidate for Senate dropped out of the race completely because a 3rd party candidate was splitting his votes away. But in the big picture I’m more worried about Republican voters staying home than voting for a 3rd party.

    Romney won independents by 10 points in Ohio, but lost the state. He won independents by 5 points nationally, but lost the election. Based on turnout for McCain and the Republican wave in 2010, they figure that 3-4 million Republican voters stayed home, which was more than enough to elect Romney.

    • Regarding Romney. If that’s true (and the reports I looked at showed that they were using very incomplete and unofficial election returns for those calculations, possibly excluding about 1 1/2 million Romney votes that were cast and ultimately counted), that implies that a majority of the voters did not wish to be led by Romney. That is not the fault of the voters. The voters are the “board members” of the republic, and they are under no obligation, legal or moral, to exercise their vote. In fact, in a way they are voting by boycotting the race. Because if everyone did that, and their uncast votes were recorded properly, there could be no President. So in effect, they voted to have a do-over (hopefully with at least one new candidate).

      If Romney wanted to be President, it was his responsibility (and no one else’s) to see that he accumulated sufficient support to be elected. Someone was talking about adulthood recently….

      • KTM says:

        I don’t disagree with your premise, but there is a difference between political principles and political gamesmanship. Democrats excel at gamesmanship and Republicans stink at it. Years ago, every time a Republican brought up something that was a winning political issue it was attacked as a “wedge issue”. Over time Repubs became cowed into silence, while Democrats have now become the Wedge party. Everything they do is driven by identity politics, nothing is principled, and Repubs have unilaterally disarmed.

        Repubs also have a tendency to challenge their own party establishment through primary challenges. This is very principled and justified, but political suicide. The Democrats have no compunctions about re-electing the same failed establishment types for decades on end, you never see any established Democrat lose a primary election to a Socialist for instance.

        The Dems have no problem parading around as intellectuals and then slumming for votes in November. They have no problem supporting unsustainable government largesse, with no plan to ever pay for it. And Democrat voters are better at holding their noses and mobilizing to elect a highly flawed Democrat than allow a Republican to win. The Democrats are just better at playing the political game, like it or not.

        At the same time, there was a lot of antipathy toward Romney from the Republican establishment. Remember back in 2008, when McCain was building up steam and Romney was trailing but the only one that could possibly catch him? Remember in West Virginia, when Romney had a winning edge for delegates in the state, only to have McCain and Huckabee’s delegates conspire to switch their votes in the last ballot to deny him the victory? They all hated Romney in 2008, hated him in 2012, and I’m sure their over the top criticism soured a lot of voters on him for November. Contrast this with Hillary and Obama, who campaigned against each other but never went harshly negative. The Democrats are team-players, the Republicans are all out for themselves.

        • Well, I could write a book in response to the issues you’ve raised. But I’ll just confine myself to three paragraphs. Hopefully, the paragraphs I find most interesting will also be the ones that you find most interesting. 🙂

          1. I disagree that Democrats have no principles. They may be bad ones, but they still have them. The greatest strategic difference between Democrats and Republicans right now is the Democrats are very homogenous, and Republicans are very heterogeneous. Among the Democrats, their newfound homogeneity produces a higher level of intolerance for differing viewpoints within the party. And among Republicans, the heterogeneity, you would think, would produce a higher tolerance of differing viewpoints. However, what is actually observed is that the more threatened the leadership feels by the party’s burgeoning conservative faction, the more motivated they are to crack down on conservative attempts to attain control of the leadership positions. As a result, there is a very low level of trust, and a high degree of tension and stress, between the factions. The “moderates” talk about compromise in the name of unity, but the truth is that it is they who broke the unity in the first place. So they are widely perceived among conservatives as being disingenuous, opportunistic … and yes, even being secretly in league with the other side. (Gasp!)

          2. When you say that “over the top” criticism soured a lot of November voters on Romney, with all due respect, for me this just goes in one ear and out the other. If he knew, or should have known, that he was not someone who could weather a truthful and thorough examination of his past and still win the election, then he had no business involving himself in the first place.

          3. Romney has all but admitted that the biggest mistake, by far, of his 2012 campaign was the 47% comment. But I also feel that the issue with the Kansas City plant was huge, and probably cost him a lot more votes than most people realize. You can’t take a candidate with those kind of hard-core negatives, and then when he loses by a relatively narrow margin, place all the blame on conservatives who tried to sound the alarm when there was still a chance to do something about it. Romney didn’t need a more disciplined base in 2012; he needed a miracle. And he didn’t get it. And, as he was the one who, while possessing intimate knowledge of his own weaknesses and the sheer magnitude of them, chose to put himself out there (twice, no less!), I wouldn’t expect conservatives to lose too much sleep over it. Would the “moderates” do so, if the positions were reversed?

          RTF

      • there is no substitute for victory says:

        R.T.F. said: “…That is not the fault of the voters. The voters are the “board members” of the republic, and they are under no obligation, legal or moral, to exercise their vote. In fact, in a way they are voting by boycotting the race…”

        Boycotting an election is the sign of a Third World or dysfunctional country or electorate. Elections are only boycotted to create strife and discontent by insuring the election of a Pee Poor or maybe I should say a Tea Poor Candidate.

        If you want to ensure an unbroken string of Presidents like Obama, Hillary, Bernie Sanders, or God forbid Pocahontas, keep on sitting on your hands and boycott a few more elections while waiting for the PERFECT candidate.

        • I didn’t say elections, I said races.

          I am not waiting for a perfect candidate. When He shows up, He will not be on any ballot. In fact, there will be no ballot.

          I am not sitting on my hands. I plan to cast many votes in this coming election. I never said otherwise, and you are a thug for suggesting that I did. People like you are the reason we’re in an AGW mess. Can’t confine themselves to the known facts, have to go making things up, acting based on their own imagination, and then lying about people just because they don’t accept the pre-established orthodoxy.

          One of my points was not that one should boycott to get perfect candidates, but that one must boycott the evil ones. That means people who have more evil than good. But there are certain basic things that are not negotiable. I’m sure you have some of these, too. It’s unfortunate if yours are not the same as mine. But that doesn’t give me the right to heap hatred upon your head. (Never mind that it wouldn’t work.)

          It appears you have no little or knowledge of boycotts, because then you should know that the only reason they ever occur is as a protest against actual or perceived illegitimacy. And they are surprisingly effective in getting results thrown out, when the disaffected group(s) are united in conducting the boycott, clearly state their grievances, and choose only the most egregious cases to boycott.

          RTF

  8. tom0mason says:

    With National debt per person at $56,000 ($145,000 per household) and rising, the future is increasingly becoming enslaved by the past.
    http://usadebtclock.com/

    • Gail Combs says:

      Stewart Dougherty, a specialist in inferential analysis, agrees. It is now “statistically impossible for the United States to pay its obligations”. http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/08.09/metastasis.html And that was back in 2009.

      If the US bankrupts then the World Bank and IMF will control the country’s policy making outright.

      • tom0mason says:

        I agree, the way it is most Western nations are in debt well over their heads.
        And most have chosen to ignore the problem. Some have the opportunity to roll it back but have failed to do so.
        Consider what this –
        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
        United States National Debt Per Person $56,000
        United States National Debt Per Household $145,000
        Total US Unfunded Liabilities Per Person $386,000
        Total US Unfunded Liabilities Per Household $1,000,000
        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

        will mean for the generations to come.

      • stpaulchuck says:

        which is why I bought into gold. The only way out of this is to inflate it away.

  9. B says:

    Every few years people forget about the evils of the party out of power and vote them back into power. The government grows, taxes go up, we get poorer, freedom diminishes.

    Neither undoes what the other does*. They simply enjoy the powers for themselves and gain more.

    It’s a tag team.

    *There have been three things undone by the federal government. Three.
    1) prohibition of alcohol and making beer and wine for yourself. (40 some years apart)
    2) prohibition on owning gold.
    3) the 55mph NMSL.

    That’s all that has been recovered working through the system. If we had a real two party system this list would be nearly endless, instead things only go one direction. Next year the repeal of the NMSL will be 20 years old. There has been no recovery of freedom or wealth from the federal government since 1995.

    • No Republicans voted for Obamacare. You think exactly the way Democrats want you to think.

      • GoneWithTheWind says:

        I sincerely hope you are right. But I will bet you a dinner that if the Republicans take the Senate they will spend the next two years in quixotic efforts to reduce abortions, undo same sex marriage and nibble around the edges of taxes. They will not try to overturn Obamacare or secure the borders. They will approve amnesty “lite” and continue wasteful spending and unneeded departments and the overall size of the federal government will continue to increase. If in 2016 a Republican wins the presidency they will continue on the slow track to radical leftism. What we need is statemen and what we have to choose from is dumb and dumber with an “R” or a “D” beside their name.

      • B says:

        I think exactly the way both parties don’t want. I float ideas which threaten their way of life.

        Obamacare is just as much republican as democrat. I have been blessed or cursed with a long memory, so when something comes around again I notice. Many key aspects Obamacare such as mandatory insurance were floated as early as the late 1980s by republicans or republican think tanks. It came into its own as an alternative to Hillarycare. This what we get, this sort of tag-teamed result. Look at the patriot act, it’s a lot of democrat police state crap recycled.

        Keep in mind that Obamacare at its core is crony capitalist. It is not socialist. It extracts wealth from the people and funnels it to the cronies. Sure the people with higher incomes pay the premiums for those with lower incomes, but that’s just window dressing to sell it. It is a rentier scheme. This is what the two parties do, create schemes that funnel our wealth to them and their friends. They sell it differently, but the results are the same.

        We have one party. They work together to extract wealth and labor and lives from the population to benefit themselves. Sure they have petty fights over control. They put on a show now and then so the fans can say ‘nobody on my team voted for that’, but it’s just an illusion. Put forth an idea that threatens their way of life. An idea that favors us, the people over them. Watch the Ds and Rs get together to squish it.

        BTW I did some web searching for references to my memory and this article has a decent summary:
        http://ivn.us/2013/09/27/obamacare-was-originally-proposed-by-republicans/

      • there is no substitute for victory says:

        You are right Steven, and voters like B are part of the problem.

        • Gail Combs says:

          No those who have drunk the kool aid like you are the problem.

          As long as you and others do not acknowledge that the Republican party is in Deep Doo-Doo we are left with a choice of voting for Progressives and Neo-Conservatives both of whom are just different flavors of Big Government Socialists. This is why as I said below 59% of Republican voters are disgusted with the Republican Party.

          Your RAH RAH RAH GO TEAM, isn’t going to do a thing to change that.

          As I have said before less than a half dozen Congress Critters have gone after the unconstitutional Federal Reserve in 100 years and two of them at least were Democrats.
          Wright Patman (1893-1976) (D-TX)
          Henry Gonzales (1916-2000) (D- TX)
          . Ron Paul (R – TX) Threatened with assassination
          Rep. Charles Lindbergh, Sr., R-MN
          Louis T. McFadden (R) murdered
          There are more I was not aware of named in the last link.

          Rep McFadden said:

          “When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here. A super-state controlled by international bankers and industrialists…acting together to enslave the world…Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers but the truth is–the Fed has usurped the government.”

          An Article by Gunther K. Russbacher
          During the 1950’s, Carroll Reese of Tennessee headed what became known as the Reese Committee. The Committee was charged with conducting a thorough investigation of the (then) major tax-exempt foundations linked to the international money cartel. The investigation centered on those foundations and trusts actually owned and controlled by the Rockefeller, Fords and Carnegies, and well as the Guggenheim foundations. The findings regarding the wealth and absolute power of these foundations were so traumatically overwhelming that many in Congress found the information difficult to believe….

          Editor’s note: Navy Captain Gunther Russbacher was a 29 year veteran of the United States Intelligence Community, (Office of Naval Intelligence, attached to the Central Intelligence Agency). During all of that time he has operated as a deep black covert operative. In 1980 Captain Russbacher flew then vice-presidential candidate George Bush to a secret meeting near Paris in what has become known as “The October Surprise” scandal.
          In 1989, Captain Russbacher violated direct orders and married, Rayelan Allan, an investigative researcher who was currently working to expose the October Surprise scandal. Captain Russbacher was arrested two days after their marriage and stayed incarcerated until December of 1993.
          http://nesaranews.blogspot.nl/search?updated-max=2013-03-27T12:28:00-04:00&max-results=10&start=167&by-date=false

          I suggest you whip the blinders off and read the rest of that article. I do not know how much is true and how much is false but it should be looked into.

          Kent Clizbe another CIA operative details in his book how the KGB infiltrated the US media, academia and politics. For example Bobby Kennedy, with the plum appointment of Attorney General of the United States, was targeted by the KGB. “…, the KGB case officer, Georgi Bolshakov, represented himself to his target, Bobby Kennedy, as a “back-channel” conduit to the Kremlin….”

  10. oeman50 says:

    I am voting for a Libertarian because otherwise I would write in Jimmie Buffett as I often do when Tweedledum and Tweedledee are running for office. At least there is a Libertarian running this time.

    • rah says:

      So IOW your voting democrat and that is the point being made.

      • Gail Combs says:

        +1
        Ron Paul split the vote and gave Obummer the win in 2008. That is the first time I voted third party and I regret it.

        • Ed Martin says:

          I always vote third party and donate to them in hopes that they will eventually get more money to run on. I refuse to hold my nose to vote. Wonder what the political landscape would be like if Henry Ross Perot hadn’t faltered because of the threats of smut photographs of his daughter right before her wedding?

        • Mat Helm says:

          Ed,
          I don’t. I’ve come to the conclusion that anyone who actually wants to be in office, shouldn’t be. So if you’re going to flush your vote, do what I do. Write in the name of the person you think would do the best job for whatever open seat. Bush 2 was the last lesser of two evils I voted for. The repub’s nominating McCain was a seriously long term mistake. There were literally millions of “never miss a vote republicans” like myself who had thought and/or said years before, that they would never vote for McCain (for anything), EVER. And once you skip (or as I did, write in) that first vote, the rest become easy. I wanted to cast an anti Obama vote in 2012, and before McCain, probably would have. But now my only hope is that the progressives will move fast enough with their agenda to bring us to the tipping point. And when SC is once again the first to succeed from the union, I’ll pack up my guns and move there…. Although it could be Texas…lol

        • Ed Martin says:

          Mat, I don’t know if this reply will make it to the right place, mine seem to spin off into space.
          Virgil Goode (Constitution) wasn’t on the ballot in Dawgpatch, Awkinsaw so that plan didn’t work.
          The ballots here don’t allow for write-in candidates. Fill in the little circles with a pencil. Texas looks more and more like California every day. Little In-N-Out burger joints and even Winco Foods. Texas is getting more towards being lost to the DimoKrats all the time. All it would take would be for the burger joint and Winco to give free Donkey burgers to the minorities to register to vote and provide a picture ID, etc…

          https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BzN_9P4CUAA8bQO.jpg

          https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BzW8wS7IQAAWqnE.jpg

          https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BxpBZeqCMAAeAgn.jpg

        • Mat Helm says:

          Ed,
          You can write in anywhere in the US. You sometimes have to request a paper ballot, but you are never limited to the printed candidates…

          That’s only true about TX because CA residents are abandoning their sinking ship. But like yankees that come down here and they try to change us (which begs the question, “why the hello didn’t you just stay where you were?”), the la la land hippy hoard too will fail in TX…

        • Actually, in Florida, the law says that:

          1. to be a write-in candidate, you have to collect signatures or pay a fee, and qualify. The amounts of signatures or money are lower but they are still there.

          2. If a voter writes in the name of a person who has not pre-qualified as a write-in candidate, their vote will NOT be counted. Even if 90% of the electorate tries to write them in, those ballots will be counted as an “undervote” for that race.

          3. For any races for which no one qualifies as a write-in candidate, NO LINE WILL BE PROVIDED ON THE BALLOT FOR WRITING IN ANYONE. Attempts to write anything next to or under the printed candidates will be ignored, and if no bubble is filled in or no touch-screen selection is made, the ballot will be counted as an “undervote” for that race.

          4. For presidential elections, voters are actually voting for Electors who will go to Tallahassee to cast the state’s official votes for President and Vice President. Therefore, in this particular race, it is doubly pointless to write in someone who hasn’t qualified, because they will have no Electors appointed, so even if the person written in gets the majority of “votes”, the voters have still not authorized any slate of Electors to go to the state capitol and cast votes there. Therefore, their “votes” would be voided on these grounds alone, irrespective of any pre-qualification requirement. The candidate with the “second-best” performance would be declared the winner by the Secretary of State. Even if that candidate received votes from less than 5% of the electorate. So in effect, a write-in for President is a vote for whoever is on the ballot who will receive the greatest number of legitimate votes.

          Also, you state that “You can write in anywhere in the US. You sometimes have to request a paper ballot, but you are never limited to the printed candidates…”

          Florida law explicitly states that if no one qualifies as a write-in candidate, then YOU ARE LIMITED to the printed candidates, and efforts to write someone in must be tossed out and not counted. Or more specifically, counted as “undervotes”, which is a category that includes ballots for which nothing was marked on that race.

          These laws regarding write-in candidates have been in place since at least the mid-1990s.

          RTF

      • there is no substitute for victory says:

        No, the point being made is that he is voting Marxist.
        They say that the truest form of flattery is copying. Why would the GOP ape the Party of Marx or Engels except to emulate their success? By boycotting elections you only ensure that the party you boycotted becomes more like the party that you detest, not more in line with your values. This is because the party you boycotted will morph into the opposition party in a failed attempt to win elections by copying the policies of the Democrat Party. Therefor by voting for a Libertarian the voter is announcing that he or she is in fact an enemy of the state, and not a patriot.

        • Wow, so if a political group realizes that their base is boycotting them, that causes them to move further away from the base, and in fact cozy up to the group that represents the opposite views, and become one with them?

          Does this also work the same way for the other side? If the leftist base boycotts a bunch of their own candidates, accusing them of being secret agents for conservatism, do the candidates respond by becoming more conservative?

  11. How To Live In A Declining Civilization

    Nothing can be done to halt the decline of a civilization; it is an irreversible and inevitable process that occurs with every civilization. Concerned citizens must learn to live in a hell called heaven without losing hope. The community is now senile and can no longer do anything sensible, so it is futile to try to:

    • Arrest the decline in the community by making changes, because the community will only accept changes for the worse.
    • Publicly promote the truth as this can only earn official denial and private persecution.
    • Control events by gaining a position of influence, for only the worst are promoted.

    Only things to do

    The only thing a sensible citizen can do is try to uphold sanity by following tradition whenever possible, which must include:

    • Be polite.
    • Think clearly by using plain words at all times.
    ….more here….
    From ‘A Study Of Our Decline’ by P Atkinson (27/9/2014)
    http://www.ourcivilisation.com/

    • Gail Combs says:

      The USA is not declining. It was pushed, prodded and shoved into a decline by enemies from within and from without.

      I used to think as you do until I did a bunch of research and found what is behind the destruction of the USA. Look at the comments I made above and also read Kent Clizbe’s book Willing Accomplices: How KGB Covert Influence Agents Created Political Correctness and Destroyed America

      Then look at how Iceland handled the bankruptcy situation:
      Iceland’s jailed bankers ‘a model’ for dealing with ‘financial terrorists’

      Iceland Jails Bankers, Erases Citizens’ Debt, Recovers Strongly

      Grimsson: IMF learned new lessons in Iceland

      The global financial crisis brought Iceland to the brink of collapse in 2008. Since then, the country has recovered well by doing many things differently from the rest of the world, President Olafur Grimsson tells DW.
      Olafur Grimsson: Of course, there are many reasons, but there are perhaps two fundamental reasons why we’re now back on the road to recovery, with economic growth and relatively low unemployment. The first dimension in our response was that we realized early on that this wasn’t just a financial or economic crisis. It was also a profound political, social and even judicial crisis.

      To galvanize the nation to go through times of hardship and difficulties there were a number of social and political reforms so that people would see that there was an attempt to let justice be done and to reform the decision-making mechanism. I think that in many other parts of Europe the crisis was long seen primarily as an economic and financial problem

      The other dimension was that we didn’t follow the traditional Western orthodoxies of how to deal with an economic crisis of this magnitude.

      “For example, you did not rescue any banks…”

      No, indeed not. We let the banks fail. They were private banks, and I’ve often asked the question why people consider them to be the holy churches of modern economy. Why are they different from telecommunications or railway companies or many other companies? Why shouldn’t they be allowed to fail?

      If you send a signal to the bankers that they can take all the risks they want to take, they will be rewarded financially in an extraordinary way. But if they fail, the bill will always be sent to taxpayers, ordinary people, fishermen, farmers, doctors, teachers, nurses and so on. But in addition we introduced currency control instruments. And we didn’t introduce social austerity measures as demanded by leaders in many different parts of Europe for their own countries at the moment….

      “didn’t introduce social austerity measures as demanded “ Look at IMF/World Bank Structural adjustment programs (SAPs) to understand exactly what he is talking about.

  12. Gail Combs says:

    tom0mason says: Gail,
    In your following piece (which has no reply button) you reference….
    Sorry Tom those are old old links from around 2010 or before.

    The best bet is the way back machine.

    (I hate that some really good articles get flushed down a black hole.)
    This one at least got saved elsewhere:

    Somewhere in the trillionaires room of Heaven three old codgers are sitting around a table smoking cigars and chuckling over the J. P Morgan Chase & Company buyout of Bear Stearns for a paltry $2.00 a share. Not so much because the price had been over $130 a share a few weeks earlier but because the Federal Reserve Board put up $30 billion of the government’s money to guarantee the sale.

    Yes, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, patriarchs of three of the most powerful family fortunes in history have waited nearly two centuries to see their dreams fulfilled. Perhaps such patience is why their families have remained successful by steadfastly maintaining the rules of the game as set down by their founders.

    It was 248 years ago, in 1760 that Mayer Amschel Rothschild created the House of Rothschild that was to pave the way for international banking and control of the world’s resources on a scale unparalleled and somewhat mysterious to this date….

    From oil (Shell) to diamonds (DeBeers) to gold (from 1919 until 2004 a Rothschild was permanent Chairman of the London Gold Fixing committee which met twice a day in the Rothschild offices in London) the Rothschild’s quietly accumulated a foothold in critical industries and commodities throughout the world.

    A master at building impenetrable walls around his family assets the current value of the Rothschild holdings are estimated to be between $100 and $300 trillion, yes that is trillion dollars! Now for a point of reference the current United States National Debt is $9.4 trillion….

    http://www.articlesbase.com/finance-articles/jp-morgan-chase-buyout-of-bear-stearns-a-trillionaires-delight-400359.html

    http://www.prlog.org/10058722-morgan-chase-buyout-of-bear-stearns-trillionaires-delight.html

    http://www.dailypaul.com/53998/any-president-that-would-dare-oppose-the-federal-reserve-gets-assassinated-history-lesson-jp-morgan-buyout-of-bear-stearns

    • tom0mason says:

      Thank-you, much obliged.
      I’ve been googling (well duckduck go-ing) and found more nasties. Might post some as I check through them.

    • tom0mason says:

      Here’s one you might like –
      Defining Away Economic Failure
      by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

      And his report on a proposal to make “factoryless goods producer” e.g. off-shore company profits, be part of the US GDP figures. Yep, increase GDP by including foreign overseas profits in the US’s accounting.

      Nuts!
      http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/04/defining-away-economic-failure/

    • Beale says:

      The article in the Daily Paul is an eye-opener. Do libertarians advocate the gold standard? The tagline “Peace, Gold, Love” suggests that they do; but here comes Sygnus Centauri (whoever he is) speaking out for fiat money, and nobody bats an eye. Of course Wright Patman also advocated fiat money, but he never claimed to be a libertarian.

      Anyway, pretty much all of it is nonsense. No matter how many times Lincoln’s supposed speech against the “money powers” is quoted, it’s still a hoax; he never said it. Garfield, far from being “dedicated” to issuing paper money, was strongly opposed to it.

      • Gail Combs says:

        Mises did not care as long as the money could not be inflated.

        Anything can be money from gold to obsidian arrow points, tobacco and Hudson bay blankets. All money does is facilitate barter.

        It just needs to be relatively scarce, easily portable, divisible, durable and universally accepted.

        Paper money is a problem only if the government or banks keep printing more.

        Counterfeiting (printing additional money) no matter who is doing it is still theft and that is the critical point to remember.

        When the Fed doubled the US money supply it meant the value of the dollar was halved (eventual inflation) and that value was stolen from everyone with savings or wages paid in dollars.

  13. jjreuter says:

    “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.
    From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
    ? Alexis de Tocqueville

    • Gail Combs says:

      That is why the USA was set-up as a REPUBLIC and not a democracy. It is why we are supposed to learn from history.

      There is also Alexander Tyler who is credited with a stage theory of Democracy.

      Turns out it is an internet myth that is ‘preparing the battlefield’ by making the descent back into bondage seem natural and inevitable.

      Why fight the inevitable? Instead just accept your bondage as a fact of nature.

      Nasty brain washing if you ask me.

      …. It goes something like this….

      The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

      From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

      Educated people have a fondness for stage theories of social development. The Communist Left embraced Marx’s theory for over a century: primitive communism, barbarism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and stateless communism (somewhere, over the rainbow.) The Right has produced a number of stage theories, but none of them nearly so popular as Marx’s, nor so inaccurate.

      When I first read the extract from Tyler’s work, I thought it sounded strangely contemporary….

      A detailed response from the library of the University of Edinburgh reveals that no such quotation appears in the library’s holdings of books by Tytler.

      Edinburgh University Library occasionally receives enquiries, particularly from North America, about this particular work. However, this title is not in our Library holdings, nor does it appear in the stocks of the other major research libraries in the UK (according to the ‘union’ catalogue COPAC)… He goes on to say that the U.S. Library of Congress has found no such quotation in its collection of books by Tytler….

      CONCLUSION

      I can do no better than to close with a citation from Chapter 18 of Ludwig von Mises’s book, Socialism (1922).

      The barren dispute over the economic life of the nations of antiquity shows how easily such classifying may lead to our mistaking the shadow of scholastic word-splitting for the substance of historical reality. For sociological study the stage theories are useless. They mislead us in regard to one of the most important problems of history — that of deciding how far historical evolution is continuous. The solution of this problem usually takes the form either of an assumption, that social evolution — which it should be remembered is the development of the division of labor — has moved in an uninterrupted line, or by the assumption that each nation has progressed step-by-step over the same ground. Both assumptions are beside the point. It is absurd to say that evolution is uninterrupted when we can clearly discern periods of decay in history, periods when the division of labor has retrogressed. On the other hand, the progress achieved by individual nations by reaching a higher stage of the division of labor is never completely lost. It spreads to other nations and hastens their evolution.

      It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others’ productivity, when they modify the commandment: “Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.” The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor. But there is no law of historical decline that says that people cannot change their minds.

      http://www.lewrockwell.com/2006/10/gary-north/stage-theories-of-history/

  14. @Andy DC, October 7, 2014 at 10:52 pm
    “I believe there are recent developments that are going to drive us quickly over the cliff. There are huge numbers of baby boomers that are retiring, as we all expected, but a relatively new development is many prescription drugs that are extending life. While 20 years ago, people were living from 60-80, now a huge number of us are living from 85-95. That is great, but how are we going to support so many people living for so long? ”

    While I am in general agreement with what you say, the USA is quite different from my native land. In the UK it would be really difficult for someone of my age to hold down a job given that it is considered immoral for someone to work beyond the age of 65 years.

    Here in the USA nobody cares what my age is so I continue to work. I plan to retire as soon as my youngest child graduates from UCF with a degree in electrical engineering. By then I will be over 80 years old.

    Thus you and yours won’t have to support me. I will be supporting myself and several other people as well. In addition to my voluntary support of relatives my annual taxes of over $30,000 per year may be going to you and yours.

  15. Joe P. says:

    Tony H. Looks like you stuck a vein for Libertarians who are aligned with message of less government and free markets of Republicans, yet aligned with liberal left Democrats on things like private life freedoms gay marriage, freedom to smoke pot, legal abortion, god not in publicly funded schools. Pure Libertarians believe in both social and economic freedom, more anti-totalitarianism on all fronts.
    Now what do you mean?
    “A favorite trick of Democrats is to run fake Libertarian candidates, in order to divide the conservative vote – and thus keep progressives in office.”
    Are you referring to the VA gubernatorial where documented that left gave money to support Libertarian candidate to split republican vote a tare to get Democrats elected, or Ross Perot (not a Libertarian) who split off Republican vote to shave off electoral votes so Clinton got elected with less than majority of popular vote? Or maybe biggest whammy of all Breckenridge splitting the Democrats in 1860 election so Republican Lincoln got elected with less than majority of popular vote?
    Well in present day, Libertarians only take Republican votes, on lesser of two evils, so get point.
    Looks to me now that Libertarians are pushing Republicans to go more towards that edge, but many liberals adhere to Libertarians on social values, yet Libertarians deplore the government funding of thing like abortions, should be free, but no gov subsidy, same to for gays, OK to be gay, but should not promote of provide money, Democrats seem to share some views with Libertarians lost by Republicans on gov out of your life, but Democrats cut line on spending public money promoting things versus freedom.
    More chance of Democrats being split next presidential election by third party candidate cutting off a few key Electoral states.
    Long term, Democrats are far a head of Republicans, Texan a key red state could turn with Latino vote in Dem pocket, key reason for letting in illegal for future amnesty and voting, few resettles in Arkansas for key Senate race, but CA 55 gone for Dems, NY same at 29 winner take all, TX with 38 votes and 270 win, well could have Dem in WH for next few decades if pull off in TX. Guess gubernatorial would come first to get voting board.

  16. Gail Combs says:

    there is no substitute for victory says:

    “In that case Gail I suggest that you find a place that you would rather live and move there forth with. There have already been to many false Conservatives…”
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    Open your eyes and don’t fall for the mine team/your team, Rah, Rah Rah B.S. the banker owned MSM keeps shoveling.
    You can not fight an enemy until you IDENTIFY the enemy. That is what I have been trying to do for the last decade.

    Short and Sweet:
    There is little if any difference between the ‘centre-left Progressives’ and the Neo-conservative Republicans. They are both pushing Third Way ideas aka Fascism.
    See E.M. Smith’s “Evil Socialism” vs “Evil Capitalism” for an explanation of why.

    …the Policy Network, the London-based think-tank launched in the 1990s with the support of various heads of government including Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Giuliano Amato, Gerhard Schröder and Göran Persson, and headed by Peter Mandelson, now European commissioner….

    the promotion of Third Way ideas “has always been the vocation of the Policy Network.
    (wwwDOT)europeanvoice.com/article/imported/centre-left-s-young-turks-seek-neo-conservative-inspiration/51890.aspx
    (Removed from internet per usual, check wayback)

    Policy Network bills itself as center-left.
    ‘A centre-left project for new times – Policy Network’

    That link above now gives you:

    Centre-left’s young turks seek neo-conservative inspiration

    The finest minds of Europe’s centre-left gathered in London last Friday (11 March) to devise a vision to help the left regain political ground across the continent.

    The young politicians behind the move openly admit they seek inspiration from the American neo-conservatives, who have been effectively building a policy agenda during the last decade, which the US President George W. Bush is now putting in practice.

    ……………….

    True capitalism died a hundred years ago with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act and now we have ‘corporatism’ a collusion between the bankers, corporations and government. (It is also called The Third Way aka Fascism) Dr. Paul Craig Roberts who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan bluntly pointed out how the bankers are gaining complete control of the corporations (Thanks tom0mason)

    Recently we learned that from 2006 through 2013 corporations authorized $4.14 trillion in buybacks of their publicly traded stocks. Moreover, it appears that corporations have been borrowing the money from banks with which to buy back their stocks. Last year there were $754.8 billion in authorized stock buybacks and $782.5 billion in corporate borrowing. In the first three months of this year, companies purchased $160 billion of their own stocks.

    Borrowing to buyback stock leaves a company with debt but without new investment with which to produce revenues to service the debt. The massive stock buybacks demonstrate that American capitalism is now corrupt.

    This analysis by Dr. Roberts is backed up by the analysis of a trio of complex systems theorists, Dr. Stefania Vitali, (Technology and Economics) Dr. James Glattfelder (MSc. in Physics, Ph.D. studies, Chair of Systems Design) and Dr. Stefano Battiston (Statistical Physics, Chair of Systems Design) who published the study: The Network of Global Corporate Control that I mentioned above.

    Also back in February, of 2009, Dr Roberts wrote:

    I am amazed that the US government, in the midst of the worst financial crises ever, is content for short-selling to drive down the asset prices that the government is trying to support….The bald fact is that the combination of ignorance, negligence, and ideology that permitted the crisis to happen still prevails and is blocking any remedy. Either the people in power in Washington and the financial community are total dimwits or they are manipulating an opportunity to redistribute wealth from taxpayers, equity owners and pension funds to the financial sector. http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts250209.htm

    Believe me I am very unhappy to find out that a vote for the Republicans is actually a vote for ‘Progressive -lite’ but denying that is true is not going to help recover this country from the ‘Evil Bast@rds’ I am not the only one to make this discovery which is why the conservative voter base is splinttered and the Tea Party was formed.

    59% of GOP Voters Say Republicans in Congress Out of Touch with Party’s Base

    Most Republican voters continue to believe their congressional representatives are out of touch with the party’s base, while most Democrats remain happy with the representation they have in Washington, D.C. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds just 29% of Likely Republican Voters think Republicans in Congress have done a good job representing GOP values over the past several years. Fifty-nine percent (59%) say Republicans in Congress have lost touch with GOP voters from throughout the nation. But that’s down slightly from 65% last August and an all-time high of 73% in October 2009.

    That is a vote of No Confidence the GOP had do well to heed or we are going to see something like UKIP forming. I had that conversation with Tallbloke not too long ago.

    • alibertarian2 says:

      While heavy on feelings of conspiracy, you were rather light on evidence of “Global Corporate Control.” It is a well-known fact that corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders to maintain stock prices. Stock buybacks are one way of doing that when interest rates are low. Check the financial newspapers and you will find much handwringing over the massive amounts of cash held by corporations not being invested. Yes, they are borrowing to buy back stock, at near-zero interest rates. If corporations continue to buyback stock when interest rates are high, then your conspiracy theory will be justified.

      On top of that, you provided no evidence of corporate control.

      • Gail Combs says:

        “On top of that, you provided no evidence of corporate control.”

        For a more specific example: HACCP and the Food Safety Modernization Act that followed:

        To start I plotted the CDC Food Borne Illness for the three years before the USDA switched to HACCP in 1996 and the three years after. All three years under the old system had HALF the illnesses when compared to the ‘new improved system’ Worst when the USDA and FDA were hyping the Food Safety Modernization act they flat out lied and said the system had not been up dated in decades.
        This is what a food inspecter had to say about during the battle over the Food Modernization Act:

        In other words folks, what Edgar Salsbury, a former state food inspector, said rings more true today than ever before. At our first meeting I asked him, <b."Which part of the law applied to food processing?"  He replied, “The part that screws the little guy and lets the big guys get away with murder.”  
        thebovine(DOT)wordpress.com/2009/02/14/small-farmers-saying-nay-to-nais/

        Background. The CED in my state just screwed N.C. farmers. The ‘Definition of Farm’ has just been raised from $1,000 in receipts to $10,000 in receipts. This means we have to not only pay sales take on every thing we buy that is farm related but now our farms are taxed as “house Lots” not farms.

        This is on top of the Food Safety Modernization Act requirements. Similar laws (they all come from WTO) were put in place in the EU. One dairy farmer, the last one left in his area now spends 60% of his time on paperwork instead of farming.

        In the USA most farmers are small farmers. They have a full time job as well as farming. When I first looked into the topic, farmers were ‘making’ a NET LOSS of $14,000 a year. So the USDA decided to do ‘something’ now when the USDA calculates farmer income they add in the rental value of the farmers home as “Income” and SURPRISE – no Net Loss.

        More on HACCP:
        HACCP’S Disconnect From Public Health Concerns

        Five Minutes With John Munsell & A Trip To The Woodshed With The USDA

        One E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak I Think I could have Prevented by Bill Marler, an accomplished personal injury and products liability attorney
        (wwwDOT)marlerblog.com/lawyer-oped/one-e-coli-o157h7-outbreak-i-think-i-could-have-prevented/#.VDWaos_L-UY

        Shielding the Giant – Government Accountability Project
        USDA’s “Don’t Look, Don’t Know” Policy

        I know John Munsell. He told me a reporter from a well known NY mag. spent three days with him on his story. The story was written and approved by the editor but at the last minute was killed by the owner of the magazine.

        That is just the tip of the iceberg. A snippet of the story from one man. John raised holy Hell with his state and federal reps. as well as writing to Bill Marler. Finally a death occurred and the politicians had to act. The story continues with Stanley Painter, Chairman National Joint Council of Food Inspection Local Unions, American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO

        Testimony Of Stanley Painter, Chairman
        Before Domestic Policy Subcommittee
        House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
        Thursday, April 17, 2008
        domesticpolicy(DOT)oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1870

        …………My members are very conscientious about their jobs. Consumer protection is the first thing we think about when we go to work every day. We are trained to enforce the various laws and regulations under FSIS jurisdiction. When we see a violation, we are trained to document and write non-compliance reports. In practice, however, that does not always occur. As I mentioned earlier in my testimony, we have had a problem with the way HACCP was implemented at FSIS in the late 1990’s and continues to be enforced. HACCP was adopted in response to the Jack-in-the-Box E.coli 0157:H7 outbreak in 1993. While HACCP was billed as an attempt to introduce science into meat and poultry inspection system, it also shifted the responsibility for food safety over to the companies.

        … it frustrates me and many of my members when we are told by our supervisors to “let the system work” when we see violations of FSIS regulations and we are instructed not to write non-compliance reports in order to give companies the chance to fix the problems on their own. Sometimes even if we write non-compliance reports, some of the larger companies use their political muscle to get those overturned at the agency level or by going to their congressional delegation to get the inspection staff to back off. So, the agency’s databases may not contain accurate information about the compliance history of meat and poultry plants because of pressure being applied not to write them up for violations.

        Employee Intimidation
        Some of my members have been intimidated by agency management in the past when they came forward and tried to enforce agency regulations and policies. I will give you a personal example…..

        In December 2004, I began to receive reports that the new SRM regulations were not being uniformly enforced. I wrote a letter to the Assistant FSIS Administrator for Field Operations at the time conveying to him what I had heard.

        On December 23, 2004, I was paid a visit at my home in Alabama by an FSIS official who was dispatched from the Atlanta regional office to convince me to drop the issue. I told him that I would not. Then, the agency summoned me to come here to Washington, DC where agency officials subjected me to several hours of interrogation including wanting me to identify which of my members were blowing the whistle on the SRM removal violations. I refused to do so.

        I was then placed on disciplinary investigation status. The agency even contacted the USDA Office of Inspector General to explore criminal charges being filed against me. Those charges were never filed. Because all of this was occurring during the time that USDA was trying to re- open beef trade with Japan, I found out that the disciplinary investigation and the possible criminal investigation into my allegations were the subject of a posting on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Japan. Both my union AFGE and the consumer group Public Citizen filed separate Freedom of Information Act requests in December 2004 for any non-compliance records in the FSIS data base that would support my allegations.

        It was not until August 2005 that over 1000 non-compliance reports – weighing some 16 pounds — were turned over to both AFGE and Public Citizen that proved that what my members were telling me was correct – that some beef slaughter facilities were not complying with the SRM removal regulations. 1 Coincidentally, on the same day that those records were released, I received written notification from the agency that they were dropping their disciplinary investigation into my actions – some eight months after their “investigation” began. It then took further action by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and Congressman Maurice Hinchey to have the State Department remove some of the material that was posted about me on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Japan. While I was completely exonerated in this incident, it has caused a chilling effect on others within my bargaining unit to come forward and stand up when agency management is wrong….

        So what happened to Stan Painter and his testimony?

        It was swept under the rug by the USDA. I have to leave so I do not have time to find the documentation for that statement in my notes.

        From my old notes:
        Statement from US Court confirming Munsell complaint:
        (wwwDOTll.georgetown.edu/federal/judicial/dc/opinions/06opinions/06-5261a.pdf
        (wwwDOT)commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views03/1222-11.htm
        (wwwDOTnader.org/index.php?/archives/158-USDA-vs-John-Munsell.html
        Unfortunately none of the links now work. You can try the Wayback Machine.

        Oh and this is just a tidbit of all the information I accumulated over several years in the fight against NAIS and HACCP. At the end of that fight all I can say is I have nothing but contempt for the US government and the MSM who acts as their propaganda arm.

        • alibertarian2 says:

          Gail Combs wrote:
          “For a more specific example: HACCP and the Food Safety Modernization Act that followed:…”

          Yeah, I read enough of reason.com, Cato, and mises.org to know about regulatory capture, and crony capitalism. That is still not corporate control. That is government control.

          The enemy is not welfare addicts, whether they are corporations or SNAP beneficiaries. The enemy is government letting them get away with it, and ultimately the voters who put those governments in place.

      • Gail Combs says:

        Oh and just to leave you with something to think about I will repost a reply I made to richardscourtney @ WUWT.

        richardscourtney says: @ January 19, 2014 at 7:52 am
        I answer
        It depends on whether or not you don’t mind being killed by e-coli.

        That is why we have systems and enforcements to regulate factories and farms.
        >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
        Sorry Richard farms have nothing to do with e-coli because ALL livestock is infected. It is a slaughter problem not a farm problem.

        The e-coli ‘scare’ is just as much of a ‘Manufactured crisis’ as Global warming is. In the USA the start was the change from actual inspection and testing to ‘Harmonizing’ with the international HACCP regs. HACCP’S Disconnect From Public Health Concerns also see John Munsell & A Trip To The Woodshed With The USDA

        You have to remove the innards WITHOUT contaminating the rest of the meat with feces. Unfortunately here in the USA the USDA relaxed the standard on feces contamination via HACCP and even before.

        National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals: “Based on a policy change in 1978 allowing “reprocessing,” the USDA decided that, instead of condemning contaminated carcasses, the industry can simply wash the contamination off with chlorinated water. “
        .

        Fecal Contamination in Retail Chicken Products

        A Report from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine – April 2012

        Fecal contamination is surprisingly common on chicken products in grocery stores. In this study, scientists with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine tested chicken products sold by 15 grocery store chains in 10 U.S. cities for the presence of feces. A certified, independent analytical testing laboratory in Chicago, Ill., tested for the presence of E. coli as evidence of fecal contamination. Chicken products from every city and every grocery store chain tested positive for fecal contamination. Overall, 48 percent of chicken samples tested positive.
        http://www.pcrm.org/health/reports/fecal-contamination-in-retail-chicken-products

        This is really bad news.

        Rice U. study: Two wastewater treatment plants in China fail to kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria

        HOUSTON – (Dec. 16, 2013) – Tests at two wastewater treatment plants in northern China revealed antibiotic-resistant bacteria were not only escaping purification but also breeding and spreading their dangerous cargo.

        Joint research by scientists from Rice, Nankai and Tianjin universities found “superbugs” carrying New Delhi Metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM-1), a multidrug-resistant gene first identified in India in 2010, in wastewater disinfected by chlorination. They found significant levels of NDM-1 in the effluent released to the environment and even higher levels in dewatered sludge applied to soils.
        http://news.rice.edu/2013/12/16/superbugs-found-breeding-in-sewage-plants/

        [US] Officials say “okay” to processed chicken from China
        ….The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) quietly announced on Aug. 29 that it has lifted the ban on processed poultry imports from China.

        As the New York Times first reported, the products will be offered without a country-of-origin label…. The chickens will still be raised in the U.S., Canada or Chile (the only countries approved by the USDA), but can be processed in China because USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) auditors have approved four Chinese poultry plants to start exporting processed poultry to the U.S.
        http://www.cbsnews.com/news/officials-say-okay-to-processed-chicken-from-china/

        Can you say OH FECES! What is to keep China from exporting their own chicken to the USA?

        I know of a truck driver who has watched produce from Mexico get transfered into boxes saying “Product of the USA’ while the inspectors looked the other way. He said reporting it just got him a threat to have his commercial drivers license removed permanently.

        In the USA the USDA and FDA are just as corrupt as the EPA.

      • phodges says:

        alibertarian2 says: blah blah blah

        You are an idiot.

        • alibertarian2 says:

          Phodges wrote:

          “alibertarian2 says: blah blah blah

          You are an idiot.”

          Were the words too big for you to understand? Or don’t you know anything about the stock market? There are some really good basic courses available for you.

          Why did you click on “reply” if you didn’t actually reply?

    • there is no substitute for victory says:

      The definition of a “Neo Con” is a NEW kind of Conservative. Generally a Liberal who embraces some but certainly not all or even a majority of Conservative values. President T. W. Wilson is a good example of a Neo Con as well as FDR or even LBJ who certainly put America’s world economic position ahead of world Socialist policy while still pushing a National Socialist or Fascists agenda at home. Never forget that FDR and Benito Mussolini carried out an extensive private relationship by post and that only Mussolini’s conquest of Abyssinia changed FDR’s mind that Fascists Italy was the best ruled nation on the face of the Earth.

      In 1938, almost 4 years before the Pearl Harbor attack and US entry into WWII, FDR wanted to go to war over Japanese aggression in China by attacking Japan first or provoking her by instituting a naval blockade. Blockades BTW are an act of war. Cooler heads prevailed and Roosevelt only provoked Japan by boycotting the sale of American strategic materials to Japan like coal, iron ore, scrap metal, and oil.

      • Gail Combs says:

        ….President T. W. Wilson is a good example of a Neo Con as well as FDR or even LBJ….
        >>>>>>>>>>>
        And that is supposed to make me LIKE Neo-Cons!?!

        LBJ is the SOB that defanged Christian Churches with 501c3 tax status. Churches, the main stay of American culture were thereby removed from having ANY influence on politics while Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and the WWF are allowed to dictate to the EPA! link

        As an Agnostic I have nothing but contempt for LBJ.

        …Churches were only added to section 501c3 of the tax code in 1954. We can thank Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson for that. Johnson was no ally of the church. As part of his political agenda, Johnson had it in mind to silence the church and eliminate the significant influence the church had always had on shaping “public policy.”

        Although Johnson proffered this as a “favor” to churches, the favor also came with strings attached (more like shackles). One need not look far to see the devastating effects 501c3 acceptance has had to the church, and the consequent restrictions placed upon any 501c3 church. 501c3 churches are prohibited from addressing, in any tangible way, the vital issues of the day.

        For a 501c3 church to openly speak out, or organize in opposition to, anything that the government declares “legal,” even if it is immoral (e.g. abortion, homosexuality, etc.), that church will jeopardize its tax exempt status. The 501c3 has had a “chilling effect” upon the free speech rights of the church…..

        On December 23, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson, a PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRAT signed the Federal Reserve Act into law. I consider Wilson one of the first rank tr@itors to this country right up there with FDR and Clinton.

        FDR is the one who saddled the USA with the misinterpretation of the Commerce Clause that has allowed the Federal government to grossly over step its bounds. link and an example

        FDR is ALSO the thief who stole the personal gold FROM PRIVATE CITIZENS and sent it to the Bank of England.

        “He is preparing to internationalize this Country and to destroy our Constitution itself in order to keep the Fed intact as a money institution for foreigners. “Mr. Chairman, I see no reason why citizens of the United States should be terrorized into surrendering their property to the International Bankers who own and control the Fed. The statement that gold would be taken from its lawful owners if they did not voluntarily surrender it, to private interests, show that there is an anarchist in our Government.

        “The statement that it is necessary for the people to give their gold- the only real money- to the banks in order to protect the currency, is a statement of calculated dishonesty!

        “By his unlawful usurpation of power on the night of March 5, 1933, and by his proclamation, which in my opinion was in violation of the Constitution of the United States, Roosevelt divorced the currency of the United States from gold, and the United States currency is no longer protected by gold. It is therefore sheer dishonesty to say that the people’s gold is needed to protect the currency.

        “Roosevelt ordered the people to give their gold to private interests- that is, to banks, and he took control of the banks so that all the gold and gold values in them, or given into them, might be handed over to the predatory International Bankers who own and control the Fed.

        “Roosevelt cast his lot with the usurers. “He agreed to save the corrupt and dishonest at the expense of the people of the United States.

        “He took advantage of the people’s confusion and weariness and spread the dragnet over the United States to capture everything of value that was left in it. He made a great haul for the International Bankers.

        “The Prime Minister of England came here for money! He came here to collect cash!

        “He came here with Fed Currency and other claims against the Fed which England had bought up in all parts of the world. And he has presented them for redemption in gold.

        “Mr. Chairman, I am in favor of compelling the Fed to pay their own debts. I see no reason why the general public should be forced to pay the gambling debts of the International Bankers.

        Roosevelt Seizes the Gold

        “By his action in closing the banks of the United States, Roosevelt seized the gold value of forty billions or more of bank deposits in the United States banks. Those deposits were deposits of gold values. By his action he has rendered them payable to the depositors in paper only, if payable at all, and the paper money he proposes to pay out to bank depositors and to the people generally in lieu of their hard earned gold values in itself, and being based on nothing into which the people can convert it the said paper money is of negligible value altogether.

        “It is the money of slaves, not of free men. — Congressman McFadden

  17. Gail Combs says:

    there is no substitute for victory says:

    “In that case Gail I suggest that you find a place that you would rather live and move there forth with. There have already been to many false Conservatives…”
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

    Where in heck do you think there is a place left on this earth that has not been befouled by the scheming Progressives?

    Rosa DeLauro (D) CT is a mouthpiece for the IPC or the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council

    The powerful private interests who control WTO agriculture policy prefer to remain in the background as little-publicized NGO’s. One of the most influential in creating the WTO in the first place was an organization called the IPC or the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council or International Policy Council, for short….

    IPC: International Policy Council on Agriculture, Food and Trade.
    A look at the IPC membership will explain what interests it represents.
    The Chairman is Robert Thompson, former Assistant Secretary US Department of Agriculture and former Presidential economic adviser.
    Also included in the IPC are Bernard Auxenfans, former chairman Monsanto France; Allen Andreas of ADM/Toepfer;
    Andrew Burke, Bunge (US);
    Dale Hathaway former USDA official and head IFPRI (US).
    Other IPC members include Heinz Imhof, chairman of Syngenta (CH)
    Rob Johnson of Cargill (US) and USDA Agriculture Policy Advisory Council;
    Guy Legras (France) former EU Director General Agriculture,
    Rolf Moehler (Germany) former EU Director General Agriculture
    . Donald Nelson of Kraft Foods (US);
    Joe O’Mara of USDA,
    Hiroshi Shiraiwa of Mitsui & Co Japan;
    Jim Starkey former US Trade Representative Assistant;
    Hans Joehr, Nestle head of agriculture;
    Jerry Steiner, Monsanto (US).
    And Members Emeritus include Ann Veneman, herself a board member of a Monsanto subsidiary company before she became US Secretary of Agriculture for George W. Bush in 2001.

    I suggest you read my comment on the consolidation of food in to the hands of the Corporations named above. Note that the ideas floated by Dan Amstutz under President Reagan were put into effect under President Clinton. The usual Tag-team in play.

    Who was Dan Amstutz?
    Dan Amstutz was undersecretary for international affairs and commodity programs from 1983 to 1987 during the Reagan Administration. He served as ambassador and chief negotiator for agriculture during the Uruguay Round General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) talks in 1987-1989. He wrote the draft Agreement on Agriculture for the World Trade Organization. He was a former VP of the Cargill Corporation, the biggest grain exporter in the world, He was a former executive with the International Wheat Council, as well as a past president of the North American Grain Export Association. Dan Amstutz was appointed by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman (Monsanto) to head Iraq’s agricultural reconstruction. “Veneman is keen to see U.S. agribusiness play a significant role in Iraq’s future where “the opportunities are immense”.”

    DeLauro pushed for over a decade to get the WTO Agreement on Agriculture codified in USA law as a “Food Safety Modernization Act” An act that was COAUTHORED by Senator Burr (R) NC during the lame duck session after his re-election. This was AFTER his office bald faced LIED and said he would not support the bill to get my vote. Senator Burr’s version of the bill SPECIFICALLY GIVES THE WTO control over regulating US farms.

    Look behind DeLauro and what do you find? Her husband Stanley Greenberg pollster, strategist and master manipulator of the public.

    Check out the company Greenberg Carville Shrum and their love of globalization. It is interesting Greenberg-Quinlan Research Inc is mention as her husband’s place of work in Delauro’s bio. Sweet, fluffy Greenberg-Quinlan Research Inc with the connections to foster care and schools, but there is no mention of Greenberg Carville Shrum who directed Campaigns in 60 countries (including Tony Blair in the UK) and was responsible for the Bolivia fiasco. Stan Greenberg “…specializes in research on globalization, international trade, corporate consolidation….” 216(DOT)92.66.74/index.php?title=Stanley_Greenberg

    Even the Democratic Underground doesn’t like Greenberg Carville Shrum Regarding Carville and dirty politics…
    Greenberg writes for the Democratic Strategist and also formed Democracy Corps.

    Greenberg got Tony Blair elected in the UK. UK livestock was wiped out because of UN-OIE “disease free status” rules. (wwwDOT)independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/exposed-blairs-fatal-dithering-over-foot-and-mouth-vaccination-668681.html

    2001 History of UK 2001 foot & mouth disease The details of how the UK, used as a testing ground for the new UN disease control procedures, destroys its farming leading Drefa to drop farming from its name in 2006. http://www.warmwell.com/footmoutheye.html

    As a hired gun strategist, Greenberg—a seasoned pollster and political consultant—has seen it all. In his memoir, he recounts his work with President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, and South African president Nelson Mandela. Through his experiences aiding the leaders in pushing their visions for better and clearer domestic and international policies, Greenberg offers an insightful examination of leadership, democracy, and the bridge between candidate and constituency… book review: macmillanspeakers(DOT)com/stanleybgreenberg

    So explain to me what the difference is between Republican Senator Burr and Democrat Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (along with Dan Amstutz who worked for Reagan and Bill Clinton?) They ALL betrayed US farmers and consumers, despite a major out cry from farmers for the last ten years.

    • alibertarian2 says:

      Gail Combs wrote: “So explain to me what the difference is between Republican Senator Burr and Democrat Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (along with Dan Amstutz who worked for Reagan and Bill Clinton?) They ALL betrayed US farmers and consumers, despite a major out cry from farmers for the last ten years.”

      If you want to know the difference between Burr and DeLauro then check the National Taxpayer’s Union. According to NTU, the effects of Burr’s votes in the Senate in the first session of the 113th Congress would have been a net decrease in federal spending of $174 billion. The score for DeLauro: a net increase of more than $105 billion in spending. This pattern is the same for all sessions of Congress for which NTU had data.

      If you want to know the difference between more than just one Democrat and one Republican, then check what happened in the recent Export-Import Bank funding proceedings. From the LA Times:

      “Many conservatives, led by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), criticize the aid as corporate welfare and complain the bank mostly helps large multinational firms such as Boeing that don’t need the government’s assistance.

      “In the face of stiff opposition in the Republican-controlled House, the best bank supporters could get was an extension of the charter until June 30 as part of a broader budget bill that passed Congress this week.” (emphasis added)

      A “senior analyst at financial services firm Guggenheim Partners said ‘Ex-Im received a stay of execution, but it remains on death row.'”

      “Conservative activist groups Heritage Action for America and the Club for Growth urged lawmakers to vote against the funding bill in part because it included the bank extension.” — http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-export-import-bank-extension-congress-20140919-story.html

      I don’t know if it is a sufficient difference, but Democrats and Republican are different.

  18. Gail Combs says:

    there is no substitute for victory,

    Let me make it very very clear.

    I am FOR strict interpretation of the US Constitution.

    I am FOR jury trials in ANY case over $20 and Jury Nullification. (These rights have been severely compromised.)
    http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/lenr-tests-claiming-positive/#comment-49848
    chiefio(DOT)wordpress.com/2013/04/24/usa-gasoline-heat-map/#comment-51217

    I am FOR Capitalism.

    However I am NOT for corporate Monopoly or Monopsony.

    I am NOT for corporations running the US government via appointments as head of the massive bureaucracy we now have.

    I am NOT for that bureaucracy writing regulations with the force of law and I am CERTAINLY NOT FOR a Tribunal of Judges within a bureaucratic department determining if a citizen has broken that bureaucracy’s regulations instead of our Constitutional right to a trial.

    We now have a situation where nine corporations (two of the original eleven have since been gobbled up by the others) control 80% of the world’s food. With the Food Safety Modernization Act and similar laws around the world, It will be =====>100%
    If you do not like LaRouche, how about the following chart presented at the 2008 NIAA (National Institute for Animal Agriculture) Annual Meeting:

    In the U.S .Today… Chart of top producers
    – The top ten food retailers sell more than 75% of food.
    – The top ten chicken companies produce 79% of chicken.
    – The top 50 dairy cooperatives produce 79% of the milk.
    – The top 60 egg companies produce 85% of eggs.
    – The top 20 pork producers produce more than 50% of pork.
    (Two percent of pork producers produce 80%)
    – The top 10 pork packers process 87% of pork.
    The top four beef packers process more than 80% of beef

    V. Lenin, the founder of the Russian revolution identified the strength of the United States when he said.

    ” The Socialist Revolution in the US cannot take place because there are too many small independent farmers there. Those people are the stability factor. We here in Russia must hurry while our government is stupid enough to not encourage and support the independent farmership.”

    Lenin was not just talking about the farmers themselves but about the community of interlocking small businesses comprising the fabric of an independent America. This community has been the target of the Corporatists/Progressives/Fabians, the Elite would be World Rulers, since just after WWII.

    To make sure the USA was steered in the direction the Elite, wanted they setup the Committee for Economic Development, one of Milners Round Tables.

    …the Committee for Economic Development, was officially established in 1942 as a sister organization to the Council on Foreign Relations. CED has influenced US domestic policies in much the same way that the CFR has influenced the nation’s foreign policies. Composed of chief executive officers and chairmen from the federal reserve, the banking industry, private equity firms, insurance companies, railroads, information technology firms, publishing companies, pharmaceutical companies, the oil and automotive industries, meat packing companies, retailers and assisted by university economists — representatives from every sector of the economy with the key exception of farmers themselves — CED determined that the problem with American agriculture was that there were too many farmers. But the CED had a “solution”: millions of farmers would just have to be eliminated.….
    http://www.opednews.com/articles/History-HACCP-and-the-Foo-by-Nicole-Johnson-090906-229.html

    With the Food Safety Modernization Act the elimination of America’s RIGHT to feed themselves is eliminated.

    Rosa DeLauro’s Bill HR 875 included this.

    …in any action to enforce the requirements of the food safety law, the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction SHALL BE PRESUMED TO EXIST.

    The fact you are growing veggies for you and friends does not exclude you from the Food Saferty Modernization Act.

    …Lori Robertson of FactCheck.org, who is not a lawyer (she has a B.A. in advertising), claims the bill doesn’t apply to “that tomato plant in your backyard.” As a lawyer, I am skeptical of this claim (I co-represented the prevailing defendant in the last successful constitutional challenge to federal regulation under the interstate commerce clause, United States v. Morrison (2000), one of only two cases in 70 years in which a challenge was successful). Congress’s power under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause is almost unlimited in the eyes of the courts, and thus can reach the “tomato plant in your backyard.”

    This so-called “food safety” bill may actually make food less safe. Federal regulation often backfires or reduces competition…. (wwwDOT)examiner.com/article/trojan-horse-law-the-food-safety-modernization-act-of-2009

    The Commerce Clause: A farmer was growing wheat for his own use “The government claimed that if Mr. Filburn grew wheat for his own use, he would not be buying it — and that affected interstate commerce” The Supreme court found against the farmer!!!

    In addition we have this:

    I’m amazed that FDA brazenly claimed:

    “There is no absolute right to consume or feed children any particular food.” [p. 25]

    “Plaintiffs’ assertion of a ‘fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families’ is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish.” [p. 26]

    “There is no fundamental right to freedom of contract.” [p. 27]

    (wwwDOT)farmtoconsumer.org/fda-true-colors-walls.htm and http://farmtoconsumer.org/litigation-FDA-status.htm

    More recently: in September 28, 2011 under Obama:

    In a decision denying basic property rights and even exceeding the FDA’s contempt for the rights of private contract and food freedom of choice, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Patrick J. Fiedler has issued an order holding that owners of cows do not have a fundamental right to consume milk from their own cow…
    (wwwDOT)farmtoconsumer.org/wi-judge-denies-basic-property-rights.htm

    If the take over of our food system by the Ag Cartel doesn’t scare the heck out of you I do not now what will. And that take over was promoted by Democrats AND Republicans for the last seventy years.

    • alibertarian2 says:

      Gail Combs wrote:

      “– The top ten food retailers sell more than 75% of food.
      – The top ten chicken companies produce 79% of chicken.
      – The top 50 dairy cooperatives produce 79% of the milk.
      – The top 60 egg companies produce 85% of eggs.
      – The top 20 pork producers produce more than 50% of pork.
      (Two percent of pork producers produce 80%)
      – The top 10 pork packers process 87% of pork.
      The top four beef packers process more than 80% of beef”

      Monopoly is “the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service.” Monopoly is not 10, 50, 60, 20, 10, and 4 producers in sub-markets of food production. What are you afraid of? No food in the stores? Exorbitant prices? The U.S. has the lowest food costs in the world.

      If 60 egg producers isn’t enough for Gail Combs, then what kind of government bureaucracy would you like to create that produces what you, an alleged capitalist, think is the proper number?

      • Gail Combs says:

        You completely missed the point. First you ignore the fact that the Big Ag Corporations have banded together in an NGO to control the Agreement on Agriculture of the WTO.

        The there is Purdue University Dept. of Agricultural Economics:
        THE FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL GLOBAL CARTELS OF THE 1990s
        “Dr. Connor is Senior Advisor to the American Antitrust Institute, and he consults for government antitrust authorities and law firms in cartel cases… For 25 years he studied the market structure and performance of the food manufacturing and distribution industries; for the past 15 years the focus of his research has been international price-fixing cartels and world-wide antitrust enforcement.”

        So no I am not a conspiracy nut unless Dr. Connor is too.

        You picked “60 egg companies produce 85% of eggs” and tippy toed around “The top ten food retailers sell more than 75% of food.” Which has since decreased to 9 corporations handling 80% of the food.

        I went scrounging in my old notes and came up with this example. I do not consider three corporations in the country holding hold more than 77 percent of the beef slaughter capacity as competition especially when there is generally ONE(1) of those three bidding on the cattle at auction… if you are lucky. And no I did not make that up out of thin air.

        Putting meat on the table: Industrial farm animal production in America

        The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (pcifap)
        was funded by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts

        …The current food animal production system is highly concentrated and exhibits conditions that suggest monopsony, in which there are very few buyers for a large number of suppliers. Under monopsonistic conditions, fewer goods are sold, prices are higher in output markets and lower for sellers of inputs, and wealth is transferred from the party without market power to the party with market power. For example, the top four pork-producing companies in the United States control 60% of the pork market, and the top four beef packers control over 80% of the beef market. Farmers have little choice but to contract with those few producers if they are to sell the food animals they grow…. [page 93]

        BACKGROUND: JBS-Swift & Co., the world’s largest beef and pork processor, & largest exporters of beef in the world, controlled by the Batista family of Brazil.

        Last June, NCBA Director of Communications Joe Schuele said his organization didn’t have any concerns about the Swift purchase and that foreign ownership would help avoid further concentration in the industry.

        Now with JBS intending to purchase two more of the top five processors, NCBA President Andy Groseta, a beef producer in Cottonwood, Ariz., said NCBA does have some concerns.

        “Until JBS’s entry into the U.S. market, most experts thought Swift would be acquired by one of its domestic competitors,” he said. “JBS’s purchase of Swift kept the number of major U.S. beef processors at four, while many had predicted that number would fall to three. JBS also brought significant investment to the U.S. processing industry at a time when it was badly needed and enhanced production at plants that many had feared would close.

        “There is a stark contrast, however, between the Swift acquisition and the latest round of announcements from JBS,” Groseta added. “If the Smithfield and National Beef acquisitions are approved, JBS will essentially consolidate the third, fourth and fifth largest U.S. beef processors into a single entity. We all know that further mergers and acquisitions are likely to happen in the packing industry. But by most any measurement, the impact of these transactions would be quite dramatic.

        “For example, the ‘Big Four’ presently hold about 66.5 percent of beef slaughter capacity. After the proposed acquisitions, JBS and its two largest remaining competitors would hold more than 77 percent.”

        That was from R_CALF
        Then there is this:

        Brazilian beef producer JBS sought to buy National Beef Packing Company of Kansas City, Missouri in March 2008. However, the US Department of Justice opposed the JBS’s purchase of National in October 2008, saying it would reduce competition and drive up prices for consumers and drive down prices paid to farmers. DOJ did not challenge JBS’s efforts to buy Smithfield Beef Group Inc, the fifth largest US beef packer. http://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=1399_0_2_0

        • alibertarian2 says:

          You completely missed the point. First you ignore the fact that the Big Ag Corporations have banded together in an NGO to control the Agreement on Agriculture of the WTO.

          Gail Combs wrote: “You completely missed the point.”

          Nope, didn’t miss it. I provided evidence that your fears of whatever may result from the “ag cartel” are unfounded. Do you remember what that evidence is?

          So the large agricultural corporations have banded together as a means to either defend themselves against government control through WTO, or as a means to regulatory capture. In both cases, whether government control, or government regulatory agencies, the problem is government control, not corporate control. There are no private monopolies except that which government grants.

          Regarding:

          The there is Purdue University Dept. of Agricultural Economics:
          THE FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL GLOBAL CARTELS OF THE 1990s
          “Dr. Connor is Senior Advisor to the American Antitrust Institute, and he consults for government antitrust authorities …antitrust enforcement.”

          For each big-government regulator that you point to, I can find more at Cato who would counter him. In these days of “scientists” who promote AGW, I am not impressed with an academic who doesn’t like too much wealth in the hands of too few people.

          Regarding:

          You picked “60 egg companies produce 85% of eggs” and tippy toed around “The top ten food retailers sell more than 75% of food.” Which has since decreased to 9 corporations handling 80% of the food.

          Didn’t tippy-toe. I don’t care if 60 egg companies control 100% of egg production. You did not answer my question. If 60 egg producers aren’t enough for Gail Combs, then what power do you want to give to the biggest, baddest, monopoly of them all, i.e. government, to ensure that you, an alleged capitalist, are satisfied with the proper number of egg companies?

          Would the Combs government bureaucracy also decide that three semi-American automobile manufacturers are not enough? Should they be broken down into 70? 100? What are the rules under which the Combs regime would like us to live?

          Why should we care that “The top ten food retailers sell more than 75% of food?” Have you checked out the profit margins of food retailers? They are among the lowest of all business market sectors. Safeway is not in my IRA or 401(k). Again, you failed to answer my questions. What are you afraid of? No food in the stores? Exorbitant prices? The U.S. has the lowest food costs in the world.

          So far, the evidence you have provided does not corroborate such fears, whatever they may be, of monopolies. I infer that you are afraid of corporate control or power. Yet you offer nothing more than replacing that alleged control with more government control, the most powerful monopoly there is.

          Regarding:

          I went scrounging in my old notes and came up with this example. I do not consider three corporations in the country holding hold more than 77 percent of the beef slaughter capacity as competition

          Until there is a government-installed Combs czar managing the “proper” number of producers, why should we care what you believe to be the “proper” amount of competition? Please do not answer with the standard monopoly-is-bad propaganda promulgated by the government schools.

          Please consider reading something other than leftist propaganda regarding monopolies and trusts, such as Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure, and Antitrust: The Case for Repeal, both by Dominick Armentano.

          Regarding:

          BACKGROUND: JBS-Swift & Co., the world’s largest beef and pork processor, & largest exporters of beef in the world, controlled by the Batista family of Brazil.

          After losing money in 2010 and 2011, JBS made a net profit margin of less than 1% in both 2012 and 2013. (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/financials.asp?ticker=JBSS3:BZ)

          Here are some quotes from a Business Week article on JBS (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-19/brazilian-meatpacker-jbs-wrangles-the-u-dot-s-dot-beef-industry):

          “’Disassembly’ lines like this one, relying not on robots but humans, are where JBS and other meatpackers make money. Profit margins are slim in the meat business, and economies of scale elusive.” (emphasis added)

          JBS sure is raking in the greedy profits, aren’t they?

          “JBS has sustained this growth not merely by gobbling up rivals but by targeting relatively cheap, poorly managed companies and making them run better—a strategy that starts with bones.”

          …because everyone know that more efficient companies can only harm the consumer.

          “Human performance has limits, so it’s important to be cutting what customers want. Not long ago, boneless, skinless breasts accounted for more than half the revenue from an average chicken, according to Lovette. That has dipped to below 40 percent with the growing U.S. population of Hispanics and Asians who tend to prefer dark meat.

          Those control-hungry corporations! How dare they give the customer what he wants!

          “The Batistas are betting they can sell branded products at higher prices and with better profit margins by equating quality and safety with Friboi, the name JBS has long been known by in Brazil. In the U.S., the company has branded products such as Aspen Ridge Natural Beef, from cattle grown without hormones or antibiotics.”

          What! Now JBS is forcing customers to have no choice but to buy their hormone-free and… wait, what? They are offering that in addition to other more traditional meat products? The greedy b@ast@ards!

          Regarding:

          Brazilian beef producer JBS sought to buy National Beef Packing Company of Kansas City, Missouri in March 2008. However, the US Department of Justice opposed the JBS’s purchase of National in October 2008, saying it would reduce competition and drive up prices for consumers and drive down prices paid to farmers. DOJ did not challenge JBS’s efforts to buy Smithfield Beef Group Inc, the fifth largest US beef packer. http://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=1399_0_2_0

          I am shocked, truly shocked, that a government agency in a leftist administration, headed by the honorable, fair, and just Eric Holder, would target private companies for expansion of government power and control. Have you heard of Operation Choke Point, Gail?

          Look closer at your reference: “it would reduce competition and drive up prices for consumers and drive down prices paid to farmers.” The word “would” is a prediction.

          That tendency to fear-monger by prediction was the same tactic offered by PEW Charitable Trust, who you quoted as saying “…The current food animal production system is highly concentrated and exhibits conditions that suggest monopsony…”

          That is all that alarmists have: predictions of catastrophe. How good are government predictions in the global warming arena?

  19. Gamecock says:

    YOU ARE ALL WRONG.

    The problem is WE, THE PEOPLE.

    We accept all this feces. It is convenient to blame others. I blame the legacy press. But in the end, we, the people, own it.

    • Gail Combs says:

      Which is why I have spent the last decade + trying to engage people and point them at articles that may open their eyes. I just finished handed cards with articles to a few people while I was out today.

      Over a decade I have engaged thousands of people. All it takes is a selection of articles in various areas of interest to rip the rose colored glasses off. Once off they person will never trust the MSM or the politicians to tell the truth.

      Congressional Performance: Americans Don’t Think Incumbents Deserve Reelection

      Now all we have to do is get some reasonable choices to choose from.

    • alibertarian2 says:

      About time someone pointed out the shameful truth.

  20. tom0mason says:

    As long as the power-brokers and politicians have control over the public wealth they will continue to bribe the public (with their own wealth). And the public will praise them for it, until the fickle public wants something else.
    Therein is the rub, the failure. Too many people have believed, continue to believe that government must provide.

    • alibertarian2 says:

      A small but important change to what you wrote: “they will continue to bribe the public (with someone else’s wealth)

      • tom0mason says:

        No, they bribe the public with the publics own money – the taxes that have been accrued.

        It is an important part to understand that the politicians and power-brokers are using the public’s money to bribe the public with. It will be under many guises and names (cash backs, reforms, one-off payments, etc.,) but always it is a bribe.
        Even when they bribe using borrowed money, the borrowing is against public wealth, as the government has no wealth of it’s own.

        • alibertarian2 says:

          “No, they bribe the public with the publics own money.”

          The money that the government has is not our money, as though it were jointly owned by all of us. It is stolen from us. The government has it. My point was the same as that of Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” The problem is precisely that voters view that pot of money as our money. It is not. If I view something as ours, then I feel more justified in taking that property than if it were someone else’s. Voters need to be shamed into realizing that the money is not theirs, but someone else’s. In all likelihood, since 10% of the population pays more than 70% of the federal income taxes, for 90% of us that is someone else’s money.

        • tom0mason says:

          Your point about who has paid how much money is IMO devisive but immaterial.
          The public money (for that is what it is) is justifiably tax from each individual. The government is only the guardian of public money not its owner.
          As good as Margaret Thatcher was on many things on this, IMO, she was wrong. But not by much.
          Socialism does run out of other people money, it runs out of everybody’s wealth. It is more than money that is demeaned by socialism but all things of value. Pushed far enough socialism devalues all wealth for everyone, and that includes the worth of the individual.

        • alibertarian2 says:

          tom0mason wrote: “Your point about who has paid how much money is IMO devisive but immaterial.”

          Of course it is immaterial to those who believe that whatever the government takes is rightfully theirs to steward, as you admitted: “The public money (for that is what it is) is justifiably tax from each individual.” You proved my point. You further solidified that proof by claiming that Thatcher was wrong.

          tom0mason wrote: “Socialism does run out of other people money, it runs out of everybody’s wealth. It is more than money that is demeaned by socialism but all things of value. Pushed far enough socialism devalues all wealth for everyone, and that includes the worth of the individual.”

          Why would socialism run out of money? And how does this demeaning and devaluing come about? It comes about because the voters treat their neighbor’s property as their own (“our” money, as you put it) and by claiming as you did, that it is “justifiable.” Just as children do not value what they are given as much as when they must earn it, the voters devalue and demean their neighbor’s property because walking into a voting booth and taking your neighbor’s property is not earning it.

          Please come up with a better explanation than mine for why socialism would run out of money, and why this demeaning and devaluing comes about.

        • tom0mason says:

          Taxes are ‘justified’ within laws of the land. Nothing more or less.
          I believe we are both talking the same language, except I believe Mrs Thatcher was too soft. Socialism is not just about money, it is about worth and value from the individual to the largest grouping.
          You are WRONG in ascribing any intent to my word ( “our” money, as you put it.) It is and always is our (the tax-payers) money. It is never, ever the governments or any other socialist thief’s money.

          The socialist dream runs out of money, worth, and value because nobody will produce anything. Why should they? There is no personal profit in it. (Note personal profit does not just mean money.)
          As the old Soviet joke goes “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us”

      • Gail Combs says:

        You are correct.
        George Bernard Shaw said:
        “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”

        Of course the people being bribed are never told what the end game is. Good ‘Ole George was kind enough to enlighten us. Too bad this is never taught in school along with the Real Story of Thanksgiving (Good to have some copies to hand out this time of year.)

        “The moment we face it frankly we are driven to the conclusion that the community has a right to put a price on the right to live in it … If people are fit to live, let them live under decent human conditions. If they are not fit to live, kill them in a decent human way. Is it any wonder that some of us are driven to prescribe the lethal chamber as the solution for the hard cases which are at present made the excuse for dragging all the other cases down to their level, and the only solution that will create a sense of full social responsibility in modern populations?”

        Source: George Bernard Shaw, Prefaces (London: Constable and Co., 1934), p. 296.

        “Under Socialism, you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live, you would have to live well.”

        George Bernard Shaw: The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, 1928, pg. 470)

        I wonder how many welfare types would continue voting Democratic if the knew that was the ‘Socialist Utopia” Sure sounds like slavery to me.

        • Gail Combs says:

          Oh, and Gamecock,

          The fact that the above is not only NOT taught in our schools but is removed from the internet on a routine basis is one of the reasons this country is asleep.

          An example of the removal:
          http://www.zimbio.com/George+Bernard+Shaw/articles/I08Va40hsJ2/Real+George+Bernard+Shaw+Fabian+Socialist

          As Kent Clizbe says in his book, Soviet Covert Influence Agents targeted our schools, journalists and Hollywood and got ‘Willing Accomplices’ to feed our children falsehoods.

          With John Dewey and George Count being the top agents of socialist transformation of the US School system.

          page 135 – details of Counts targeting US education.

          In 1931 Houghton Mifflin published New Russia’s Primer: The Story of the Five-Year Plan, by M. Ilin, translated from the Russian by George S. Counts, Associate Director of the International Institute and Professor of Education in Teachers College, and Nucia P. Lodge, Research Assistant in the International Institute.

          We see that Anna Osipovna has transformed herself into Nucia Lodge. And we see that the dapper professor Counts modestly claims that he translated the book, while grudgingly crediting his KGB handler. The payload of this unbelievably brazen covert influence operation is straight out of Muenzenberg’s manual….

          The newly-minted “Russian expert” from Columbia delivered the KGB payload directly into the cultural heart of America. “Capitalism is corrupt! Russia’s experiment is working!” screamed
          his text.

          The Primer was a selection for Book-a-Month Club members in May 1931, and 46,000 members chose it. Counts’ first influence project was a best-seller for seven months, and ranked eighty-first on the list of nonfiction bestsellers from 1921-1932. Cloaked in his non-partisan, academic-research cover, Counts delivered the anti-capitalist payload into schools, universities, and living rooms across America.

          Of course, at the same time that Counts published this covert influence coup, Stalin was in the midst of forced collectivization of huge swaths of Soviet society. Dissenters were rounded up and shot. Or sent to the gulag, where they were worked to death, in the most inhuman conditions imaginable. Counts, who had visited Russia at least twice by 1931, could have witnessed the unimaginably squalid lives of normal Soviet citizens, if he had wanted to do so. Maybe he did, maybe he did not. We’ll probably never know, but we do know that he continued pouring out covert influence payloads for another decade.

          Counts cloaked his KGB payload in his work in Education with his participation in “non-ideological” organizations, like the Progressive Education Association, and the Philosophy of Education Society, for which Counts edited the journal The Social Frontier, beginning in 1934.

          Counts continued publishing, speaking, and teaching that “the age of individualism was over,” and that it was time to accept “collectivization” in the American economy. Counts continued advancing his KGB covert influence payload, always rejecting any suggestion that he was a communist, or inspired by socialism, cloaking his “philosophy of education” in Progressive terms.

          Counts founded the Social Reconstruction philosophy of Education—the root of which was the need to “change America.” A tenet of Count’s approach was that America needed to be changed. He voiced, and repeated, over and over, the KGB’s influence payload of his shock at what was happening in America.

          After Stalin’s 1939 pact with Hitler, Counts began to distance himself from the “collectivist” approach to economics, and in the 1940s launched a new publishing career, again with Anna “Nucia” Perlmutter Lodge as his translator. This new phase, clearly after a break with the KGB, focused on the negatives of the U.S.S.R. and its education system. Yet he never renounced his earlier works. And amazingly, Counts’ covert influence payload is still required reading in many schools of education.
          From the book Willing Accomplices: How KGB Covert Influence Agents Created Political Correctness and Destroyed America by Kent Clizbe

        • alibertarian2 says:

          Yes, comrade! “Make haste slowly!”

        • tom0mason says:

          The bottom line is what is Government for?
          This is explained already.
          It’s called the Constitution.

          What is tax for and what is the ‘correct level’ for today?
          That is the next logical question.

        • alibertarian2 says:

          tom0mason wrote:
          “The bottom line is what is Government for?
          This is explained already.
          It’s called the Constitution.”

          Where does the Constitution explain what government is for?

          The Declaration of Independence does explain the purpose of government:

          “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.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men

        • tom0mason says:

          Yes

        • alibertarian2 says:

          George Bernard Shaw said:
          “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
          Of course the people being bribed are never told what the end game is. Good ‘Ole George was kind enough to enlighten us. Too bad this is never taught in school along with the Real Story of Thanksgiving (Good to have some copies to hand out this time of year.)

          The Real Story of Thanksgiving will never be taught in government schools, by government employees.

          Regarding:

          “… If people are fit to live, let them live under decent human conditions. If they are not fit to live, kill them in a decent human way.”
          “If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live, you would have to live well.”

          These quotes of Shaw reveal what a horrendous person he was. Yet he is well-regarded by most unknowing Americans.

          Regarding:

          I wonder how many welfare types would continue voting Democratic if the knew that was the ‘Socialist Utopia” Sure sounds like slavery to me.

          My dog and 5 cats are quite happy in their socialist utopia. Of course, just like Obamacare, they got their free birth control – whether they wanted it or not.

  21. KTM says:

    Anyone that votes based on how much they of a government subsidy they get on a $4 per month birth control prescription (when we still pay 2-3x more per capita for health care than other countries) is a useful idiot.
    Anyone that votes based on whether they pay 5% or 3% interest on a student loan (when college education costs continue skyrocketing) is a useful idiot.
    Anyone that votes based on whether possession of marijuana is a misdemeanor or legal (when America’s insatiable drug use is devastating much of the Western hemisphere) is a useful idiot.
    Anyone that votes based on whether men and women in completely different careers and family obligations have modestly different income (when employment is still near historic lows and pay is still sagging) is a useful idiot.
    Anyone that votes based on whether their school provides free babysitting (when we pay top dollar for K-12 education but deliver mediocre results) is a useful idiot.
    Anyone that votes based on promises to raise someone else’s taxes (when most people think they themselves pay too much, and deficits are driven by overspending) is a useful idiot.
    Anyone that votes based on what candidates think another country should do with their oil sands (when it will be used somewhere regardless) is a useful idiot.

    Sadly, one some level almost every American voter is a useful idiot, so easily distracted with trivial and tangential concerns when major problems go unaddressed. The real problems are the third rail of politics, and anyone that touches them gets crucified. When voters let themselves be swayed by trivialities, we deserve what we get.

    • Gail Combs says:

      You forgot the idiotic fighting over ‘gay rights’ and abortion.

      There are much more important issues. Like jailing Banksters, repealing the Federal Reserve Act and killing off most of the bureaucracy.

      This country needs to spend the next twenty five years repealing useless laws and regs.

    • Actually, the TEA party has been touching those rails for four years now, and surviving, at least in congressional and gubernatorial races. But if they don’t take positions on at least a few other issues, they will be perceived by many as shallow and too inexperienced to be given a chance.

      Certainly there are many districts and states where it might be suicidal to touch any of those third rails. But what distinguishes real conservatives from the imposters is that the real ones are willing to take the chance, and accept whatever consequences there may be.

      Again (I’ve alluded to this further up on the page), the greatest problem we have is that the leadership does not want to do anything about the big problems (hence the heterogeneity and the intolerance for opposing views), and that is why they don’t want to talk about them on the campaign trail. At this point, I don’t think there is any way to make most of them change their mind. But they should at least be made aware that they do not automatically get re-elected just because they run as a Republican and call themselves a conservative. Then, if they come to believe that defeat is inevitable regardless of whether they act or not, perhaps some of them will choose to do the right thing.

      And that is an excellent example of a hard decision that sometimes has to be made by an “adult” voter.

      RTF

      • I had Rush on about 20 minutes ago, and he took a call from someone who wanted to talk about illegal immigration. And the caller said to Rush, basically, that it’s not just Obama who has blood on his hands when illegal immigrants cross the border and commit murder or homicide against U.S. citizens. He said it was all Democrats and all Republicans who have paid lip service to amnesty, that all of them have the same blood on them.

        Rush’s response included noting that on the Republican side, this was being led by the Chamber of Commerce, which is still sticking to the line that we need more people from these countries (that are producing masses of illegal immigrants) because they will do work that ‘no one else wants to do’.

        He then stated that polling shows that a large majority of the public is opposed to amnesty, and that the Democrat-Republican coalition that has emerged in support of amnesty is trying to govern against the will of the great majority of the people.

        He then made a statement that was particularly timely for the present discussion, and I quote it here now:

        The American people are not hard to understand. It’s when you start assuming that they are a bunch of rubes and hayseeds and hicks that you run into a real problem.

        • Gail Combs says:

          rubes and hayseeds and hicks were names intentionally stuck onto farmers by the Committee on Economic Development for the same reason ‘Climate Change Denier’ is stuck on us. It is to marginalize a group of people as low IQ who have a legitimate complaint.

          We also got “Stop The Hysteria” when we tried to bring the downside of NAIS and the Food Safety Modernization Act to peoples attention.

          This was in response to a line by line analysis of the darn bill! (And yeah, I was one of unnamed ones who did the reading – GACK!)

        • Thank you for that. But Gail, the question that I’m trying to get people to focus on is, What did Rush mean when he mentioned “a real problem”? What kind of problem was he alluding to?

          RTF

        • Gail Combs says:

          Richard,
          He may be referring to these polls from Rasmussen:
          59% of GOP Voters Say Republicans in Congress Out of Touch with Party’s Base

          56% Think Their Congressman Likely to Have Sold a Vote

          47% Think Neither Political Party Represents the American People

          29% Say U.S. is Heading in Right Direction

          And finally:
          ==>Americans Don’t Think Incumbents Deserve Reelection <===
          …survey finds that 23% of Likely U.S. Voters think their representative in Congress is the best person for the job.
          (wwwDOT)rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/top_stories/congressional_performance

          That is a really big vote of no confidence from the voters. The democrat’s voter base is more satisfied (and brainwashed) than the GOP base but if someone actually figured out what people really want they have a heck of a lot better chance of winning an election.

        • Not exactly. (I know because in listening to him, I find he is frequently bringing this point up. He is talking about a sudden exodus. Who would continue to vote for someone after they have explained what they want done in clear, intelligent terms, only to be told that they are too stupid or idiotic to understand? Would you? Would anyone?

          That’s what Rush is talking about, and he’s been saying it for at least a couple years now. He keeps repeating it because he knows that the leadership is ignoring him on this point. And Rush knows that the current state of affairs within the Republican party can only go on so long, because the “moderates” just keep becoming more and more vocal about the “idiot” meme. And he doesn’t want to see a breakup.

          Here is the essential nature of the dispute at this time: Group 1 calls Group 2 stupid idiots, and in return Group 2 calls Group 1 what many of them obviously are: closet Marxists.

          RTF

  22. Gail Combs says:

    alibertarian2 says:
    October 9, 2014 at 5:35 am

    You completely missed the point. First you ignore the fact that the Big Ag Corporations have banded together in an NGO to control the Agreement on Agriculture of the WTO.

    Gail Combs wrote: “You completely missed the point.”

    Nope, didn’t miss it. I provided evidence that your fears of whatever may result from the “ag cartel” are unfounded. Do you remember what that evidence is?
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    And you are all wet.

    My ‘Fears’ Showed up on my door step and shut down 2/3 of my business.

    My ‘Fears’ shut down the only place that would slaughter chickens and rabbits for small farmers.

    My ‘Fears’ shut down the guy who used to slaughter my sheep and goats….

    And you wanted the evidence that Big Ag runs the USDA/ FDA?
    HERE:
    http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/Cargill2009.pdf
    This is much much shorter than the original document unfortunately.
    and
    HERE. This is about the top all time campaign contributor to BOTH parties. He got into a bit of a mess when they caught him bribing Nixon.
    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1995/07/dwaynes-world

    I can’t find the old article I wanted but this one will do. I am not the only one who has found the slaughter houses closing left and right. (It was a major problem in the UK with FMD too. All the local small houses were closed via WTO/EU regs leaving the UK with a major mess on their hands.)

    Why so few slaughterhouses?

    The “processing, marketing and distribution networks that once made small farming viable… disintegrated in the last 30 years as U.S. agriculture went through a dramatic consolidation,” reported the Washington Post in 2010.

    “The decline of small-scale USDA-inspected slaughterhouses comes as the demand for pasture-raised niche meats is soaring,” noted USA Today in a 2010 article.

    In other words, the increased demand for niche meats is being suppressed by a dearth of slaughterhouses.

    A report last year in Washington State’s Spokesman-Review detailed the problem. Farmers and ranchers are free to use slaughterhouses that are not inspected by the USDA. But meat from animals slaughtered there “must be sold to the consumer before it is butchered.”

    “Since a steer yields about 400 pounds of meat, that’s often too much for a single family,” reported the Spokesman-Review. “Several families can go together to purchase an animal, but that’s more hassle for the rancher. And it doesn’t address the needs of individuals who just want to purchase a few steaks or some ground chuck.”

    The result, as NPR reported in 2012, is that “many local meat products are sent to slaughterhouses hundreds of miles away, across state lines.”

    The impact of limiting where animals can be slaughtered have real-world consequences—including the Rancho recall….

    In 2007, USDA officials were forced to admit to Congress that for at least 30 years, “U.S. inspectors visited 250 meat processing plants as rarely as once every two weeks despite federal law requiring daily inspection.”

    What’s the alternative? Without this USDA stranglehold, local abattoirs could flourish, recalls like the one in California would become less common, and those that do occur would have a much smaller impact on farmers, consumers, and the food supply….

    USDA regulations effectively force consumers who want to support small-scale, local farmers to buy meat that’s been processed in the same large slaughterhouses that larger competitors use.….
    http://reason.com/archives/2014/03/08/breaking-the-usdas-slaughterhouse-strang

    • Gail Combs says:

      Oh and alibertarian2?

      I have been fighting the fight your blindness illustrates for over a decade. At this point I agree with Doreen LET THEM EAT GRASS!

      …When less than 1% of the population is engaged in feeding the entire population and those being fed don’t actively, and positively support the one percent, then the 99% should be happy when they are left to feed themselves….When Marie Antoinette was told that the peasants were threatening revolt because they had no bread, she said, “Let them eat cake.” When we are faced with rampant hunger because of the regulatory, financial, trade and foreign policies of the past 100 or so years, those of us who have been crying from the roof tops for people to take an interest in what really sustains them may be very well justified in saying, “Let them eat grass.”

      She is a much better writer. Here are other articles she wrote on the issue.
      http://www.newswithviews.com/Hannes/doreenA.htm

      Of course at this point it is mute. The Ag Cartel won and the USDA/FDA has already started to slowly drive the independents off their land.

      The USDA agent I tangled with was an Animal Rights Activist according to the internet search I did. She made up the rules as she went along. And yeah I plowed through the 100s of pages of regs just to make sure. She has driven everyone in my former business out of business in her territory. A friendly competitor gave up and moved to S.C. to get away from her.

      Here is another example: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2011/06/27/Animal-Rights-Activism-Fuels-USDA-Rabbit-Chase

      Again the nitty gritty article by the same author with all the facts is gone:
      bobmccarty(DOT)com/2011/06/27/animal-rights-activism-fuels-usda-rabbit-chase/

      Recap: The HSUS lawyer who once claimed to be fighting animal cruelty and government bureaucracy is now a government bureaucrat who wields a regulatory whip that inflicts cruel and unusual punishment on people like the Dollarhites.

      Oh, the irony!

      • alibertarian2 says:

        “The USDA agent I tangled with was an Animal Rights Activist according to the internet search I did. She made up the rules as she went along.”

        More that we agree on.

    • alibertarian2 says:

      Regarding:

      Gail Combs wrote: “You completely missed the point.”
      Nope, didn’t miss it. I provided evidence that your fears of whatever may result from the “ag cartel” are unfounded. Do you remember what that evidence is?
      >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
      And you are all wet.
      My ‘Fears’ Showed up on my door step and shut down 2/3 of my business.
      My ‘Fears’ shut down the only place that would slaughter chickens and rabbits for small farmers.
      My ‘Fears’ shut down the guy who used to slaughter my sheep and goats….
      And you wanted the evidence that Big Ag runs the USDA/ FDA?
      HERE:
      http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/Cargill2009.pdf
      This is much much shorter than the original document unfortunately.
      and

      I can’t buy clothing from a local retailer, who bought clothing from a local distributor, who bought clothing from a local clothing manufacturer, who bought fabric from a local textile manufacturer, who bought cotton from a local farmer, who bought farm machinery from a local factory, who bought steel from a local factory, who bought iron and coal from local mines.

      So what?

      Do you have a natural right to a successful business? Do you have a natural right to sell your products to your neighbors at a higher price than they would like to pay, who would rather buy their stuff from companies with lower prices resulting from economy of scale, both materially and financially?

      Regarding:

      HERE. This is about the top all time campaign contributor to BOTH parties. He got into a bit of a mess when they caught him bribing Nixon.
      http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1995/07/dwaynes-world

      Donors usually give money to candidates to those with whom they philosophically agree. That is why more than 95% of union money goes to Democrats.

      Campaign donations are limited to a few thousand dollars. I can buy just as much campaign influence as Warren Buffett.

      What are you suggesting? Banning or limiting donations to PACS not affiliated with campaigns? A Constitutional Amendment, such as the Democrats just voted on in the Senate to repeal-and-replace the First Amendment?

      Regarding:

      “The decline of small-scale USDA-inspected slaughterhouses comes as the demand for pasture-raised niche meats is soaring,” noted USA Today in a 2010 article.

      In other words, the increased demand for niche meats is being suppressed by a dearth of slaughterhouses.

      In other words, you did not read what I already wrote concerning JBS that refutes your claim.

      Regarding:

      What’s the alternative? Without this USDA stranglehold, local abattoirs could flourish, recalls like the one in California would become less common, and those that do occur would have a much smaller impact on farmers, consumers, and the food supply….

      USDA regulations effectively force consumers who want to support small-scale, local farmers to buy meat that’s been processed in the same large slaughterhouses that larger competitors use.….
      http://reason.com/archives/2014/03/08/breaking-the-usdas-slaughterhouse-strang

      That is something we can agree upon.

      • Gail Combs says:

        a.libertarian2

        “Do you have a natural right to a successful business? Do you have a natural right to sell your products to your neighbors at a higher price than they would like to pay, who would rather buy their stuff from companies with lower prices resulting from economy of scale, both materially and financially?”
        >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
        I can not believe a supposed libertarian keeps missing the point. So I will try again. There are several points so I will put them in different comments.

        E.M. Smith has a a degree in Economics and tons of other ‘stuff’ you can click on his ‘About’ page. He manages to sum up what I have been trying to say in one comment. I am going to put this critical passage up top so you do not miss it:

        …………………………………….
        Once corporations figure out that it is cheaper and easier to get the competition banned and them mandated, than to create new products; and that they can make lots of money as the sole provider of a crappy product but not that much making good products in a competitive market; well, lets just say that the campagne contributions flow…
        The result of the last 50 years has been more companies in markets with Oligopolies that are essentially guaranteed by the government.

        …………………………………..

        That in a nutshell is what has been going on and it has NOTHING to do with what is best for the consumer, the environment, or the country. It has to do with what is best for the corporate bottom line and the hell with the rest of us!

        If you can manage to wrap your brain around that concept the last fifty to a hundred years suddenly makes sense.

        “Evil Socialism” vs “Evil Capitalism”

        … to answer the implied question “why would capitalists destroy their own markets?”:

        Realize that the capitalist urge is not toward a competitive market. It’s the very LAST thing any profit maximizer wants. Even in Adam Smith’s “The Wealth Of Nations” he recognizes that ~’Rairly do men of means gather, even for merryment and {discourse?} but that the conversation turns to ways to {restrict competition and raise prices}’.

        What a profit maximizer wants is a monopoly where they can achieve the profit maximizing price point. Not competition. No “market” with many sellers.

        So watch what GE does, as an example. It is always on the hunt for a market it can “dominate”. It uses political leverage to get its products mandated and the competition banned. It doesn’t want a market, it wants a ‘company store’.

        Internalize that, and a lot of things “fit” better…

        Monsanto pushing legislation to ban private traditional seeds and seed sharing, and promoting GMO products. (Why would a seed company want to ‘destroy’ a seed market? So you must come to the company store…)

        EPA is used to forbid all sorts of things that can be done easily and cheaply, and where the alternative is very expensive (and available from very few, or one, supplier). So, want to make your own “trash to fuel FT machine”? Well, better check out all the “regulations” on fuel refining and production … if you don’t have a few full time lawyers to fill out the paperwork and a few more to defend against the EPA suing you, it’s a no-go. And who DOES have those lawyers? AND the already established refineries? Oh yeah…

        Once corporations figure out that it is cheaper and easier to get the competition banned and them mandated, than to create new products; and that they can make lots of money as the sole provider of a crappy product but not that much making good products in a competitive market; well, lets just say that the campagne contributions flow…

        Oddly, you can look at Communism as the “limit case” where there is ONE corporation and it IS the government. At the other extreme is “laissez faire” with huge numbers of competitors. As you move toward Communism you pass through stages of ever more “concentration” of control. Just shy of communism is Classical Socialism with it’s state planning boards and commissions. A bit more toward L.F. you get “Market Socialism” (with some sub-types in between).

        The USA until about 1990 was a “Mixed Economy” with some “natural monopolies” under government “control” via “regulation”; and with many competitive markets. We’ve moved to more central planning and more central “regulation” (in some cases as a cover for the “planning” word that has gotten tied to Socialism… so is political to some extent). With the nationalization of GM and the bank “bailout” / “rescue” that was really more of a ‘take-under’ in some ways; we moved to a Lange Type Socialism.

        The result of the last 50 years has been more companies in markets with Oligopolies that are essentially guaranteed by the government. Who dominates the Home Mortgage Market? Fanny & Freddy – Gov’t Corporations. Who dominates the Student Loan Market? Sally Mae – a Gov’t Corporation. Who dominates US Autos? GM – a Gov’t Corporation via Nationalization, but now being sold off. (Though Ford is doing well too.) And who “Calls the Tune” for the Banks in America? ALL of them? The Federal Reserve Bank – a Gov’t sponsored corporation. And there are a whole lot more of them. Try taking a train from coast to coast for example…

        At the next tier down, we have Gov’t dependent Oligopolies. Say you wanted to make airplanes. First off, you need that dozen lawyers to work the FAA for you. Next up, you need some friends in the Military to feed you contracts. Don’t think so? When Boeing gets a $B contract to ‘study’ or ‘develop’ and you need to design your new tech from scratch on your own money: Who do you think will win? So the government basically decides how many companies it wants, and who they will be, then funds them “to plan” with contracts. (This is NOT a hypothetical… I’ve watched them flat out announce “We’d like Lockheed and Martin to merge” or “we don’t want…” usually when one of them is ‘having issues’ and the topic is raised. Then the gov’t casts the one vote that matters…)

        And so it goes…

        This is, dare I say it…. basically the same way the Fascist “Third Way” worked. (And it DOES work). FDR and Wilson both had high praise for The Third Way and you can see how they shifted America from a ‘free market’ toward “Third Way” government – corporation “cooperation” … It was this same process / tendency that Ike warned about in the “Military Industrial Complex” speech.

        • alibertarian2 says:

          Regarding:

          I can not believe a supposed libertarian keeps missing the point. So I will try again. There are several points so I will put them in different comments.
          .
          .
          .
          Once corporations figure out that it is cheaper and easier to get the competition banned and them mandated, than to create new products; and that they can make lots of money as the sole provider of a crappy product but not that much making good products in a competitive market; well, lets just say that the campagne contributions flow…
          The result of the last 50 years has been more companies in markets with Oligopolies that are essentially guaranteed by the government.

          Check my response to you, something like two posts ago, in my discussion of ag cartels and regulatory capture. The fact that you seem to think I don’t know what your point is either indicates that you don’t read what I wrote, don’t remember it, or don’t know what regulatory capture is.

          Regulatory capture is endemic to the financial sector, and many others. That there are “only” 60 egg producers, that the top ten food retailers sell more than 75% of food, and that nine corporations handle 80% of the food did not come about by regulatory capture, but primarily through market forces.

          Regarding:

          That in a nutshell is what has been going on and it has NOTHING to do with what is best for the consumer, the environment, or the country. It has to do with what is best for the corporate bottom line and the hell with the rest of us!
          If you can manage to wrap your brain around that concept the last fifty to a hundred years suddenly makes sense.

          And what would you expect from any business, corporate or otherwise, or any individual? Every business and individual seeks to maximize the bottom line, and “regard for the rest of us” does not show up as a line on the profit-loss statement or the balance sheet, or in the individual’s checkbook. As long as the government is nothing more than a trough at which all the pigs, big or little, fight for their food, corporations will be at that trough to feed too.

      • Gail Combs says:

        a.libertarian2

        “Do you have a natural right to a successful business? Do you have a natural right to sell your products to your neighbors at a higher price than they would like to pay, who would rather buy their stuff from companies with lower prices resulting from economy of scale, both materially and financially?”
        >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
        The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution supposedly grant me

        …..certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–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,…..

        The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

        He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. [Try getting a trial. The government can decide whether to prosecute or not – Heartland vs Peter Gleick is a classic example.]

        He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. [bureaucracies and unconstitutional regulations]

        He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our law…. [The UN, Agenda 21, World Trade Organization…]

        For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: [Fractional Reserve Banking and wage devaluation]

        For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: [See comment ]

        For abolishing the free System of English Laws…[FDA’s statement we have No Right to Contract]

        For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments….[ The Commerce Clause: Route to Omnipotent Government ]

        GEE, I am seeing most of those complaints taking on new life. Imagine that. /sarc

        • tom0mason says:

          “Do you have a natural right to a successful business? ”
          Essentially no. That is for the market to decide.

        • tom0mason says:

          “Do you have a natural right to sell your products to your neighbors at a higher price than they would like to pay, who would rather buy their stuff from companies with lower prices resulting from economy of scale, both materially and financially?”

          Yes you have the right to sell at any price. The market will determine whether you are a success at doing so.

        • alibertarian2 says:

          Regarding:

          “Do you have a natural right to sell your products to your neighbors at a higher price than they would like to pay, who would rather buy their stuff from companies with lower prices resulting from economy of scale, both materially and financially?”

          Yes you have the right to sell at any price. The market will determine whether you are a success at doing so.

          Let me re-write the question to make it clearer.

          “Do you have a natural right to force your neighbors to buy products from local, small retailers, and to forbid your neighbors from buying their stuff from large companies with lower prices resulting from economy of scale, both materially and financially?”

        • Gail Combs says:

          Actually Tom I do sell at a higher price and my customers are quite happy because of the increase in individual attention and QUALITY.

          I also buy grass fed beef from a local farmer at a higher price and am quite please with it. It costs 10% more but I actually get the 90% beef (hamburger) i expected.

          The Walmart hamburger in a tube was 20% fat and 20% water (I measured both brands three times) so I only got 60% beef in a package that claimed to be ‘80% lean.’ I called the FDA and was told adding 20% water was not ‘adulterating’ the product or false advertising.

        • alibertarian2 says:

          Regarding:

          a.libertarian2 “Do you have a natural right to a successful business? Do you have a natural right to sell your products to your neighbors at a higher price than they would like to pay, who would rather buy their stuff from companies with lower prices resulting from economy of scale, both materially and financially?” >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> […]

          Actually Tom I do sell at a higher price and my customers are quite happy because of the increase in individual attention and QUALITY.
          I also buy grass fed beef from a local farmer at a higher price and am quite please with it. It costs 10% more but I actually get the 90% beef (hamburger) i expected.
          The Walmart hamburger in a tube was 20% fat and 20% water (I measured both brands three times) so I only got 60% beef in a package that claimed to be ‘80% lean.’ I called the FDA and was told adding 20% water was not ‘adulterating’ the product or false advertising.

          Who is Tom?
          I will respond, since you quoted me.

          You did not actually respond to my question, which explicitly regarded rights. The happiness of your customers was not the question.

        • tom0mason says:

          “Actually Tom I do sell at a higher price and my customers are quite happy because of the increase in individual attention and QUALITY.”

          That is part of my point – you’ve added something to your product that the customer perceives as valuable. You’ve added value to a basic product, and so can charge a higher price.

        • alibertarian2 says:

          Regarding:

          Gail Combs commented on Behaving Like An Adult.
          in response to alibertarian2:
          Regarding: I can’t buy clothing from a local retailer, who bought clothing from a local distributor, who bought clothing from a local clothing manufacturer, who bought fabric from a local textile manufacturer, who bought cotton from a local farmer, who bought farm machinery from a local factory, who bought steel from a local factory, who […]

          Let’s recap a little first.

          First Gail Combs wrote: “You completely missed the point.”

          To which I responded: “Nope, didn’t miss it. I provided evidence that your fears of whatever may result from the ‘ag cartel’ are unfounded.”

          To which Gail Combs responded:

          And you are all wet.
          My ‘Fears’ Showed up on my door step and shut down 2/3 of my business.
          My ‘Fears’ shut down the only place that would slaughter chickens and rabbits for small farmers.
          My ‘Fears’ shut down the guy who used to slaughter my sheep and goats….
          And you wanted the evidence that Big Ag runs the USDA/ FDA?
          HERE:
          http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/Cargill2009.pdf
          This is much much shorter than the original document unfortunately….

          (emphasis added)

          To which I responded:

          I can’t buy clothing from a local retailer, who bought clothing from a local distributor, who bought clothing from a local clothing manufacturer, who bought fabric from a local textile manufacturer, who bought cotton from a local farmer, who bought farm machinery from a local factory, who bought steel from a local factory, who bought iron and coal from local mines.

          So what?

          Do you have a natural right to a successful business? Do you have a natural right to sell your products to your neighbors at a higher price than they would like to pay, who would rather buy their stuff from companies with lower prices resulting from economy of scale, both materially and financially?

          To which Gail Combs responded:

          I can not believe a supposed libertarian keeps missing the point. So I will try again. There are several points so I will put them in different comments.
          .
          .
          .
          That in a nutshell is what has been going on and it has NOTHING to do with what is best for the consumer, the environment, or the country. It has to do with what is best for the corporate bottom line and the hell with the rest of us! It has to do with what is best for the corporate bottom line and the hell with the rest of us!
          If you can manage to wrap your brain around that concept the last fifty to a hundred years suddenly makes sense.

          (emphasis added)

          Did you want me to pretend that you did not mention “my sheep and goats,” as though that has something to do with regulatory capture? My response was a direct response to your comments about YOUR sheep, YOUR goats, and YOUR business.

          Gail Combs had written:

          I am FOR Capitalism.

          However I am NOT for corporate Monopoly or Monopsony.

          I am NOT for corporations running the US government via appointments as head of the massive bureaucracy we now have.

          Do you notice that you mentioned BOTH monopoly and regulatory capture? My response to you was a response to your disdain for monopoly. A discussion of one topic that YOU mentioned is not an avoidance of another topic that you mentioned.

          Besides, I did not avoid that other topic. You did mention the regulatory capture in your question “And you wanted the evidence that Big Ag runs the USDA/ FDA?” But I already recognized and dealt with regulatory capture in a previous post, at http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/behaving-like-an-adult/#comment-436518, where I wrote:

          Yeah, I read enough of reason.com, Cato, and mises.org to know about regulatory capture, and crony capitalism. That is still not corporate control. That is government control.

          The enemy is not welfare addicts, whether they are corporations or SNAP beneficiaries. The enemy is government letting them get away with it, and ultimately the voters who put those governments in place.

          Regarding:

          “Do you have a natural right to a successful business? Do you have a natural right to sell your products to your neighbors at a higher price than they would like to pay, who would rather buy their stuff from companies with lower prices resulting from economy of scale, both materially and financially?”
          >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
          The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution supposedly grant me…
          .
          .
          .
          GEE, I am seeing most of those complaints taking on new life. Imagine that. /sarc

          First, let’s have a small but important correction to what you wrote. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution do not grant you rights. They recognize pre-existing rights that no government or documents can grant. We are born with those rights. They are not given to us by anyone.

          Given your previous statement of disdain for monopoly, and not just regulatory capture, does that mean your answers to the questions “Do you have a natural right to a successful business? Do you have a natural right to sell your products to your neighbors at a higher price than they would like to pay, who would rather buy their stuff from companies with lower prices resulting from economy of scale, both materially and financially?” are “yes?”

  23. Gail Combs says:

    a.libertarian2

    …Campaign donations are limited to a few thousand dollars. I can buy just as much campaign influence as Warren Buffett.

    What are you suggesting? Banning or limiting donations to PACS not affiliated with campaigns? A Constitutional Amendment, such as the Democrats just voted on in the Senate to repeal-and-replace the First Amendment?….
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    Brother are you naive. Ever hear of LAW FIRMS? It is amazing how much money is contributed via law firms, and that is just one possibility.

    So You Want to Buy A President?

    Perhaps America’s champion all-time campaign contributor is Dwayne Orville Andreas. Although virtually unknown to most Americans, since the 1970s, leading politicians of both parties have been well acquainted with Andreas, his company, and his money….

    As far back as Watergate, Andreas’ political giving has thrust him into controversy. A Watergate-era investigation led to criminal charges that he had illegally contributed $100,000 to Humphrey’s 1968 campaign for President, but Andreas was acquitted. And his $25,000 cash donation to President Nixon’s re-election bid in 1972 became a focus of Watergate inquiry into abuses surrounding unreported campaign money. According to an investigative memo uncovered in 1992 that quotes President Nixon’s personal secretary Rosemary Woods, Andreas delivered $100,000 in $100 bills to the White House shortly before the 1972 election. Woods stored the money in a basement safe for about a year, when the President had her return the cash to Andreas.

    Andreas, who earns a $3.6 million salary, has continued donating generously to many Democratic and Republican candidates — “tithing,” he calls it. Over the years he has given money to Senator Bob Dole, President Clinton, President Bush, President Carter, Michael Dukakis, Jack Kemp, and Jesse Jackson, among others. Between 1981 and 1994, Senator Dole and his political foundations collected $178,000 in contributions from Andreas, members of Andreas’ family and A.D.M. executives, according to Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington. Andreas and A.D.M. have also given more than $2 million in “soft money” to the Democratic and Republican parties since 1991, according to federal records.

    Currently , however, the company has bigger problems than its reputation for political giving. Federal prosecutors are investigating allegations that the company has conspired to fix commodity prices. A.D.M. has denied any wrongdoing.

    November 11, 1996: ADM agreed to plead guilty and to pay the largest criminal antitrust fine in history – $100 Million – in order to resolve felony charges brought by the U.S. Justice Department Antitrust Division for violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

    So that gives us a time window. Between 1991 to 1996 Andreas and A.D.M. have given more than $2 million. Can you match 2 million in five years? I doubt it.

    • tom0mason says:

      Power brokers and politicians have been a commodity since Roman times, propably before then. They are in a market. The immoral ones use this market against the people they should represent and for themselves and their pals.

    • alibertarian2 says:

      First Gail Combs wrote:

      HERE. This is about the top all time campaign contributor to BOTH parties. He got into a bit of a mess when they caught him bribing Nixon.
      http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1995/07/dwaynes-world

      To which I responded:

      Donors usually give money to candidates to those with whom they philosophically agree. That is why more than 95% of union money goes to Democrats.

      Campaign donations are limited to a few thousand dollars. I can buy just as much campaign influence as Warren Buffett.

      What are you suggesting? Banning or limiting donations to PACS not affiliated with campaigns? A Constitutional Amendment, such as the Democrats just voted on in the Senate to repeal-and-replace the First Amendment?

      To which Gail Combs replied:

      Brother are you naive. Ever hear of LAW FIRMS? It is amazing how much money is contributed via law firms, and that is just one possibility.

      First of all, individuals, such as Andreas if he is still alive, are limited to $2600 per election to a candidate (or his campaign committee).

      Corporations, such as law firms, may not donate directly to a candidate, but through separate PACs. Those donations are also limited to $2600 per candidate per election.

      The most that any individual or PAC can give is $32,400 per calendar year, and that is to a national party committee, not to a candidate. But even the national party committee is limited to giving $5000 per candidate.

      http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/contrib.shtml#Contribution_Limits

      I may be naïve, but you are …?

      You again failed to answer my questions regarding your solution to the problem that you see What are you suggesting? Banning or limiting donations to PACS not affiliated with campaigns? A Constitutional Amendment, such as the Democrats just voted on in the Senate to repeal-and-replace the First Amendment?

      As long as government is viewed by the voters as, effectively, just a trough at which all the pigs, individuals and corporate, fight over all of the country’s property, as though it were one big commune, you will have all the pigs doing what is necessary to get their share (fair or otherwise). And that includes putting money into elections.

  24. Gail Combs says:

    a.libertarian2

    “Do you have a natural right to a successful business? Do you have a natural right to sell your products to your neighbors at a higher price than they would like to pay, who would rather buy their stuff from companies with lower prices resulting from economy of scale, both materially and financially?”
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    What do all those unconstitutional regulations mean to a person, not just a newly regulated business niche:

    The 2013 Federal Register contains over 80,000 pages of new rules. As the Dollarites showed only a large corporation who hires a full time legal staff has any hope of steering clear of traps in those new rules and in the new laws with completely off topic amendments attached. The Dollarites fell foul of a one liner in an unrelated bill that amended the Animal Welfare Act years after the original law was passed.

    On top of that you need a compliance staff. I worked for a company with a small thirty man staff. After a new law was passed we had to add 3 more people, 10% of the employees, to do nothing except deal with the additional paperwork required.
    That cost YOU money.
    federal regulations have lowered GDP growth by 2 percent per year
    (wwwDOT)aei-ideas.org/2013/06/federal-regulations-have-lowered-gdp-growth-by-2-per-year/

    Federal Regulations Have Made You 75 Percent Poorer U.S. GDP is just $16 trillion instead of $54 trillion… in the absence of six decades of accumulated regulations—a median household income of $330,000 instead of the $53,000 we get now.

    Red Tape Rising: A 2011 Mid-Year Report

    Argument for what’s certain: regulations hurting economy

    As a private citizen do YOU have the time to read 80,000 pages of new regs a year not to mention court cases. (Courts can make laws. It is called case law.)

    Mark Stoval’s article, The state says you are a criminal makes that point clear:

    Are you a criminal? The state says that you are. Harvey A. Silverglate’s Three Felonies A Day says in his book that federal prosecutors invent creative interpretations of statutes and by doing so create new felonies out of thin air. So many felonies that the average person in this country commits three felonies a day.

    The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have not only exploded in number, but, along with countless regulatory provisions, have also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how the federal criminal justice system has become dangerously disconnected from common law traditions of due process and fair notice of the law’s expectations, enabling prosecutors to pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior….

    markstoval(DOT)wordpress.com/2013/11/09/the-state-says-you-are-a-criminal/

    John W. Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law and human rights. He wrote the book, A Government of Wolves
    His blog has the article:
    We’re All Criminals and Outlaws in the Eyes of the American Police State

    “Never in the civilised world have so many been locked up for so little.”—“Rough Justice in America,” — The Economist

    Why are we seeing such an uptick in Americans being arrested for such absurd “violations” as letting their kids play at a park unsupervised, collecting rainwater and snow runoff on their own property, growing vegetables in their yard, and holding Bible studies in their living room?

    Mind you, we’re not talking tickets or fines or even warnings being issued to these so-called “lawbreakers.” We’re talking felony charges, handcuffs, police cars, mug shots, pat downs, jail cells and criminal records.

    Consider what happened to Nicole Gainey, the Florida mom who was arrested and charged with child neglect for allowing her 7-year-old son to visit a neighborhood playground located a half mile from their house.

    For the so-called “crime” of allowing her son to play at the park unsupervised, Gainey was interrogated, arrested and handcuffed in front of her son, and transported to the local jail where she was physically searched, fingerprinted, photographed and held for seven hours and then forced to pay almost $4000 in bond in order to return to her family. Gainey’s family and friends were subsequently questioned by the Dept. of Child Services. Gainey now faces a third-degree criminal felony charge that carries with it a fine of up to $5,000 and 5 years in jail…..

    What are the repercussions?
    House Hearing, 112 Congress
    CAUGHT UP IN RED TAPE: THE IMPACT OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS ON SMALL BUSINESSES AND CONTRACTORS

    (wwwDOT)gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg76478/html/CHRG-112hhrg76478.htm
    …..small business owners are most likely to say that complying with government regulations is the most important problem facing them today. That is more than taxes and more than the overall economy. The Gallop poll is mirrored by numerous trade association surveys, such as the one conducted by the United States Chamber of Commerce in March of 2012. That Chamber study found that almost half of small business owners said regulation is a greater threat to their business than taxation and litigation combined. Similarly, a poll conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business found that 63 percent of respondents believe the rules issued by the federal government have done more to hurt small business and 74 percent believe that the federal government should focus on creating jobs instead of issuing new rules and regulations. The message is clear–small businesses need Washington to stay out of the way.

    Small business owners face unique challenges in navigating federal regulations. According to the study, “The Impact of Regulatory Costs on Small Firms,” published by the SBA’s Office of Advocacy in September of 2010, small businesses face an annual regulatory cost of over $10,500 per employee, which is 36 percent higher than the per employee regulatory cost facing large firms. It is oftentimes more expensive for small firms to implement regulatory rules and to abide by regulations than it is for large businesses.

    And while regulations certainly have benefits, they also have costs that are barriers to entry, distort markets, and divert scarce capital away from job creation. Small businesses simply do not have the resources to navigate the ever-increasing maze of federal regulations….

    Colonel O’Cain.

    Maybe I should start by explaining the difference between a large business and a small business. A large business, all these problems that Mr. Mulvaney has alluded to regarding regulations are not a problem for large business. They are a cost, but not a problem, because in each one of those areas where a regulation has to be complied with, they simply have a vice president or senior vice president or director with an army of people who take care of all that. They make all the right submissions and they do not get in any kind of trouble with the government, because they have the resources to be able to do that.

    But mom and pop, they do not have these vast resources to call to help them navigate their way through these shark-infested waters. It is daunting enough that a number of small businesses will not even try to do business with the government because they see that it is too complicated, too complicated.

    And then there are other small businesses who want to do business with the government and they attempt to do business with the government. Because resources are vital to them, financial resources, they generally try themselves. So they will go online and search websites and read this site and that site and what-have-you. And normally after a few weeks, they are more confused than when they started. They have no idea where to start to begin doing business with the government, and if they think they have begun the process, they have no idea when they are done. How do you know when you are done. How many certifications does it take before you can actually submit a bid and negotiate a contract with the government….

    Small businesses losing out to red tape

    …cities and states stifle new small businesses at every turn, burying them in mounds of paperwork; lengthy, expensive and arbitrary permitting processes; pointless educational requirements for occupations; or even just outright bans. Today, the Institute for Justice released a series of studies documenting government-imposed barriers to entrepreneurship in eight cities. In every city studied, overwhelming regulations destroyed or crippled would-be businesses at a time when they are most needed.

    Time and again, these reports document how local bureaucrats believe they should dictate every aspect of a person’s small business. They want to choose who can go into which business, where, what the business should look like, and what signs will be put in the windows. And if that means that businesses fail, or never open, or can operate only illegally, or waste all their money trying to get permits so they have nothing left for actual operations, that’s just too bad. This attitude would be bad enough in prosperous times, but in a period of financial strain and high unemployment, it’s almost suicidally foolish.

    Along the way, the dreams of individuals are repeatedly crushed:
    usatoday30(dot)usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-10-21-mellor26_st_N.htm

    • alibertarian2 says:

      Regarding:

      a.libertarian2
      “Do you have a natural right to a successful business? Do you have a natural right to sell your products to your neighbors at a higher price than they would like to pay, who would rather buy their stuff from companies with lower prices resulting from economy of scale, both materially and financially?”
      >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
      What do all those unconstitutional regulations mean to a person, not just a newly regulated business niche:…

      While you did not actually write a response to my question that you quoted, what you did write should be sent to The Nation, the New York Times, and Obama. They need to learn.

  25. Gail Combs says:

    alibertarian2 says:
    “Do you have a natural right to force your neighbors to buy products from local, small retailers, and to forbid your neighbors from buying their stuff from large companies with lower prices resulting from economy of scale, both materially and financially?”
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

    Tell that to GE who is forcing us to buy twisty light bulbs at much higher cost. Tell that to Dupont who forced us to buy a freon substitute at much much higher cost. Tell that to Monsanto who has been suing organic farmers for ‘Patent infringement’ because their UNWANTED GMOs cross bred with heirloom varieties and the court do not recognize that as criminal trespass but as patent infringement. link

    What you refuse to acknowledge is the Transnationals are not really competitors but instead are cartels.

    Maybe you have fallen for the argument that mutual funds and pensions hold most of the Monsanto stock so it is owned by the public. Not so. You BUY shares in a mutual fund and Mr Johnson holds title and votes the Monsanto shares NOT YOU.

    Now think of the yearly Bilderberg meetings:
    (wwwDOT)globalresearch.ca/the-true-story-of-the-bilderberg-group-and-what-they-may-be-planning-now/13808

    Daniel Estulin Bilderberg Speech at EU Parliament Press Conference
    https://publicintelligence.net/daniel-estulin-bilderberg-speech-at-eu-parliament-press-conference/

    Bill Clinton’s mentor was Carroll Quigley. Read what he wrote:
    (wwwDOT)thirdworldtraveler.com/New_World_Order/Anglo_American_Estab.html
    (wwwDOT)thirdworldtraveler.com/Banks/Tragedy_Hope_excerpt.html

    Then look at the evidence of actual control:

    Network of 147 Companies Controls Nearly 40% of Global Economic Value of Transnational Corporations
    An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy….
    It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs).

    “Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market,” says James Glattfelder. “Our analysis is reality-based.”

    Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world’s economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships….

    From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company’s operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power….

    When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

    Top 50 control-holders (The Network of Global Corporate Control): [listed]

    • alibertarian2 says:

      Regarding:

      alibertarian2 says:
      “Do you have a natural right to force your neighbors to buy products from local, small retailers, and to forbid your neighbors from buying their stuff from large companies with lower prices resulting from economy of scale, both materially and financially?”
      >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
      Tell that to GE who is forcing us …

      I didn’t “tell” you anything. I asked a question. Do you have answers?

      Since you seem to have gotten this far, you should have already seen my discussion of both monopoly and regulatory capture.

      Regarding:

      …to buy twisty light bulbs at much higher cost. Tell that to Dupont who forced us to buy a freon substitute at much much higher cost. Tell that to Monsanto who has been suing organic farmers for ‘Patent infringement’ because their UNWANTED GMOs cross bred with heirloom varieties and the court do not recognize that as criminal trespass but as patent infringement. link

      You are fundamentally wrong in identifying the problem. Those companies do not have the power to force us to do what you claim. The government has that power to limit the markets in such ways. I already pointed this out many posts ago.

      Regarding:

      What you refuse to acknowledge is the Transnationals are not really competitors but instead are cartels.

      Please re-read what I wrote and you will not find such a refusal.

      Do they collaborate directly with one another? Would such collaboration be anti-libertarian if no government favoritism, or regulatory capture, is involved?

      Regarding:

      Maybe you have fallen for the argument that mutual funds and pensions hold most of the Monsanto stock so it is owned by the public. Not so. You BUY shares in a mutual fund and Mr Johnson holds title and votes the Monsanto shares NOT YOU.

      Actually, institutional ownership, such as pensions and mutual funds, own about 68% of the outstanding shares of Monsanto. (http://investors.morningstar.com/ownership/shareholders-overview.html?t=MON&region=usa&culture=en-US)
      All owners, including mutual funds and pensions, have a vote at stockholder meetings of publicly-held corporations.

      Regarding:

      Then look at the evidence of actual control:
      Network of 147 Companies Controls Nearly 40% of Global Economic Value of Transnational Corporations…

      An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy….

      You continue to conflate market-induced corporate control of our lives with government-induced corporate control. There is an important moral difference.

  26. Gail Combs says:

    You continue to conflate market-induced corporate control of our lives with government-induced corporate control. There is an important moral difference.
    >>>>>>>>>>>>
    Nice twisting and turning. Market-induced corporate control of our lives is the direct result of government laws and regulations.

    Bottom line is the billionaires who own the corporations are the same billionaires who fund foundations who are the same foundations that fund and control NGOs who are the same NGOs that dictate government policy. That is the round about method of control. Straight buying of politicians and inserting friendlies in to top bureaucratic slots is the other.

    An example of the direct method is the Corporate-Government revolting door like Monsanto’s lawyer Mike Taylor while holding a position in the FDA ruling that Monsanto’s GMOs are the same as natural and need no testing.

    Or Ann Veneman, United States Secretary of Agriculture, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was on the was on the Board of Directors of Monsanto’s Calgene Corporation. She help negotiate the Uruguay round talks for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that lead to WTO. She was also a member of the law firm and lobby group Patton, Boggs & Blow who were the lawyers for Monsanto in an Agent Orange dumping case among others. Patton, Boggs & Blow lobbies for Pharmacia Corporation. The company was formerly known as Monsanto Company and changed its name to Pharmacia Corporation in April 2000.

    You also keep ignoring things like the Bilderbergers, 1001 Club, Club of Rome….

    Shock U.S. Senate Report: Left-Wing ‘Billionaire’s Club’ Using Environmentalism to Control the US Economy and Subvert Democracy a news article referring to the Senate Report:

    The Chain of Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA

    This is a typical ‘blind spot’ shown by Steve Fraser & Gary Gerstel.
    Ignoring Elites, Historians Are Missing a Major Factor in Politics and History

    [Steve Fraser is a writer and historian living in New York. Gary Gerstle is a professor of history at the University of Maryland at College Park. This essay is adapted from the book they edited, Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy, published this month by Harvard University Press. Copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.]

    … Over the last quarter-century, historians have by and large ceased writing about the role of ruling elites in the country’s evolution. Or if they have taken up the subject, they have done so to argue against its salience for grasping the essentials of American political history. Yet there is something peculiar about this recent intellectual aversion, even if we accept as true the beliefs that democracy, social mobility, and economic dynamism have long inhibited the congealing of a ruling stratum. This aversion has coincided, after all, with one of the largest and fastest-growing disparities in the division of income and wealth in American history….

    Neglecting the powerful had not been characteristic of historical work before World War II. To the contrary, the story of the ruling elites had preoccupied historians for a very long time. Moreover, to talk about classes and the struggles between them was common parlance. Indeed, for the first 150 years of the nation’s life, the language of ruling and subordinate social groups defined the contours of one of the grand narratives of American history. Measured by the long sweep of that history, stretching back into the colonial era, it is the recent muting of those concerns about the concentration and exercise of power that seems odd.

    … It is virtually impossible to make sense of any of the great epochs in American political history or of the grander chronicle of democracy in America without coming face to face with “Tories,” “moneycrats,” “the Monster Bank,” “the slaveocracy,” “robber barons,” “plutocrats,” “the money trust,” “economic royalists,” “the Establishment,” the “power elite,” or the “military-industrial complex.”…

    We need to focus on the variety of economic elites that have ruled, or attempted to rule, the nation.

    … Whatever the outcome, the life and death of ruling elites is one of the enduring themes that run through the long literature of wealth and political power in America. It remains so today as the country witnesses the tribulations of its latest ruling group

    • alibertarian2 says:

      Regarding:

      You continue to conflate market-induced corporate control of our lives with government-induced corporate control. There is an important moral difference.
      >>>>>>>>>>>>
      Nice twisting and turning. Market-induced corporate control of our lives is the direct result of government laws and regulations.

      Monopoly is not the same as regulatory capture. There is an important moral difference. Not all monopolies are the result of government control.

      It can’t be “market-induced” if it is the direct result of government laws and regulations, by definition. Microsoft and Standard Oil were market-induced monopolies. Utilities and the market for mortgage-backed securities (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) are government-induced monopolies.

      Regarding:

      Bottom line is the billionaires who own the corporations …

      I already dealt with regulatory capture previously. Please read it. You would save yourself a lot of copy-paste time if you did.

      Regarding:

      This is a typical ‘blind spot’ shown by Steve Fraser & Gary Gerstel.
      Ignoring Elites, Historians Are Missing a Major Factor in Politics and History
      … Over the last quarter-century, historians have by and large ceased writing about the role of ruling elites in the country’s evolution. Or if they have taken up the subject, they have done so to argue against its salience for grasping the essentials of American political history. Yet there is something peculiar about this recent intellectual aversion, even if we accept as true the beliefs that democracy, social mobility, and economic dynamism have long inhibited the congealing of a ruling stratum. This aversion has coincided, after all, with one of the largest and fastest-growing disparities in the division of income and wealth in American history….
      Neglecting the powerful had not been characteristic of historical work before World War II. To the contrary, the story of the ruling elites had preoccupied historians for a very long time.

      Here you have presented a new aspect, the role of historians. Most of us older than 40 were certainly brainwashed with a one-sided anti-capitalist “history” of American economic evolution, particularly as it relates to monopoly, which conveniently did not include mention of regulatory capture.

      In returning to teaching a fuller picture of American economic history, if you leave out the facts presented in The Myth of the Robber Barons, by Burton Fulsom, then you will certainly be just repeating the anti-capitalist propagandist historical presentation.

      From the Amazon review of The Myth of the Robber Barons:

      The Myth of the Robber Barons describes the role of key entrepreneurs in the economic growth of the United States from 1850 to 1910. The entrepreneurs studied are Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, James J. Hill, Andrew Mellon, Charles Schwab, and the Scranton family. Most historians argue that these men, and others like them, were Robber Barons. The story, however, is more complicated. The author, Burton Folsom, divides the entrepreneurs into two groups market entrepreneurs and political entrepreneurs. The market entrepreneurs, such as Hill, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller, succeeded by producing a quality product at a competitive price. The political entrepreneurs such as Edward Collins in steamships and in railroads the leaders of the Union Pacific Railroad were men who used the power of government to succeed. They tried to gain subsidies, or in some way use government to stop competitors. The market entrepreneurs helped lead to the rise of the U. S. as a major economic power. By 1910, the U. S. dominated the world in oil, steel, and railroads led by Rockefeller, Schwab (and Carnegie), and Hill. The political entrepreneurs, by contrast, were a drain on the taxpayers and a thorn in the side of the market entrepreneurs. Interestingly, the political entrepreneurs often failed without help from government they could not produce competitive products. The author describes this clash of the market entrepreneurs and the political entrepreneurs. In the Mellon chapter, the author describes how Andrew Mellon an entrepreneur in oil and aluminum became Secretary of Treasury under Coolidge. In office, Mellon was the first American to practice supply-side economics. He supported cuts on income tax rates for all groups. The rate cut on the wealthiest Americans, from 73 percent to 25 percent, freed up investment capital and led to American economic growth during the 1920s. Also, the amount of revenue into the federal treasury increased sharply after tax rates were cut. The Myth of the Robber Barons has separate chapters on Vanderbilt, Hill, Schwab, Mellon, and the Scrantons. The author also has a conclusion, in which he looks at the textbook bias on the subject of Robber Barons and the rise of the U. S. in the late 1800s. This chapter explores three leading college texts in U. S. history and shows how they misread American history and disparage market entrepreneurs instead of the political entrepreneurs. This book is in its fifth edition, and is widely adopted in college and high school classrooms across the U. S.

      (emphasis added)
      http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Robber-Barons-Business-America/dp/0963020315/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413144487&sr=1-1&keywords=the+myth+of+the+robber+barons

  27. Gail Combs says:

    Enter your comment here…It would seem that alibertarian2 does not actually believe that cartels exist.

    The following paper looks at over ONE THOUSAND hard-core cartels.

    Price-fixing Overcharges: Legal and Economic Evidence

    ABSTRACT:

    This paper surveys published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 1,040 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary finding is that the median long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 25.0%:18.8% for domestic cartels and 31.0% for international cartels. Cartel overcharges are positively skewed, pushing the mean overcharge for all successful cartels to 43.4%. Convicted cartels are on average as equally effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels, but bid-rigging conduct does display somewhat lower mark-ups than price-fixing cartels. These findings suggest that optimal deterrence requires that monetary penalties ought to be increased.

    A talk by The U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

    AN INSIDE LOOK AT A CARTEL AT WORK: COMMON CHARACTERISTICS OF INTERNATIONAL CARTELS

    I would like to talk to you this afternoon about some of the common characteristics of international cartels — how cartels are initiated; how they operate…

    We believe that the materials being made available today — particularly the tape — will be useful in impressing upon corporate executives, as well as counsel, that cartels are pervasive in today’s global economy; that they are sophisticated in their understanding and manipulation of the markets they affect; that they employ elaborate methods to avoid detection; that they often involve senior management of huge multinational corporations…..

    Brazen Nature of Cartels

    One of the characteristics we see over and over again in international cartels is the brazen nature of the conspiracies. By that, I refer to the contempt and utter disregard that the members of the cartel typically have for antitrust enforcement….

    In another tape played at the lysine trial, ADM’s President summed up the company’s attitude toward its customers in a single phrase, when he told a senior executive from his largest competitor that ADM had a corporate slogan that “penetrated the whole company”: “Our competitors are our friends. Our customers are the enemy.” Imagine, one of the world’s largest companies, which bills itself as “the supermarket to the world,” having such a disdainful slogan as its internal corporate trademark.

    alibertarian2, you remember ADM and Dwayne Andreas, the all time biggest US political campaign contributer don’t you? No wonder ADM is BRAZEN!

    Another presentation by by The U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

    INTERNATIONAL CARTELS: THE INTERSECTION BETWEEN FCPA VIOLATIONS AND ANTITRUST VIOLATION

    … The Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice has made the prosecution of international cartels one of its highest priorities. The prosecutions have resulted in huge criminal fines — in fact, in one such prosecution, the largest criminal fine ever imposed in the United States for any type of violation.

    …The Antitrust Division began to crack down on international cartel activity roughly five years ago when it decided to reallocate resources to make the prosecution of international cartels that victimize American businesses and consumers one of its highest priorities.

    ….there are now over 35 sitting grand juries looking into suspected international cartel activity. The subjects and targets of these investigations are located on five continents and in over 20 different countries…. investigations have uncovered meetings of international cartels in over 100 cities and in over 35 countries, including most of the Far East and nearly every country in Western Europe. For example, the Division’s investigation of the worldwide vitamin cartel uncovered meetings in over a dozen different countries where the conspirators got together to carry out their agreement. While gouging their customers with agreed-upon price increases, the members of the vitamin cartel spared no expense on themselves….

    Since the shift in emphasis on international cartel enforcement, the Division has prosecuted international cartels operating in a broad spectrum of commerce including vitamins, food and feed additives, preservatives, chemicals, graphite electrodes used in steel making, magnetic iron oxide particles used in the production of video and audio tapes, and marine construction and transportation services….

    The government /cartel intersect. Revolving door lobbyists.

    Revolving door lobbyists and interest representation
    …social scientists know surprisingly little about the revolving door beyond such sensational, albeit important, cases. To shed more light on the broader phenomenon, we systematically explore the revolving door on a large scale to answer a simple question: Do revolving door lobbyists represent different interests than conventional lobbyists?…

    …if they represent a wider variety of economic interests than conventional lobbyists then we assume they are hired more for their ability to get a foot in the door than to serve as policy expert adjuncts to government. Using evidence from original data on the professional biographies of roughly 1600 registered lobbyists – which we link to data from almost 50?000 quarterly Lobbying Disclosure Act reports – we expose a significant transparency loophole in the law. Because lobbyists are not required to continuously disclose their ‘covered official’ status – the statutory definition of revolving door – periodic lobbying disclosure reports effectively hide the revolving door from public scrutiny. Instead, we rely on our more comprehensive information on lobbyists’ connections to previous employers to more accurately measure the size and scope of Washington’s revolving door, and to investigate how these connections affect which interests they represent. We find that revolving door lobbyists have worked mostly in Congress, tend to work as contract lobbyists rather than in-house government-relations staff and are more likely to specialize in lobbying for appropriations earmarks….

    the revolving door problem is not limited to a handful of headline-catching former legislators, is much bigger than the existing lobbying disclosure regime reveals and – most importantly – significantly distorts the representation of interests before government. The practical implications are clear: lobbying transparency rules, cooling-off periods and other restrictions are insufficient disincentives. Interest group demand for access is simply too strong

    Worth taking a look at:
    http://attempter.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/the-ttip-and-globalizations-corporate-coordination-master-plan-1-of-3/

    • alibertarian2 says:

      Regarding:

      in response to stevengoddard:
      Adults have to make hard choices sometimes. A favorite trick of Democrats is to run fake Libertarian candidates, in order to divide the conservative vote – and thus keep progressives in office. In November, people can choose to be an adult, or they can choose to be a useful idiot.

      Enter your comment here…It would seem that alibertarian2 does not actually believe that cartels exist…

      I read nothing of what you wrote following your comment about what I believe, because you provided no evidence of that claim. I am sure there is a good reason you neglected to provide that evidence.

  28. Gail and AL2,

    Not all political contributions are mere rank bribery or purchasing someone to rule by proxy for you. And by the same token, neither are all political contributions mere “speech” or “expression of a viewpoint”.

    Therein lies the reason why a model of campaign finance that is simple and attracts widespread support, is so elusive.

    The Supreme Court lately has been fond of calling all contributions for which there is no clear evidence of bribery or graft “speech”. But if the majority really believed that, they would simply have tossed out all the campaign finance limits when they had the chance. They didn’t do that, did they? So we’re back to square one, which is, if we’re going to have a line, or lines … where exactly do we draw them? There are many opinions about this.

    Obviously, the solution is not public campaign financing (which amounts to a full nationalization of the business of campaign management). But neither is it a return to the free-wheeling days of the 19th Century when anything was possible, and the vast majority of it was actually done. The correct solution must be more subtle than either of these options. And perhaps just as important, once that solution is found, it must be enacted with a set of serious consequences for all violations, or else it will be no more successful than the status quo. For example, repeat offenders who prove impervious to all attempts to educate them about the rules should be banned permanently from running for or holding office, or managing campaign funds; and if they are already in one of these positions, a finding of repeated, willful violations should result in their immediate and automatic expulsion from such position, even if it is a seat in Congress or the Presidency. Now that would be true, conservative, and proper campaign regulation. And I doubt we will ever see it happen.

    RTF

    • alibertarian2 says:

      Regarding:

      The Supreme Court lately has been fond of calling all contributions for which there is no clear evidence of bribery or graft “speech”.

      If Congress bans the purchase of ink and paper, for the purpose of stopping a free press, would that be constitutional? If I want to say something on the TV, but must pay a broadcaster money in order to say it, is it constitutional for Congress to ban such purchases? If you answer “yes,” then it would be constitutionally proper for Congress to effectively ban all speech and press by merely limiting access to the medium through which the words transmit.

      The Supreme Court has made a distinction between donations to the campaign committees authorized by candidates for office, for which donation limits are enforced, and PACS whose function is to act as a conduit of information. That was established by Citizens United.

      Regarding:

      Obviously, the solution is not public campaign financing (which amounts to a full nationalization of the business of campaign management). But neither is it a return to the free-wheeling days of the 19th Century when anything was possible, and the vast majority of it was actually done. The correct solution must be more subtle than either of these options. And perhaps just as important, once that solution is found, it must be enacted with a set of serious consequences for all violations, or else it will be no more successful than the status quo. For example, repeat offenders who prove impervious to all attempts to educate them about the rules should be banned permanently from running for or holding office, or managing campaign funds; and if they are already in one of these positions, a finding of repeated, willful violations should result in their immediate and automatic expulsion from such position, even if it is a seat in Congress or the Presidency. Now that would be true, conservative, and proper campaign regulation. And I doubt we will ever see it happen.
      RTF

      Those who favor laws limiting campaign donations are implicitly stating that voters are too stupid to act on their own to get the necessary information to vote intelligently. (I agree with that evaluation of most voters.)

      Political activists who buy those 15- and 30-second ads on TV are stating the same thing about the vast number of voters. But worse than that, such activists don’t care that those ads don’t provide sufficient information for the voters to vote intelligently.

      • Whatever would make you think I would answer “yes” to those yes-or-no questions?

        • alibertarian2 says:

          in response to alibertarian2:

          Regarding: If Congress bans the purchase of ink and paper, for the purpose of stopping a free press, would that be constitutional? If I want to say something on the TV, but must pay a broadcaster money in order to say it, is it constitutional for Congress to ban such purchases? If you answer “yes,” […]

          Whatever would make you think I would answer “yes” to those yes-or-no questions?

          I had no presumptions about how you would answer. Just looking for clarification of your ideas.

        • I’m sorry, you “had no presumptions”? Do you realize how obtuse you sound right now?

          Let me rephrase the question, if it’s all right. Why do you believe that my statement which you quoted implies permission for government to do those things?

        • alibertarian2 says:

          Regarding:

          I’m sorry, you “had no presumptions”? Do you realize how obtuse you sound right now?

          I realize that I may sound obtuse only to those who are so presumptuous as to assume that they could read my mind and know what I was really thinking.

          I asked questions because I did not know the answer, and wanted the answer from the only person who would know: you.

          Regarding:

          Let me rephrase the question, if it’s all right. Why do you believe that my statement which you quoted implies permission for government to do those things?

          First, I would not claim that your statement “The Supreme Court lately has been fond of calling all contributions for which there is no clear evidence of bribery or graft ‘speech’”
          implies “permission for government to do those things.” But is it obvious from your statement that you are one of the people who would have voted with the majority in the Supreme Court (in Citizens United) to allow unlimited donations related to political activity had you been a Supreme Court Justice? It is not obvious to me.

          The questions I asked were a means to find out both what your opinion is regarding donations related to political activity, and to what extent you would be inclined to limit such contributions.

        • No. It’s not a question of mind-reading. Your words demonstrate your obtuseness. It is obvious you don’t understand what I’m talking about, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to make you understand. You are not trying to place yourself in the other person’s shoes to understand how your words might be coming across to them. That is not my opinion, it is a demonstrated fact. The negative consequence of it is that almost nobody besides myself will bother to read your words.

          Now, I already explicitly stated that I disagreed with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of what political contributions are. I explicitly stated that some are expression, and some are not. It is also true that some can be partly for the purpose expression, while part of the contribution is for some other purpose. I explicitly stated that the majority of the Supreme Court understands this, even though they are not willing to publicly admit it.

          Contributions that constitute expression of any kind, political or otherwise, should be afforded all the protections of any other kind of expression. To apply the term “speech” to them is not really correct, but the effect is the same as if one uses the word “expression.”

          As far as exactly where the limits should be set, it should be perfectly clear from my original comment that I don’t know. I wasn’t trying to answer that question in one comment, and I think it would be very difficult (and not ideal) for anyone to provide an adequate answer in a single blog comment. The question is so complex that it really calls for an entire post, and perhaps a plurality of them before one’s audience can really understand the whole picture. It is not so simple as to throw a few numbers out there. Because the numbers have to come from a system or theory, and the system or theory would have to be complex in order to accommodate all of the various foreseeable scenarios.

          I’m doubt if that’s satisfactory to you, but you asked.

          RTF

        • alibertarian2 says:

          Regarding:

          in response to Richard T. Fowler:
          Whatever would make you think I would answer “yes” to those yes-or-no questions?
          No. It’s not a question of mind-reading. Your words demonstrate your obtuseness.

          An entire post written by RTF was:

          I’m sorry, you “had no presumptions”? Do you realize how obtuse you sound right now?

          Let me rephrase the question, if it’s all right. Why do you believe that my statement which you quoted implies permission for government to do those things?

          How do you think most people would view the “obtuse” remark? You had no citations in that small post to anything else that I wrote. It is therefore logical to assume that you were applying your “obtuse” remark to my statement that I had no presumptions, thereby casting doubt upon my claim that I had no presumptions. If you are not a mind reader who knows that I do or do not have such presumptions, then it is you who are presumptuous.

          Regarding:

          Now, I already explicitly stated that I disagreed with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of what political contributions are.

          I found no such explicit disagreement here http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/behaving-like-an-adult#comment-439253, in the comment that started our little back-and-forth. The closest I found was “The Supreme Court lately has been fond of calling all contributions for which there is no clear evidence of bribery or graft “speech”. But if the majority really believed that, …”

          What ruling by the SCOTUS would you have changed, if you disagree with its interpretation?

          Regarding:

          As far as exactly where the limits should be set, it should be perfectly clear from my original comment that I don’t know. I wasn’t trying to answer that question in one comment, and I think it would be very difficult (and not ideal) for anyone to provide an adequate answer in a single blog comment. The question is so complex that it really calls for an entire post, and perhaps a plurality of them before one’s audience can really understand the whole picture. It is not so simple as to throw a few numbers out there. Because the numbers have to come from a system or theory, and the system or theory would have to be complex in order to accommodate all of the various foreseeable scenarios.
          I’m doubt if that’s satisfactory to you, but you asked.

          It is satisfactory. Your exposition here above gives precisely the reasons that my questions were necessary.

        • alibertarian2 says:

          (corrected
          Regarding:

          in response to Richard T. Fowler:
          Whatever would make you think I would answer “yes” to those yes-or-no questions?
          No. It’s not a question of mind-reading. Your words demonstrate your obtuseness.

          An entire post written by RTF was:

          I’m sorry, you “had no presumptions”? Do you realize how obtuse you sound right now?

          Let me rephrase the question, if it’s all right. Why do you believe that my statement which you quoted implies permission for government to do those things?

          How do you think most people would view the “obtuse” remark? You had no citations in that small post to anything else that I wrote. It is therefore logical to assume that you were applying your “obtuse” remark to my statement that I had no presumptions, thereby casting doubt upon my claim that I had no presumptions. If you are not a mind reader who knows that I do or do not have such presumptions, then it is you who are presumptuous.

          Regarding:

          Now, I already explicitly stated that I disagreed with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of what political contributions are.

          I found no such explicit disagreement here http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/behaving-like-an-adult#comment-439253, in the comment that started our little back-and-forth. The closest I found was “The Supreme Court lately has been fond of calling all contributions for which there is no clear evidence of bribery or graft “speech”. But if the majority really believed that, …”

          What ruling by the SCOTUS would you have changed, if you disagree with its interpretation?

          Regarding:

          As far as exactly where the limits should be set, it should be perfectly clear from my original comment that I don’t know. I wasn’t trying to answer that question in one comment, and I think it would be very difficult (and not ideal) for anyone to provide an adequate answer in a single blog comment. The question is so complex that it really calls for an entire post, and perhaps a plurality of them before one’s audience can really understand the whole picture. It is not so simple as to throw a few numbers out there. Because the numbers have to come from a system or theory, and the system or theory would have to be complex in order to accommodate all of the various foreseeable scenarios.
          I’m doubt if that’s satisfactory to you, but you asked.

          It is satisfactory. Your exposition here above gives precisely the reasons that my questions were necessary.

        • 1. Ay, ay, ay. Just forget it, man. You finally managed to make yourself clear; that’s what’s important.

          2. “What ruling by the SCOTUS would you have changed, if you disagree with its interpretation?” All the rulings pertaining to contributions to organizations that campaign for or against candidates or which are controlled by a candidate or close associate or family member of a candidate. Because in assuming that all contributions go to “speech” or expression, they manage to hopelessly mangle the application of the First Amendment to campaign finance activities. Therefore, after about 125 years of campaign finance regulation, we still have massive problems of candidates getting rich from their campaign contributions, which the Supreme Court in its rulings will not admit runs afoul of the constitutional guarantee of a republican form of government, and also of the public oaths of office taken by the candidates after they win and do the bidding of their major contributors.

          Such corruption, while perhaps of lesser degree than it used to be, is still every bit as common as it ever was. The Supreme Court is surely aware of this. But they are afraid to say so in their rulings. If they told the truth, they would get all these issues promptly brought back before them by litigants, and they would have a chance to correct their past errors. But that is exactly what they apparently don’t want to do. So they just ignore the problem in their majority opinions.

          RTF

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *