Category: Economy

GREY CHAMPION

A Grey Champion must step forward and lead. Who will it be? Where will they lead us? These are the questions of our time.

Grey Champions

By: Strauss & Howe

One afternoon in April 1689, as the American colonies boiled with rumors that King James II was about to strip them of their liberties, the King’s hand-picked governor of New England, Sir Edmund Andros, marched his troops menacingly through Boston. His purpose was to crush any thought of colonial self-rule. To everyone present, the future looked grim.

Just at that moment, seemingly from nowhere, there appeared on the streets “the figure of an ancient man” with “the eye, the face, the attitude of command.” His manner “combining the leader and the saint,” the old man planted himself directly in the path of the approaching British soldiers and demanded that they stop. “The solemn, yet warlike peal of that voice, fit either to rule a host in the battlefield or be raised to God in prayer, were irresistible. At the old man’s word and outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was hushed at once, and the advancing line stood still.” Inspired by this single act of defiance, the people of Boston roused their courage and acted. Within the day, Andros was deposed and jailed, the liberty of Boston saved, and the corner turned on the colonial Glorious Revolution.

“Who was this Gray Champion?” Nathaniel Hawthorne asked near the end of this story in his Twice-Told Tales. No one knew, except that he had once been among the fire-hearted young Puritans who had first settled New England more than a half century earlier. Later that evening, just before the old priest-warrior disappeared, the townspeople saw him embracing the 85-year-old Simon Bradstreet, a kindred spirit and one of the few original Puritans still alive. Would the Gray Champion ever return? “I have heard,” added Hawthorne, “that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires, the old man appears again.”

Posterity had to wait a while before seeing him again—the length of another long human life, in fact. “When eighty years had passed,” wrote Hawthorne, the Gray Champion reappeared. The occasion was the revolutionary summer of 1775—when America’s elders once again appealed to God, summoned the young to battle, and dared the hated enemy to fire. “When our fathers were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker’s Hill,” Hawthorne continued, “all through that night the old warrior walked his rounds.” This “old warrior”—this graying peer of Sam Adams or Ben Franklin or Samuel Langdon (the Harvard president who preached to the Bunker Hill troops)—belonged to the Awakening Generation, whose youth had provided the spiritual taproot of the republic secured in their old age.

Hawthorne wrote this stirring legend in 1837, as a young man of 33. The Bunker Hill “fathers” belonged to his parents’ generation, by then well into old age. The nation had new arguments (over slavery) and new enemies (Mexico), but no one expected the old people of that era—the worldly likes of John Marshall and John Jacob Astor—to be play the role of Gray Champion.

“Long, long may it be ere he comes again!” Hawthorne prophesied. “His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril. But should domestic tyranny oppress us, or the invaders’ step pollute our soil, still may the Gray Champion come….” Although Hawthorne did not say when this would be, perhaps he should have been able to tell.

Had the young author counted eight or nine decades forward from Bunker Hill, or had he envisioned the old age of the young zealots (like Joseph Smith, Nat Turner, and William Lloyd Garrison) who had recently convulsed America’s soul, he might have foreseen that the next Gray Champion would emerge from his own Transcendental Generation. Seared young by God, Hawthorne’s peers were destined late in life to face an hour of “darkness, and adversity, and peril.” The old priest-warrior would arise yet again in John Brown, damning the unrighteous from his scaffold; in Julia Ward Howe, writing “a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel”; in William Tecumseh Sherman, scorching Georgia with “the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword”; in Robert E. Lee commanding thousands of young men to their deaths at Cemetery Ridge; and especially in Abraham Lincoln, announcing to Congress that “the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation.”

Were Hawthorne to have prophesied yet another eight decades further ahead, he might have foretold another Gray Champion whose childhood would begin just after the “fiery trial” of Hawthorne’s own old age. This generation would come of age scorching the elder-built world with its inner fire—and then, a half-saeculum later, complete its self-declared “rendezvous with destiny” as “the wise old men of World War II.” By adding FDR’s Missionary Generation to the recurrence, Hawthorne’s Tale would have been not Twice, but Four Times Told.

When ancestral generations passed through these great gates of history, they saw in the Gray Champion a type of elder very different from the bustling “senior citizens” of America’s recent past—and from the old “Uncle Sam” Revolutionary War survivors of the 1830s, when Hawthorne wrote his tale. Who were these old priest warriors? They were elder expressions of the Prophet archetype. And their arrival into old age heralded a new constellation of generations.

 

iMORONS UNITE

You can’t make this shit up. Three minutes that will crush any illusions you might have of the masses rising up and shaking off the yoke of corporate fascism. The decades of mass media propaganda and dumbing down of the people through our government run public education system has succeeded beyond Edward Bernays’ wildest dreams. I give you the next head of the Department of Commerce:

TOWER OF BABEL: fact or fiction?

PROLOGUE

Along with The Arky Arky and the Great Flood, the Tower of Babel is one of the best known bible stories.

But it is famous beyond its ACTUAL content … a mere 236 words (in English). Yet, the story has come to mean much more than its actual words. For example, the idea that God is so afraid of tall brick structures that he has to create multiple languages to keep people from becoming too smart for their own good.

Most have at least a vague idea of what the story is about, or at least know the name “Babel”. But, let’s take a look at the entire brief text. I will follow-up with my usual outrageous observations.

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THE BIBLICAL TEXT — GENESIS 11:1-9
“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.”

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BACKGROUND

The Babel story is a great example why a literal interpretation of many OT stories makes no sense whatsoever. A literal interpretation makes a mockery of science, tortures logic, and detracts from the author’s actual spiritual meaning (if any) he intended to impart.

Genesis is a narrative dealing with “beginnings,” as its title indicates. It records the beginning of the universe, plant life, animal life, and even mankind. Hence, one is tempted to apply a literal interpretation that the primary lesson of the Babel passage is the record of how human beings began to speak different languages. This is incorrect, as you will soon see.

That being said, “Babel” may very well be a story of beginnings. The city “Babel,” is the same exact term used of “Babylon” elsewhere in the Bible. Indeed, the Tower was built in Mesopotamia, not Israel. So, more than just a possible explanation for the confusion of languages, it may also function as the etymology of “Babylon” …. the very same Babylonian empire that would wreak tremendous havoc on Israel in sixth century B.C.E. … and the very same Babylon called a “Whore” in Revelation, representing all that is evil, and ultimately destroyed.

Before I get into specifics, it is worth mentioning the origin of the word “Babel”. Strong’s Concordance says the word means “confusion”. That may be true regarding the meaning, but that’s not its etymology. In Hebrew “el” is a name for God … any God, actually. In Ezekiel — “I am el (God), in the seat of elōhîm (Gods). The Hebrews called God El-shaddai (God almighty), ImmanuEL (God with us), and dozens of other “el-” names. The Miriam Webster dictionary gives the following etymology — “Middle English, from Hebrew Bābhel, from Akkadian bāb-ilu, gate”. So, what is Babel? Literally, the Gate of God. So, is it the city that’s called Babel because that’s where God “came down” … as the text says? Or, was the actual tower the people were constructing the “gate of God” … their attempt to “reach to heaven”, or more likely, their attempt to provide a means for God to come down? The text is not clear. So, we’ll leave as interesting speculation.

THE MYTH OF A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.”

A literal interpretation presents problems right from the get go. That’s because there has NEVER been One Universal Language spoken by all humanity. However, I don’t wish to debate philology. A fine overview of the origin of languages is here; — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language

Rather, I am much more interested in the status of human language AT THE TIME referred to by the text. Scholars diverge wildly regarding the possible date the Tower of Babel could have been built – anywhere from 3500BC – 2500BC. So, let’s take the earliest possible date (3500BC) and briefly examine the archaeological evidence.

I need only one example. Spirit Cave in Thailand is a stratified site showing human occupation from BEFORE 5000 B.C. We do not know what language they were speaking in what is now Thailand …. but we can be darn sure it was not Sumerian, or Hebrew. Also, an archaeological dig in Pakistan revealed trident-shaped writing on fragments of pottery dating even further back at 5,500 years BC. Pretty sure they weren’t speaking Sumerian or Hebrew either. There, I gave you two examples.

The fact of the matter is the writer of Genesis 11 was oblivious to the existence of the Far East, Australia, the Americas, and pretty much the rest of the world beyond a few hundred miles of his locale. . Had he been aware of these lands, the peoples, and their cultures … which existed AT THE SAME TIME as when The Tower was built …. then he would have had a much better understanding regarding the history of language, and he would NEVER have said “.. the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech”.

Furthermore … and quite significantly … the previous chapter in Genesis, Gen: 10, seems to completely contradict the Babel story. Gen 10 is known as the “Table of Nations”. It lists all the nations that derived from Noah’s sons (Shem, Ham and Japheth) after the flood; Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, dozens of other “ites” and even including Egypt and …. Babylon. No one in their right mind would suggest that ancient Egypt and ancient Babylon spoke the same language. We have written texts from both areas to prove otherwise. So,now we have at least two languages. Of much, much greater significance is the fact that the Bible itself states that once dispersed …. these people spoke “after their tongues”! Let’s be clear about this; the Bible states people spoke in unique tongues BEFORE the construction of the Tower.

Either the author of Chapter 11 was being redundant at best (an unlikely repetition in Chapter 11 of what was just reviewed in Chapter 10), or much more likely, he didn’t know that God ALREADY dispersed the nations … each speaking after their own tongues. That’s quite a conundrum for literalists.

GOD GETS ALL PARANOID, ONCE AGAIN

“ And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower … Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down,”

1)- God says, “let US go down”. Who is this “us”?? Some folks say it is a figure of speech; such as when a British Royal Queen refers to herself as “we”. Unfortunately, there was no British royalty back then … and the royalty that did exist simply didn’t talk that way. But most Christians say God was talking to Jesus in his pre-incarnate form .. cuz Jeebus existed before he was born. I don’t know how to debate time-travel fantasies, so I won’t. The more logical explanation is that the ancient Jews, before they developed monotheism, believed in multiple Gods. Even Abraham’s father worshipped multiple Gods, and almost certainly Abraham was raised by his own father to do likewise (until he didn’t). Many years later, perhaps decades, Rachel was caught hiding the “household idols” inside her camel’s saddle. Then after the Jews escaped Egpyt, one of their first acts was to construct and worship a Golden Calf. However Christians want to interpret this. The fact of the matter is that early Judaism adopted very many of the Gods they left behind, they believed in multiple Gods, amd monotheism actually took centuries to fully develop.

2)- Why does an omniscient, omnipotent God need to “come down” to see anything?? And, where exactly is he coming down from? Does he walk, or take a bus? Theologians call this anthropomorphism; “the attribution of human form or other characteristics to anything other than a human being, such as a God.”. These attributions must be made because no one has ever seen this OT God. Moses came closest, and even then, he only saw God’s “backside” … literally, “ass”. Who said there’s no humor in the Bible? “Anthropomorphism” is just a way of saying; “We make our Gods in MAN’S image.” Have you ever noticed that Western Gods behave just like humans? Especially the Greek and Roman Gods with all their fornication and backstabbing and jealousy and murder. And the OT God who laughs, cries, repents, has massive bouts of anger so much so that he has attempted to wipe out the human race, is often driven to jealous rage, and suffers from severe bouts of paranoid insecurity. We “anthropomorphize” deities because the more the Gods become like men, the easier it is for men to believe in the Gods.

3) Regarding paranoia in the Tower of Babel story —- why would an omnipotent God be so damn afraid of humans [supposedly] speaking one language? Why is he so afraid of humans building a structure that is, at best, about 300 feet high? Why didn’t he strike dead the builders of One World Trade Center who just completed a 1,776 foot skyscraper? Why is God afraid of technological progress? Does God REALLY believe that by having one language that “NOTHING” will be “impossible” for mankind? The implication being that puny finite mankind can (will) overthrow an all-powerful eternal God …. unless their language be confounded. Isn’t this idea just beyond silly, and indicative of massive paranoia?

And this isn’t the first time God exhibited his paranoia. He freaked out when Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit …. fearing that mankind is “now like us”. (There’s that ‘us’ again.) Really?? Humans are now like God because they ate some fruit? Shortly thereafter God freaked out again … afraid that Adam and Eve might eat from a tree that would give them eternal life, so he had an angel with a flaming sword drive them out of the Garden to prevent that. Another time God was so freaked out over man’s wickedness that he sent a Great Flood to wipe out all but eight people from the face of the earth …. you know, because this all-powerful God was totally powerless to influence humanity. There are dozens more stories in the OT where God freaks out, and when God freaks out, humans die. A strange and paranoid God.

HOW DID GOD PULL THIS OFF?

Almost always in the reading of God’s miracles, they are almost always simply accepted at face value. The reasoning being that God is All-Powerful, and therefore He can do anything He wants. So, when the Bible states that the planet Earth stopped spinning, or the sun stood still, (so that Joshua could kill more Amorites), well, not one in a hundred Christian readers stops to ask themselves “how in the hell is that even possible without the earth exploding into space in a million fragments?” “More miracles” is the only possible response. But that answers absolutely nothing. Such cop-out explanations are akin to the Hindu idea that the elephant holds up the earth. Someone asks, “What holds up the elephant?” Answer: Another elephant. And so on, ad infinitum, ad absurdum.

So, exactly how did God pull this off? Did folks suddenly and immediately in the blink of an eye start speaking, for example, German? Were they suddenly able to pronounce “umlauts” and that crazy “ch” sound? Did they suddenly and immediately understand the nuances of the German language and realize that one can now end a sentence with a verb? Did they suddenly wear Lederhosen? Language is in the brain, of course, so did God have to “rewire” each and every person’s brain, from 5 year olds to 100 year olds? Key question; did they forget their original language … or were they bilingual, in which case, of course, the people would all STILL have a common language! Lol

WAS CONFOUNDING LANGUAGE A GOOD IDEA?

It doesn’t seem that confounding human language was all that brilliant. SAME language / culture unites … MULTICULTURALISM divides. It is significant to note that up to this point in biblical history, man had not fought against his fellow man other than in conflicts between individuals. There had been no mention of wars, no racial strife, no religious bigotry, no patriotic blood baths. Man had no reason to gang up and attack other groups of men. At that time, man was not at war with his fellow man and all men communicated freely in one tongue. It was this free communication which God knew he must put an end to if he planned on keeping men enslaved. Brilliant!

IS GOD BIPOLAR?

I ask this because thousands of years later in the New Testament book of Acts (2:1-11), God has a totally different agenda. This agenda is the antithesis of Babel … ONE language. This is the narrative. Believers were all in one place and of one accord (just like in Babel). The story even uses the word “confounded”, but for a different reason. This time after having received the Holy Spirit, the apostles preach … and men of diverse languages hear the sermon IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGES. Back in Babel the plan was to separate people, and now in Acts we’re seeing the exact opposite; a great re-integration. Bad one time. Good the next time. I wish God would make up His mind.

It seems that God’s primary reason for “coming down” was not necessarily the Tower structure itself – that was merely the means to an end — but because the people of Babel wanted to “make a name for ourselves”. But, in the very next chapter it is God himself who makes Abraham’s name great. King David spends a good portion of his life making a name for himself (2 Sam 8:13) without any negative repercussions or divine reprisals. It can be really hard to figure out what God really believes / wants.

WHAT LESSON CAN WE LEARN FROM THE TOWER OF BABEL?

Are we really supposed to believe that the Builders of the tower were motivated by building a structure that could reach heaven? How stupid would that be? They built the thing on “the PLAINS of Shinar”. A FLAT plain. There were MOUNTAINS nearby which would have given them a few thousand feet head start. Lol Are we to believe that they thought they could build a structure higher than a mountain? If they really wanted to reach the heavens, wouldn’t they have built the tower on the nearest high mountain? Yes. So, there must have been a different motivation … one we will never know. However, I can speculate on what the writer of the Babel story intended.

We can all certainly agree that the end result in the Tower story is one of division (one of God’s specialties). Let’s take a very brief look at one other major example in how God divides. OK. So, God chooses one race to his people … creating Judaism in the process. God later sends a Messiah to create a second division of his people …. creating Christianity in the process. God then chooses another guy, Mohammed, to create a third division of his people …. creating Islam in the process. And don’t tell me it wasn’t God who did all this. You should know that for ALL three of these divisions, God used the angel Gabriel as the messenger. Of course, these divisions have resulted in the longest and bloodiest conflicts in human history … which continue to this very day.

So, what are we to make of all this?

The 16th century philosopher, Machiavelli, may be able to help understand what is going on. Machiavelli described how a third party could manipulate two other parties … and maintain control over them both. It works like this;

—– 1) The Ruler creates a division amongst the people.

—– 2) The Ruler does this by creating conditions which accentuate the differences between groups. This causes conflict, and so the groups fight amongst themselves rather than against the ruler.

—– 3) The Ruler hides that HE is the cause of the conflicts, going so far as to feign innocence.

—– 4) The Ruler then offers support to ALL parties involved, thus maintaining their loyalty and faith in him.

—– 5) The Ruler is now viewed as The Beneficial One – Machiavelli uses the term “concerned parent” — no matter how bad and evil The Ruler might be in reality. After all, ONLY The Ruler can help bring everyone back together. There is a steep cost, of course. Many will suffer. Few will benefit. But, no one will ever blame The Ruler … which is just the way he likes it.

Now, am I saying that God is some type of Machiavellian monster? No. But, I am saying that that’s how the writers of Scripture often portray Him. Some may not want to hear this, but I am 100% convinced that the various authors of Scripture had no clue whatsoever that they were writing Scripture. There was no voice from heaven thundering “Hezekiah! Grab a pen. Let’s write some Scripture!”. They had no clue that the words they penned would take hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years to be considered “The Word of God” … and even then, only by a fatally flawed procedure of humans voting. The Ancient Sages had even less of a clue as to how the world works, human psychology and all that, but that didn’t stop them from trying to explain it.

So they wrote stuff, lots of stuff … some of it eventually became God’s Word … based on their observations and very limited knowledge. I imagine some smart (at the time) guy trying to explain to the people how multiple languages came into being, so he fabricates a story that at one time all humanity spoke just one language (a blatant misconception). No one apparently knew better, so people believed it. They believed it for so long, that even when the truth of the matter was made know … people STILL believed it. That, my friends, is the power of propaganda, believing the temporary lie until it becomes permanent truth. So, people have a choice to make. For me, the Tower of Babel story is an interesting piece of ancient literature. Nothing more.

EIGHT HUNDRED MILLION F@#KING DOLLARS IN 24 HOURS

I’m flabbergasted on a daily basis by the idiocy that goes on in this country. We have the lowest percentage of people working since 1978. We have 47 million people, or 20% of all households, on food stamps. The real median household income is lower than it was in 1998. Gas prices are near all-time highs. The average family has virtually no retirement or current savings. Despite these facts, millions of broke Americans lined up to buy a freaking video game to the tune of $800 million in the first 24 hours on the market. They just whipped out the credit card and went $60 further into debt. I’m sure some people enjoy video games. Personally, I have never played a video game in my entire life. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on games for my kids, but never played one of them. Of course, I’ve never sent a text message in my life either, so I may not be the ideal judge of technology.

I see this phenomenon as part of the bigger picture of a world ruled by propaganda, distraction, chosen servitude and willful ignorance. The corporate fascist ruling class know they must keep the masses distracted from the true reality of their situation. Video games, sporting events, 24 hour faux news entertainment, reality TV, porn, the stock market, religion, evil dictators, iGadgets, fashion magazines, and most of the internet are just opium for the masses.  

Our Controllers have succeeded in implementing every dystopian idea dreamed up by Aldous Huxley and detailed in his classic 1932 novel – Brave New World. Huxley’s fears have been realized to a greater extent than he could have imagined:

“In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies – the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account  man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.

In the past most people never got a chance of fully satisfying this appetite. They might long for distractions, but the distractions were not provided. Christmas came but once a year, feasts were “solemn and rare,” there were few readers and very little to read, and the nearest approach to a neighborhood movie theater  was the parish church, where the performances though frequent, were somewhat monotonous. For conditions even remotely comparable to those now prevailing we must return to imperial Rome, where the populace was kept in good humor by frequent, gratuitous doses of many kinds of entertainment – from poetical dramas to gladiatorial fights, from recitations of Virgil to all-out boxing, from concerts to military reviews and public executions. But even in Rome there was nothing like the non-stop distractions now provided by newspapers and magazines, by radio, television and the cinema.

In “Brave New World” non-stop distractions of the most fascinating nature are deliberately used as instruments of policy, for the purpose of preventing people from paying too much attention to the realities of the social and political situation. The other world of religion is different from the other world of entertainment; but they resemble one another in being most decidedly “not of this world.” Both are distractions and, if lived in too continuously, both can become, in Marx’s  phrase “the opium of the people” and so a threat to freedom.

Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in their calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those would manipulate and control it.” 
―    Aldous Huxley,    Brave New World Revisited

The ignorant masses that make up the majority in this country have learned to love their servitude. We threw in the towel on vigilance and love of liberty decades ago. While millions sit in front of their boob tubes killing whores and stealing cars with their joy stick in their fantasy worlds, our Controllers are smiling as they manipulate, obfuscate, and increase their wealth, power and control. Welcome to Brave New World USA.

 

‘Grand Theft Auto’ Sets $800 Million, One-Day Record

Surpassed Record Set by ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops II’ Last November

 

WHICH DRUG COMPANY KILLED THE 12 PEOPLE AT THE D.C. NAVY YARD?

The corporate mainstream media has no interest in the truth. They are corporations who care about the bottom line. Aaron Alexis was taking drugs created by one of the massive drug conglomerates for his mental disorder. The dude in Aurora was on drugs created by one of the humungous drug companies. The guy in Tucson was taking drugs invented by one of these multi-billion dollar institutions. The teenagers at Columbine were on psychiatric drugs. The fact is that these drugs produce the violent crazed outbursts of these killers. Supposedly mild dosages of sleep drugs like Ambien can scramble your mental faculties. These psychotropic drugs are 100 times more powerful. The drug  companies and their paid off doctor cronies are prescribing these drugs to millions of Americans and the true impact is being covered up by the corporate media and the medical industrial complex. The corporate mass media will gladly sacrifice truth and journalistic integrity in order to keep the billions in advertising dollars from these scumbag drug cartels.

A real journalist would be able to find out which drug company is responsible for the 12 deaths this week and shout it from the mountaintop. Don’t count on CNN, MSNBC, Fox or any of the faux journalists in the MSM to kill their advertising golden goose. This is just free market capitalism at its best.

Have you seen any apologies from the MSM about their declaration that Alexis used an AR-15? Didn’t think so.

Media Buries Psychiatric Drug Connection to Navy Shooter

Networks don’t want to risk losing $2.4 billion in ad revenue from pharmaceutical giants

Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com

September 18, 2013

Despite every indication that Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis was on SSRI drugs that have been linked to dozens of previous mass shootings, the mainstream media has once again avoided all discussion of the issue, preferring instead to blame the tragedy on a non-existent AR-15 that the gunman didn’t even use.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

We now know that Alexis “had been treated since August by the Veterans Administration for his mental problems.”

As Mike Adams points out, “This is proof that Aaron Alexis was on psychiatric drugs, because that’s the only treatment currently being offered by the Veterans Administration for mental problems. Alexis’ family members also confirmed to the press that he was being “treated” for his mental health problems. Across the medical industry, “treatment” is the code word for psychiatric drugging.”

Alexis also suffered from PTSD, blackouts and anger issues – all of which are treated with SSRI drugs. The most common form of treatment for PTSD is Paroxetine, which is listed as the number 3 top violence-causing drug by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP).

The Navy Yard shooter was clearly on some form of psychiatric drug, but the media has shown no interest in discovering its identity.

Despite it being reported that prescription drugs were found in the apartment of ‘Batman’ shooter James Holmes days after the Aurora massacre, it took nine months to find out exactly what those drugs were. Like Columbine killer Eric Harris, Holmes had been taking Zoloft, another SSRI drug linked with violent outbursts.

The length of time it took to find out that Holmes was on Zoloft was partly because the media habitually shows zero interest in pursuing the link between anti-depressants and violence.

As the website SSRI Stories profusely documents, there are literally hundreds of examples of mass shootings, murders and other violent episodes that have been committed by individuals on psychiatric drugs over the past three decades. The number of cases is staggering.

Why is the corporate media so disinterested in pursuing this clear connection?

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the pharmaceutical giants who produce drugs like Zoloft, Prozac and Paxil spend around $2.4 billion dollars a year on direct-to-consumer television advertising every year. By running negative stories about prescription drugs, networks risk losing tens of millions of dollars in ad revenue.

While failing to ask questions about what SSRI drugs Aaron Alexis was taking prior to his rampage, the media instead blamed the shooting on assault rifles, even after it had been confirmed that no AR-15 was used by Alexis during the massacre.

FBI assistant director Victoria Parlave stated at a press conference on Tuesday that authorities, “do not have any information at this time that [Alexis] had an AR-15 in his possession.”

Despite there being no evidence that an AR-15 was used, the New York Daily News ran a front page headline yesterday morning entitled, “Same Gun Different Slay,” next to a picture of an assault rifle.

Hours after the FBI stated that no AR-15 had been used, MSNBC’s Alex Wagner, who previously blamed the Boston bombings on Alex Jones, continued to use an animated graphic depicting Alexis carrying an assault rifle during the massacre.

Anti-second amendment crusader Piers Morgan also erroneously blamed the shooting on “a man with a legally purchased AR-15, who just committed the same kind of atrocity as we saw at Sandy Hook, and Aurora,” during his CNN show on Monday.

CNN’s live news coverage also reported that Alexis had “recently purchased (an) AR-15 shotgun,” when in fact that purchase had been denied.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post also falsely reported that an AR-15 had been found on Alexis after the massacre.

D.C. gun grabbers Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin also regurgitated the false claim that Alexis used an AR-15 during the rampage.

The U.S. press has once again behaved like state media in the aftermath of the Navy Yard shooting by pursuing the assault rifle angle – despite the fact that it was patently false – in order to bolster the White House’s gun control agenda.

In doing so, they have concurrently buried an integral aspect of mass shootings that needs to be highlighted as part of a national conversation – the clear connection between violent outbursts and SSRI drugs.

Stucky Tells The State Of Michigan To Stick It Where The Sun Don’t Shine

Dear ACT Team,

At 8:35 AM this morning my son got on a train bound for Newark, NJ.

You Gestapo Goons tried to keep that from happening, but couldn’t. Then you Gestapo Goons decided that you’d pump him up with your Poison Shots a week earlier than scheduled … you thought he was leaving next week ….. haha, fooled ya!!

Then you Statist, Control-Freak, assholes decided to call me and give me all kinds of instructions; giving me the contact-names and clinic names where you want me to take my son and force him against his will to take your Poison Shots. And I mumbled, “Yeah, sure.” … cuz I just don’t feel like arguing with brainwashed retarded Gestapo Goons.

But, the joke is on you, you assholes. Now that he’ll be in my care for the next few months … WE’LL DO IT MY WAY!! I won’t be taking him to no fucking clinic. And don’t bother calling … I won’t be accepting, or returning, your calls … except I might refer you to this post. Here’s my final word to you; KISS MY LILLY WHITE ASS!!!!!!

Cordially,
You know who

The Only Legal Way to Escape US Taxes Besides Death and Renunciation

The Only Legal Way to Escape US Taxes Besides Death and Renunciation

By Nick Giambruno, Editor, International Man

When I hear about strategies that purport to legally allow US citizens to avoid having to pay income taxes, the first thing that usually comes to mind is that it is some sort of dodgy cockamamie scheme.

This is because the US government is no slouch when it comes to shaking down its citizens for every penny it can get away with. The mind-boggling spending on welfare and warfare policies necessitates this. It would be dangerously foolish in the extreme to think you could slip one past them.

There really was no sure way to legally escape the suffocating grip of US taxes besides death and renouncing your US citizenship… until recently.

Every other country in the world (besides the US and Eritrea) practices a system of residence-based taxation. This means that citizens are not liable for paying income taxes to their home country if they become a legal resident of another country and earn their income there.

Take, for example, an American expat and a Canadian expat who both live and earn income in Singapore. The Canadian would only be responsible for paying the much lower Singapore income taxes, while the American would be responsible for paying Singapore income taxes AND American income taxes (though the IRS does allow for around $100k of foreign earned income to be excluded from income taxes if certain conditions are met).

This is because the US taxes its citizens by virtue of their citizenship (citizenship-based taxation), regardless of where they live and earn their money. Even leaving the US permanently does not absolve you from paying US income taxes. Though Eritrea also practices citizenship-based taxation, it is an impoverished African country and has no ability to effectively enforce it. That’s the key difference. The US government can effectively enforce its citizenship-based taxation policies thanks to its massive economic, political, and military weight and the fact that it does not recognize any limit to its jurisdiction (consider FATCA and Edward Snowden).

American expats are therefore in the uniquely unfavorable position of having arguably the worst tax policies and a government that can effectively enforce them. For many, it is a tight and suffocating tax leash. It is no wonder, then, that a record number of Americans gave up their citizenship last quarter to escape these onerous requirements. (You can find more about citizenship-based taxation versus residence-based taxation in this article.)

There is, however, another way besides death and renunciation to legally escape US income taxes, thanks to the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory (commonwealth) of the US, and this allows it to have a special tax arrangement. Namely, legal residents of Puerto Rico who earn their income in Puerto Rico do not pay US federal income taxes (though they still have to file a federal tax return).

All Puerto Ricans are already US citizens, and since it is a commonwealth of the US, Americans are generally free to stay on the island without restriction and do not even need a passport to travel there.

In order to obtain legal residency status in Puerto Rico and the associated tax benefits, one would have to be physically present on the island for at least 183 days a year.

While US citizens who become legal Puerto Rican residents do not have to pay US federal income taxes on income earned on the island, they still have to pay local Puerto Rican taxes. This only amounts to 4% in certain cases, a pittance in comparison to combined US federal, state, and sometimes city income taxes.

This low 4% rate only applies if the services are performed in Puerto Rico for clients outside of Puerto Rico—otherwise a local income tax of as much as 33% is applicable. For example, an investment manager based in Puerto Rico who performs services for US-based clients would be eligible for the lower income tax rate. Consult a tax expert to discuss individual cases and circumstances.

In addition, Puerto Rico recently slashed its taxes on dividends and interest to ZERO, and capital gains taxes to as low as zero (maximum of 10%).This is part of a recent program over the past year or so in which Puerto Rico has been promoting itself as a tax-friendly jurisdiction open to Americans, in order to compete with its better-known Caribbean neighbors like the Cayman Islands.

Taken together, Puerto Rico is an attractive destination for American companies and individuals who have portable incomes, such as software developers, writers, Internet businesses, and especially those dealing with investments, like hedge funds, in which the majority of the earnings are derived from investment income like dividends, interest, or capital gains.

Spending half the year in Puerto Rico, with its beautiful white sand beaches, Caribbean climate, and close proximity to the US is not a bad proposition.

In short, thanks to a system of citizenship-based taxation, becoming a legal resident of Puerto Rico is the only way for Americans to keep their US citizenship and legally avoid US federal income taxes.

There have been at least 40 Americans who have taken advantage of this special arrangement with Puerto Rico and moved there during the past year. Earlier this year billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson was said to have been exploring this option. Check out the short clip below from Bloomberg about an American who has moved to Puerto Rico for exactly these reasons.

Of course, the US government could always pressure Puerto Rico to change its policies, but people in the know view that as unlikely.

For now, Puerto Rico and its special tax situation definitely deserve consideration for Americans.

Puerto Rico may be the best internationalization option for Americans at present, but its conditions may be unworkable for many. Fortunately, many other options exist for internationalizing at least part of your wealth—and your life, should you want to leave your home country and live elsewhere. And honestly, with the global economy in the state it’s in, just about everyone would benefit from internationalizing… it isn’t just for Americans.

But how to get started? What are the best ways to move wealth offshore, and what are the best destinations for it? Should you internationalize in the same countries that you move your wealth to? All these questions, and many more, can be answered in one convenient, trustworthy resource.

This resource has its roots deeply intertwined with the original “International Man”—legendary contrarian and speculator Doug Casey himself. So you can be confident that every detail has been thoroughly vetted, to not just maintain your wealth and lifestyle… but in many cases, to improve them. Get all the details and get started on your path to internationalization right now.

TAPER MY FAT A$$

I’ve been saying for weeks that Bernanke needed a Syrian War to give him an excuse to not taper. The American people and Vlad Putin put the kabosh on that plan. Soon to retire Ben was left with no choice but to just prove he is a tool for Wall Street and the corporate interests by announcing he has no plans to taper. His goal is to get out of Washington DC in January before the entire thing implodes. He’ll let Yellen or some other idiot take the fall. Ben is a ball-less wonder.

His bosses on Wall Street have begun their ticker tape parade by setting their HFT supercomputers to buy. Only thoughtful people are stepping back to question this surprise move. How bad is the true situation that Bennie can’t even taper by $5 billion per month? The suppression of gold and silver prices by Wall Street and Bennie has been a high priority because rising precious metals prices reveals how bad things are. We now know that Bennie thinks the situation is so dire, he is even willing to let gold and silver go wild. Bennie will inflate and debase until the cows come home.

Gold is up $50 from its lows on the day, or 3.9%

Silver is up 5.8% from its low on the day.

All you plebs who need to fill up your gas tank on a weekly basis will be thrilled to know oil jumped by 2.6% to over $108 a barrel.

Do you think Bennie works for you or Wall Street?

Party on Garth!!!

 

 

FOMC Shocker: No Taper

Tyler Durden's picture

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/18/2013 14:01 -0400

It seems the Fed is so scared about something (despite every long-only asset manager telling us day after day that the economy is recovering and the US doesn’t need crisis support… oh and can withstand higher rates) that they have gone against consensus and decided that Tapering now is premature:
  • *FED REFRAINS FROM QE TAPER, KEEPS MONTHLY BUYING AT $85 BLN
  • *FED: RISE IN MORTGAGE RATES, FISCAL POLICY RESTRAIN GROWTH
  • *FED: `TIGHTENING OF FINANCIAL CONDITIONS’ COULD SLOW GROWTH
  • *MOST FED OFFICIALS SEE FIRST INTEREST-RATE RISE IN 2015

Pre-FOMC: S&P Futs 1696, VIX , 10Y 2.865%, MTG Spread 72.5bps, USD 81.00, WTI $107.00, Gold $1310

We await Cramer and Liesman to explain what to do next…

Consensus was for a $6bn taper in TSYs and $3bn taper in MBS

What the Washington Navy Yard Shooting Really Means…

What the Washington Navy Yard Shooting Really Means…

By Paul Rosenberg, FreemansPerspective.com

Freeman's Perspective

There was a shooting earlier this week in DC. The details are still sketchy as I write this, but it appears that a deranged man decided to kill other people for some reason. In response, the usual talking heads will be debating whether this is actual TerrorTM or merely something like it. But the T-word will be spoken in the same grave way we speak of cancer – a thing to be dreaded above all else.

Certainly this shooting was a horrible, tragic thing – especially for the families involved. But that said, any talk about an “age of terror” is utter crap.

Terror is NOT worse now than it was before 9/11 – it’s just that we’ve been bombarded with fear for more than a decade, creating a culture-wide residue that poisons every mind it touches. In actual fact, you are eight times more likely to be killed by a cop than a terrorist. Does that mean that we should all have a collective panic attack and beg for anti-police police?

Now here’s the truth they don’t want you to know: You are taught to fear because fear makes you easy to manipulate. If someone is making you afraid, they’re also making you into an easy mark – a sucker.

Think of how many things people have accepted from governments just because they were afraid. Things like complete online surveillance, crotch searches at airports, random searches on the highways, and so on. Do you think those would have been accepted in 1920? Of course they wouldn’t, because people hadn’t been sufficiently frightened at that time.

The Facts About Terrorism

The fact is, there has been terror in every age of human history. Our time is not unusual at all. A small but consistent percentage of people are always crazy enough to kill strangers and blow things up.

Let me give you some proof from a single year:

  • March 6: A bomb being assembled by terrorists explodes, killing 3.
  • April 8: 47 children are killed by (peacetime) bombs from a neighboring country.
  • May 4: Soldiers kill four American college students.
  • May 8: A huge mob of construction workers in New York attacks protestors.
  • May 14: Police fire on a crowd at a college, killing 2 and injuring 12.
  • June 9: A bomb explodes at New York police headquarters.
  • July 12: Two canisters of tear gas are thrown into the British House of Commons.
  • August 7: Terrorists take a judge hostage in California, then kill him.
  • September 1: An assassination attempt on the King of Jordan.
  • September 6: Terrorists hijack four airplanes on flights to New York.
  • October 5: Terrorists kidnap a British diplomat.
  • October 10: Terrorists kidnap a Canadian Minister. He is found dead a week later.
  • November 25: Terrorists seize the headquarters of Japan’s Defense Forces.
  • November 27: An assassination attempt on the Pope.
  • December 3: A major government caves and releases 5 terrorists.
  • December 4: Spain declares martial law.
  • December 7: A Swiss ambassador is kidnapped.
  • December 13: Martial law is declared in Poland.

Can You Guess The Year?

Think it was in some terrible period of history? Maybe one of the worst years during World War Two?

It was 1970.

But you don’t have any horrible, scary feelings about 1970, do you? That’s because you were never taught to have them – unlike the endless fear that has been promoted to you in recent years.

You may not remember 1970, but I do, and I’ll tell you that people weren’t peeing themselves over this stuff. They thought these events were horrible, of course, but they also knew that such things had always happened, and would continue to happen.

Acts of Terrorism in the US

While 9/11 resulted in the single highest loss of life due to terrorism, such events aren’t isolated incidents. We’ve always had them:

  • 1910: A bomb goes off at the Los Angeles Times building, killing 21.
  • 1917: A race riot in East St. Louis kills between 40 and 200.
  • 1919: A race riot in Chicago kills dozens and injures hundreds.
  • 1920: A bomb explodes on Wall Street, killing 38 and injuring 143.
  • 1927: A deranged man blows up a school in Michigan, killing 44 and injuring 58.
  • 1943: A race riot in Detroit kills 34 and injures 433.
  • 1968: Race riots erupt in at least 125 US cities.
  • 1972: Terrorists detonate a bomb inside the Pentagon.
  • 1988: A terrorist poisons bottles of Tylenol in Chicago. 7 people die.

Get the picture? And I can give you examples of terror back to a few thousand years BC, from every corner of the world.

Do you really think that our new Nazi-style police state will stop this? (The Nazis couldn’t even stop assassination attempts on Hitler.)

These events are tragic, of course, but the chorus of fear that accompanies them it is all about manipulation: to keep us quiet and well behaved while we are bled of our money and our freedoms.

And boy, are they good at it.

[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]

David Stockman On 2008: “Hank Paulson’s Folly: AIG Was Safe Enough to Fail” Part 1

Authored by David Stockman, author of “The Great Deformation”,

A decisive tipping point in the evolution of American capitalism and democracy—the triumph of crony capitalism—took place on October 3, 2008. That was the day of the forced march approval on Capitol Hill of the $700 billion TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) bill to bail out Wall Street. This spasm of financial market intervention, including multi-trillion-dollar support lines provided to the big banks and financial companies by the Federal Reserve, was but the latest brick in the foundation of a fundamentally anti-capitalist régime known as “Too Big to Fail” (TBTF). It had been under construction for many decades, but now there was no turning back. The Wall Street bailouts of 2008 shattered what little remained of the old-time fiscal rules.

There was no longer any pretense that the free market should determine winners and losers and that tapping the public treasury requires proof of compelling societal benefit. Not when AAA-rated General Electric had been given $30 billion in taxpayer loans and guarantees to avoid taking modest losses on toxic assets it had foolishly funded with overnight borrowings that suddenly couldn’t be rolled over.

Even more improbably, Goldman Sachs had been handed $10 billion to save itself from alleged extinction. Yet it then swiveled on a dime and generated a $29 billion financial surplus—$16 billion in salary and bonuses on top of $13 billion in net income—for the year that began just three months later.

Even if Goldman didn’t really need the money, as it later claimed, a round trip from purported rags to evident riches in fifteen months stretched the bounds of credulity. It was reminiscent of actor Gary Cooper’s immortal 1950s expression of suspicion about Communism. “From what I have heard about it,” he told a congressional committee, “it isn’t on the level.”

Nor was Washington’s panicked bailout of Wall Street on the level; it was both unnecessary and targeted at the wrong problem. The so-called financial meltdown was not the real crisis; it was only the tip of the iceberg, the leading edge of a more fundamental economic malady. In truth, the US economy was heading for the wringer because a multi-decade spree of unsustainable borrowing, speculation, and financialization of the national economy was coming to an abrupt end.

In the years after 1980, America had undergone the equivalent of a national leveraged buyout (LBO). It was now saddled with $30 trillion more in combined public and private debt than would have been the case under the time-tested canons of financial discipline and prudence which prevailed during the nation’s long economic ascent. This massive debt burden had fueled a three-decade prosperity party by mortgaging the nation’s future. Now the bill was coming due and our national simulacrum of prosperity was over.

This rendezvous with the limits of “peak debt,” however, did not mean that the Main Street economy was in danger of collapse into an instant depression. That was the specious claim of the bailsters. What did threaten was a deeper and more enduring adversity. The demise of this thirty-year debt super cycle actually meant that it was payback time. Instead of swiping growth from the future, the American economy would now face a long twilight of debt deflation and struggle to restore household, corporate, and public sector solvency.

This abrupt turn in the road should not have been surprising. America’s fantastic collective binging on debt, public and private, had no historical precedent. During the century prior to 1980, for example, total public and private debt on US balance sheets rarely exceeded 1.6 times GDP. When the national borrowing spree reached its apogee in 2007, however, the $4 trillion of new debt issued by households, business, banks, and governments amounted to 6 times that year’s $700 billion gain in GDP. Plain and simple, what was being recorded as GDP growth was little more than faux prosperity borrowed from the future.

In fact, by the time of the financial crisis total US debt outstanding was $52 trillion and represented 3.6 times national income of $14 trillion. Accordingly, there were now two full turns of extra debt weighing on the nation’s economy. And the embedded math was forbidding: at the historic leverage ratio of 1.6 times national income, which had prevailed for most of the hundred years prior to 1980, total US public and private debt would have been only $22 trillion at the end of 2008.

So the nation’s households, businesses, and taxpayers were now lugging around the aforementioned $30 trillion in excess debt. This staggering financial burden dwarfed levels which had historically been proven to be healthy, prudent, and sustainable. TARP and all its kindred bailouts and the Fed’s ceaseless money printing could not relieve it. And Washington’s reckless use of Uncle Sam’s credit card to fund the Obama stimulus actually made it far worse by attempting to revive the false prosperity of the bubble years. The obvious question remains: Why did this plague of debt arise? Did the American people suddenly become profligate and greedy through a mysterious process of moral and social decay?

There is no evidence for the greed disease theory but plenty of reason to suspect a more foreboding cause. The real reason for the current crisis of debt and financial disorder is that public policy had veered into the ditch, permitting an unprecedented aggrandizement of the state and its central banking branch. In the process, the vital nerve center of capitalism, its money and capital markets, had been perverted and deformed. Wall Street has become a vast casino where leveraged speculation and rent seeking have displaced its vital function of price discovery and capital allocation.

The September 2008 financial crisis, therefore, was about the need to drastically deflate the Wall Street behemoths—that is, dangerous and unstable gambling houses—fostered by decades of money printing and market rigging by the Fed. Yet policy veered in the opposite direction, propping them up and thereby perpetuating their baleful effects, owing to a predicate that was dead wrong.

A handful of panic-stricken top officials, led by treasury secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, proclaimed that the financial system had been stricken by a deadly “contagion” that had come out of nowhere and threatened a chain reaction of financial failures that would end in cataclysm. That proposition was completely false, but it gave rise to a fateful injunction—namely, that all the normal rules of free market capitalism and fiscal prudence needed to be suspended so that unprecedented and unlimited public resources could be poured into the rescue of Wall Street’s floundering behemoths...

LLPOH’s Update on What I See Happening

I have been promising an update of what I see going on in the world, especially re manufacturing. I have managed to clear the decks, and my mind, long enough to draft this update.

What I see happening is the result of events that started back around 1980. I will (try to) briefly summarize as follows:
1) Large manufacturing companies had let their costs blow out, and were losing profitability and viability. Cost blow outs were a result of decades of poor management, as well as union militancy.

2) In response, they made the decision to outsource components to smaller local organizations with lower costs. The large companies effectively surrendered, and this was an admission that they could not control their organizations.

3) The result of this outsourcing is that the larger corporations ended up with a cost structure that was very heavy in fixed overheads relative to direct labor costs. In other words, total costs divided by direct labor costs grew when the outsourcing occurred. This is important, because this ratio very much reflects how sensitive a corporation is to change in sales volume. More volume = dramatically more profit, while reduced volume = dramatically reduced profit when this basic ratio is high.

4) A further result of this is that the corporations outsourced potential profit when they stopped manufacturing components and concentrated on becoming assemblers.

5) When downturns happened, the corporations became severely aware of what I described in #3 – profits plummeted extremely fast.

6) So in response to the realization that they could not survive downturns, companies began to look for further reductions. They began to source components from low-cost nations. But it did not resolve the issue of a high cost to labor ratio or of having outsourced product.

7) By outsourcing components to low cost countries, they created competition for themselves, as these low cost countries began to sell complete products into the US in direct competition to the US assembled products. Americans, believe it or not, by and large prefer to buy American made. But some will buy a cheaper crappier product.

8) The corporations then once again begun to be in trouble, as even though Americans did not overall necessarily flood to the imported crap, it only takes a small percentage of them to do so to cause problems, again because of that pesky cost to labor ratio that blew out when the first outsourcing to local companies began.

9) So the corporations then had incentive to move their entire production offshore, which happened in many instances.

And that is where we are. All of these steps I forecasted would happen, all those years ago, and so it has come to pass. Of course, there is much, much more at play – automation, free trade laws, etc etc etc.

My company benefitted from step #2 above, and has been successfully supplying components for over thirty years. We are in a niche market, and make high quality, small volume components for some very large corporations. But we are now under pretty extreme competitive pressure.

First, there are many corporations at stage 6 – looking for more reductions. My customers are in a panic – they desperately need to cut costs in order to survive. They are changing from more expensive higher quality materials to less expensive materials – say from steel to plastic. They are of course looking to source from “low cost countries”, and are “encouraging” me to start a plant overseas (akin to taking a blowtorch to my feet), or to enter into joint ventures.

The reason my customers want me to either start a company overseas or enter into a joint venture is worth special comment. You see, the reason the want me to source the product as opposed to them sourcing the product is that they want me to continue to have liability for the quality/safety/etc of the parts. They do not want to import directly themselves, for the following reasons (and more):

1) Quality is crap, and they want to be able to claim against someone

2) Many countries have very loose government oversight, and they do not want to be associated with any issues that might spring up (environmental, etc.)

3) Many countries require that officials be bribed in order to do business there, and big corporations have rules forbidding them to offer bribes. They want me to offer the bribes so that their hands will be clean.

4) They want just in time delivery, and buying from overseas does not allow that. They want someone to import the product, carry the associated risk and cost of storage, etc. for them.

Further, I am coming under pressure from established companies in low cost countries that have collected the “low hanging fruit” – in other words, China, etc., have just about exhausted their take-over of high volume components, which is initially the easiest stuff to do and the most profitable for them – and have begun to collect high hanging fruit, too. And high hanging fruit is what I deal in – low volume, specialty components. These low cost countries now have the experience to tackle this sort of work, and it is about all the work there is left for them to take over in order to keep exports expanding. Again, I forecast this would happen.

There is also one more major competitive pressure on my company that I did not expect, but perhaps should have. Those middle size local corporations that initially benefitted from the outsourcing, and who are now suffering due to the parts they make flowing to overseas manufacturers, are now attacking me, too. They are desperate for any work, and are prepared to make a loss on the type of work I do just to try to buy themselves another day or two of solvency. They are effectively offering to make tools for free, and to beat any price that I have. Now, this is commercially unsustainable, and my customers know it. But folks in purchasing are measured on their ability to reduce prices, and there will always be some prepared to buy from someone who they know is going broke just to hit their targets this year, and they will worry about the fallout later.

So, in summation, I am under extreme pressure to reduce cost substantially. The only way I can do that is to either relocate production to a lower cost country, or to enter a joint venture with someone in a lower cost country. The risks of both are extreme.

Over the next few years, I expect the size of my company to halve, if I refuse to source from overseas. Then, in 2020 or there about, it will suddenly either be forced out of business, or will be not much more than a jobbing shop employing perhaps 20 people. A 20 person company would be viable and profitable, but the cost and expertise required to keep the business alive during a downsizing from a company of 150 to one of 20 is extreme. Financially, I would be better off killing the company at the appropriate moment, as the restructuring cost will be bigger than the cost of killing it. And as I am growing older, and have fought these battles for 35 years now, I do not know if I have it in me to fight the requisite battle over the next 10 years or so.

The decision I am making now is do I do something I have never done, which is outsource work or jobs to low cost countries? I have never outsourced any work, local or overseas, as I am perfectly capable of managing my business. And I am disgusted by the number of people that have made the claim that I have outsourced work. It is a damn lie.

But I simply cannot compete with the extreme low costs on offer, and the dumping/predatory pricing that is underway. And then there is the extreme risk involved in outsourcing. I imagine I can manage that risk if I choose, but it is a consideration. At this point I believe it improbable I will choose to outsource any work.

I am busy restructuring the business to allow it to be viable for the next 8 to 10 years at about half its current size. That is a difficult process and some hard decisions are being made. For instance, I ultimately will have to choose between employees that have been with us for 30 years and younger, more active employees. The younger ones I have are far more productive, but are less experienced. The longer-serving employees are full of experience and skill, but their motors are running down. To survive/thrive the business will have to be extremely efficient. And I will have to keep the most efficient employees. It is going to be a brutally hard decision to make and implement.

Once that restructuring is complete, I will have to finalize the plan to either kill the business off at the most financially advantageous point, or let it dwindle to the jobbing shop mentioned above. That too will be a difficult decision – do I make the best decision for me personally, or do I save as many jobs as I can. I do not have the answer. In the end, my willingness to absorb stress will probably be a, if not the, determining factor.

CALLING DOCTOR PAUL – A PRESCRIPTION FOR OUR SICK EDUCATION SYSTEM

Twelve-term Texas Congressman, Presidential candidate, and #1 New York Times bestselling author Ron Paul returns with a highly provocative treatise about how we need to fundamentally change the way we think about America’s broken education system in order to fix it.

Whether or not you have children, you know that education is vital to the prosperity and future of our society. Yet our current system simply doesn’t work. Parents feel increasingly powerless, and nearly half of Americans give our schools a grade of “C”. Now, in his new book, Ron Paul attacks the problem head-on and provides a focused solution that centers on strong support for home schooling and the application of free market principles to the American education system. Examining the history of education in this country, Dr. Paul identifies where we’ve gone wrong, what we can do about it, and how we can change the way we think about education in order to provide a brighter future for Americans.

 

Do you trust the government to educate your child? These scumbags change the 2nd amendment in textbooks to suit their purposes.

Guyer High School (and obviously several others) are complicit in attempting to condition students to interpret the 2nd Amendment in a clearly opposite manner in which it was intended. The 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th are also misinterpreted as several commenters below pointed out.

This textbook, currently being used by Guyer High School, is attempting to redefine the Second Amendment to impressionable young minds. Parents, you must speak up and demand action. Investigate your child’s history book ASAP, and post more pictures in the comments below. Call your school and demand that revisionist history books like this are removed from the school district.

Textbook version: “The people have a right to keep and bear arms in a state militia.”

Actual 2nd Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Did you catch the sleight of hand?

A militia is a body of citizens enrolled for military service, and called out periodically for drill but serving full time only in emergencies. It’s a common man army of citizens, NOT soldiers. The citizens are called up in emergencies to protect the free State.

The 2nd Amendment says that a militia is necessary to protect a free State, so in order to be able to have a militia, the citizens have a natural right to keep and bear arms and the government cannot infringe on that right.

The textbook version implies that we’re only allowed to keep and bear arms if we’re in a State militia, a clear misrepresentation of the 2nd Amendment.

NEVER SUSPECT A CONSPIRACY WHEN STUPIDITY IS AN ADEQUATE EXPLANATION

Interesting that the liberal legacy media is very slow to put out the race of the Washington DC shooter this morning, even though it has been known for awhile. Chris Matthews and the rest of the MSNBC douchebags were praying for a Ron Paul Tea Party shooter. Just like they were praying for one in Tucson, Aurora, and Boston. Maybe next time.

Social Oncology, Race, and the Legacy Media

“It´s Just a Lump. It Will Probably Go Away.”

By Fred Reed

http://www.fredoneverything.net/

September 14, 2013

I think I will don a loin cloth, stop bathing, and ascend  a moutain where I will gibber, drool, and perhaps cástrate myself and wait to  go to Hale-Bopp. This is a patrioitic plan. I don´t want to distance myself too  much from my fellow Americans.

Though, on thought, I may welsh on the castration part.

Every morning, as I shamble through the heather of the  internet in search of reason (any day now), I find another story of a savage racial attack on whites by feral  blacks. At least, when a black man says, “I´m gonna kill the next white I see,”  and does so, I begin to suspect a racial motive. Perhaps this is unfair.  Perhaps the gentleman really meant to  say, “…find a good book on Keynes and the Austrian school, and compare with  Veblen.” I remain suspicious.

Where is this taking us?

In the past  these attacks were carefully hidden by the Legacy Media, aka Mainstream. An  argument, understandable if not satisfying, can be made for this. Detwaddled,  it amounts to saying that the black underclass is permanent, that stopping the  crime would require something close to martial law, and that ghastly riots  would then ensue with unpredictable consequences. The path of wisdom is then to grin and bear it. This  is a dismal analysis, but  not unreasonable.

However, it  suggests a degree of intelligent design by the media that is contradicted by  other regions of their behavior. Usually they appear to be trying to increase racial hostility. Note the deliberate  distribution of a version of the Rodney King tape edited to make the use of force seem  unjustified. Also note the editing of the Zimmerman audio track by NBC to make him  sound racially biased. Given an underclass that majorly can´t read and entirely  doesn´t, this is dangerous incitement. And of course the media spin every story  to make blacks believe that they are victims when they are not.

If you work  in the media in Washington, you see that there is no intention to do anything more than bask in narcissisitc appreciation of one´s preternatural rightness. As someone said, never suspect a conspiracy when stupidity is an adequate explanation. Many reporters  know exactly what is going on, but saying so would cost them their jobs, so  they don´t.

Then you have the ideological lefties, who dominate most newsrooms.  They, in my experience at any rate, genuinely don´t know what is happening. There  are several reasons for this. For one thing, reporters run to combativeness  instead of contemplation. For another, they are not thinkers but hurried fact-accountants. For a third, they spend their time with  each other, reinforcing what they all think.

They really  truly believe that blacks are brutalized, beaten, mistreated, that they suffer  discrimination of various sorts, chiefly invisible to others, and that white racists want to impoverish them.  They simply reject as prejudice anything that doesn´t fit this view of the  world.  It makes no sense to the  rational, but they are sincere. The psychology seems to be that if  you deny the existence of something, such as a combination of grotesquely high  crime rates and racial attacks, it will go away.

If you point  out (as I have done on many occasions) that the statistics on crime come from the  Obama administration´s FBI (the Uniform Crime Reports) eyes glaze. It doesn´t  get in. Say that the public schools of Washington are horrible, as documented  by myriad studies and decried by black columnists, and you will be told that it  isn´t true, that the reports are biased, and so on.

If you don´t  recognize the existence of a problem, how can you solve it?

An ominous  development is that the wall of protective silence begins to crack. In the  past, the race of criminals simply wasn´t divulged. Then  some  television stations, though still saying nothing of race,  played the surveillance footage while  talking of “teens,” a word suggesting fun-loving striplings. Many papers now publish photos, and others   often mention in graff fifteen that the assailants were “young black males” (though  often girls are also involved).

But the  internet was the true fly in the ointment. The internet and the cell phone, I  should say. Today web sites, some of them huge, regularly post stories and  video of attacks on whites: the Drudge Report and World Net Daily News, for  example. These have too much circulation to ignore. Further, stories that used  to be covered only by local media that had no choice began to be picked up by the  web, and thus became national. E.g., the Wichita Massacre.

The upshot  was that mention of racial problems became increasingly less taboo. Second-tier  publications like The American Conservative began publishing pieces on black  crime. And there was that curious new world of web-pubs too intelligent and  well-written for the main stream, and utterly independent of the straitjackets  muzzling  the legacy media. The new kids on the block could talk about anything. And  do. There is Taki´s Magazine, the American Spectator, or even, in a very minor  way, Fred on Everything. Their readers were not great in number, but high in  intelligence. This was, as we say in Pentagonese, a force multiplier.

Then came  Ann Coulter´s book, Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama,  about race hustlers and black crime (which I  recommend without qualification: highly intelligent, well-researched, and blunt).  The book, methinks, constitutes something of a watershed. So far as I know, it  is the first time a major, respectable writer, not remotely of the fringe, has  written a book saying, “OK, boys and girls, here is what is going on, here´s  the scam, and here´s who is doing it.”

In sum, as the major media incite an already angry black underclass, the internet and, increasingly, the legacy media incite white anger by publicizing attacks. Does no one understand that this can have really, really ugly consequences?

My question  is: What now? Television will continue to control the idiot demographic, but as  more and more of the sentient realize what is happening, and that they can talk  about it, things will change. Just how I don´t know. But we had better do some  thinking. The racial divide is the worst danger this country has faced, or  refused to face. If we don´t think of something to do about it, it´s going to  wreck the joint, and nobody will like it.

I am now going  to climb my mountain and await Hale-Bopp. Without surgery.

The 7 Choices Left to the Military-Industrial Complex

The 7 Choices Left to the Military-Industrial Complex

By Paul Rosenberg, FreemansPerspective.com

Freeman's Perspective

Since 2002 the US government has presided over one of the most dramatic financial bubbles of all time: the bubble of the military-industrial complex. (A few will remember that Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans about this in 1961.)

This bubble, like all others, will pop, and it looks to be deflating right now. The amounts of money that have been spent in the past decade can only be characterized as obscene. But the point that really matters is this:

Military spending is just part of the bubble.

In addition to the military complex, we have a massive intelligence complex.

Not only that, but we also have a massive law enforcement complex. The Department of Homeland Security has given them at least $34 Billion in the past several years, on top of their take from local taxes, state taxes, fines, seizures, and other Fed money.

Take a look at these graphs. First, defense spending:

Freeman's Perspective

Then, intelligence spending, or as close as I’ve been able to get to real numbers:

Freeman's Perspective

Lastly, War on Drugs spending, which we’ll use as a proxy for overall law enforcement spending (numbers that are more difficult to acquire):

Freeman's Perspective

Needless to say, this multi-headed beast is huge, requiring oceans of money… and it’s about to have its rations cut. Actually, that may be why they’re so hot for a war in Syria – they need to goose spending again, and quickly.

Power Corrupts, but Arrogance “Stupidizes”

Yeah, I know that word’s not in the dictionary, but it should be.

These agencies are drunk on power and stupid on arrogance.

There’s no other way to describe a situation where the intelligence and law enforcement branches of this beast have been waging a war against the American people for the last few years.

Think of the endless search for “domestic terrorists,” the sickening NSA spying on everyone, and the 135 SWAT team raids per day in America. Apparently it has never entered their minds that people might eventually resent being abused.

It’s also useful to understand that “intelligence agency” is the same thing as “secret service,” and very little different from “secret police.” They’ve had secret courts for some time, after all.

I won’t even talk about the rampant corruption that runs through all of these departments; you can either trust me on that one or not.

And this situation reaches all the way to local cops. I had a conversation recently with a young man who recently completed a stint with the US Marines and didn’t know what he wanted to do next. At one point, he said that he thought about being a police officer (an easy fit for a Marine), but he rejected the idea.

“Why?” I asked.

“Cops are bullies,” he responded.

And indeed they are. They lie all the time, they intimidate people all the time, and they treat everyone as a violent perp. (Except if you’re rich or politically connected, of course.) Like the rest of the military-industrial complex, they are out of control.

There used to be cops who were exceptions to this young man’s “bully” statement, but they have been vanishing rapidly. Cops are routinely taught to intimidate and lie.

What Dooms Them

So, while things look absolutely horrible at the moment, the rug is being pulled out from underneath these wastrels.

The issue here (as it so often is) is fiat currency. The money for all of this War Welfare has NOT come from taxes. Instead, it has come from deficits, a.k.a. money printing. The problem is, the money printing game is sputtering. And without a strong money printing program, future increases in military spending will have to come from increased taxes – and there simply isn’t any more to be taken.

American workers already have about half their money taken from them. The now-denuded middle class is surviving on food stamps, disability payments, and a dozen other programs that dish out federal money. They’ve undergone a long, hard fall, from working machines to working government programs.

Their Choices

he military-industrial-intelligence-law enforcement complex has only a few choices left in front of it. (Aside from rational things, like giving up their immoral and abusive game.)

Those choices include:

  1. Find a way to legitimately juice the economy. (Good luck.)
  2. Make people want to be poorer. (Again, good luck.)
  3. Act like Stalin and terrorize your populace openly. (Americans still have guns.)
  4. Create a really, really scary foreign devil. (A tough sell these days, but not for lack of trying.)
  5. Create an iron-clad, world monetary system and government. One that can feed them no matter what. (Probably requires a nuclear war first.)
  6. Create a truly scary war, with piles of dead people in US cities. Then folks will be frightened enough to hand over the rest of their money.
  7. Down-size: Work with their politicians and bankers to dominate only the major cities, the major corporations, and those who will live as dependents to the system. Abandon most of the rest and stop meddling in all the world’s affairs.

The one other possibility for them is to convince the Fed to print faster and damn the consequences. And they may choose that option first, since it would allow them to kick the can just a little bit further down the road.

But once that’s done, they’ll be right back to these seven choices.

[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]

DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY

Everything’s Fixed, Everything’s Great

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

A brief summary of everything that’s been fixed.

Much to the amazement of doom-and-gloomers, everything’s been fixed and as a result, everything’s great. The list is impressive: China: fixed. Japan: fixed. Europe: fixed. U.S. healthcare: fixed. Africa: fixed. Mideast: well, not fixed, but no worse than a month ago, and that qualifies as fixed.

Let’s scroll through a brief summary of everything that’s been fixed.

1. China’s economy. It was slowing down, which would have been bad for the global economy. But the recent PMI (preliminary made-up indicator) readings have been the strongest since the Great Leap Forward.

The basic story here is China needs a million more of everything: a million more concrete highrises, a million more airports, a million more miles of highway, and so on. And because there are 200 million rural peasants anxious to open nail shops in all those empty ghost cities, there is no end to growth in China.

And thanks to central banking and a wide-open spigot of credit, there’s also a million times more leverage and debt in China. It’s a perpetual growth machine.

There are growth stories on top of growth stories in China. There are 300 million diabetics and pre-diabetics in China right now–the equivalent of the U.S. population. Think of all the growth possibilities for diabetes clinics in those ghost cities. All the owners of those nail shops and diabetes clinics will be getting so rich, Goldman Sachs will be needed to sell them safe investments like Detroit Muni Bonds.

2. Japan’a Abenomics has worked, and Japan is back. Need proof? Just look at the Japanese stock market: it’s up. What more do you need? Hello Kitty is expanding its market share of the global Cute market–yee-hah!–and the 2020 Olympics will be a growth story for seven years–a Biblical cornucopia of growth, growth, growth.

3. Europe is on the mend. European stocks are at 5-year highs–proof everything’s fixed. Greece’s budget is near surplus (if you exclude interest payments on their debt), and there’s light at the end of the tunnel on Europe’s debt crisis. The fix is LTRO (long-term ripoff operation)–basically another perpetual growth machine funded by free money issued by the European Central Bank. Can’t pay your debts? No problem, just borrow more!

It won’t take more than a couple trillion euros to set things right and get things moving.

Sure, unemployment in some countries is 25% (or is it 40%? hard to be sure), but that’s stabilized, and there are sure to be more jobs for waiters/waitresses as tourism works its growth magic.

4. The U.S. healthcare system is fixed, thanks to ObamaCare. I can’t understand the details, of course, but then neither can anybody else, and that’s the beauty of it: there’s a practically unlimited demand for people who know how all this works. Job growth will be through the roof.

Here’s a summary of how ObamaCare works. There’s three levels, kind of like a credit card: silver, gold and platinum. Silver is like your current lousy plan, only the government will give you $167 if your plan costs more than $10,000 (or maybe it’s $1,670–nobody knows).

The Gold level is much better, similar to gold-plated healthcare plans enjoyed by government workers, but it costs a lot more. Platinum is equivalent to what everyone in other advanced democracies gets from national healthcare, only it costs twice as much here in the U.S.

But hey, you get what you pay for, and that’s why the U.S. healthcare system is the best in the world–we spend twice as much per person as anyone else.

If you refuse to get insurance, the government penalizes you $167–or maybe it’s $1,670. Nobody really knows yet because there are thousands of pages of fine print to sort out.

5. America has its own perpetual money machine to fuel growth. The Federal Reserve creates money and then buys Treasury bonds. The Federal government sells the bonds and uses the cash (just created by the Fed) to pay for everything: $300 million a piece F-35 fighters, 47 million Food Stamp SNAP vouchers, bridges to nowhere, tax breaks for billionaires, you name it.

And here’s the beauty of it: there’s no limit to this money machine. The Fed can print a gazillion dollars and buy a gazillion dollars of Treasury bonds so the government can spend a gazillion dollars. There is no consequence of this, it can go on forever. That means we can borrow as much money as we want to buy everything we want, forever.

So you see, everything’s fixed, because everybody that can create their own money can do so without limit or consequence. It’s a perpetual money machine, and that fuels a perpetual growth machine. No limits on credit and debt means no limit on spending. Free money for everyone and everything–it’s unbelievably easy.

Doom and gloomers have been wrong, just like Paul Krugman said. The solution to every problem is at hand: create more money and credit, in ever larger sums, until a tsunami of cash washes away all difficulties.

Please note this is a satire.