Silver | Between The Lines

Ron Paul: Let’s Legalize Competing Currencies

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

by Ron Paul
Before the US House of Representatives, February 13, 2008

I rise to speak on the concept of competing currencies. Currency, or money, is what allows civilization to flourish. In the absence of money, barter is the name of the game; if the farmer needs shoes, he must trade his eggs and milk to the cobbler and hope that the cobbler needs eggs and milk. Money makes the transaction process far easier. Rather than having to search for someone with reciprocal wants, the farmer can exchange his milk and eggs for an agreed-upon medium of exchange with which he can then purchase shoes.

This medium of exchange should satisfy certain properties: it should be durable, that is to say, it does not wear out easily; it should be portable, that is, easily carried; it should be divisible into units usable for everyday transactions; it should be recognizable and uniform, so that one unit of money has the same properties as every other unit; it should be scarce, in the economic sense, so that the extant supply does not satisfy the wants of everyone demanding it; it should be stable, so that the value of its purchasing power does not fluctuate wildly; and it should be reproducible, so that enough units of money can be created to satisfy the needs of exchange.

Over millennia of human history, gold and silver have been the two metals that have most often satisfied these conditions, survived the market process, and gained the trust of billions of people. Gold and silver are difficult to counterfeit, a property which ensures they will always be accepted in commerce. It is precisely for this reason that gold and silver are anathema to governments. A supply of gold and silver that is limited in supply by nature cannot be inflated, and thus serves as a check on the growth of government. Without the ability to inflate the currency, governments find themselves constrained in their actions, unable to carry on wars of aggression or to appease their overtaxed citizens with bread and circuses.

At this country’s founding, there was no government-controlled national currency. While the Constitution established the Congressional power of minting coins, it was not until 1792 that the US Mint was formally established. In the meantime, Americans made do with foreign silver and gold coins. Even after the Mint’s operations got underway, foreign coins continued to circulate within the United States, and did so for several decades.

On the desk in my office I have a sign that says: “Don’t steal – the government hates competition.” Indeed, any power a government arrogates to itself, it is loathe to give back to the people. Just as we have gone from a constitutionally instituted national defense consisting of a limited army and navy bolstered by militias and letters of marque and reprisal, we have moved from a system of competing currencies to a government-instituted banking cartel that monopolizes the issuance of currency. In order to introduce a system of competing currencies, there are three steps that must be taken to produce a legal climate favorable to competition.

The first step consists of eliminating legal tender laws. Article I Section 10 of the Constitution forbids the States from making anything but gold and silver a legal tender in payment of debts. States are not required to enact legal tender laws, but should they choose to, the only acceptable legal tender is gold and silver, the two precious metals that individuals throughout history and across cultures have used as currency. However, there is nothing in the Constitution that grants the Congress the power to enact legal tender laws. We, the Congress, have the power to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, but not to declare a legal tender. Yet, there is a section of US Code, 31 USC 5103, that purports to establish US coins and currency, including Federal Reserve notes, as legal tender.

Historically, legal tender laws have been used by governments to force their citizens to accept debased and devalued currency. Gresham’s Law describes this phenomenon, which can be summed up in one phrase: bad money drives out good money. An emperor, a king, or a dictator might mint coins with half an ounce of gold and force merchants, under pain of death, to accept them as though they contained one ounce of gold. Each ounce of the king’s gold could now be minted into two coins instead of one, so the king now had twice as much “money” to spend on building castles and raising armies. As these legally overvalued coins circulated, the coins containing the full ounce of gold would be pulled out of circulation and hoarded. We saw this same phenomenon happen in the mid-1960s when the US government began to mint subsidiary coinage out of copper and nickel rather than silver. The copper and nickel coins were legally overvalued, the silver coins undervalued in relation, and silver coins vanished from circulation.

These actions also give rise to the most pernicious effects of inflation. Most of the merchants and peasants who received this devalued currency felt the full effects of inflation, the rise in prices and the lowered standard of living, before they received any of the new currency. By the time they received the new currency, prices had long since doubled, and the new currency they received would give them no benefit.

In the absence of legal tender laws, Gresham’s Law no longer holds. If people are free to reject debased currency, and instead demand sound money, sound money will gradually return to use in society. Merchants would have been free to reject the king’s coin and accept only coins containing full metal weight.

The second step to reestablishing competing currencies is to eliminate laws that prohibit the operation of private mints. One private enterprise which attempted to popularize the use of precious metal coins was Liberty Services, the creators of the Liberty Dollar. Evidently the government felt threatened, as Liberty Dollars had all their precious metal coins seized by the FBI and Secret Service this past November. Of course, not all of these coins were owned by Liberty Services, as many were held in trust as backing for silver and gold certificates which Liberty Services issued. None of this matters, of course, to the government, who hates to see any competition.

The sections of US Code which Liberty Services is accused of violating are erroneously considered to be anti-counterfeiting statutes, when in fact their purpose was to shut down private mints that had been operating in California. California was awash in gold in the aftermath of the 1849 gold rush, yet had no US Mint to mint coinage. There was not enough foreign coinage circulating in California either, so private mints stepped into the breech to provide their own coins. As was to become the case in other industries during the Progressive era, the private mints were eventually accused of circulating debased (substandard) coinage, and in the interest of providing government-sanctioned regulation and a government guarantee of purity, the 1864 Coinage Act was passed, which banned private mints from producing their own coins for circulation as currency.

The final step to ensuring competing currencies is to eliminate capital gains and sales taxes on gold and silver coins. Under current federal law, coins are considered collectibles, and are liable for capital gains taxes. Short-term capital gains rates are at income tax levels, up to 35 percent, while long-term capital gains taxes are assessed at the collectibles rate of 28 percent. Furthermore, these taxes actually tax monetary debasement. As the dollar weakens, the nominal dollar value of gold increases. The purchasing power of gold may remain relatively constant, but as the nominal dollar value increases, the federal government considers this an increase in wealth, and taxes accordingly. Thus, the more the dollar is debased, the more capital gains taxes must be paid on holdings of gold and other precious metals.

Just as pernicious are the sales and use taxes which are assessed on gold and silver at the state level in many states. Imagine having to pay sales tax at the bank every time you change a $10 bill for a roll of quarters to do laundry. Inflation is a pernicious tax on the value of money, but even the official numbers, which are massaged downwards, are only on the order of 4% per year. Sales taxes in many states can take away 8% or more on every single transaction in which consumers wish to convert their Federal Reserve Notes into gold or silver.

In conclusion, Madam Speaker, allowing for competing currencies will allow market participants to choose a currency that suits their needs, rather than the needs of the government. The prospect of American citizens turning away from the dollar towards alternate currencies will provide the necessary impetus to the US government to regain control of the dollar and halt its downward spiral. Restoring soundness to the dollar will remove the government’s ability and incentive to inflate the currency, and keep us from launching unconstitutional wars that burden our economy to excess. With a sound currency, everyone is better off, not just those who control the monetary system. I urge my colleagues to consider the redevelopment of a system of competing currencies.

Source: http://www.dailypaul.com/97508/ron-paul-lets-legalize-competing-currencies

Manning The Barricades for Virtue and America

Sunday, July 3rd, 2011

Written on July 2, 2011 by Floyd Brown

This a Fourth of July we are reflecting on the Founding Father’s intensive study of the Roman civilization. Knowing history, they embraced Rome’s virtues and eschewed her vices. The Founders understood the currents of history which gave us a collective heritage unrivaled. Sadly, we as a nation are turning our backs on the morality that made America special.

The country has convulsed in the past 30 years as a new modern morality has supplanted the currents of culture built nearly two thousand years ago along the shores of Galilee. This new culture is not yet fully defined, but we stand horrified as we peer into the future.

The culture of the Roman world was brutal and nasty. Ironically, we see its worst practices reviving with vigor. Please give us a moment as we recount a history seldom taught today’s students.

The Roman Empire had a twisted view about the value of human life. These views were banished by the ascendency of Christ’s teaching. Infanticide was both legal and encouraged in ancient Rome. Pagan societies, such as the Carthaginians, Romans and Greeks went so far as to kill their children outside the womb, sometimes as a religious sacrifice to their gods. According to Plutarch, the Carthaginians “offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs of young birds; meanwhile the mothers stood by without a tear or moan.”

We see a modern American society which looks at children as a burden, and a generation of mothers who have decided by their own “choice” to sacrifice a generation. Population control is now an international objective.

Roman views on homosexuality were closer to today’s views than many realize. Pundit Nathaniel Blake characterizes it this way: “But, the Roman conception of same-sex relationships was very different than that of the modern West. The most important factors in the Roman view seem to have been the status and role of the partners. The Romans did not consider homosexual or heterosexual identities as exclusive from one another. While bisexuality was common, strict homosexuality was all but unknown. Unlike the modern view, social class mattered a great deal in the acceptability of homosexual relations. The upper classes were much more likely to indulge in homosexual acts, and masters had the sexual use of their slaves.” It was common to see an older man who held dominance over a younger male, using him for sexual pleasure.

It was not until the teachings of Christ and Saint Paul conquered Rome and Western Europe that sodomy was outlawed. But alas much has changed. Now sodomy is once again legal, and some states believe these acts deserve celebration in the most public of ceremonies, the wedding.

Finally, we see the debasement of money and profligacy of the state. Today taxpayers fund stadiums for the “games.” Roman emperors don’t hold a candle to the US Congress and the Federal Reserve in the looting of the public coffers and destruction of money.

In this, Roman Emperor Caracalla comes to mind. In addition to murdering his brother, Caracalla is mostly remembered for granting Roman citizenship to every Freeman in the empire. Caracalla’s goal was to broaden the tax base to pay for his extravagant spending. He raised the inheritance tax so he could double public salaries and win the allegiance of the legions. His public works are still on display today. If you visit Rome, you can see the ruins of the gigantic “Baths of Caracalla.”

His final contribution rivals the Federal Reserve. The silver denarius was an innovation in sound money introduced by Emperor Augustus. It was 95 percent silver like America’s pre- 1964 coinage, and the denarius lead to greatly improved honest trade around the empire. Caracalla, in his drive to increase spending, changed it to a coin with only 50 percent silver.

It took later emperors to debase it as far as the Federal Reserve has debased America’s currency. By 268 AD the denarius was only 0.5 percent silver. The result was predictable, as prices rose throughout the empire by up to 1,000 percent. Soon the “barbarians” hired by the emperor as mercenaries would not accept the denarius as payment, and insisted on being paid in gold.

Such manipulations by Roman leaders are legendary, but Americans who fail to understand history are doomed to repeat it. The moral and financial collapse of Rome lead to a renaissance of morality and the “Christian Era.” We can only hope that the accelerating American collapse leads to a return of the time tested honest culture that celebrates life, prudently shuns sexual immorality, and with commerce flourishing after a return to honest money.

But until that day arrives, we will continue to fight for these virtues until our last breath.

©2011 Floyd and Mary Beth Brown. The Browns are bestselling authors and speakers. To comment on this column, e-mail browns@caglecartoons.com. Together they write a national weekly column distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Floyd is also president of the Western Center for Journalism. For more info call Cari Dawson Bartley at 800 696 7561 or e-mail cari@cagle.com.

Floyd’s latest book is “Killing Wealth, Freeing Wealth,” from WND Books. Time magazine wrote of Floyd: “Brown has stature among devoted conservatives that almost matches his physical heft (6 ft. 6 in. and 240 lbs.)” See more at Floyd’s blog at floydreports.com.
The Patriot Update

Reality Zone Unfiltered News 2011 April 2-8

Friday, April 8th, 2011

US: Federal legislators who refuse to increase the debt ceiling are being threatened with blame for causing the unthinkable shutdown of many government services as of midnight tonight. They will have to carry guilt for putting 800,000 federal workers on furlough, stopping funding for Planned Parenthood abortions, canceling tours of the Statue of Liberty, delaying pay to soldiers stationed in the Middle East, and even cancel the annual Cherry Blossom Parade. [It never occurs to these spenders to consider the nation's ability to pay for the programs they launch. They assume that, once they are started, the public will not tolerate their elimination, even if it destroys the nation. So far, they have been right – but is there a change in the wind?]
DailyMail 2011 Apr 8 (Cached)

Japan suffers a 7.4 earthquake aftershock on Thursday that put another nuclear plant on emergency power to keep the fuel rods cool. There is no evidence of new radiation leaks.
NHK 2011 Apr 8 (Cached)

British constitutionalists engage in ‘lawful rebellion’ and try to arrest a judge who violates the law during trial of a tax case. This is a common-law right under the Magna Carta. The police refuse to support the protestors. This may be the beginning of a new tax revolt to rival the poll-tax riots of 1990.
InfoWars 2011 Apr 8 (Cached)

Genetically modified fungus that kills the malaria parasite is under development. It is sprayed on walls and bednets to be picked up by mosquitoes that carry the parasites. [The problem with all GM organisms is that the long-term effects are not known, and unanticipated damage to life and environment may be severe and irreversible.]
Yahoo 2011 Apr 7 (Cached)

Japanese journalist drives straight into the Fukushima nuclear-reactor evacuation zone. The area is eerily deserted except for a few animals. It is like a scene from a science-fiction apocalypse movie. His Geiger counter proves the severity of this disaster.
YouTube 2011 Apr 6

US: Senate votes to repeal the provision in ObamaCare that requires companies to report to the IRS all business transactions exceeding $600. The bill now goes to the White House. [This is good news, but the entire bill should be repealed. Unfortunately, there is no serious movement in that direction at the present time.]
C4L Apr 5 (Cached)

Japan: Radiation levels at damaged power plant are so high that measurement devices have been rendered useless.
NHK 2011 Apr 5 (Cached)

Tokyo Electric Power Company admits it knew that radiation in seawater was 7.5 million times above normal BEFORE it started dumping its radioactive water, which means it was seeping from ground sources. The Japanese fishing industry is dead and will remain so for many years. [Those who eat the fish may also be dead.]
ZeroHedge 2011 Apr 5 (Cached)

Japan sets limits to the amount of radiation permitted in fish, hoping this will instill public confidence that they will be safe to eat. Already some fish are exceeding those limits. India has halted food imports from Japan.
Yahoo 2011 Apr 5 (Cached)

US: Government reverses its former stance and now calls for phase-out of dental mercury amalgams. [This is good news for mercury-free dentistry, but 'calling for' and 'requiring' are not the same thing. The fact that dental mercury is still allowed at all shows that much has yet to be done.]
MercuryExposure 2011 Apr 5 (Cached)

Dentist speaks before the Costa Mesa, California, City Council and urges them to ban dental mercury. The city did so and made national headlines. This was partly responsible for the federal government’s reversal on this issue.
YouTube 2010 Oct 26

Ivory Coast leader, Gbagbo, is abandoned by his military and remains holed up in a bunker attempting to negotiate with the UN where he can obtain asylum.
Yahoo 2011 Apr 5 (Cached)

UK: Military and health officials urge doctors to use their positions of trust in society to build support for the myth of global warming by portraying it as a threat to health.
Guardian 2011 Apr 5 (Cached)

Jesse Ventura takes on mainstream news commentator, George Stephanopolous, about covert government operations, including 9/11 and the CIA Assassination Manual. Jesse says he would like to be Ron Paul’s running mate in 2012.
YouTube 2011 Apr 4

DON’T FIGHT CITY HALL WHEN YOU CAN BE CITY HALL

Stop complaining and RUN FOR OFFICE.

SUNDAY APRIL 10: NEXT TRAINING CALL

Topic: Using Social Networks

Click here for details

After the radioactive cloud emanating from Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant reached Europe last week, French authorities detected radioactive iodine-131 in rainwater and milk.
EurActiv 2011 Apr 4 (Cached)

The Queen of England dissolves the Canadian Parliament for the third time in 3 years. [The Queen still has full power over her colony-states. Canada is not an independent nation.]
BLN 2011 Apr 4 (Cached)

Here is ‘how-to’ advice for long-term food storage. Be prepared for disruption of food availability. Better safe than sorry.
Ready Nutrition 2011 Apr 4

The Dalai Lama promotes the myth of global warming. [Incidentally, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.]
DNA 2011 Apr 2 (Cached)

Although the Dalai Lama claims the Tibetan glaciers are melting, the latest scientific data shows that many of them are stable, and half are actually growing.
Telegraph Posted 2011 Apr 2 (Cached)

US: Three forecasting scientists/professors testified before a congressional committee and reported that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change violated 81% of standard forecasting procedures. They recommended that Congress terminate all funding for climate change regulations and research and stop funds for organizations that advocate the myth of global warming.
Digital Journal Posted 2011 Apr 2 (Cached)

China: Researchers have created genetically modified cattle that produce milk that is similar to human milk. They also are producing cloned cattle, but the offspring are unhealthy, and many die shortly after birth. [As usual, the lure of profits from patented food blinds GMO developers to the possibility of negative long-term consequences of their work.]
Telegraph 2011 Apr 2 (Cached)

US: ‘Concierge Medicine’ is a free-market program for those who are willing to pay more for better medical service than available from Obama Care. Collectivists are worried that this will produce inequality of care. [Since collectivists cannot raise the standard for everyone, they seek to lower the standard for all.]
Yahoo 2011 Apr 2 (Cached)

Woman in Phoenix, Arizona, films “dry rain” consisting of tiny particles falling from the sky. Watch closely and you will see them reflecting sunlight as they flutter to the ground. [Just prior to this, Phoenix had been the focus of intensive chemtrail activity.]
YouTube Posted 2011 Apr 2

Many governments take threat of bee-killing pesticides seriously. Bayer’s ‘neonicotinoid’ pesticide, believed to be the cause of honeybee die-off, has either been banned or limited in Germany, France and Slovenia. The UK is reconsidering it prior to approval. However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does nothing.
Grist Posted 2011 Apr 2 (Cached)

New Hampshire House of Representatives votes to end participation in regional cap-and-trade program. The Governor supports cap-and-trade because the state gets $12 million in federal handouts for it every year.
WattsUpWithThat Posted 2011 Apr 2 (Cached)

Ron Paul advocates competition in currency (by legalizing the use of gold & silver) and removing sales and capital gains taxes from the coins. He says the shortage of US minted coins forces people to use Federal Reserve Notes, and he wants an explanation for the shortage.
YouTube Posted 2011 Apr 2

Obama announces a plan for the federal government to buy up millions of acres of MORE land under the ‘Great Outdoors Initiative’. Children will be encouraged to participate in the name of helping the environment and fighting global warming. [The nation already staggers under the unbearable weight of deficit spending, and now this? But it is not really about money. It is about implementing the UN's Agenda 21, designed to drive people off of rural lands and herd them into cities]
HumanEvents Posted 2011 Apr 2 (Cached)

California Air Resources Board (CARB) used false data to justify air pollution rules that will cripple truck deliveries and create massive unemployment and higher prices, thus adding further burden to the state and businesses.
YouTube Posted 2011 Apr 2

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ANALYSIS
Reports and commentaries that look beyond the news to identify historical facts and trends that must be understood to place the news into perspective. This is our “think-tank” section that makes it possible to anticipate future events.

Organized Chaos. This is an excellent analysis of the extent to which the so-called spontaneous uprisings in the Middle East are influenced and even planned by key figures who are members of the American-based CFR.
New American 2011 Apr 4 (Cached)

Fat Head, a humorous and highly informative documentary says we have been fed a load of bologna about the movie, Super Size Me, and nearly everything we’ve been told about healthy eating is wrong. That’s quite a claim, but our bet is that, after viewing this program, you probably will agree. So, watch it here and, if you like it, support the film maker by purchasing a copy. [This program does not touch on the hazards of artificial hormones and antibiotics in meat and dairy products nor does it deal with inhumane treatment of animals in factory farms, but that is another story and does not negate the truth this program delivers about fraudulent claims against dietary fat and cholesterol.]
Hulu Posted 2011 Apr 1

US: Organic farmers file lawsuit against Monsanto, but this reporter says it may be designed to fail. [If so, this is another case of controlled opposition. The lawyers are funded by the Rockefellers and Soros.]
Rense 2011 Apr 1 (Cached)

“Extend and Pretend” is an excellent analysis of the bookkeeping tricks and rule-changing that tanked the US economy. You will learn how the mistakes and frauds of the past were hidden from view and why the worst is yet to come.
Financial Sense 2011 Mar 31 (Cached)

Kirk Elliot, PhD explains how food inflation is depleting savings and destroying the middle class. Here are the hard numbers.
API posted 2011 Mar 31

Alex Jones exposes Al-Qaeda as a tool of the New World Order. It’s role is to destabilize enemy governments and terrorize friendly into accepting totalitarian measures in the name of security. His evidence cannot be dismissed.
Prison Planet 2011 Mar 31 (Cached)

Genetically modified organisms now are found in 85% of processed foods. Viruses are frequently used to splice genes together. GMOs are not tested and virtually unregulated in the US. Here are the facts you need to know.
Farmwars 2011 Mar 29 (Cached)

Middle East protests have been linked to Western influence and funding and is believed to be controlled opposition. If this is true, the international power elites will replace these toppled governments with new rulers who will do their bidding.
Activist Post 2011 Mar 25 (Cached)

12 Warning Signs of U.S. Hyperinflation

Sunday, March 27th, 2011

One of the most frequently asked questions we receive at the National Inflation Association (NIA) is what warning signs will there be when hyperinflation is imminent. In our opinion, the majority of the warning signs that hyperinflation is imminent are already here today, but most Americans are failing to properly recognize them. NIA believes that there is a serious risk of hyperinflation breaking out as soon as the second half of this calendar year and that hyperinflation is almost guaranteed to occur by the end of this decade.

In our estimation, the most likely time frame for a full-fledged outbreak of hyperinflation is between the years 2013 and 2015. Americans who wait until 2013 to prepare, will most likely see the majority of their purchasing power wiped out. It is essential that all Americans begin preparing for hyperinflation immediately.

Here are NIA’s top 12 warning signs that hyperinflation is about to occur:

1. The Federal Reserve is Buying 70% of U.S. Treasuries. The Federal Reserve has been buying 70% of all new U.S. treasury debt. Up until this year, the U.S. has been successful at exporting most of its inflation to the rest of the world, which is hoarding huge amounts of U.S. dollar reserves due to the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. In recent months, foreign central bank purchases of U.S. treasuries have declined from 50% down to 30%, and Federal Reserve purchases have increased from 10% up to 70%. This means U.S. government deficit spending is now directly leading to U.S. inflation that will destroy the standard of living for all Americans.

2. The Private Sector Has Stopped Purchasing U.S. Treasuries. The U.S. private sector was previously a buyer of 30% of U.S. government bonds sold. Today, the U.S. private sector has stopped buying U.S. treasuries and is dumping government debt. The Pimco Total Return Fund was recently the single largest private sector owner of U.S. government bonds, but has just reduced its U.S. treasury holdings down to zero. Although during the financial panic of 2008, investors purchased government bonds as a safe haven, during all future panics we believe precious metals will be the new safe haven.

3. China Moving Away from U.S. Dollar as Reserve Currency. The U.S. dollar became the world’s reserve currency because it was backed by gold and the U.S. had the world’s largest manufacturing base. Today, the U.S. dollar is no longer backed by gold and China has the world’s largest manufacturing base. There is no reason for the world to continue to transact products and commodities in U.S. dollars, when most of everything the world consumes is now produced in China. China has been taking steps to position the yuan to be the world’s new reserve currency.

The People’s Bank of China stated earlier this month, in a story that went largely unreported by the mainstream media, that it would respond to overseas demand for the yuan to be used as a reserve currency and allow the yuan to flow back into China more easily. China hopes to allow all exporters and importers to settle their cross border transactions in yuan by the end of 2011, as part of their plan to increase the yuan’s international role. NIA believes if China really wants to become the world’s next superpower and see to it that the U.S. simultaneously becomes the world’s next Zimbabwe, all China needs to do is use their $1.15 trillion in U.S. dollar reserves to accumulate gold and use that gold to back the yuan.

4. Japan to Begin Dumping U.S. Treasuries. Japan is the second largest holder of U.S. treasury securities with $885.9 billion in U.S. dollar reserves. Although China has reduced their U.S. treasury holdings for three straight months, Japan has increased their U.S. treasury holdings seven months in a row. Japan is the country that has been the most consistent at buying our debt for the past year, but that is about the change. Japan is likely going to have to spend $300 billion over the next year to rebuild parts of their country that were destroyed by the recent earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, and NIA believes their U.S. dollar reserves will be the most likely source of this funding. This will come at the worst possible time for the U.S., which needs Japan to increase their purchases of U.S. treasuries in order to fund our record budget deficits.

5. The Fed Funds Rate Remains Near Zero. The Federal Reserve has held the Fed Funds Rate at 0.00-0.25% since December 16th, 2008, a period of over 27 months. This is unprecedented and NIA believes the world is now flooded with excess liquidity of U.S. dollars.

When the nuclear reactors in Japan began overheating two weeks ago after their cooling systems failed due to a lack of electricity, TEPCO was forced to open relief valves to release radioactive steam into the air in order to avoid an explosion. The U.S. stock market is currently acting as a relief valve for all of the excess liquidity of U.S. dollars. The U.S. economy for all intents and purposes should currently be in a massive and extremely steep recession, but because of the Fed’s money printing, stock prices are rising because people don’t know what else to do with their dollars.

NIA believes gold, and especially silver, are much better hedges against inflation than U.S. equities, which is why for the past couple of years we have been predicting large declines in both the Dow/Gold and Gold/Silver ratios. These two ratios have been in free fall exactly like NIA projected.

The Dow/Gold ratio is the single most important chart all investors need to closely follow, but way too few actually do. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) itself is meaningless because it averages together the dollar based movements of 30 U.S. stocks. With just the DJIA, it is impossible to determine whether stocks are rising due to improving fundamentals and real growing investor demand, or if prices are rising simply because the money supply is expanding.

The Dow/Gold ratio illustrates the cyclical nature of the battle between paper assets like stocks and real hard assets like gold. The Dow/Gold ratio trends upward when an economy sees real economic growth and begins to trend downward when the growth phase ends and everybody becomes concerned about preserving wealth. With interest rates at 0%, the U.S. economy is on life support and wealth preservation is the focus of most investors. NIA believes the Dow/Gold ratio will decline to 1 before the hyperinflationary crisis is over and until the Dow/Gold ratio does decline to 1, investors should keep buying precious metals.

6. Year-Over-Year CPI Growth Has Increased 92% in Three Months. In November of 2010, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS)’s consumer price index (CPI) grew by 1.1% over November of 2009. In February of 2011, the BLS’s CPI grew by 2.11% over February of 2010, above the Fed’s informal inflation target of 1.5% to 2%. An increase in year-over-year CPI growth from 1.1% in November of last year to 2.11% in February of this year means that the CPI’s growth rate increased by approximately 92% over a period of just three months. Imagine if the year-over-year CPI growth rate continues to increase by 92% every three months. In 9 to 12 months from now we could be looking at a price inflation rate of over 15%. Even if the BLS manages to artificially hold the CPI down around 5% or 6%, NIA believes the real rate of price inflation will still rise into the double-digits within the next year.

7. Mainstream Media Denying Fed’s Target Passed. You would think that year-over-year CPI growth rising from 1.1% to 2.11% over a period of three months for an increase of 92% would generate a lot of media attention, especially considering that it has now surpassed the Fed’s informal inflation target of 1.5% to 2%. Instead of acknowledging that inflation is beginning to spiral out of control and encouraging Americans to prepare for hyperinflation like NIA has been doing for years, the media decided to conveniently change the way it defines the Fed’s informal target.

The media is now claiming that the Fed’s informal inflation target of 1.5% to 2% is based off of year-over-year changes in the BLS’s core-CPI figures. Core-CPI, as most of you already know, is a meaningless number that excludes food and energy prices. Its sole purpose is to be used to mislead the public in situations like this. We guarantee that if core-CPI had just surpassed 2% and the normal CPI was still below 2%, the media would be focusing on the normal CPI number, claiming that it remains below the Fed’s target and therefore inflation is low and not a problem.

The fact of the matter is, food and energy are the two most important things Americans need to live and survive. If the BLS was going to exclude something from the CPI, you would think they would exclude goods that Americans don’t consume on a daily basis. The BLS claims food and energy prices are excluded because they are most volatile. However, by excluding food and energy, core-CPI numbers are primarily driven by rents. Considering that we just came out of the largest Real Estate bubble in world history, there is a glut of homes available to rent on the market. NIA has been saying for years that being a landlord will be the worst business to be in during hyperinflation, because it will be impossible for landlords to increase rents at the same rate as overall price inflation. Food and energy prices will always increase at a much faster rate than rents.

8. Record U.S. Budget Deficit in February of $222.5 Billion. The U.S. government just reported a record budget deficit for the month of February of $222.5 billion. February’s budget deficit was more than the entire fiscal year of 2007. In fact, February’s deficit on an annualized basis was $2.67 trillion. NIA believes this is just a preview of future annual budget deficits, and we will see annual budget deficits surpass $2.67 trillion within the next several years.

9. High Budget Deficit as Percentage of Expenditures. The projected U.S. budget deficit for fiscal year 2011 of $1.645 trillion is 43% of total projected government expenditures in 2011 of $3.819 trillion. That is almost exactly the same level of Brazil’s budget deficit as a percentage of expenditures right before they experienced hyperinflation in 1993 and it is higher than Bolivia’s budget deficit as a percentage of expenditures right before they experienced hyperinflation in 1985. The only way a country can survive with such a large deficit as a percentage of expenditures and not have hyperinflation, is if foreigners are lending enough money to pay for the bulk of their deficit spending. Hyperinflation broke out in Brazil and Bolivia when foreigners stopped lending and central banks began monetizing the bulk of their deficit spending, and that is exactly what is taking place today in the U.S.

10. Obama Lies About Foreign Policy. President Obama campaigned as an anti-war President who would get our troops out of Iraq. NIA believes that many Libertarian voters actually voted for Obama in 2008 over John McCain because they felt Obama was more likely to end our wars that are adding greatly to our budget deficits and making the U.S. a lot less safe as a result. Obama may have reduced troop levels in Iraq, but he increased troops levels in Afghanistan, and is now sending troops into Libya for no reason.

The U.S. is now beginning to occupy Libya, when Libya didn’t do anything to the U.S. and they are no threat to the U.S. Obama has increased our overall overseas troop levels since becoming President and the U.S. is now spending $1 trillion annually on military expenses, which includes the costs to maintain over 700 military bases in 135 countries around the world. There is no way that we can continue on with our overseas military presence without seeing hyperinflation.

11. Obama Changes Definition of Balanced Budget. In the White House’s budget projections for the next 10 years, they don’t project that the U.S. will ever come close to achieving a real balanced budget. In fact, after projecting declining budget deficits up until the year 2015 (NIA believes we are unlikely to see any major dip in our budget deficits due to rising interest payments on our national debt), the White House projects our budget deficits to begin increasing again up until the year 2021. Obama recently signed an executive order to create the “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform”, with a mission to “propose recommendations designed to balance the budget, excluding interest payments on the debt, by 2015″. Obama is redefining a balanced budget to exclude interest payments on our national debt, because he knows interest payments are about to explode and it will be impossible to truly balance the budget.

12. U.S. Faces Largest Ever Interest Payment Increases. With U.S. inflation beginning to spiral out of control, NIA believes it is 100% guaranteed that we will soon see a large spike in long-term bond yields. Not only that, but within the next couple of years, NIA believes the Federal Reserve will be forced to raise the Fed Funds Rate in a last-ditch effort to prevent hyperinflation. When both short and long-term interest rates start to rise, so will the interest payments on our national debt. With the public portion of our national debt now exceeding $10 trillion, we could see interest payments on our debt reach $500 billion within the next year or two, and over $1 trillion somewhere around mid-decade. When interest payments reach $1 trillion, they will likely be around 30% to 40% of government tax receipts, up from interest payments being only 9% of tax receipts today. No country has ever seen interest payments on their debt reach 40% of tax receipts without hyperinflation occurring in the years to come.

It is important to spread the word about NIA to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, if you want America to survive hyperinflation. Please tell everybody you know to become members of NIA for free immediately at: http://inflation.us
National Inflation Association 2011 March 26

The Floating Dollar as a Threat to Property Rights

Friday, March 11th, 2011

Seth Lipsky is the founding editor of the New York Sun. A graduate of Harvard College, he served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam as a combat correspondent for Pacific Stars and Stripes. A former senior editor and member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, he has also served as editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal/Europe, managing editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal, and assistant editor of Far Eastern Economic Review. In 2009, he published The Citizen’s Constitution: An Annotated Guide.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on February 16, 2011, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Phoenix, Arizona.

TO BEGIN, consider one of the most important measures of property, the kilogram. It’s a measure of mass or, for non-scientific purposes, weight. According to the papers last week, a global scramble is under way to define this most basic unit after it was discovered that the standard kilogram—a cylinder of platinum and iridium that is maintained by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures—has been losing mass.

You may think that this is impossible. Of all the elements, iridium is the most resistant to corrosion, and the cylinder is kept in a facility at Sevres, France, where it is under three glass domes accessible by three separate keys. The cylinder itself is more than 130 years old and is what the New York Times calls the “only remaining international standard in the metric system that is still a man-made object.” The new urgency to redefine the kilogram comes from the fact that its changing mass “defeats,” as the Times put it, “its only purpose: constancy.”

The question I invite you to consider for a moment is what would happen if we just let the kilogram float? This is a question that was posed in an editorial last week in the New York Sun. After all, the editorial said, we let the dollar float. The creation of dollars, and the status of the dollar as legal tender, is a matter of fiat. Its value is adjusted by the mandarins at the Federal Reserve, depending on variables they only sometimes share with the rest of the world. This would have floored the Framers of our Constitution, who granted Congress the power to coin money and regulate its value in the same sentence in which they gave it the power to fix the standard of weights and measures—like, say, the aforementioned kilogram.

Now, the record is clear in respect of how America’s founders viewed money. Many of them went into the Second United States Congress, where they established the value of the dollar at 371 ¼ grains of pure silver. The law through which they did that, the Coinage Act of 1792, noted that the amount of silver they were regulating for the dollar was the same as in a coin then in widespread use, known as the Spanish milled dollar. The law said a dollar could also be the free-market equivalent in gold. The Founders did not expect the value of the dollar to be changed any more than the persons who locked away that kilogram of platinum and iridium expected the cylinder to start losing mass. In fact, in this same 1792 law, they established the death penalty for debasing the dollar.

Today, members of the Federal Reserve Board don’t worry about how many grains of silver or gold are behind the dollar. They couldn’t care less. And this is what I believe is the most worrisome threat to property rights today. When the value of a dollar plunges at a dizzying rate—at one point in recent months it collapsed to less than ¹/_1,400 of an ounce of gold—Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke goes up to Capitol Hill and declares merely that he is “puzzled.” No “new urgency” to redefine the dollar for him. The fact is that we’ve long since ceased to define the dollar, and it can float not only against other currencies but even against 371 ¼ grains of pure silver.

So, the New York Sun asked, why not float the kilogram? After all, when you go into the grocery to buy a pound of hamburger, why should you worry about how much hamburger you get—so long as it’s a pound’s worth? A pound is supposed to be .45359237 of a kilogram. But if Congress can permit Mr. Bernanke to use his judgment in deciding what a dollar is worth, why shouldn’t he—or some other Ph.D. from M.I.T.—be able to decide from day to day what a kilogram is worth?

No doubt some will cavil that the fact that the dollar floats makes it all the more reason for the kilogram to be constant. But what’s so special about the kilogram? If the fiat dollar floats, one has no idea what it will be worth when it comes time to spend it. If the kilogram also floats, it will simply be twice as hard to figure out what something we’re buying will be worth. So what if, when we unwrap our hamburger, the missus has to throw a little more sawdust in the meatloaf?

Or let us consider a compromise. Let’s go to a fiat kilogram—that is, permit the kilogram to float—but apply the new urgency to fixing the dollar at a specified number of grains of gold. To those who say it would be ridiculous to fix the dollar but let the butcher hand you whatever amount of hamburger he wants when you ask for a kilogram, I say, what’s the difference as to whether it’s the measure of money or of weight that floats?

For that matter, one could go all the way and fix the value of both the kilogram and the dollar but float the value of time. You say you want to be paid $100 an hour. That’s fine by your boss. But he—or Chairman Bernanke—gets to decide how many minutes in the hour. Or how long the minute is. You know you’ll get a kilogram of meat for the price a kilogram of meat costs. But you won’t know how long you have to work to earn the money.

There was obviously a satirical element to that Sun editorial. But it’s not satirical to say that we are in a dangerous situation in our country in respect of the dollar, and that property rights are very much bound up in the question of money. After all, consider that kilogram. It is a cylinder. And it’s a cylinder the size of, say, a golf ball. The amount of mass that it is believed to have lost is measured in a few atoms, and yet the institution where they maintain standards is in a complete tizzy about it. The implications are said to be enormous.

The dollar, by contrast, has collapsed from ¹/₃₅ of an ounce of gold to less than ¹/_1,300 of an ounce of gold. If the kilogram had collapsed on that order of magnitude, there would be left only a small shard of that handsome grayish cylinder under the three glass domes at Sevres, France.

I understand that this is not where the property rights discussion is usually focused. It usually centers around the takings clause of the Constitution—the clause at the center of the landmark case that erupted when condemnation proceedings were launched against the homes in New London, Connecticut, of a woman named Susette Kelo and her neighbors. Under the Fifth Amendment, the government is prohibited from taking private property for public use without just compensation. That is a bedrock principle of American constitutionalism. What was special about Susette Kelo is that her property was taken for private use. It was coveted by a private, non-profit development corporation for private, for-profit use near a big pharmaceutical development that the town reckoned would benefit the public.

Mrs. Kelo and her neighbors went all the way to the Supreme Court to try to keep their homes. She lost the case, Kelo v. New London, albeit by a five to four vote. On the one hand, it was a terrible defeat for the principle of property rights. On the other hand, the decision was so alarming that states have begun changing their own laws to strengthen protections against the kind of raid on private property that Mrs. Kelo suffered. At least 43 states have already passed such laws. Rarely has the loser in a Supreme Court case established so great a legacy as Mrs. Kelo, whose case is one of the most important warnings we have had in my generation of the vigilance that is going to be required in respect of the right to property enshrined in the Fifth Amendment.

Which brings me to the question of how the law can be used to illuminate the problem of the floating dollar. What I consider the most astonishing legal question in the country came into the news in 2008, when Judith Kaye, the chief judge of the highest court in the state of New York, the Court of Appeals, filed a lawsuit in an inferior court, asking it to order the state legislature and the governor to give her a raise.

My first reaction, and that of my colleagues at the Sun, was to consider this something of a joke. Yet the more we began to look at the case, the more it threw into sharp relief the issue of the right to the property that comes to us in the form of a salary or is held by us in the form of savings. The judges on New York’s Court of Appeals, after all, hadn’t had a raise in more than a decade, and they were having an ever harder time making their salaries cover rising costs. In that they are just like the rest of us.

But it turns out that under the Constitution, judges are not quite like the rest of us—and in a way that lies at the heart of the American Revolution. Indeed, in the Declaration of Independence, one of the reasons our Founders listed for breaking with England was that King George III had “made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.” So they wrote into the Constitution not only that judges would have life tenure (with good behavior), but also that the pay of a judge would not be diminished during his term in office. This principle that one can never lower the pay of a judge is also in many state constitutions.

So if in, say, the year 2000 a judge was paid in dollars that were worth ¹/₂₆₅ of an ounce of gold, and if today that same judge is being paid with dollars worth less than ¹/_1,300 of an ounce of gold, has the judge’s pay been diminished?

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I have been nagged by the thought that judges’ pay could be the device with which to attack the legal tender law I have come to regard as the greatest threat to property in America. This is the law establishing that paper money in America must be accepted in payment of debts, public and private. The Founders themselves hated paper money. Washington, whose picture is on the one dollar bill, warned that paper money would inevitably “ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice”; Jefferson, whose picture is on the two dollar bill, called its abuses inevitable; as did Madison, whose picture is on the $5,000 bill. Paper money, he said, was “unconstitutional, for it affects the rights of property as much as taking away equal value in land.”

I’m not so sure that the existence of paper money is the problem. The problem is the requirement that a one dollar paper note be accepted in lieu of 371 ¼ grains of silver. Certainly when the greenback was introduced—as it was by President Lincoln—it was for a cause, the Union, that was worth enormous risks. The Treasury Secretary who helped him put through the greenback as a war measure, Salmon Chase, became, in 1864, the sixth Chief Justice of the United States; and when the concept of legal tender finally came up for consideration, Chase ruled against the greenback. Lincoln, however, eventually got two new justices on the court, and legal tender was established in a series of rulings—one involving the purchase of some sheep, the other of some bales of cotton, and another some land—known as the Legal Tender Cases.

A few months ago, I called Bernard Nussbaum, who was representing Judge Kaye, and asked him why she didn’t challenge legal tender head on. He told me he feared the Legal Tender Cases couldn’t be overturned. It was too heavy a lift. So instead he fought the case on separation of powers grounds. It seems that the New York legislature had said it would not give the judges of New York a raise until the legislators got a raise. The judges sprang on this as a transgression of separation of powers—and, no surprise, when they heard their own case, they ruled against the legislature. A few weeks ago, the legislature decided to delegate to an independent commission the job of deciding judges’ pay.

By my lights, this delegation to an unelected body, even if the legislature could overrule it, was an unsatisfactory outcome. But it turns out that the judges of New York are not the only jurists who are furious about the diminishment of their pay. A group of federal judges is also in court, fighting over their salaries. In the case of the federal judges, Congress had some time ago enacted a law that gave them an automatic pay increase designed to keep up with the Consumer Price Index. But then, as deficits got out of control and Congress’s own salary lagged, Congress suspended the automatic pay increase.

At that point, a coalition of federal judges went into court. Their aim is limited: to force Congress to reinstate the automatic pay adjustment. To understand the scale of what one is talking about, consider the pay of but one of the plaintiffs, Judge Silberman. I don’t know his exact salary. But at the time he was assigned to the District of Columbia Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals, the salary of a federal appeals judge—$83,200—was worth 258 ounces of gold. Since then, the value of the pay of a judge of one of the Appeals circuits—$184,500—has been diminished to 139 ounces of gold.

At this very hour, the judges’ petition in their pay case is before the United States Supreme Court. And while I believe the justices have been wronged by Congress, I hope they lose on the question of whether a suspension in the automatic pay adjustment is unconstitutional. That should get them angry enough to come back and look legal tender in the face. They could force Congress to pay them in the gold or silver equivalent of a federal judge’s salary at the time they were appointed to the bench. It would move judges closer to the kinds of salaries the lawyers before them are receiving.

And people would start to ask: If judges deserve honest money, why shouldn’t the rest of us?

To those who suggest that such a scenario is far-fetched, one can say, no more far-fetched than the notion that the post-Civil War monetary system could be erected on Supreme Court decisions in a pair of disputes over payment for a flock of sheep and some bales of cotton. Or that centuries of law on abortion could be overturned in a fell swoop by a Supreme Court ruling in the case of a woman who later changed her mind. Could the court cast aside precedent to decide such a sweeping issue as legal tender? It certainly didn’t hesitate—nor should it have—in demolishing the notion that racially separate schools could be equal. With everyone from the United Nations to Communist China today calling for the abandonment of the dollar as a reserve currency, is it so hard to imagine that the Supreme Court might revisit the Legal Tender Cases?

It may be that the judges will lose their pay case, just as Susette Kelo lost her house, or that they will win a partial victory and the Supreme Court will shy away from confronting legal tender. But we know from Mrs. Kelo’s case that this needn’t be the end of things. People began to see the logic and think about property rights, and now at least 43 states have passed laws to make it harder for state and local jurisdictions to use the power of eminent domain to seize private land for someone else’s private use.

Could such a thing happen with money? Well, there is a part of the Constitution called Article I, Section 10. It is the section that lists the things that states can never do. And one of these prohibited activities is making legal tender out of something other than gold or silver coin. So what is happening now is that a growing number of states, watching the sickening plunge in the value of federal money, are starting to explore how they can set up monetary systems based on gold or silver coins. The most recent effort was launched in Virginia, where there is a bill before the General Assembly to set up a joint committee to study the question. There have been early stirrings—just stirrings—in the legislatures of several other states.

Could the entry of the states into the monetary role be a reaction to a failure at the federal level, the way the states reacted to the failure of the Supreme Court to enforce Susette Kelo’s Fifth Amendment rights? It would be inaccurate to make too much of these efforts. But it would be shortsighted to make too little of them. Strange things can happen. It is even possible that one can take a cylinder of platinum and iridium, lock it away in a room under three glass domes, secure it with three separate keys, and come back in a few years to discover that part of it has disappeared. And the New York Times will write an editorial about the value of constancy.

“Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.” SUBSCRIPTION FREE UPON REQUEST. ISSN 0277-8432. Imprimis trademark registered in U.S. Patent and Trade Office #1563325.

Reality Zone Unfiltered News 2011 January 15-21

Saturday, January 22nd, 2011

US: Giant rocket lifts off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California carrying a secret spy satellite (the third of 6 that are planned). It is believed that the new satellite will be capable of reading car license plates.
DailyMail 2011 Jan 21 (Cached)

US: Congress has introduced a bill to repeal the ban on incandescent lights by 2012. Compact fluorescent lights save energy but they contain toxic mercury and are a potential health hazzard when broken.
Natural News 2011 Jan 21 (Cached)

Chinese President Hu, speaking in Chicago, says China is not a military threat and also denied that his country has a one-child policy. [Well, that settles that, doesn't it? Surely he wouldn't say anything that was untrue!]
DailyMail 2011 Jan 21 (Cached)

Australia: Global-warming myth makers claim that recent floods are the result of so-called “climate change”. Here is the historical proof that such claims are pure bunk. These charts show that floods of this magnitude are not unusual for that area and, in fact, were more common and severe in the 19th century.
WUWT Posted 2011 Jan 21 (Cached)

Spain: Government is pouring freshly created money into banks in hopes of warding off an international bailout. Billions of euros in previous bailouts have been ineffective. [As always, the influx of money out of nothing will create even more inflation for consumers.]
WSJ 2011 Jan 20 (Cached)

US: FDA is investigating a possible connection between flu vaccines and 36 seizures in young children that occurred within 24 hours of receiving the shots. [Don't expect much here. The FDA is more of a partner to Big Pharma than a regulator and likely will "find" that the problem was not the shots in general but a bad batch or some other temporary condition or that the number of adverse reactions is too small to worry about, so keep those kids coming for more. We shall see.]
Yahoo 2011 Jan 20 (Cached)

US: Supreme Court has denied hearing a case exposing corruption by lower-court federal judges. The proof against them is so clear that no one even tries to deny it. Yet, the Supreme Court has refused to hear the case, which has the effect of releasing them from conviction and, at the same time, condemning an innocent man.
Breitbart 2011 Jan 19 (Cached)

Goldman Sachs’ earnings fell by 53% in the 4th quarter and 37% overall in 2010 due to a reduction in bond trading and investment banking. (Investment banking involves acting as an agent for companies that need to raise capital from investors.) However, its own investing and lending segment showed a larger profit than last year. [This so-called profitable sector is the same one that was bailed out after suffering huge losses from high-risk loans. It's easy to show a profit when your losses are covered by taxpayers.]
Yahoo 2011 Jan 19 (Cached)

Goldman Sachs has 475 secret elite partners who stand to reap a windfall from 38 million stock options that were granted to them in 2008. [Options allow the holders to purchase stock at a stated price, usually very low, in anticipation of the stock being much more valuable at a future date. This method of compensation often is concealed from the public because it does not show up as salary or bonus. Among those to benefit are former Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and Robert Rubin.]
NY Times 2011 Jan 19 (Cached)

Obamacare has been repealed in the House but, likely, will be sustained the Senate and/or the President, so this was largely a symbolic effort. Most Republicans want to reform parts of the law instead of abolishing it completely. [Neither the Right nor the Left in Congress has any intention of repealing Obamacare because they stand to collect an extra $345 billion a year with the new tax provisions. That's why we support State Nullification.]
Fox News 2011 Jan 19 (Cached)

US: 26 states have joined a lawsuit filed by Florida to challenge the constitutionality of Obamacare. [This is a good sign of public opposition but contains the seeds of its own defeat. The lawsuit says Obamacare is unconstitutional because it forces Americans to buy health insurance. However, if that provision is struck down, all the other provisions would remain, and funding would come from taxes and inflation instead of premiums. So this has the appearance of opposition but is without real effect. If the states are serious about abolishing Obamacare, they should simply nullify the whole thing under the 10th Amendment.]
Guardian 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)

Ireland’s central bank begins printing Euros [that's right, Euros] out of thin air to cover its debt. This will have an inflationary effect on the rest of the EU countries. [This seems strange, but appears to be not much different than having the money printed by the EU and then shipped to Ireland. It's all just an accounting trick anyway.]
Daily Bell 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)

US: An air traveler at the Baltimore-Washington Airport declined to accept a full-body scan but was forced to walk through the machine anyway. He believes it was a psychological move to show that opt-outs cannot claim a “victory” over their authority.
InfoWars 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)

Hawaii: Natural farming, using compost and earthworms, has doubled the yield of a small farm in just two years – and no pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilizer are needed. There was a 30% decrease in water usage. [Even though most of us are not farmers, it is important that even city dwellers know that chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not necessary for our food supply.]
Staradvertiser 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)

Overpopulation time bomb is a myth, according to several recent scientific studies. The problem with global hunger is not that there is not enough food but that distribution is hampered by a holdback in technology.
The Independent 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)

City of Camden, New Jersey, lays off 17% of its employees, including police and firefighters, who warn that the city will become a “living hell.”. Public-safety workers and unions refused to take job-saving cuts, and the state is unable to bail out the city again (as it has for the past 2 generations).
Yahoo 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)

US: Department of Agriculture provides a $12 million secret bailout to Domino’s Pizza in a bizarre new partnership. The announced purpose is to promote “a cheesier pizza.” [How's that for the proper function of the state?]
Shatter Limits 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)

Chief climate scientist at NASA calls for Chinese-style dictatorship to fight global warming. He laments that the democratic process allows voters to obstruct the process. [Is anyone surprised? The global-warming myth is merely an excuse to establish a global dictatorship, and this fellow is just confirming it.]
Washington Times 2011 Jan 17 (Cached)

A study from the University of California found that all of the pregnant women in the test were contaminated with toxic chemicals, many of which have been banned in the US for decades. The source? Plastics, toys, personal-care products, and pesticide residue in food that is imported from other countries. Even though banned in the US, they can be imported with no problem. In addition, many toxic chemicals are still allowed in the US.
Natural News 2011 Jan 17 (Cached)

UK: A single mother, who was temporarily paralyzed by a fall, was told that her two-month-old baby (which was being well cared for by her sister) was to be put up for adoption by social services. The case workers claimed (with absolutely no evidence) that the mother may have been suicidal. The case has dragged on for 18 months after the mother’s total recovery. [This is only one case, but the details are painfully reminiscent of many similar cases that occur in every collectivist nation of the world where children are considered to be property of the state.]
Telegraph 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)

Here is a list of the top 10 prescription drugs linked to violent behavior, including homicide and suicide. Most are anti-depressants and attention deficit drugs. [Incidentally, these are some of the most highly prescribed drugs in history. Instead of outlawing guns, how about outlawing these killers?]
Time Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)

Here is an article that contains astonishing excerpts from Air Force documents describing how the HAARP installation in Alaska (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), may create weather modification as a weapon. [When they speak of nanotechnology and particles in the atmosphere, be aware that the most efficient method of putting them there is through aerosol spraying from aircraft. We call them chemtrails.]
PPJ Gazette Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)

See: What in the World Are They Spraying?

Montana is considering ‘Sheriffs First’ legislation requiring federal agencies like the IRS, FBI and ATF, to get written permission from local sheriffs to perform searches and seizures.
WND Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)

US Mint reports a buying frenzy of physical silver within the first 12 days of January 2011. Gold sales also have jumped. [Ironically, the spot price of silver and gold dropped significantly shortly after this announcement. It appears that those who manipulate the market are making a last-ditch effort to push the demand back down. They do this by selling bullion contracts (not the bullion itself). If buyers decide to demand physical delivery, the game is over, and the speculators who have done this will be wiped out.]
ZeroHedge Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)

US: Here is a list of the tax hikes that are in Obamacare. It is one of the largest tax increases in American history.
ATR.org Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)

US: Patriot Act that allows the government to conduct warrantless searches, monitor private computer records, tap phone calls, and prevent you from knowing you are being spied on, has wide support in Congress and is expected to be renewed this month with little or no debate or fanfare. [This will be a test of the sincerity of those Tea-Party Republicans who recently were elected on their promise to uphold the Constitution.]
Huffington Post 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)

Genetically modified chickens have been created that developers say will not transmit avian flu to other birds. [That's good news, but developers don't say what negative effects to human health may come from eating the meat from these chickens. This is part of the current trend whereby GMO companies are trying to get farmers to grow only foods that they have patented, and they always justify this practice as, somehow, providing a benefit to mankind.]
PopSci Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)

UK: Grandmother received swine flu vaccine and was told by her doctor that it would absolutely protect her from the flu. She did not have the flu at the time but died from swine flu two months later.
Natural News Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)

California applies to the federal government for bankruptcy protection. Currently, states are prohibited from declaring bankruptcy, but a new law to change that is being considered. [If states can declare bankruptcy, they will be able to re-negotiate impossible-to-sustain employee pension plans and health-care contracts, which is why unions oppose the measure. For taxpayers, it would be a great relief.]
LA Times 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)

US Fish and Wildlife has agreed (only after being sued) to stop planting GMO crops on refuges in 12 Northeastern states. More lawsuits to stop the practice in other regions are being pursued. [This article says that, while farming is allowed on refuges, most have been converted to GMO crops because those were the only seeds farmers could obtain. A peek into the future?]
PEER Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)

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ANALYSIS

Reports and commentaries that look beyond the news to identify historical facts and trends that must be understood to place the news into perspective. This is our “think-tank” section that makes it possible to anticipate future events.

Texas: Activist confronts Austin Chief Sustainability Officer as she confirms that the UN’s Agenda 21 program, which she supports, calls for reducing the population by 85%. She laughs when the issue is raised and says she is not concerned about that aspect of the program. [This is only one official out of thousands just like her in positions of government authority around the country, but be assured that she represents the norm, not the exception. These people are dead serious.]
YouTube 2011 Jan 16

Goldnomics: the value difference between cash and gold bullion. [You probably know most of this, but it is a good idea to take a refresher course from time to time.]
YouTube Posted 2011 Jan 15

Mike Adams and Farmer Brad discuss the impact of the misnamed Food Safety Bill: Many small farmers will go out of business due to extensive paperwork and FDA regulations; food prices will increase; and more food will be imported from other countries. [Imported food bypasses most safety regulations, so Americans will be at greater risk than before. Incidentally, small farms have never been the source of major outbreaks.]
Natural News Posted 2011 Jan 15

This is an excellent animation that explains the illusion of the “American Dream” and fiat money. [Caution! Some of the historical information is not accurate. For example, the story that JFK was assassinated because of his stand against the Federal Reserve cannot be substantiated. In fact, Kennedy always was a friend of central banking (See The JFK Myth). Nevertheless, because of the high quality of this program and the fact that the general theme is correct, we recommend it highly.]
YouTube Posted 2011 Jan 15

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DISINFORMATION

When the enemies of freedom cannot hide or deny the truth, their disinformation agents proclaim it boldly but mix it with questionable or offensive claims so people will recoil from the whole, like mixing garbage with groceries to stink up the bag and cause us to throw out the good with the bad. News items in this section may be in that category.

EU Times story on “toxic-oil spill rains” correctly spotlights damage from the Gulf-oil spill but makes claims that it cannot be substantiated, thus, undermining genuine concerns.
Rense.com Posted 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)

Reality Zone Unfiltered News 2011 January 8-14

Saturday, January 15th, 2011

JP Morgan-Chase bank says its net income jumped 47% in the fourth quarter of 2010, and that executive salaries in their home-loan division tripled from $549 million to $1.8 billion since last year. CEO Jamie Dimon says that hurdles are high for investors who want to force banks to buy back bad loans, and this will be vigorously opposed in court.
Yahoo 2011 Jan 14 (Cached)

US: Treasury announces it will sell warrants it holds in Citigroup and 2 smaller banks to raise money to repay the $700 billion bailouts. It claims it will make $12 billion on its $45 billion bailout of Citigroup. [We are getting tired of having to repeat this warning, but it must be done: We don't believe you can squeeze orange juice out of a rock. In spite of all the brave talk about economic recovery and improved profits, banks and other bailed out entities are not yet producing anywhere near sufficient real profit to repay the bailouts. The trick they have used in the past, working in partnership with the Federal Reserve, is to provide new bailouts, hidden from public view, to repay the old ones, thereby fooling the public into believing bailouts are acts of statesmanship. Eventually, all of this will be exposed but, by then, it will be too late to do anything about it.]
Yahoo 2011 Jan 14 (Cached)

US: A recent poll reported that Obama’s approval rating has soared to 77%. [Here's how they produced that absurd figure: 44% like him as a person and also like his policies. 29% like him but oppose his policies. 2% like his policies but dislike him as a person. 19% dislike him and his policies. The reality, therefore, is that 75% like something about him (mostly his personality) but only 46% like his policies, which is the meaning of an approval rating. This is classic media spin.]
InfoZine 2011 Jan 14 (Cached)

Illinois raised its income-tax rate to 5% to pay off a $15 billion deficit. That’s a 66% increase. Neighboring states with lower taxes are gleefully anticipating the influx of businesses and jobs away from Illinois.
Yahoo 2011 Jan 13 (Cached)

AIG and the US government are working on a plan to sell $20 billion dollars of AIG stock to expand the company’s capital. This will reduce the value of existing shares, but it is hoped it will attract needed capital from investors. [As with previous moves to attract new capital into businesses that continue to lose money, we are skeptical. The standard game plan is for the Treasury and the Fed to covertly provide politically favored investors with new money or offer guarantees to cover the loss of old money so that, on the surface, it looks like the bailouts have been paid back. Watch closely. Can you tell which shell covers the peanut?]
MSNBC 2011 Jan 13 (Cached)

If you still believe that mass bird kills are caused by fireworks, flying into buildings, indigestion, or some other “official” explanation, here is a map showing global locations for 30 recent events. [Whatever the cause, it is happening world wide. See the article by Andrea Silverthorne in the Forum section, below, for reasons to suspect formaldehyde that forms from methane gas.]
Google 2011 Jan 13 (Cached)

US: Home foreclosures hit a record high of over 1 million in 2010. If not for the recent wave of court cases in which banks are prevented from foreclosure when they cannot document that they own the mortgage, the total could have exceeded 3 million. Currently, more than 5 million homeowners are at least 2 months behind in their payments. [Not to worry. Our leaders and media pundits have assured us that the economy has turned around.]
Yahoo 2011 Jan 13 (Cached)

Missouri has no problem with illegal immigrants because of common sense laws: English is the official language; police verify immigration status of those who are arrested; and illegal immigrants are not eligible for taxpayer-funded programs like food stamps, health care, and financial aid for education.
Ozark Sentinel posted 2011 Jan 12 (Cached)

Morgan-Chase bank in Cleveland told a homebuyer that the only way they were willing to modify his loan downward was for him to default on his payments, which he did. [Why would a bank advise default? Because it counts on moving the mortgage into a GSE (Government Sponsored Enterprise) such as Fanny Mae or Mac and thereby receive a subsidy on the revised loan. In other words, the banking game continues at the expense of taxpayers.]
ZeroHedge 2011 Jan 12 (Cached)

Philippines: Town mayor forces university to uproot a field of GMO eggplant. The reason is that the university failed to follow the law and take adequate steps to insure that the plants could not contaminate natural crops in the vicinity.
NaturalNews 2011 Jan 12 (Cached)

State of Virginia is considering establishing a committee to study whether it should adopt currency such as gold or silver should the Federal Reserve collapse. [This is a step in the right direction but strictly speaking, it is unconstitutional. Article 1 Section 10 of the Constitution says that states may not "coin money." That is reserved to the federal government. States must allow only gold or silver coins to be legal tender (which means people are required by law to accept them), but they cannot issue legal tender coins themselves. They can manufacture their own coins and accept them in payment of taxes, but cannot make them the official money of the state that people must accept. So it gets murky. Let's hope the committee will sort all this out and come to the conclusion that the state should issue silver and gold coins, encourage them to be used as money even though they are not required to do so. That would be ideal. No one needs to be forced to accept gold or silver.]
Market Oracle 2011 Jan 12 (Cached)

US: Housing market values have fallen 26% since their peak in June 2006, which is worse than the decline during the Great Depression from 1928 and 1933. [In spite of these grim statistics, this article insists that the economy is revving back to life. We shall see.]
CNBC 2011 Jan 11 (Cached)

US Court case discloses that military conducted mind-control experiments on 7800 Viet Nam veterans. They were subjected to nerve agents and psycho-active drugs (including LSD). Soldiers volunteered but were not told of the risks.
Alternet 2011 Jan 11 (Cached)

Obama’s presidential commission report on the Gulf gusher suggests the the US government should share responsibility. [That probably is correct, but there is more here than meets the eye. If the government shares responsibility, this will blunt the legal attack on BP and will save it billions of dollars in law suits. The government likely will have to pay at least half of the damages and most of the remediation costs. Taxpayers, once again, will be put through the ringer, while the people who were personally responsible for this disaster will not pay a dime or be punished in any way.]
DailyMail 2011 Jan 11 (Cached)

Obama is pushing for Internet ID overseen by the Department of Commerce – to protect your on-line identity, of course. It will be optional – for now. [If the public wants this, the private sector could and would provide it without government presence or access to the data base, but that is not what will happen.]
DailyMail 2011 Jan 10 (Cached)

Canada: Homeowner fined $5,200 for growing cucumbers in his basement. Authorities thought he was growing marijuana. Even though only cucumbers were found, the fine was levied to cover the cost of the search.
The Province 2011 Jan 10 (Cached)

Australia: Government is considering re-naming ‘climate change’ (already changed from ‘global warming’) to ‘climate challenges’. This is because most people no longer think that climate change is man-made, so the myth makers must find a more appealing phrase. [No matter how they sell it, at its core it is junk science leading to carbon tax.]
The Australian 2011 Jan 9 (Cached)

Massachusetts federal court voids bank seizure of 2 foreclosed homes because the banks failed to show they held the mortgages at the time of foreclosure. This is expected to have an enormous impact on other foreclosed homes in the past and in the future.
DailyMail 2011 Jan 8 (Cached)

US: While the Constitution is read on the House floor, a woman in the audience yells out that Obama has violated the Constitution because he is not ‘natural born citizen’ as required. She is removed.
Yahoo Posted 2011 Jan 8

Upcoming G20 meetings to discuss how rising food prices can be used as an excuse for passage of regional laws to increase government control over crops, farming methods, quotas, and prices. [Never let a good crisis go to waste. Instead of reducing government interference in the free market, which is the primary cause of food shortages, they are pushing ahead for more controls than ever. Collectivism always grows until it consumes everything.]
Reuters Posted 2011 Jan 8 (Cached)

China supplies most of the world’s honey and is notorious for using antibiotics to keep the bees “healthy” – but the honey becomes contaminated, which is far from healthy for humans. Chinese honey is falsely labeled as from Taiwan, Indonesia or Malaysia to avoid tariffs.
Globe and Mail Posted 2011 Jan 8 (Cached)

Ron and Rand Paul plan to introduce a bill to cut the federal budget by $500 billion. Rand says that the government collects about $2 trillion, but spends $4 trillion. Ron advocates repealing the welfare warfare state.
Sad Hill Posted 2011 Jan 8

Greek doctor (Harvard graduate) tells how medical research is a “damned lie.” He says bad science is manipulated to skew data favorably toward drug manufacturers who fund the research. Up to half of all medical research is untrustworthy.
The Atlantic Posted 2011 Jan 8 (Cached)

==============================

ANALYSIS

Reports and commentaries that look beyond the news to identify historical facts and trends that must be understood to place the news into perspective. This is our “think-tank” section that makes it possible to anticipate future events.

Pulitzer Prize winner, David Johnston, explains how the rich get richer at your expense. It’s a system of subsidies and tax breaks for those with political influence. He says these mega-businesses should earn their money in the marketplace, not receive it as a gift, stolen from the middle class by their friends in politics.
The DailyBail posted 2011 Jan 13

The Arizona shooting has resulted in a media frenzy to vilify conservatives, Constitutionalists, Libertarians, the Tea Party, “divisive political rhetoric,” and gun-rights advocates. Like every other crisis in the present day, the event is being used to create public acceptance of yet more government power. This is an excellent overview.
NeitherCorp 2011 Jan 12 (Cached)

Globalism and the UN’s Agenda 21 are forbidden by the Bill of Rights and the American Constitution. Here is an excellent outline of how to restore America’s core value.
FreedomAdvocates 2011 Jan 12 (Cached)

Vaccine Court is an alternative to a real court and was established to shield drug companies from prosecution for vaccine injuries (like autism). Only small damages are granted, and those are charged to taxpayers, not Big Pharma. [Guess who lobbied for that.]
PPJ Gazette 2011 Jan 9 (Cached)

Here is a short video that is designed to condition people to accept and even approve being crammed into mega-cities with tightly controlled housing, transportation, education, job placement, and food choices. It’s pure propaganda for the UN’s Agenda 21 program that aims to remove most people from the country where they are hard to control and get them into mega-cities where they can be totally regimented. This REALLY is what is being planned for you.
YouTube 2011 Jan 4

Lockheed Martin, a military and aircraft production company, is the largest single recipient of US tax dollars. This author says that, like the largest banks, it has become too big to fail, which means its mistakes and corruption are always covered up by the government, and its losses are passed to the taxpayers. This is an eye-opening review.
Yahoo 2011 Jan 4 (Cached)

Alcohol is a fuel and can be distilled from plants that thrive in poor soil, don’t need much rain, and grow like weeds without cultivation. [If we could ever break our fixation on gasoline from oil, producing fuel from these sources could bring back economic prosperity and oil independence to the US.]
ActivistPost 2011 Jan 4 (Cached)

US: Local law enforcement increasingly is being brought under federal control primarily through offers of money from Washington. [Local police departments seldom resist a federal grant to help them hire more officers and purchase needed equipment; but, with the money, comes control.]
PoliceOne.com 2010 Jan 3 (Cached)

Reality Zone Unfiltered News 2010 December 11-17

Saturday, December 18th, 2010

$7.2 billion is recovered for victims of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme. The widow of ‘philanthropist’ Jeffrey Picower agreed to return the money that had been paid to her husband out of the Madoff fund. (That represents about half the amount stolen from investors.) Picower drowned in a swimming pool after a heart attack. [Incidentally, Madoff's son, who also was paid heavily from the fund, committed suicide on December 11.]
Yahoo 2010 Dec 17 (Cached)

US: Dept. of Agriculture says it wants to approve use of Monsanto’s genetically modified alfalfa, but public concern over contamination of conventional crops forces the agency to consider putting restrictions on its use. [The restrictions are minor and will not prevent contamination, and safety testing will not be required. The USDA has become a rubber stamp for the biotech industry, while Congress, fat with campaign contributions, remains silent. Incidentally, USDA co-owns a separate GMO patent with Monsanto, so they are business partners.]
Reuters 2010 Dec 17 (Cached)

US: Memo leaked from the EPA sheds light on the mystery of why honey bees have been dying off. It may be a pesticide produced by the Bayer Company. The EPA has known that this chemical harms honey bees since at least 2003; yet, not only has it allowed Bayer to sell the product, it has concealed the research. [Once again, we see the ugly face of corruption in government.]
GreenChipStocks 2010 Dec 16 (Cached)

US: A federal appeals court ruled that government must have a court-issued warrant based on probable cause if it wants to look at your e-mails stored by your internet service provider. Fourth Amendment rights are now extended to e-mails. [There is no mention of capturing emails by government agencies or private contractors while they are in transit before becoming stored, but this is a welcome ruling.]
AllGov.com 2010 Dec 16 (Cached)

Blackwater (now known as Xe), a private military contractor firm, has been sold by its owner Erik Prince because of ongoing criticism, especially for the senseless killing of 17 people in Baghdad in 2007. Xe was sold to an investment group with close ties to Prince. The group includes a partner who is a longtime financial adviser congress, to Prince helping him to procure government contracts. [This appears to be a strategy to create the illusion of divestment of control, but the crony connections suggest that little has changed except the paper trail.]
Yahoo 2010 Dec 16 (Cached)

California will adopt a Cap-and-Trade program even though a similar proposal was rejected by Congress. It will cap emissions from the 600 biggest industrial facilities and impose additional taxes on energy use. It is expected to set a precedent for other western states.
LA Times 2010 Dec 16 (Cached)

US government initiates lawsuit against BP Oil for violating environmental and pollution laws. Halliburton, the primary suspect in causing the spill, is absent from the complaint. [This is an indication that the complaint may ignore the initiation and cause of the spill and focus, instead, only on cleanup operations.]
DailyMail 2010 Dec 16 (Cached)

How did Goldman Sachs “repay” it’s $10 billion TARP loan? It obtained the money from the quiet sale of more than $100 billion in mortgage-backed securities (junk-quality) to the Federal Reserve. [In other words, the first bailout was paid secretly by additional bailouts of even greater magnitude. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs, the government, and the Fed have claimed that repayment of these loans was proof of the wisdom and success of the initial round of bailouts. This makes the Mafia look like a Boy Scout troop; yet, none of the criminals will be punished.]
Economic Policy Journal 2010 Dec 15 (Cached)

US: Army Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin refuses to deploy to Afghanistan because he does not believe Obama is a natural born citizen and, according to the Constitution, not the legitimate Commander-in-Chief. Prior to the trial, the judge said Obama’s birth certificate is irrelevant. Lakin was sentenced to 6 months in prison and loss of all benefits.
Yahoo 2010 Dec 14 (Cached)

JP Morgan has been manipulating the silver market for several decades but, because of rising prices even beyond its control, is forced to begin reducing its short derivatives position. It has already closed out 4000 contracts but has about 26,000 contracts still in play. [It appears that, for the first time in many years, the price of silver is being driven by the free market. Don't be surprised if it doubles or triples in price soon.]
NIA 2010 Dec 14 (Cached)

USA: A 17-year old boy asks TSA agent why his mother was frisked but not him. The answer: “You don’t have boobs.” The mother is suing.
Prison Planet 2010 2010 Dec 14 (Cached)

Sunscreen chemicals are absorbed into the body and are found in human milk samples. They can disrupt cellular functions at many levels.
Natural News 2010 Dec 14 (Cached)

US: A federal judge strikes down ObamaCare because part of it is unconstitutional. 2 other federal judges have ruled it constitutional, so it is headed for the Supreme Court. The issue is whether the federal government has authority to require Americans to purchase insurance. [This is too narrow an issue and could be a clever way to guarantee that the major portion of the bill will be approved. The issue is being defined to focus on the unconstitutionality of just one small part of the bill instead of the whole thing. The Feds may willingly give up the compulsory-purchase part (for now) in order to keep the other 95%.]
Yahoo 2010 Dec 14 (Cached)

The proper way to reject ObamaCare is for the states to nullify it. This will eliminate the bill in its entirety, and Congress doesn’t even have a say in the matter. Click here to read the model state legislation.
TenthAmendmentCenter posted 2010 Dec 14 (Cached)

Spanish scientists are developing technology to imprint human embryos with bar codes.
Fox News 2010 Dec 13 (Cached)

Genetically modified mosquitoes have been released for the purpose of transmitting Dengue Fever to the unsuspecting population. This already has resulted in deaths in Florida. Incredible as that may sound, this project is admitted by the U.S. government, the World Health Organization, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has heavily funded the program. The excuse is that this is a valuable experiment in the quest for ways to use mosquitoes to deliver vaccines to the masses at low cost. [The project, however, is controlled by the military which is far more interested in weapons of control and death. It should be noted also that the Gates Foundation is well known for funding projects related to population reduction. Here is the fascinating and frightening story.]
ActivistPost 2010 Dec 13 (Cached)

YouTube now allows viewers to flag videos if they believe they encourage terrorism. [Sounds downright patriotic, but the word terrorism is undefined. If people are angry because you criticize a politician they like, they can vote you off the Internet by flagging you as a terrorist. Google will make the final decision, but this allows the company to claim it is merely responding to public concern.]
Huffington Post 2010 Dec 13 (Cached)

NASA completes the first global study of Urban Heat-Island effect (heating of the air within large cities caused by heated buildings and and power devices). Temperatures were skewed by a whopping 13 to 16 degrees compared to rural areas. [For many years, global temperature readings increasingly have been coming from large cities and airports while ignoring the larger land mass of rural areas. Cities should be included, of course, but they have been given far too much weight in the calculations. Here is yet another way in which data has been tilted to favor the global-warming myth.]
NASA Dec 13 (Cached)

Massachusetts, home of the socialized medicine plan that was the inspiration for ObamaCare, now finds it cannot afford it. [Unfortunately, politicians are seeking to cut costs without reducing benefits. Collectivists never learn, but the Gods of the Copybook Headings ultimately will prevail.]
Yahoo 2010 Dec 11 (Cached)

Ron Paul, newly appointed head of the Congressional Banking Committee, says the Fed is bailing out states and cities by purchasing their bonds, even though they almost certainly will go into default. As usual, the money will be taken from all citizens in the form of higher prices and destruction of savings. [The banking cartel is in charge, and Congress is in its service.]
YouTube Posted 2010 Dec 11

Bank of America admits fraud and conspiracy in rigging municipal bond bids in derivatives trading. They are fined $137 million to make restitution to the IRS and municipalities that lost revenue. [The fine will be paid by stockholders in the form of lower dividends and by taxpayers who must pay for the inevitable bailouts. Innocent people will pay, while the executives who perpetrated the crime will not be punished but will earn bonuses.]
AFP Posted 2010 Dec 11 (Cached)

Judge Napolitano (on Fox News Network) interviews top rock-band leader, Jon Schaffer. Jon is in the Freedom Force Hall of Honor and a strong advocate of Constitutional government. They discuss the importance of educating America’s youth about freedom. In the following segment, Napolitano also covers the history of taxation.
YouTube Posted 2010 Dec 11

==============================

ANALYSIS

Reports and commentaries that look beyond the news to identify historical facts and trends that must be understood to place the news into perspective. This is our “think-tank” section that makes it possible to anticipate future events.

US: The tax system is rigged to favor the super wealthy. Here is a summary of the ways in which billionaires can avoid heavy tax hits while the middle class continues to be wiped out. Regardless of political rhetoric, neither major party wants to change that.
News Herald 2010 Dec 11 (Cached)

Tax provisions hidden in ObamaCare are built on IRS reporting rules that go into effect in January 2011. The rules are explained here. [The result will be a vast increase in taxes, an increase in personal record keeping, small-business failures, unemployment, a big step toward cashless transactions and, in 2012, tracking of gold sales to coin and gold dealers.]
YouTube2010 Dec 7

The full detailed article with research links can be seen here.
Activist Post 2010 Dec 7 (Cached)

California declares a fiscal emergency due to health care costs and calls for $9.9 billion in spending cuts. [Not much news in this, but here is an excellent analysis of why California got into this mess and what must be done about it.]
Natural News 2010 Dec 6 (Cached)

Jesse Ventura exposes the worldwide takeover of water by multinational corporations – and China.
FreeThoughtNation2010 Dec 4

Report gives a glimpse at what is planned for the common man in the not-too-distant future. 3/4 of the population will live in cities because only the elites will have automobiles. [The report focuses on transportation and traffic issues but read between the lines and you will see that all aspects of daily life will be tightly controlled.]
Guardian 2010 Dec 2 (Cached)

Animated characters entertainingly explain how the Morgan bank is massively overextended on naked short silver derivatives (that means they have sold silver they don’t have), so if silver rises in value and buyers demand the physical silver, prices will skyrocket, and Morgan could be wiped out. Meanwhile, those who buy silver now stand to profit handsomely.
YouTube 2010 Dec 2

Reality Zone Unfiltered News 2010 December 4-10

Saturday, December 11th, 2010

Worldwide corruption deepens as evidenced by the fact that, in the last 3 years, 25% of the people polled paid bribes to officials of governments and institutions empowered by governments. [In general, as governments increase their power to legally coerce citizens, corruption will follow at the same rate.]
Bloomberg 2010 Dec 10 (Cached)

Canada calls for global leaders to bind the US into complying with its CO2 emission-reduction pledges made at Copenhagen. This is a strategy to get Russia and Japan to sign a new treaty to limit CO2 even if the U.S. does not become a party to the Kyoto Treaty. [It's all based on the global-warming myth that is never challenged at such international conferences. Why not? Because, if the myth was acknowledged, there would be no reason for the treaties or the conferences.]
Globe and Mail 2010 Dec 10 (Cached)

US: The misnamed Food Safety Bill that will impede small-farms and expand FDA power, was folded into a general budget bill and passed by the House. It must now be voted in the Senate. Also, the “Same-Day Authority” bill passed, which allows other bills to be brought to vote with virtually no notice until December 18th. This allows the Democrat majority to ram through any bill they wish until their majority comes to an end. [By the way, Republicans often have used similar trickery.]
NWV 2010 Dec 10 (Cached)

US: Equity value of all homes has fallen $9 trillion since 2006 and is expected to continue downward.
Business Insider 2010 Dec 9 (Cached)

Prince Charles and Camilla’s car is attacked by students protesting the tripling of university tuition. Government buildings and shops are vandalized
Yahoo 2010 Dec 9 (Cached)

Ted Turner urges global one-child policy at UN Cancun treaty talks. The article says the world’s population currently is at 7 billion and expected to rise to 10 billion by 2050. Yet …?
The Globe and Mail 2010 Dec 2

The UN’s own documents say the world’s population will reach 9 billion by 2300 and then plateau.
Population Press 2003 Dec 9 (Cached)

US: Baltimore man arrested for trying to detonate a bomb. Just like the recent sting operation in Portland, this man was recruited and trained by FBI agents, posing as Muslim extremists, who gave him a fake bomb so, when he tried to detonate it, they could move in for the arrest. [This makes great news and convinces people there is a constant threat, but terrorism it is not. It is theater.]
Fox News 2010 Dec 8 (Cached)

Visa and MasterCard are cyber-attacked by hackers who objected to their withdrawal of services to WikiLeaks. Visa actually crashed for several hours. [Unfortunately, the government will use this to gain political support for the Cyber Security Act, which will not improve cyber security but will authorize cutting off anyone's Internet access if they dissent from government policies.]
ABC News 2010 Dec 8 (Cached)

Iceland’s recession is over because the voters demanded their government to let the banks fail rather than bail them out with tax money. Iceland has its own currency and is independent of the EU. Nobel Prize winner, Paul Krugman, urges Ireland, Greece and Portugal to get out of the EU and follow Iceland’s example.
Guardian 2010 Dec 7 (Cached)

Obama and Republicans agree to extend Bush tax cuts and increase unemployment benefits. The combined cost is over $800 billion. [Before rejoicing over lower taxes and higher benefits, consider that this will be paid through rising prices. There is no free lunch – except for politicians.]
CNN Money 2010 Dec 7 (Cached)

US: Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who doubles as Obama’s point man for the Gulf oil spill, is pressing the armed services, prisons, and schools to consume Gulf seafood. This is in response to a sharp decline in sales due to public concern about toxic residues of oil and Corexit, an oil dispersant. BP Oil will spend $30 million in a campaign to sell the idea that Gulf food is safe. Millions of federal dollars also will be spent for that same purpose.
NOLA 2010 Dec 7 (Cached)

Japan announces, that in compliance with a request from US Department of Homeland Security, it will no longer allow mail over one pound to be shipped into the US. This includes private services like Federal Express. Other countries are expected to follow suite – to fight terrorism, of course.
Natural News 2010 Dec 7 (Cached)

UPS now is requiring photo identification from anyone who wishes to send a package.
MSNBC 2010 Dec 6 (Cached)

US: Federal Reserve forced to reveal jaw-dropping statistics. When Americans were outraged at $700 million bank bailout, it really was $12.3 TRILLION. Much of it went to foreign banks and large corporations who owed money to banks. This is perhaps the biggest theft in all history, and no one has been brought to justice. This analyst thinks the Wikileaks scandals have been used to distract attention from the legalized plunder.
Poor Richard’s Blog 2010 Dec 6 (Cached)

US Treasury says it sold the last of the shares it held in Citibank and claims a $9 billion “profit” from the original bailout. [There is something fishy about this. The economy is still sliding downhill, and most investors are reluctant to put money into red-ink companies; so the suspicion is that these profitable stock-sales are possible only if the government has quietly provided the money or made stop-loss guarantees to large financial institutions so they can buy the stocks at no risk. In other words, they are paying off old losses by setting up new and larger losses in the long run. Time will tell if this suspicion is justified.]
Wall Street Journal 2010 Dec 6 (Cached)

US: Federal Reserve proposes to amend the ‘Truth in Lending Act’ so that homeowners can no longer challenge the validity of their mortgages even if lenders did not make full disclosure or falsified loan documents. [The Fed is a banking cartel. It represents the banks, not the people.]
NJ.com 2010 Dec 5 (Cached)

US signs a ‘free trade’ agreement with South Korea so their cheap products can be exchanged for US agricultural products. [Wait a minute! American industry already has been severely damaged by cheap imports - and food shortages in the U.S. already are beginning to appear. Is anyone in Washington looking out for America?]
PPJ Gazette 2010 Dec 4 (Cached)

Warren Buffet says it will be a “pleasure” to donate $50 million to the UN to create a nuclear “fuel” bank. The purpose is to place all nuclear resources under control of the UN. [The theory is that this will make the world safer but, considering the low ethical level of international despots and dictators that comprise leadership at the UN, just the opposite will be the result.]
CNBC 2010 Dec 4 (Cached)

Cancun climate-treaty talks are stalled because global warming has been discredited. To pressure the delegates into supporting the Kyoto Treaty based on the global-warming myth, the UN is threatening to unleash ‘geo-engineering’ that could poison the planet. The US and UK are the main backers.
MorphCity 2010 Dec 4 (Cached)

US Federal agencies are tracking citizens in real time via credit card activity, loyalty cards, and travel reservations, all without warrants.
Wired Posted 2010 Dec 4 (Cached)

Florida orange groves are infected by a bacteria that originated in China. The Chinese simply destroyed the infected trees and planted new ones, which solved the problem. In the U.S., the government decided that the only solution is to introduce genetically engineered varieties that are patented by companies like Monsanto. [To prevent growers from experimenting with ways to eradicate the bacteria, the government declared that it was a "bio-terror" bug, so no one is allowed to even examine it. Clever!]
Reuters Posted 2010 Dec 4 (Cached)

==============================

ANALYSIS

Reports and commentaries that look beyond the news to identify historical facts and trends that must be understood to place the news into perspective. This is our “think-tank” section that makes it possible to anticipate future events.

Tax provisions hidden in ObamaCare are built on IRS reporting rules that go into effect in January 2011. The rules are explained here. [The result will be a vast increase in taxes, an increase in personal record keeping, small-business failures, unemployment, a big step toward cashless transactions and, in 2012, tracking of gold sales to coin and gold dealers.]
YouTube 2010 Dec 7

The full detailed article with research links can be seen here.
Activist Post 2010 Dec 7 (Cached)

California declares a fiscal emergency due to health care costs and calls for $9.9 billion in spending cuts. [Not much news in this, but here is an excellent analysis of why California got into this mess and what must be done about it.]
Natural News 2010 Dec 6 (Cached)

Jesse Ventura exposes the worldwide takeover of water by multinational corporations – and China.
FreeThoughtNation 2010 Dec 4

Report gives a glimpse at what is planned for the common man in the not-too-distant future. 3/4 of the population will live in cities because only the elites will have automobiles. [The report focuses on transportation and traffic issues but read between the lines and you will see that all aspects of daily life will be tightly controlled.]
Guardian 2010 Dec 2 (Cached)

Animated characters entertainingly explain how the Morgan bank is massively overextended on naked short silver derivatives (that means they have sold silver they don’t have), so if silver rises in value and buyers demand the physical silver, prices will skyrocket, and Morgan could be wiped out. Meanwhile, those who buy silver now stand to profit handsomely.
YouTube 2010 Dec 2

Reality Zone Unfiltered News 2010 November 13-19

Saturday, November 20th, 2010

US: Uniformed flight attendant, after going through full-body scanner, also is subjected to a “pat-down”. After full-hand contact, she is required to remove her prosthetic breast for inspection.
WBTV 2010 Nov 19 (Cached)

US: Charles Rangel (Congressman from NY) is found guilty of 11 ethics violations including soliciting corporate donations in return for legislation granting tax favors and tax evasion for 17 years. Rangel was not investigated for criminal fraud. His punishment is censure (a written scolding by Congress) instead of expulsion from office and jail time.
Forbes 2010 Nov 19 (Cached)

California District Attorney TSA workers he will prosecute for intentional sexual touching. Orlando Airport in Florida has hired a private security firm to screen its customers. Other airports also are considering dumping TSA as resistance builds.
Daily Mail 2010 Nov 18 (Cached)

New York police, dressed in bulletproof vests, bust and ticket 7 men for playing chess in a park. Why? Because they were in a children’s area – even though there were no children present. [Police say they were merely enforcing the law. In other words, police are not free to use judgment but must blindly follow orders – like concentration-camp guards did in Nazi Germany. It's the same in all collectivist systems.]
NY Post 2010 Nov 18 (Cached)

UN: Climate official admits that upcoming world climate conference in Cancun actually is an economic meeting to negotiate redistribution of the world’s wealth and resources. [The global warming myth always has served the advancement of global collectivism, not a better environment].
WUWT 2010 Nov 18 (Cached)

Ron Paul slams TSA and introduces legislation that would remove immunity from government employees who do anything that private citizens are not allowed to do. He also reminds us that if we as a people continue to act like cattle we will continue to be treated as cattle.
YouTube 2010 Nov 17

UK: Manchester Airport is running a new government-backed trial where travelers have their eyes scanned at check in and boarding. Also, they will be monitored as they walk around the airport. [Don't worry. It's to fight terrorism – and it's voluntary – for now.]
Daily Mail 2010 Nov 17 (Cached)

TSA airport “security” pat-downs now include touching people inside of their pants [The pat down apparently has little to do with security but everything to do with motivating people to go through the body scanners. If it were related to security, why didn't they do it 10 years ago? Why wait until only after the new scanners were purchased and people began to object to them?]
Prison Planet 2010 Nov 16 (Cached)

California prepares to default on $25 billion debt and is only one of many states in similar trouble. [If it seeks federal bailout, it will lose what is left of its sovereignty. If it does not, it must cut government programs and salaries, cut welfare, reduce retirement plans, and renegotiate contracts. No one wants that, so the outcome probably will be federal bailout and economic death by inflation.]
Yahoo 2010 Nov 16 (Cached)

Greek Prime Minister says it at last: Carbon taxes are just another way to raise revenue and have nothing to do with reducing emissions. He wants the money to be used for more bailouts.
Telegraph 2010 Nov 16 (Cached)

Haiti: Journalists find broken sewer pipes from a UN military base dripping into a river in the locale where a recent outbreak of Cholera has killed more than 1000 people.
AP 2010 Oct 27 (Cached)

Haitians riot against UN for the Cholera outbreak that is believed to originate from UN soldiers from Nepal. The UN denies responsibility but asks for $164 million in aid that will go mostly to UN personnel to fix the sewage and open treatment centers.
Yahoo 2010 Nov 16 (Cached)

New York police are tracking suspected criminals with iris-scanning technology, similar to that being tested at Manchester Airport in the UK. [They say they are not storing these images (yet) and, besides, the technology is much more accurate and faster than fingerprinting, so what is there to worry about?]
NPR 2010 Nov 16 (Cached)

US retailers suddenly must pay up to 30% more for cotton clothing due to sagging cotton crops and inflation. The price of clothing is going to take a drastic jump within the next few months.
Daily Crux 2010 Nov 16 (Cached)

California man refuses the Full Body Scanner at the airport and is offered the new ‘enhanced’ pat-down. The TSA officer said he would touch the man’s groin, and the man replied: “You touch my junk and I’ll have you arrested.” He was prevented from boarding his flight and threatened with a civil suit plus a $10,000 fine.
Yahoo 2010 Nov 15 (Cached)

TSA out of control! Watch this jaw dropping video montage. [See if you can spot the terrorists.]
YouTube 2010 Nov 15

Mars candy company is working to create genetically engineered chocolate that they claim will fight heart disease. [What a wonderful, health conscious company it must be. Perhaps now they will engineer sugar to fight obesity, dental caries, and diabetes.]
Daily Record 2010 Nov 15 (Cached)

US: Leaked documents show that body scanners have stored images, contrary to the assurances from TSA and Homeland Security to the contrary. One manufacturer has admitted that the machines can store up to 40,000 images.
Prison Planet 2010 Nov 16 (Cached)

US: One in 7 households now receive assistance from federal agencies or food pantries – and the number is climbing. [There is no doubt that the number of people genuinely in need is growing as the economy continues to shrink. However, be aware that many of those receiving free food are doing so, not because they would go hungry without it, but because the government has made it easily available.]
Reuters 2010 Nov 15 (Cached)

US: Judges hearing cases of Social Security claimants are receiving rising numbers of violent threats because of denied benefits. [In 1850, Frederic Bastiat wrote a treatise called The Law in which he said that, if government assumes the role of provider for the people, eventually they will turn against it, because it can never provide enough to meet their expectations. Such governments, he said, always die a violent death. The Law can be obtained here.]
Yahoo 2010 Nov 15 (Cached)

Ireland’s deficit soon will be 32% of its GDP, and insiders are saying the government is quietly seeking a bailout from the EU central bank. [This is causing political panic throughout Europe because all countries are in similar straights, and there is no source of funds for the bailout except more taxes and inflation, which could lead to open rebellion. National leaders continue to reassure the public that everything will work out fine.]
Yahoo 2010 Nov 15 (Cached)

Google is designing a phone with built-in payment system to replace credit cards. The company already has disregarded privacy with cameras. Now it wants to handle your money along the way to a cashless economy.
Yahoo 2010 Nov 15 (Cached)

Scientists develop a genetically modified plant that produces pharmaceutical drugs. [This may sound wonderful (if you are enamored with pharmaceutical drugs) but it merely is a variation on the GMO process. We still prefer nature's unaltered plants that contain healing herbal compounds because they usually work better, have fewer side effects, and are much cheaper.]
Natural News 2010 Nov 14 (Cached)

US: 9/11-Truth movement message has been well received in New York mainstream media. It focuses primarily on the question of how and why Building 7 collapsed, and mentions that 1300 architects and engineers agree that there is more to the story than has been told – A simple but powerful message.
Raw Story 2010 Nov 14 (Cached)

Government gives waivers to 111 large corporations and unions that exempts them from ObamaCare. Department of Health and Human Services buries the information on their website, and there is no press release. [This is a classic case of politically favored groups receiving exemption from regulations that will destroy small businesses. That's the nature of collectivism.]
YouTube 2010 Nov 13

Bill Gates wants to register every birth on a cell phone to get fingerprints and locations into a global database to make sure no infant escapes vaccinations. His admitted goal is population reduction and, says (illogically) that the best way to control the population is to save the lives of children under 5. [Saving lives at any age increases population. However, if we substitute "save lives" with "vaccinate" then it makes sense, because most vaccines shorten lives and reduce fertility. Wake up, world!]
SmartPlanet Posted 2010 Nov 13 (Cached)

Southern Poverty Law Center makes a training video for police that shows 2 officers being killed by men who claimed to be “sovereign citizens.” [Tragic acts of this kind, although rare, are a bonanza for those who want to portray everyone who opposes corruption in government as being "anti-government" and domestic terrorists. This is powerful propaganda, and you need to be aware of how it is being used to condition the attitudes of law enforcement personnel.]
Pixiq 2010 Posted Nov 13 (Cached)

UN says plastic trash can be converted into oil by a machine that uses melting instead of burning, thus creating less toxic waste. One kilogram of plastic trash can be converted into one liter of oil at a cost of 20 cents. [Although this is great news, we are skeptical of anything that comes from the UN, so we are hesitant to jump on board without knowing more. Does anyone have knowledge of this process and would like to share their views? In particular, does the process (including heating energy) cost more than simply purchasing the oil? Comments will be posted in the Forum section.]
OurWorld Posted 2010 Nov 13 (Cached)

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ANALYSIS

Reports and commentaries that look beyond the news to identify historical facts and trends that must be understood to place the news into perspective. This is our “think-tank” section that makes it possible to anticipate future events.

Codex Alimentarius is a commission created through the United Nations seeking to establish itself as regulator of the world’s food supply, nutritional supplements, and drugs. It appears that Codex actually was established by Nazi war criminals with the support of multinational corporations.
Activist Post 2010 Nov 16 (Cached)

Here is an excellent overview of how the Federal Reserve has destroyed the American economy and allowed great concentration of power in the hands of a few who set interest rates and control inflation. If you have wondered why people are calling for an end to the Fed, here is the answer.
NIA 2010 Nov 14

Quantitative Easing explained in cartoon video – humorous but amazingly accurate.
YouTube Posted 2010 Nov 13

The contest between Left and Right has been replaced by a new conflict between the individual vs. corporations – especially so when one realizes that corporations have become the dominant controlling force over governments. This provides an excellent insight to the new reality.
USAWatchdog Posted 2010 Nov 13 (Cached)

Silver is still an excellent safe haven for your savings, perhaps even better than gold. Here are the reasons.
NeitherCorp 2010 Nov 12 (Cached)

The Federal Reserve latest round of quantitative easing (creating $600 billion out of nothing to pay its debts) will further devalue the US Dollar. Countries that previously were willing to purchase US bonds now have lost interest. Increasingly, only the Fed is left to create more and more money, as the economy begins its final plunge to the bottom.
Economic Collapse 2010 Nov 9 (Cached)

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