…If you happen to be among the roughly 5% of the Global Population that ever flies on an Airplane, you know all about the security Kabuki Theater ongoing since some Towel Heads ostensibly hijacked some Jumbo Jets to knock down the World Trade Center and Punch a Hole in the Pentagon back on that fateful day of 9-11 in 2001. This method of terrorist attack was so successful they even managed to knock down buildings they didn’t fly planes into.
In order to combat the ever present threat of Jets being Hijacked to knock down skyscrapers, a War on Terror was launched, part of which was the establishment of the now infamous TSA, or Transportation Safety Administration here in the FsoA. The highly qualified and highly trained staff of the TSA recruited from the ranks of ex Baggage Handlers, trailer drop lot security guards and JC Penney Store Detectives has been enormously successful, effectively preventing any further Skyscapers from collapsing on their own footprint since 2001…
Who really does most of the violent crime and murders in the USSA?
Is it psycho privileged white males? Or somebody else? Who’s victimized the most?
Oh well, so much for reality. There’s no such thing as reality when there’s a race card to be played, or somebody else to blames for your problems.
Salon.com contributing writer Brittney Cooper, who also teaches Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, has figured out what caused Elliot Rodger to go on his rampage: white privilege. Absent from the article is any acknowledgment that the shooter was half-Asian.
“Welp. Another young white guy has decided that his disillusionment with his life should become somebody else’s problem,” she begins. “How many times must troubled young white men engage in these terroristic acts that make public space unsafe for everyone before we admit that white male privilege kills?”
She then states, “Black men are not rolling onto college campuses and into movie theaters on a regular basis to shoot large amounts of people. Usually, the young men who do that are white, male, heterosexual, and middle-class.”
Cooper offers an analysis of Rodger’s video and 140-page note and says that his behavior is definitively attributed to white privilege:
And make no mistake: from my standpoint as an arm chair therapist — having read transcripts of Rodger’s videos — his anger is about his failure to be able to access all the markers of white male heterosexual middle class privilege. He goes on and on about his status as a virgin, his inability to find a date since middle school, his anger and resentment about being rejected by blonde, sorority women. In fact, he claims he will “slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blond slut I see.” As Jessica Valenti so thoroughly demonstrates: “misogyny kills.” I am struck by the extent to which Rodger believed he was entitled to have what he deemed the prettiest girls, he was entitled to women’s bodies, and when society denied him these “entitlements” he thought it should become the public’s problem. He thought that his happiness was worth the slaughter of multiple people.
As noted by the Daily Caller, there are several examples that dispel Cooper’s narrative that mass shootings are done exclusively by white men:
Aaron Alexis, who killed 12 in last year’s Navy Yard shootings in Washington, D.C., was black.
And the largest university campus mass murder in U.S. history was carried out by Seung-Hi Cho, who was Asian. He killed 32 at Virginia Tech University in 2007.
In 2004, Chai Vang, an immigrant from Laos, killed six hunters in the woods of Wisconsin.
Nidal Hasan, who murdered 13 at Fort Hood in 2009, was Palestinian.
Cooper then says that Rodger’s grievances were a result of a “sense of heterosexual white male entitlement to a world that grants all one’s wishes, and this destructive murderous anger that attends the ostensible denial of these wishes, is at the emotional core of white supremacy.”
Unsurprisingly, she proceeds to launch into an attack on society, claiming it is slanted toward white men and their sexual desires:
Elliot Rodger was a late bloomer, which while socially inconvenient and embarrassing, is neither uncommon nor a problem. But because we don’t have a fundamentally honest societal conversation happening about white male privilege, rooted as it is in sexism and racism, we can’t even observe one of the most basic truths here: what Rodger’s perceived as a denial was at the very worst a delay. Our society is fundamentally premised on making sure that straight, middle-class (upper class in Rodger’s case) white men have access to power, money, and women.
She attributes concerns with the Obama administration to the color of the president’s skin:
In this regard, the rage at the core of Rodger’s horrific acts is not unlike the kind of middle class, heterosexual, white male rage that drives much of social policy in this country. In the era of Barack Obama, we have endured a mass temper tantrum from white men that includes a mind-boggling war on women, with an unprecedented rollback of the gains of the women’s rights movement, and an attempt to decimate whole communities of color, which are disproportionately poor, through school privatization, mass incarceration (which began long before the Obama era) and the gutting of the social safety net.
Cooper is quick to clarify that she is “not calling these guys mass murderers. Of that I want to be clear” but that we “cannot understand Elliot Rodger’s clear mental health issues and view of himself as the supremely forsaken victim here outside a context of racism, white supremacy, and patriarchy.”
“I’m also saying that white male privilege might be considered a mental health issue, because it allows these dudes to move through the world believing that their happiness, pleasure, and well-being, matters more than the death and suffering of others,” she wrote.
She then claims that the public does not sufficiently label the monsters who go on rampages:
Every few years, the American public has to watch in horror as some white kid goes on a rampage, killing everything from babies to old people. Yet, neither the press nor the law will understand such perpetrators as monsters or terrorists. Few will have a conversation about white male pathology and the ways that systems of whiteness and patriarchy continue to produce white men who think like this.
After observing that the tragedy could have been prevented, Cooper attributes the police department’s inaction to the fact that Rodger was white:
Can I go ahead and scream yet? A black or brown man would have been violently hauled into a jail and locked up at the first sign of such machinations. His property rights would have been thoroughly violated, and no matter how “polite” and “courteous” he might have been with officers, no reports would have reflected such language.
These coded terms mean that these officers were incapable of seeing this clearly troubled young white man as a threat. How many mass killings must it take to recognize that white male entitlement is potentially deadly? How many Youtube videos must one post outlining an attempt to do harm before it is taken seriously?
As yet another community attempts to make sense of this tragedy, to put itself back together again after this needless, senseless path of destruction that Elliot Rodger has wrought, I’m reminded of something my dad says: “these are funerals we didn’t have to have.” But as long as America refuses to deal with its white male privilege problem we will continue to have them.
90% of the criminals in Washington are lawyers. The government hires tens of thousands of lawyers to make laws, regulations, taxes, and a host of other non-productive economy-strangling edicts. They’ve made so many laws and regulations that just anything you do is illegal.
We have more lawyers than any other country in the world (1 lawyer for every 100 people). Not surprisingly, we also have the largest number of people in jail. Lawyers in the USSA file 15 million lawsuits every year. And anyone doing business in this country not only has to pay exorbitant taxes, but they have to fight regulations and lawsuits. The legal costs of complying with regulations is more than $1 trillion a year, and a complete and utter waste of money, unless you’re a lawyer.
Of course, the legal system, the regulatory farce, the lawyers, and the millions of lawsuits are all designed to keep lawyers busy and employed. Our joke of a legal system keeps those with money in power, and “above the law”, while the little guy gets wiped out, or worse, put in jail. And unions and corporations use lawyers to lobby for ridiculous pensions and favorable laws. Lawyer-lobbyists even write legislation (which politicians don’t even bother reading) even though they were not elected, and represent only their client.
The root cause of corruption, fraud and fascism in this country are the lawyers. In a world without lawyers, none of this would exist.
This Is What’s Wrong With The Legal System In America
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
What else could we have done with the billions of dollars squandered on regulatory friction and the pursuit of questionable claims of damage?
Behind the public-relations facade of “advocacy” and “justice,” much of the American legal system is unproductive regulatory friction and the pursuit of extortionist rentier skims. I recently received an email that reflects many aspects of this systemic reality.
The letter blares legal threat in its upper-case title: TRADEMARK VIOLATION. Not possible trademark violation or alleged trademark violation, but a declaration of the unquestioned guilt of the recipient.
The email then proceeds to the accusation:
We recently visited your website and discovered that you are using the phase “From the Garden to the Table” on your website.
This is not an accurate statement. I used the phrase once within a longer string of words: from the garden to the table in 20 minutes. I am not “using the phrase on my website,” I wrote those words once as a description of my individual actions, i.e. harvesting vegetables from my garden and preparing a meal with them in 20 minutes.
Next, the email lists the URL to the offending page on my site, but when I clicked on the link, it led to some other website:
This URL http://www.oftwominds.com/blogfeb14/chard2-14.html led to http://experimentalstation.org/garden-to-plate-for-carnegie-elementary-s…, a page of the Chicago-based organization experimental station.
In other words, this threatening legal letter was filled with errors both subtle and egregious. Anecdotally, such sloppiness is hardly unique in American law–especially when it comes to issuing veiled threats and enforcing rentier skims. The basic approach in America is unleash a tsunami of questionable threats and demands and then see what sticks.
The email then declared: Please take formal and Legal notice that the phrase “From the Garden to the Table” is a TRADEMARKED NAME of a California based non-profit organization. This registration is listed under #3118945 in the US Patent and trademark office.
At this juncture, we have reason to believe that your utilization of the trademark may be an oversight, and as such, we are sending you this notice to request that you immediately remove this phrase from your website. (emphasis in the email)
Would any judge declare my single use of this phrase in the context of a longer phrase a violation of trademark law? It’s difficult to see how my writing the plain English descriptive phrase from the garden to the table in 20 minutes harms the trademark or the holder of the trademark, from the garden to the table, a non-profit organization whose slogan is Eat & Live Green.Perhaps the organization has trademarked that phrase as well, so please be cautious in your use of eat & live green as well as from the garden to the table.
You see the Orwellian absurdity of a non-profit promoting growing and eating healthy food devoting resources to threatening individuals and other organizations that share these same goals with unproductive and nonsensical accusations of trademark violation.
If I were a donor of from the garden to the table, I would be wondering if devoting scarce resources to absurd attacks on obviously innocent uses of a trademarked phrase was really a good use of my money.
I would also wonder if such poorly executed “enforcement of trademark” is really the best possible use of the money I donated to further the goal of Eating & Living Green. Wouldn’t donors’ funds be better spent reaching out to these individuals and organizations, rather than harassing them with bogus accusations of TRADEMARK VIOLATION?
But none of this–the sloppiness, the scattershot accusations, the threatening tone of presumed guilt, the money squandered that could have been spent on something productive–is unique: it is standard practice in America.
We might also ask: why is it even possible to trademark such a phrase? What possible benefit is created by enabling the trademarking of virtually any common phrase, or the patenting of practices such as “photography against a white background”?
The practice of law in America boils down to two activities: enforcing extortionist rentier skims (for example, patent trolls who buy broad patents and then threaten everyone under the sun with questionable patent violations) or seeking extortionist compensation for alleged damages from anyone or any entity with insurance and/or cash to plunder.
The rest of the nation’s unproductive legal churn is devoted to complying with the tens of thousands of conflicting and overlapping regulations imposed by layer upon layer of government. Common sense suggests some regulations benefit the broad public, but much of what is passed as “protecting the public” is actually designed to protect established businesses from competition and hide parasitic skims behind complexity fortresses.
All this generates two kinds of extortion: you need to pay legal firms to protect you from frivolous claims of damage (or else bad things happen), and you also have to pay them to “vigorously defend” whatever intellectual property you might own, lest the circling legal sharks snatch it all away (i.e. bad things happen).
This unproductive edifice of legalized extortion, threats, scattershot claims of damage and regulatory friction has a very high opportunity cost to society and the economy. How many potential entrepreneurs decide not to start a business once they see the horrendous costs of complying with overlapping regulatory complexities, and how many close down rather than face the uncertainties and high costs of legal jousting with attorneys whose own costs of filing accusations and threats is near-zero?
What else could we have done with the billions of dollars squandered on regulatory friction and the pursuit of questionable claims of damage? Some estimate the cost of legal extortion and regulatory compliance at $1.9 trillion a year–roughly 12% of the nation’s GDP. There is no question we could have done something productive with all this treasure. Instead we have a system of parasitic make-work that incentivizes legalized extortion.
Yes, there are plenty of honest, hard-working attorneys. The problem is not the individuals trapped in the system, the problem is the system itself.
Watch as immigration builds a country, and then how immigration destroys a country. We once looked like Europe, and very soon we are going to look like Mexico/Africa, ie, Detroit.
I am writing this introductory note from London during a layover on my way to Rome, and I’ll append a personal ending tonight after I finally make my way back from dinner to the hotel.
One of the few consensus ideas that I took away from the Strategic Investment Conference is that China has the potential to become a real problem. It seemed to me that almost everyone who addressed the topic was either seriously alarmed at the extent of China’s troubles or merely very worried. Perhaps it was the particular group of speakers we had, but no one was sanguine. If you recall, a few weeks back I introduced my young colleague and protégé Worth Wray to you; and his inaugural Thoughts from the Frontline focused on China, a topic on which he is well-versed, having lived and studied there. Our conversations often center on China and emerging markets (and we tend to talk and write to each other a lot). While I’m on the road, Worth is once again visiting China in this week’s letter, summing up our research and contributing his own unique style and passion. I think regular TFTF readers are going to enjoy Worth’s occasional missives and will want to see more of them over time. Now, let’s turn it over to my able young Cajun friend.
Editors’ note: With John up to his eyeballs in prosecco and peaches there on the patio in Trequanda this morning and with Worth just getting the sleep out of his eyes in Houston, we are hereby making an executive decision to split this 22-page beast masterpiece right up its middle and bring you the second half next week … which will give both these guys some well-earned rest! – Charley & Lisa Sweet
Looking at the Middle Kingdom with Fresh Eyes
By Worth Wray (Houston, TX)
In my Thoughts from the Frontline debut this past March (“China’s Minsky Moment?”), I highlighted the massive bubble in Chinese private-sector debt and explored the near-term prospects for either (1) a reform-induced slowdown or (2) a crisis-induced recession. Unfortunately, it was not an easy or straightforward analysis, considering the glaring inconsistencies between “official” state-compiled data and more concrete measures of real economic activity.
More Questions Than Answers
Although John and I spend hours every week searching for the truth in a murky stream of official and unofficial reports, we always reach the same conclusion about the People’s Republic: There is really no way to know what is happening in China today, much less what will happen tomorrow, based on widely available data. The primary data is flawed at best and manipulated at worst. Sometimes the most revealing insights lie in the disagreement between the official and unofficial reports… suggesting that official data is useful only to the extent that we think about it as state-sanctioned propaganda. In other words, it tells us what Chinese policymakers want the world to believe.
This shortfall in credible and actionable data from one of the global economy’s largest and most interconnected members leaves us with more questions than answers – especially in the presence of a massive Chinese credit bubble, with clear signs of overinvestment and unsustainably high debt-service ratios. These are troubling signs for all investors, in every asset class, everywhere in the world today… and everyone should be paying close attention.
(I should note that John has access to a massive amount of research from a very wide variety of both traditional and nontraditional sources… and I say that after having extraordinary access myself as the portfolio strategist for an $18B Texas money manager. I am seeing and reading things every day that I could only imagine before, and the information flow is addictive. John’s sources give us a big, if sometimes overwhelming, head start on thinking through all the implications for investing around the constant collisions of macroeconomic forces. While we legally and ethically cannot share some of the best research we see, we can share a lot of the core ideas and do our best to give you a head start, too. That’s what this letter is about.)
Read the Tea Leaves Carefully & Expect Miscues
Most China economists – who do the best they can to read the economic tea leaves by focusing on a handful of economic indicators ranging from gross domestic product (GDP), purchasing managers’ indices (PMI), consumer/producer inflation (CPI/PPI), total social finance, and industrial production – end up expressing a rather bipolar view on Chinese economic activity, with wild swings in their outlooks from quarter to quarter. On this front, I was particularly impressed by an explosive letter (viewable by Over My Shoulder subscribers only) from our friends at Political Alpha, which remains one of the elite political intelligence/analysis firms on the Street. While China watchers tend to trade reactively around official and unofficial manufacturing PMI releases as monthly proxies for the broader economy, very few investors realize that “not only is manufacturing no longer the bellwether of the [Chinese] economy, more often than not it now performs counter-cyclically.”
Although China is the world’s largest producer of value-added manufactured goods, it has not been an export-led economy for a very long time. As I detailed in last month’s letter, China’s growth has largely relied on extraordinarily high levels of fixed investment, supported by even higher levels of domestic savings and an unsustainable rise in private-sector credit.
Source: Wayne M. Morrison, China’s Economic Rise: History, Trends, Challenges, & Implications for the United States. Congressional Research Service, February 3, 2014
Even so, industry experts often fall into the trap of extrapolating flash manufacturing readings into forecasts for the broader economy.
Our friends at Political Alpha describe one such situation where HSBC’s China team (which puts out the unofficial monthly PMI each month in partnership with MarkIt) “was forced to backpedal from its September 23rd announcement that the flash PMI data was ‘further evidence [of] China’s ongoing growth rebound’ to a much more somber conclusion just seven days later: ‘There are still a lot of structural headwinds ahead. This is as good as it gets for the time being…. [D]on’t expect too sharp an acceleration from here.’”
On a side note, I don’t mean to disparage the China research team at HSBC or question their competency by reprinting the comments above. I’m sure they get up each morning (just like I do) with a genuine intent to understand changing economic conditions as best they can and to help their clients protect and grow their savings. If anything, this example is a broader indictment of investors’ widespread reliance on a handful of flawed or misunderstood data points in the absence of credible Chinese economic data.
I don’t mean to be cute or coy on this issue. The lack of transparency of the Chinese economy is not just a problem for individual and institutional investors who make the choice every day to put their money at risk; it also carries enormous policy implications for central bankers and elected politicians in a highly unstable global system where total debt-to-GDP has risen across the world’s major economies by nearly 35% since 2008… and continues to rise.
Source: Hoisington Investment Management Company, May 2014
As you can see in the table above (which Dr. Lacy Hunt was kind enough to share with us at this year’s Strategic Investment Conference), China has seen its total debt-to-income ratio jump by more than 100% (another full turn of GDP) in the last five years… more debt growth than any other major economy on the planet, including Japan.
To continue reading this article from Thoughts from the Frontline – a free weekly publication by John Mauldin, renowned financial expert, best-selling author, and Chairman of Mauldin Economics – please click here.
In my last article, I diagrammed out the gross flow of downhill energy through the Money Valve, down through Industry and Consumption toward its final destination as Waste. Readers interested in this aspect of Industrial Economics may be interested also in the Waste Based Economy series here on the Diner.
The basic flowchart turning resources into waste through the Money Valve of Central Banks is straightforward and easy to understand. However, it does not look at all the various Feedback Loops that are engineered into the system in order to keep it operating. Most notably what is not included in the diagram is how Goobermint and the Military are involved, or how taxation and interest serve to capture wealth out of the system for the Elite class of society.
So for this installment of the Money Valve series, I made a basic Web diagram to show the relationships of these portions of the economy, and from that define where the waste is produced at each level. Rather than try to show all the flows and backflows on the diagram with a bazillion arrows and colored lines (which would have taken forever), what I did was to label each of the Nodes with a number, and each number has a corresponding explanation below for the connections. So, let’s look at the Web of Connections in the Waste Based Economy.
The large number of connections that results from even a restricted number of nodes results in a lot of information to cover, much more than you want to eat for the Diner Brunch on a Sunday Morning. So I have broken this analysis up into 3 parts, and for today we will look at the first 5 nodes and their relationship to the rest of the economy.
1- Energy Resource
The whole game begins with a large stock of Energy yet to be accessed. In the example I will use here, we are looking mainly at the FSoA in the mid-1800s when Standard Oil first began pumping Oil out of Pennsylvania, then Texas and Oklahoma and California, right up to today fracking the last of it out of the Bakken and Marcellus shale formations. However, all the principles apply globally as well to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, everywhere the Industrial Economy moved to either on the Extraction or Consumption end.
In order to gain control over the resource in any given area, you need a Military to take control over the area.
2- Military Acquisition and Control
In the case of the FSoA, using the Military to gain control over the territories was done during the “Manifest Destiny” period, clearing the land of the Native Population that still remained and making it “safe” for the Industrial Economy begun in Europe to move into. The Civil War was a part of that Battle, pitting Industrialists from the North against the more Agrarian based economy of the South. Globally speaking, WWI & WWII were about taking control over the vast Oil Reserves held in the Middle East, and bringing those resources under the control of the Industrial based Economy.
General Smedley Butler wrote about how the Military functions as the enforcement arm of the Capitalist Racket in his paper War is a Racket.
You see 4 Connections in addition to the Energy Connection on the Web from the Military Node, to Industry, Consumers, Goobermint and Infrastructure.
The connection to Goobermint should be obvious, your Goobermint provides the Justification for your Army. If you don’t have the Stamp of Approval for Violence from Da Goobermint, then you are Thieves and Murderers. Goobermint has a monopoly on Legal Violence, and provides Political and Legal justifications for all military actions.
Industry is essential for the Military in the modern age, since all warfare is conducted using Machines made by Industry. As Smedley Butler wrote, the folks who benefit the most from War are those who control the factories that make the War Machines. Industrialists profit by selling Guns & Bullets to BOTH sides of any War
Why are Consumers necessary for the Military? Consumers are the Cannon Fodder! Where else are you gonna get people to go out and fight from? The Elite certainly aren’t going to get out in front of the Bullets and RPGs!
Infrastructure? Just how much do you think it costs each year to maintain hundreds of Military Bases here in the FSoA and all over the world? That is some expensive Infrastructure out there! Besides that, you have all those roads necessary to drive the Humvees and APCs on! HTF would the military machine operate without all those roads? About as well as it operated in the Jungle of Vietnam, which is to say EPIC FAIL. Does the Military pay for those roads? Hell no, the Taxpayer pays for them so he can Happy Motor around, longs as he can still afford Gas anyhow.
3- Energy Extractors
Now, in popular parlance these folks are called “Energy PRODUCERS” but in fact they produce nothing so this is a complete misnomer. These folks simply extract Energy that has been stored up underground for a few million years and pitch it out to be burned up. The process of burning it is what generates the gobs of “wealth” the folks controlling this bizness have, so it behooves them to encourage as much consumption as possible. At least it did as long as they had gobs of it easily available to dig up anyhow.
The energy because it came up so cheap and easy served as a Loss Leader for the other Industries it was based on, specifically the Automotive Industry, the Aircraft Industry, the Electrical Grid and the Telecommunications Grid. Each of these Industries requires copious amounts of cheap oil and cheap credit to keep functioning. At the moment, these industries continue to be supported by cheap credit, but they run shorter each day on cheap energy to keep them functioning. Even if they still have access to credit, if the Consumers do not, they can’t sell it.
4- The Money Valve: Central Banking
Obviously the topic of Central Banking is way too deep to explore in a couple of paragraphs here. Basically however, once you have control over a Resource, you need to also have control over the credit creation mechanism for people to begin to buy that resource from you. It is no coincidence of course that the very same people who are the energy extractors and Industrialists involved in this game are ALSO the people who issue out the credit to buy it. John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan both live on today as JP Morgan Chase, Standard Oil lives on in Exxon-Mobil and so forth. The Banking and Energy Industries are integrally tied together, one does not function without the other.
In presenting it, you notice I use a much larger Font for the Banking System, and also present this before Goobermint in the structure. Why?
Well, in the olden days, Goobermint came before Banking and Money, but in the modern world, Banking controls Goobermint. Entities like the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and Da Federal Reserve Bank (really a Private Company, not a Goobermint Agency) are all controlled by a supra-national Cartel, often referred to as the “Illuminati”. Basically these are just all the people and families which took control of the Banking System beginning in the Medici Era, continuing through the Colonial Period and currently running the entire economic system that built up through the period.
Today, this system can even make somebody like Vlad the Impaler in control of Russia capitulate. Remains to be seen if a Chinese-Ruskie alliance is strong enough to combat the economic sanctions and loss of credit from the International Bankster Cartel.
So for today, and for at least the last couple of Centuries, Banking has led Goobermint in control over the kind of civilization that developed, which of course is the Waste Based Economy.
5- Goobermint
On the administrative level, Goobermint is necessary as a means to make Legal Warfare, and provide cover for the Banking System. J6P is sold the idea his Goobermint is Democratic and represents what he wants, when really it represents what the Banking Cartel wants. Nobody gets elected without kowtowing to the Banksters, money required to GET elected is beyond the reach of all but Billionaires these days, so each person elected to a Representative position in a “republic” is in fact beholden to numerous Special Interests that funded his campaign. Whether Democrat or Republican, every member of Congress and State legislatures is beholden to the folks who can fund their campaigns.
Once IN office, anyone who has even a sliver of moral decency left in their soul is bombarded every day by various Lobbyist, all also funded by Industry. The end result is that all legislation that gets passed is directed to benefit the Industrialists who run the system. Even supposedly good Agencies like the EPA just serve as an excuse to offshore industry to cheaper labor countries where they don’t have strict laws regarding pitching pollutants out into the atmosphere and water supply. The EPA would never have gained any ground at all if industrialists didn’t KNOW they could simply move the factories to other locations.
As you can see, Goobermint has numerous connections to all the other areas of the Economy, primarily funded by Taxes on all the Commerce going on, and Debt floated by the Money Valve Banks. Taxes worked OK in the early days of the Ponzi, now it is all increasing Debt that keeps Da Goobermint floating. In theory a Goobermint should be able to issue it’s own money, however since the International Banking Cartel took over the Money Biz going back to the Medici Era, it has been close to impossible for any Goobermint to do this independently. The Cartel steps all over them, cuts them off from Credit, their Money Hyperinflates and they are screwed. In the current case of the Ruskies and China, they are trying to break free of this and may be large enough to do so, but even if they succeed it just crashes the whole global trade system. No win situation there, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Besides providing Justification for the Military arm, the main job of Da Goobermint is to provide Infrastructure to make the whole system work the Industry doesn’t want to pay for, because if they did they couldn’t sieve off any Profits. This includes all the Road Maintenance, Police necessary to enforce laws and Private Property claims,Teachers and Schools to Warehouse kids until old enough to get a job (assuming any exist in the economy when they get out of school in their 30s sometime) etc. Also of course the ballooning SS and Medicare liabilities incurred here over time. Da Goobermint provides the sinkhole for all the stuff Industrialists don’t want to foot the bill for. Which of course becomes greater all the time as the system becomes more complex and involves a greater population size, while at the same time revenues decrease across the board because of a decreasing energy stock available at a cheap credit price. its a combination of positive feedback loops that send the debt levels exponential as the Ponzi draws to a close.
The main difference in this part of the network chart is the curved lines I drew between the Money Valve and Goobermint. What those represent is the Revolving Door that exists between these two entities that allows for stuff like Regulatory Capture to occur and keeps all legislation favorable to Industry. It is the system of Fascism which underlies all Goobermints participating in this monetary system, which is essentially all of them around the Globe today. Central Bankers and Financial Ministers are all selected from the ranks of Banksters who worked for Goldman-Sachs or JP Morgan Chase. Lobbyists all come from the ranks of ex-Politicians who get juicy high paid jobs from Industry after leaving office. Agencies like the SEC which supposedly regulate the system are entirely in the pocket of those they are supposed to be regulating. Together, these two entities form a parasitical symbiosis that feeds on the rest of the surrounding economy.
In Part III of The Money Valve series next Sunday, we will look at the connections between the core Infrastructure and Systems elements of the economy that serve as the engine which drives the machine forward, so long as there is sufficient available energy to drive it.
Disclaimer: There is no intention by the author to make incorrect/false statements; I may know more than the average person but I am not a firearms “expert” by any means so please check every statement and claim I make here before accepting it as fact. We all make mistakes and there is always someone who knows more, we should all be eager to learn from them (anyone reading this please do not hesitate to inform me where I am incorrect). Also, many states don’t understand what the word “infringe” means so for many this build may be illegal so be sure to know your state laws, regardless of how stupid, immoral and unconstitutional they may be (I am looking at you NY, NJ, MD, CT & CA).
I decided to build a completely new AR15, I wanted to make it as compact as possible while avoiding the regulation heavy SBR (short barreled rifle) paperwork exercise and 9 month limbo. I have fired 5.56 AR pistols as short as 7.5″ and many are ridiculously loud and breath fire (the powder is still burning when the round exits the barrel and the shorter barrel means the exit is closer to the explosion). Barrels that are 10-10.5″ long are the shortest one can typically go without the pistol becoming impractical while using the same loads one would use for their rifle.
I already have an AR15 rifle chambered in 300 Blackout and I am a big fan of the round. It is a .30 caliber round coupled with a 5.56 case that is cut down (by 10mm); the neck gets resized with a very slight taper. Looking at the picture below from left to right, three 300BLK (7.62X35), one 5.56NATO (standard AR15) and 7.62X39 (typically fired from an AK47).
It fires a rifle bullet but overall the cartridge acts very much like a pistol/rifle hybrid round. It was developed by AAC to be a short range round; with the goal that it would excel when being suppressed while minimizing the changes needed to the M4 platform to implement it. Because of these characteristics I knew what I wanted what the barrel of my AR to be chambered in.
Because of its OAL and use of the 5.56 case; the lower, upper, BCG and magazines used with 300BLK are the same as almost any AR15 chambered in 223/556. But the 300BLK is a slightly different animal; the bullet is 2-4X’s the size of a 556 with a shorter case so less volume is available for powder when compared to a 7.62X39 or 308 Win. When reloading 300BLK I use the same powder I would use to reload 357 magnum. I did some research and found that an 8″ barrel in 300BLK would be as short as I should go to balance out my desire to minimize size and maintain practicality.
I purchased a new blemished stripped lower (the lower is what is stamped and considered the firearm) because it was significantly less expensive, the imperfections were unnoticeable until pointed out and after a few days at the range it will all look the same anyway. Note: When buying the lower specify that it will be used to build a pistol. As I understand it; a stripped lower can be used to build a pistol or a rifle but once it is used build a rifle it can no longer be used as a pistol (legally), an SBR is different and won’t cover them here. I purchased a standard MIL-Spec lower parts kit and a pistol buffer tube assembly. This is all that is needed to build a pistol lower assembly. I added a set of YHM take-down pins to replace the ones in the standard parts kit; they are designed to make it easier to break down the firearm (see closeup pic further down) as well as a Hogue rubberized grip and SigTac SB15 stabilizing brace (more on that later).
After a little work this is what it should look like.
Be careful, there can be some tricky parts and if this is your first time it is more than likely that during assembly at least one small part (detent pin) will be launched by one of the springs into the corner of your basement/garage never to be seen again. I suggest spare parts kits as well, they can be had on Midway or Amazon for $10-15. Roll punches and a brass hammer are also recommended. There are exhaustive instructions and tutorial videos available on the internet so I am not going to rehash them here. Some basic tools, a few specialty tools and basic mechanical aptitude is all that is needed.
Here is one of the YHM take-down pins installed.
As you can see I also have the SigTac arm brace. It looks like a stock but it isn’t, it is designed to straddle your forearm and be tightened by Velcro.
http://youtu.be/bseTmEmgrm0
Sig provides a copy of their determination letter from the ATF. It is also legal (at least at this time) to “shoulder” the brace. A link to the determination letter regarding this specific issue is provided as well.
Determination Letter regarding the Sig Sauer SB15 brace not being a stock. (click HERE for PDF)
Determination Letter regarding “shouldering” of an AR15 pistol as well as “shouldering” SB15 brace.
To see a copy of this determination letter go HERE.
The upper assembly includes the upper (also an inexpensive blemished version) with ejector dust cover and forward assist already installed, an 8″ barrel (1/7 twist), rail, flash hider/muzzle brake, gas block, tube, BCG (bolt carrier group) and charging handle. I purchased the barrel from Aero, a DPMS BCG, a knock-off Noveske muzzle cone, a Vltor handle and the rest are components from YHM.
Assembly is pretty straight forward, instructions are everywhere on the internet and many of the components manufacturers offer installation instructions on their websites. The main issue is to follow the torque guidelines to avoid damaging your components.
Now you can install the BCG and charging handle, pop out the take down pins and fully assemble the pistol.
I am also adding an angle fore-grip and F/R MBUS’s from Magpul.
To remain legal DO NOT install a vertical grip to the rail, this is one of the features that would make it an SBR. The ATF has determined that angled grips are not vertical grips and can be used on pistols. A copy of the ATF’s determination letter is available at the link above. The ATF has ruled that “shouldering” the SigTac brace does not violate any laws or make the pistol an SBR but to make sure not to violate the law it is best to not modify the brace in any way whatsoever. As an extra measure I am going to write to the ATF regarding these issues so that I can get a personal reply and have a concise determination letter addressed directly to me.
cue 21 Pilots~Guns for Hands.
I have also included a cost breakdown of this particular build for anyone interested; I think it is a very reasonable price. I found my components for good prices and took my time sourcing them; for anyone doing this I cannot guarantee those prices can be matched by the vendors you choose but it shows a quality AR15 pistol can be built for less than $1000.
The overall length of the entire firearm is 26″ and quite a sight to be seen. After seeing the muzzle cone installed I am considering switching the carbine length rail for a mid-length one that is about 3″ longer. I am also considering what additional optics I want to add. I have included screenshots and links to all the pertinent ATF letters. I plan on carrying copies of all of them (until I get my own reply) with the firearm because there are way too many so-called experts out there who don’t know sh!t about the law, many of them being gung-ho LEO’s. We all want to make sure we don’t get shot and stay out of Federal Pound Me In The Ass Prison.
As usual, no mention of the drugs peddled by mega-corporations to children and young adults contributing to the rash of mass murders. We wouldn’t want to upset that advertising revenue that keeps the mainstream media afloat.
If only gun bans or background checks could have kept Elliot Rodger from murdering six innocent people.
He passed three background checks for gun purchases despite having seen mental health counselors for years. This in a state where people are banned from having access to a gun if they are institutionalized, even briefly, or make specific threats while in counseling with a psychologist, psychiatrist or licensed therapeutic counselor.
Rick Mckee / Augusta Chronicle
Sadly, supposed adults around the country publicly sought other people and objects to blame for this tragedy.
Predictably, politicians and liberal media pundits came out screaming about guns, somehow overlooking the fact that Elliot killed his first three victims with a knife and planned more carnage by using his car as a weapon.
A reactionary, emotional columnist at the New York Daily News went so far as to blame the NRA for Elliot’s murderous rampage.
An equally reactionary, emotional Ann Hornady at the Washington Post blamed Seth Rogan and Judd Apatow for the killings based on their sophomoric comedic movies.
Rep. Peter King (R) of New York fulminated over the failures of congress to pass a background check law while Elliot passed California’s background checks.
Liberal media all across the nation trumpeted banning guns, which has already been tried in Chicago and Washington D.C., where gun bans resulted in more gun violence.
Some people blame the police who interviewed Elliot at the request of his father because Elliot was able to charm the police. The police had no probable cause to search his apartment.
It also wasn’t their job to look at his videos, according to forensic psychologist Dr. Katherine Ramsland. They did their duty.
Dr. Ramsland is a university professor of forensic psychology who also teaches criminal justice. She holds a master’s in forensic psychology, a master’s in clinical psychology and a master’s in criminal justice. She had written 50 books and 1,000′s of articles.
Since we would all like to prevent tragedies like this from occurring, I asked Dr. Ramsland how it might be done.
She says not all anti-social behavior is potentially deadly. Killers like Rodger and Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook Elementary School) often have a multitude of mental afflictions. And while both have been reported to have Asperger’s syndrome, people who happen to have some level of Asperger’s are not violent. They may get as frustrated as anyone else who having trouble communicating, but it is not an indicator of any violent behavior.
When someone does make specific threats against specific people or targets, especially indicating specific times for the attacks, that is when friends, family or acquaintances should immediately seek professional help for that person before they cause harm.
Someone without the professional training should not try to counsel the person themselves.
Elliot’s parents followed that prescription at least twice.
Dr. Ramsland advice is sound and unsatisfying to those who seek simple solutions such as banning inanimate objects or institutionalizing everyone who exhibits behavior they find troubling.
Among the families suffering the wrenching, senseless loss of their loved ones’ lives are the parents of Elliot who have been wrestling with their son’s mental illness for years. They were the first to reach out to police through a mental health hotline back in April when they discovered his disturbing videos.
Elliot Rodger’s father, Peter, is correct in his tearful statement that more needs to be learned and publicized about mental illnesses.
We can ban cars and guns and knives all we like but the illness seeking its devastating outlet remains, finding other tools to achieve its deadly desire.
General Smedley Butler wrote about how the Military functions as the enforcement arm of the Capitalist Racket in his paper War is a Racket.
3- Energy Extractors
4- The Money Valve: Central Banking
As you can see, Goobermint has numerous connections to all the other areas of the Economy, primarily funded by Taxes on all the Commerce going on, and Debt floated by the Money Valve Banks. Taxes worked OK in the early days of the Ponzi, now it is all increasing Debt that keeps Da Goobermint floating. In theory a Goobermint should be able to issue it’s own money, however since the International Banking Cartel took over the Money Biz going back to the Medici Era, it has been close to impossible for any Goobermint to do this independently. The Cartel steps all over them, cuts them off from Credit, their Money Hyperinflates and they are screwed. In the current case of the Ruskies and China, they are trying to break free of this and may be large enough to do so, but even if they succeed it just crashes the whole global trade system. No win situation there, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
