Ron Paul's Update on H.R. 1207 To Audit The Fed

Welcome to the Destructive Downward Spiral of Government Intervention

This article was on TBI. thanks, John Carney.

Tim Geithner Takes Responsibility For AIG Bonuses

Tim Geithner says he takes "full responsibility" for knowing the stimulus legislation had a loophole that would allow bailed-out insurance giant American International Group pay massive bonuses to employees at the controversial money-losing financial products group.

CNN got the confession from Geithner:

In an interview with CNN's Ali Velshi, Geithner said the Treasury Department did talk to Sen. Chris Dodd about a clause he put forth that would have strictly limited executive bonuses.

The Treasury Department was concerned that legislation that would restrict contractual bonuses would not hold up to legal challenges, Geithner said.

"We expressed concern about this specific version. We wanted to make sure it was strong enough to survive legal challenge," Geithner said.

Geithner's interview will air on CNN in part at 5 p.m. ET on Thursday and in full at 8 p.m.

Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, also acknowledged Wednesday his role in controversy, after denying having anything to do with crafting language that permitted the bonuses.

Geithner said he learned the full scale of the bonus problems on March 10.

"It's my responsibility, I was in a position where I didn't know about those sooner, I take full responsibility for that," he said.

Geithner probably hopes that by taking responsibility in this way, he can defuse criticism. As CNN's senior political correspondent said about Barack Obama, when these guys say "blame me" it is political code for "move on." It is, in other words, an attempt to change subjects and end discussion.

Mar. 19, 2009, 4:51 PM

This is only the beginning of the kind of problems we will see when our elected officials think it's perfectly fine to have an economy that's half socialist half capitalist.(I'm sure they have there reasons..... p$o$w$e$r) It's the worst of all systems, AIG is stealing tax payers dollars by the means of Government coercion. We need to start holding all our representatives accountable. Voters should vote more on substance rather than symbolism.

Support H.R. 1207 The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009

The Federal Reserve Transparency Act, Congressman Paul's bill to audit the Fed, is now up to 28 cosponsors! (6 Democrats and 22 Repubs.)
Rep Abercrombie, Neil [D, HI-1]
Rep Alexander, Rodney [R, LA-5]
Rep Bachmann, Michele [R, MN-6]
Rep Bartlett, Roscoe G. [R, MD-6]
Rep Broun, Paul C. [R, GA-10]
Rep Burton, Dan [R, IN-5]
Rep Chaffetz, Jason [R, UT-3]
Rep DeFazio, Peter A. [D, OR-4]
Rep Duncan, John J., Jr. [R, TN-2]
Rep Foxx, Virginia [R, NC-5]
Rep Garrett, Scott [R, NJ-5]
Rep Grayson, Alan [D, FL-8]
Rep Heller, Dean [R, NV-2]
Rep Jones, Walter B., Jr. [R, NC-3]
Rep Kagen, Steve [D, WI-8]
Rep Kingston, Jack [R, GA-1]
Rep Marchant, Kenny [R, TX-24]
Rep McClintock, Tom [R, CA-4]
Rep Petri, Thomas E. [R, WI-6]
Rep Poe, Ted [R, TX-2]
Rep Posey, Bill [R, FL-15]
Rep Price, Tom [R, GA-6]
Rep Rehberg, Denny [R, MT]
Rep Rohrabacher, Dana [R, CA-46]
Rep Stearns, Cliff [R, FL-6]
Rep Taylor, Gene [D, MS-4]
Rep Woolsey, Lynn C. [D, CA-6]
Rep Young, Don [R, AK]
If you don't see your rep on this list, contact him/her today and urge them to support the bill!


Here is a good video that explains how the FED started and what it was supposed to be. The Federal Reserve and the people who work there are our central economic planners. My hopes are that if passed, H.R. 1207 will lead us to more sound money and the eventual abolishing of the Federal Reserve.

The Law of Identity....A is A

Chapter 11 from Anthem, by Ayn Rand

I am. I think. I will.

My hands . . . My spirit . . . My sky . . . My forest . . . This earth of mine. . . . What must I say besides? These are the words. This is the answer.

I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.

It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth. It is my ears which hear, and the hearing of my ears gives its song to the world. It is my mind which thinks, and the judgement of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth. It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will is the only edict I must respect.

Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: "I will it!"

Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me; the guiding star and the loadstone which point the way. They point in but one direction. They point to me.

I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars.

I am a man. This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before!

I do not surrender my treasures, nor do I share them. The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.

I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.

I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned.

I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire. For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone. Let each man keep his temple untouched and undefiled. Then let him join hands with others if he wishes, but only beyond his holy threshold.

For the word "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie.

The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.

What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and the impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey?

But I am done with this creed of corruption.

I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.

And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.

This god, this one word:

"I."

This Article was posted in Mises Daily

Beating Back Obamanomics

Mises Daily by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. | Posted on 3/6/2009 12:00:00 AM

It's raining, pouring, economic fallacies by the hour, followed by a flood of horrible policy that is driving us ever further into economic depression. The regime in charge has really gone nuts, revealing itself as both deeply ignorant and horribly evil.
We find ourselves facing the horror of what has always been the Achilles heel of the left wing: its abysmal ignorance of economic science. The ideological tendency has gone from Keynesianism to outright socialism in a matter of a few weeks.
And the trajectory seems to be accelerated mainly by the logic of the interventionist cycle: bad policy leads to bad results that are addressed through bad policy, and so on, straight down the fast track to serfdom. Obama's attachment to "transparency" — the buzzword of the day — allows all intelligent people to observe the sickening sight in real time, and to the cheers of the kept class of intellectual phonies like Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman.
The encouraging thing — and perhaps this too was inevitable — is that the right wing is getting its act together. It has suddenly discovered that economics matters. You can cheer on the hot wars, fight the culture wars, and crack down on political dissidents all you want. But in the end, what makes for the good society is a sound economy. Without it, all the rest falls apart.
Thus all our favorite conservatives are starting to make sense. The American Spectator is alarmed. Rush Limbaugh sounds like LRC. The American Conservative has temporarily dropped its love of protectionism to warn of dollar inflation. The love of war has gone AWOL at National Review. The Heritage Foundation is warning that government spending and taxation are driving us to ruin. Pat Buchanan is defending the free market!
Where were these people during the last eight years of Bush's misrule? Asleep or seeking preferment or something. It's not as if Obama caused this crisis; he is only making it worse. In any case, the Right has begun to turn to the side of truth and justice, precisely as they did during Clinton's rule, and this is all to the good, in general.
But just in case we are observing yet another expedient shift, it might be a good idea to understand precisely why socialism is a bad idea. The Obama administration doesn't seem to get it. And there is plenty to get. Socialism crushes human rights, builds the state, impinges on the liberty of conscience, and breeds social, cultural, and economic degeneration.
People have made those points for hundreds of years. Somehow, and for whatever reason, many people rejected these critics. No, they said, all of this sounds plausible, but you don't understand how the sheer glory of the socialist ideal, with perfect equality and social justice, will bring about a new sense of things. Mankind will be inspired to share, create, work, and obey by the astonishing emergence of a completely new form of social organization.

Ludwig von Mises in 1920, however, added something special and new to the critique of socialism. He said that socialism in all its forms cannot accommodate any economic development beyond the hunter-gatherer stage. And the reason has to do with the socialist attack on the ownership and exchange of capital goods. Without ownership, there is no exchange, and so prices do not emerge. Here is his 1920 essay, which says it all.
Without market prices for capital goods, accounting is not possible. You don't know if you are making money or losing money, saving resources or wasting them, doing the right thing or not doing the right thing. Think of all the decisions that have to be made on the production end that require you to know whether you are wasting resources or not. With steel, do you make more buildings or trains? Or do you make cutlery or computers? Or cars or cables?
You can't just rely on assessing consumer demand. The demand for stuff is infinite. What matters are choices in light of foregone alternatives. These can't be discerned with polls or intuition. What matters here is the weighting of all alternative uses of resources. They can only be worked out in real time, in light of the choices of consumers and the profitable production decisions of producers.
None of this is possible if you don't have real market prices providing the real stuff that makes cost accounting possible. Collectivize property and you abolish the market for capital goods. No prices emerge. Every choice you make is arbitrary. There is no more rationality remaining. You just end up groping around in the dark.
No socialist has ever been able to provide an answer to Mises's devastating point. And why? Because no socialist has seriously thought through how their cockamamie system would work. Lenin used to say, oh whatever, just run the whole economy the same way the post office is run. But notice: the post office has a problem with innovation, pricing, cost accounting, and making ends meet. Its only source of life comes from the competition provided by private competitors. The post-officeization of the entire economy would mean a return to barbarism.
Mises's illustration of the failure of socialism provides a fantastic means to discover what is right about markets and wrong about all forms of collectivized economic planning. It shows what happens when you nationalize banks and credit. But it also shows what is wrong with all bureaucracies.
Mises put all his criticism together in a single book, a book that remains the definitive refutation of the entire intellectual apparatus of socialism. It is a classic, a must-read, a treasure for all ages. To read it is to be amazed. It has changed the minds of millions of people since it appeared in 1922. It is the one book that utterly crushes the economic agenda of the Left, revealing what fools they really are.
Mises's point has also been a fruitful one for further theorizing about all forms of collectivism. See, for example, Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Theory of Socialism and Capitalism.
And look: it's not as if socialism is a new idea. It was tried in the 20th century. It produced economic stagnation and despair. In its purest form, it extinguished more than one hundred million people. That's why The Black Book of Communism must be owned and read and understood by every thinking person. It is the most terrifying book you will ever read. It is a standing rebuke to any living soul who claims that economic understanding doesn't matter.
Take this seriously: it is where the Obama tendency is leading us.

What Is Greed? Milton Friedman on Capitalism

A Foreign Policy of Freedom

Here is a posting by Ron Paul on his Blog. It's a great essay that can help one understand how out of control our empire is.



Imagine

Imagine for a moment that somewhere in the middle of Texas there was a large foreign military base, say Chinese or Russian. Imagine that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of “keeping us safe” or “promoting democracy” or “protecting their strategic interests.”

Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up check points on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence.

Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers’ attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but instead, for every American killed, ten more would take up arms against them, resulting in perpetual bloodshed. Imagine if most of the citizens of the foreign land also wanted these troops to return home. Imagine if they elected a leader who promised to bring them home and put an end to this horror.

Imagine if that leader changed his mind once he took office.

The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas. We would not stand for it here, but we have had a globe straddling empire and a very intrusive foreign policy for decades that incites a lot of hatred and resentment towards us.

According to our own CIA, our meddling in the Middle East was the prime motivation for the horrific attacks on 9/11. But instead of re-evaluating our foreign policy, we have simply escalated it. We had a right to go after those responsible for 9/11, to be sure, but why do so many Americans feel as if we have a right to a military presence in some 160 countries when we wouldn’t stand for even one foreign base on our soil, for any reason? These are not embassies, mind you, these are military installations. The new administration is not materially changing anything about this. Shuffling troops around and playing with semantics does not accomplish the goals of the American people, who simply want our men and women to come home. 50,000 troops left behind in Iraq is not conducive to peace any more than 50,000 Russian soldiers would be in the United States.

Shutting down military bases and ceasing to deal with other nations with threats and violence is not isolationism. It is the opposite. Opening ourselves up to friendship, honest trade and diplomacy is the foreign policy of peace and prosperity. It is the only foreign policy that will not bankrupt us in short order, as our current actions most definitely will. I share the disappointment of the American people in the foreign policy rhetoric coming from the administration. The sad thing is, our foreign policy WILL change eventually, as Rome’s did, when all budgetary and monetary tricks to fund it are exhausted.

Posted by Ron Paul (03-09-2009, 10:29 AM)

Whats The Only Job That Gets A Pay Raise in A Recession?

If the congress wants to spend all the money in the world on gaining votes, we should deduct it from there pay check, but instead they get a pay raise. In 1989 the congress voted on a bill that would raise there salaries every year 4,700 dollars. How long will this go on? The congress should not be taking any more money from the taxpayer. This is insane.

Believe in Revolution

Everyday I talk to more and more people who are fed up with the way Obama and the U.S. government are reacting to economic turmoil. It inspired me to write letters to Obama and many other members of congress expressing the way I, and a growing number of others, are starting to feel about what they are doing. I attached a link in case you were interested in leaving a message for obama. You can also email your local representative and tell them how you feel, and demand that they represent you. These representatives need to hear it, if they can get away with the things they are doing without losing any votes(which is all they care about) than America will surely fall into more and more big government. Wake up people! Take action! Email your reps, protest on the streets, meet with groups to talk about these issues. We all must understand what is happening right now, and as soon as we all do, we will have the power to change it. Go to Congress.org and look at what our representatives have voted on and how they voted. If you disagree with anything, email them and tell them you disagree and why, and demand representation. Our country has strayed far into the shadows of Big Fat Government, and it is time to do something about it.


To Mr. Obama
More and more angry American's everyday are......
...beginning to realize exactly what your policies actually will do
...waking up to the fact that you are leading us down the dark road of socialism
...educating themselves on political policies and there effects on economics
..taking action with local groups that directly oppose everyone of your ideas
....studying the history of Germany in the early 1900's
....shutting off there TV sets that spew propaganda
....remembering the principle's this country was founded on
....analyzing the way these principle's are abandoned in your policy
....supporting politicians that do not favor BIG GOVERNMENT
....not seeing the transparency in government that you promised
... seeing that you are a phony and a liar
...standing up for themselves
....inspired by Politicians like Ron Paul who stick true to there word
....finally putting enough thought into politics, and actually realizing that they are conservatives who believe in liberty!!!
....not getting the change they envisioned

So Please Mr. Obama,
CHANGE. Represent the American people, after all that is your job! And stop with your Keynesian economics. It is flawed. In addition in order to have a true Keynesian system you must cut spending and raise taxes during the boom cycle, but we did not do that during our boom so all this spending you do is not savings from the boom it is pure debt right of the printing press. So please realize that you are only inflating our money; the American people are realizing this everyday. Free Markets Work!!!!! Please stop being so Naive. At this pace I predict that you are going to lose all your support within a year.

Link to congress.org http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/