Inedible Melting Dollar

Still won't buy gold? Make a sandwich with your dollar bills. One ounce of gold will buy you about 400 hamburgers.

Seditious Petitioning in America

Who are the Oklahoma 3?

"The Oklahoma 3 were indicted based on allegations of felony misconduct stemming from a 2005 petition drive for the Oklahoma TABOR initiative, which would have placed a Taxpayer Bill of Rights initiative on Oklahoma's November 2006 general election ballot.

Jacob, Johnson, and Carpenter were indicted on felony charges of "conspiracy to defraud the state." Carpenter was charged with a second felony, that of violating the state's petition act. According to an Associated Press report, "The indictment accuses the three of 'willfully, corruptly, deceitfully, fraudulently and feloniously' conspiring with each other to defraud the state through the collection of signatures on the TABOR petition."

The Oklahoma 3 each face up to ten years in prison and a $25,000 fine. Defense efforts immediately went into action, primarily through the FreePaulJacob.com web site. "

-Tom Saunders

http://www.ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=Oklahoma_3

This indictment also effectively aborted a ballot access petition campaign in Oklahoma.


What is a 'petition for redress of grievances'?

It is a public declaration in specific terms setting forth to those in temporary authority that if certain "laws" are not repealed, then the people will assert their natural right of revolution.

The American war of secession from Great Britain was preceded by numerous such petitions and finally by the Declaration of Independence (or secession).

The right of secession is still accepted in international law. See support for the recent Kosovo secession endorsed even by G. W. Bush. (At least when expedient.)

The modern rebuttal to the right of secession rest on the presumption of democratic "due process", i.e., "fair and free" elections. If the people have access to such elections then, it is asserted, they cannot justify secession or the overthrow of "democratically chosen" authority. Apparently, no matter how oppressive that authority may be of individual human rights. In other words, if a majority votes in a "fair and free" election to accept slavery, then a majority overrules the right of secession. That's the sophistry presented.

How are elections evaluated as fair and free? By the pronouncement of selected officials of some other political regime deemed democratic. Thus, elections are given as an initiation ceremony into the international fraternity of legitimate governments who reserved the right to intervene anywhere to enforce 'legitimate democratic governments'. This fraternity is not a confederation of people in the various states. It is a coalition of ruling elites against the peoples of various states and the right of those people to revolution and secession whenever elections are a sham and fraud - as they are in all countries today. All governments impose barriers to open, fair and free elections. None can invoke the the "self-immunity clause" of democratic consent. Consent of the governed has disappeared world-wide. Therefore, all people have the right to petition for a redress of grievances and undertake revolution and secession.

This is what the prosecution of the Oklahoma 3 exemplifies. This is what the hijacking of the monetary relation and the imposition of the fiat money credit system exemplifies.

The circulation of a petition is a private, consensual activity between political equals. The circulation of money and voluntarily agreed money substitutes is a private, consensual activity between economic equals. Intervention against either of these processes is tyranny and sufficient grounds for secession. Prosecution of the Oklahoma 3 is a link in a chain that connects directly to Kosovo and the gold issue.

If people have the right to choose their own money, no government aspiring to authoritarian control can get a grip on the people's liberty.

Emigration has been an historic means of comparatively peaceful secession from a more oppressive regime to a less oppressive regime. The Americas have been overrun secessionists from Asia and then the entire globe. The recent U.S. influx of partial and complete secessionists from other countries is just normal. Get over it and adopt them as allies in a war of secession against an arbitrary and increasingly inherited quasi-nobility of fascists.

[The government has determined this communication is in violation of law and is terminated. You have been warned!]

NO! You, Sir, Have been warned!

Who cooks the election returns?

Who is most responsible for the inequities of American elections? See:

The Scope of Congressional Authority in Election Administration (PDF)

The document cited above makes clear that Congress assumes 'penultimate' authority with the support of the U.S. Supreme Court for this claim of authority. For this discussion we will accept the Congressional claim of authority at face value. Therefore, we conclude that the U.S. Congress is also most responsible for the inequities of American elections.

The states do whatever they wish to do because the Congress implicitly condones whatever is done at the state level until or unless the Congress choses to preempt state action. Whatever goes unchallenged at the state level is presumptively upheld by the courts whenever the Congress has refused to act specifically on that issue. Over time ample precedent is built to sustain Congressional inaction.

The partisan coalition of the Congress assures that no state action will be questioned that serves to sustain that coalition from competitive threats unless it takes a form that is grossly embarrassing to the democratic facade.

Oklahoma is a state whose political coalition seems to pride themselves in skating as closely as possible to the grossly embarrassing with its ballot access law, for example. I would like to know if there is any correlation between political corruption (by the number of officeholders convicted) in a state and the restrictiveness of that state's ballot access law. Any political science students want to take on that project?

While the Oklahoma Legislature has a despicable record on this subject since David Boren was in the State House of Representatives, the U.S. Congress claims for itself the discredit of being the most contemptible of the two institutions. In these matters, the courts know what Congressional intent is: leave well enough alone.

The same analysis holds for mere vote counting between coalition members. Either party candidate is far preferable to outsider party candidate. Since losing or stealing votes from outsider candidates does change the final outcome of the election between a D or an R, it's just a technicality. Unless you can poll more than 33 1/3 of the vote, none of your votes really matter. But elections can also be corrupt even between the members of the coalition. One one wonders how the U.S. Supreme Court really decided the 2000 election. Did they just flip a coin in chambers? Letting the people decide is a mere formality. The penultimate authority – Congress – didn't want to touch the election even though it was their constitutional responsibility to do it. Why not left the SCOTUS flip a coin and declare their decision set no precedent?

What constitution? Never mind. Nothing to see here. Move along.

The Last Free Election in America

I don't know when the last free election was held in the United States. It won't be in 2008. It wasn't in 2004, 2000, 1996, 1992, 1988, 1984, 1980, 1976, 1972, 1968, 1964. Those are the presidential elections I have been eligible to vote in my lifetime. I don't consider any of those elections as free and open contests. Hence, I conclude that the American people have lost all of those elections and they have already lost the 2008 election.

There is really nothing audacious about this claim. The purpose of elections in the U.S. is to restrain political power and sustain a constitutional regime. No living American has seen an election which met this standard.

All elections are flawed exercises, but some are grossly flawed. Elections in the U.S. Have become 'progressively' more grossly flawed since at least the first decade of the 20^th Century. All elections since the War of Secession (Civil War) were flawed by racists barriers. That flaw has diminished, but other flaws have deepened to nullify the effectiveness of elections for every American.

Elections are irrelevant in effecting real political control in the U.S.

For scope let us consider the forthcoming 2008 pseudo-election. What is at risk in every American election? Lives and treasure – life, liberty and property. What has government done to preserve these private values? Nothing. It has operated against them.

Life is not sustained by government killing citizens. Liberty is not sustained by violations of individual rights by government. Property is not sustained by government regulations and monetary depredations.

In short-hand terms its all about war, criminal law, the destruction of private property values, and debasing money and credit.

What “leading candidates” has presented a program to reverse the politicization of criminal law, the politicization of property or money-credit? None. Ron Paul cannot reach the levers of power which would enable the people to control and restrain state power. They have lost the election of 2008.

The consequences will be further and increasingly severe losses of life, liberty and property.

Is there a fall-back strategy for the people? Do they have recourse to failed democracy? Of course, people always have choices and they always fall into two broad categories: violent resistance, revolt, revolution or picking up as many marbles as they can and deserting the regime. Historically, people always use both tactics as best they can in their own personal circumstances.

I think for many people desertion is the best tactic, or buy gold and leave the country. For other people the best tactic is to buy gold and clean their weapons and wait to strike.

The U.S. is now a porous concentration camp. Formal imprisonment is just a transfer from one building to another before you make it through the fences.

So, vote early and vote often, it doesn't matter. Then run!

The People's Gold

“Gold, which used to be a symbol of the greed of empires, has ironically become a grass-roots revolt against the ‘imperial’ management of money by the state,” says Alvaro Vargas Llosa. - Independent Institute

Rising Gold Prices Signal Inflation Worries

Judging by the run-up in the price of gold, people’s confidence in the U.S. monetary system has waned since 2001, but especially over the past month. Investors worry that inflation and a resulting weakening dollar will inflict lasting damage on the U.S. economy. It is this fear—and the excessive monetary growth that drives price inflation—that has pushed the price of gold above $900 per once, according to Alvaro Vargas Llosa, director of the Independent Institute’s Center on Global Prosperity.

“Unlike oil, whose rising demand has a direct connection to increasing economic production in places such as China, the demand for gold is not tied to productive needs so much as to the psychological factor we usually call insecurity,” writes Vargas Llosa in his latest syndicated column for the Washington Post Writers Group.

“Gold, which used to be a symbol of the greed of empires, has ironically become a grass-roots revolt against the ‘imperial’ management of money by the state,” he continues. “In colonial times, gold was actually the creator of, rather than a safe haven from, inflation: by flooding the European market with bullion from the Americas, the Spanish empire caused a general distortion of prices. Today, the general distortion of prices—reflected in the credit and housing market crisis—has led people, through their investment fund managers, to rush toward gold in search of protection.”

“The People’s Gold,” by Alvaro Vargas Llosa (1/9/08) Spanish Translation

Tell Me Something I don't Know

Tell me something I don't know as they say on CBS's Chris Mathews Show.

What the hell is a populist-libertarian or libertarian-populist?

In his book The Populist Persuasion Michael Kazin traces "two different but not exclusive strains of vision and protest" in the original US Populist movement: the revivalist "pietistic impulse issuing from the Protestant Reformation;" and the "secular faith of the Enlightenment, the belief that ordinary people could think and act rationally, more rationally, in fact, than their ancestral overlords." - Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, pp. 10-11.

- Producerism-the idea that the real Americans are hard-working people who create goods and wealth while fighting against parasites at the top and bottom of society who pick our pocket...sometimes promoting scapegoating and the blurring of issues of class and economic justice, and with a history of assuming proper citizenship is defined by White males;

- Anti-elitism-a suspicion of politicians, powerful people, the wealthy, and high culture...sometimes leading to conspiracist allegations about control of the world by secret elites, especially the scapegoating of Jews as sinister and powerful manipulators of the economy or media;

- Anti-intellectualism-a distrust of those pointy headed professors in their Ivory Towers...sometimes undercutting rational debate by discarding logic and factual evidence in favor of following the emotional appeals of demagogues;

- Majoritarianism-the notion that the will of the majority of people has absolute primacy in matters of governance...sacrificing rights for minorities, especially people of color;

- Moralism-evangelical-style campaigns rooted in Protestant revivalism... sometimes leading to authoritarian and theocratic attempts to impose orthodoxy, especially relating to gender.

- Americanism-a form of patriotic nationalism...often promoting ethnocentric, nativist, or xenophobic fears that immigrants bring alien ideas and customs that are toxic to our culture.

The resurgent right-wing forms of populism borrow from these traditions. (1)

These six characteristics above mark the establishment academic critique of populism as a proto-fascist movement.

I disagree. As I see it, the essential root of populism in the U.S. is debtor revolt against a creditor elite which has seized control of government to extract rents from the general population by debt and taxes. All the other characteristics cited by establishment academics are transitory contigenicies of historical circumstances. Secondary details, not irrelevant, but secondary consequentials.

Libertarian-populism is rooted in Austrian School economic analysis of money and credit. Populism is like an immune response to the parasitical effects of inflation and debt. The social immune response of populism can cause symptoms that are uncomfortable and even dangerous to an entire society of individuals. But criticizing those symptoms evades the core of disease. That core is best understood by Austrian/libertarian economic analysis.

In a nutshell, libertarian-populism is an accurate explanation of the sentiment for revolt held by the vast majority of people in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries against the Wall Street-Washington 'Axis of Evil'. It is a revolt against the elites' manipulation of money and credit.

Even more bluntly, it's all about the money, stupid!


1) This list is a compilation of points made previously by Canovan and Kazin, as well as John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860-1925 (New York: Atheneum, 1972); Richard Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965); and David H. Bennett, The Party of Fear: The American Far Right from Nativism to the Militia Movement, (New York: Vintage Books, revised 1995, (1988)).

Why Americans don't save? It's the Axis of Evil!

There is a lot of economic blather in political circles about the US trade deficit. The typical blather focuses on the currency spread between the dollar and US trading partners. A cheap dollar blather is that it will make US exports cheaper and that will fix the trade deficit. The prospect of that is bleak. The US doesn't make enough stuff to export and currencies cannot be that easily manipulated without other consequences. An alternative fix for the trade deficit is for Americans to save more and not spend so much on imported goods. That would work, but what are Americans supposed to put their savings into?

If we just burned 10% of our cash we couldn't spend it on imports. Is that saving? It would certainly reduce imports by 4 to 8 percent. The point is that putting money into a bank savings account or similar instrument is just a slow way to burn cash and it would reduce imports...somewhat. What's the incentive to defer consumption by "saving" with a slow burn or a sudden bonfire?

Americans don't save because it is irrational in this economic environment. Money spent on any gadget or service returns some benefit greater than just burning your cash.

Fortunately, there is a way to save even now, but 90% or more of the population is clueless about how to do it. The answer: Switch your savings out of the US Dollar into foreign currency - some usually burn slower than the US Dollar. How about a fireproof savings vehicle? Yeah, you know what's coming next.

Buy gold. It's a patriotic act in the sense that it lowers the US trade deficit. It's also patriotic because it undercuts the bankers' central banking cartel and money/credit expansion engine.

Gold is for savings because is the most non-depreciating commodity available. The only thing that might depreciate gold would be a sudden discover of a massive deposit of ore that could be cheaply mined. Not likely at all. It is far more expensive to recover gold than oil. Oil is consumed. Very little gold is 'consumed'. It merely changes forms from bullion to coins to jewelry to bullion. Most of what is used in industrial production is recovered. Gold is a very "sustainable" resource.

Who besides Ron Paul among the candidates is willing to give the game away? No one yet. It's so easy to blame the Chinese or anybody but the financial/banking/political elites. Wall Street-Washington: The Axis of Evil.

2008: A Golden Year

With so many analysts forecasting that gold will rise to at least $900 an ounce next year and perhaps reach those levels in the first quarter, investors should be accumulating gold at these price levels. Just as gold was a bargain at $340, $540, $640, and $740, it is now a bargain at the $840 level.

I expect to see $1000 gold by April. Your own due diligence is necessary.