Thursday, October 25, 2012

Prison May Be the Next Stop on a Gold Currency Journey

High above the cliff tops and the beach bars, up a winding mountain road, in a borrowed house on someone else’s ranch, an unusual criminal is waiting for his fate.

His name is Bernard von NotHaus, and he is a professed “monetary architect” and a maker of custom coins found guilty last spring of counterfeiting charges for minting and distributing a form of private money called the Liberty Dollar.

Described by some as “the Rosa Parks of the constitutional currency movement,” Mr. von NotHaus managed over the last decade to get more than 60 million real dollars’ worth of his precious metal-backed currency into circulation across the country — so much, and with such deep penetration, that the prosecutor overseeing his case accused him of “domestic terrorism” for using them to undermine the government.

Of course, if you ask him what caused him to be living here in exile, waiting with the rabbits for his sentence to be rendered, he will give a different account of what occurred.

“This is the United States government,” he said in an interview last week. “It’s got all the guns, all the surveillance, all the tanks, it has nuclear weapons, and it’s worried about some ex-surfer guy making his own money? Give me a break!”

The story of Mr. von NotHaus, from his beginnings as a hippie, can sound at times as if Ken Kesey had been paid in marijuana to write a script on spec for Representative Ron Paul. At 68, Mr. von NotHaus faces more than 20 years in prison for his crimes, and this decisive chapter of his tale has come, coincidentally, at a moment when his obsessions of 40 years — monetary policy, dollar depreciation and the Federal Reserve Bank — have finally found their place in the national discourse.

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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Ron Paul: Man of the Left - How the libertarian Republican scrambles progressive priorities

At Occupy Wall Street encampments around the nation last fall, most of the activists rallied against modern American capitalism and in favor of government aid to the now-famous 99 percent. But from New York to Philadelphia, from Seattle to Los Angeles, Occupiers were joined (or infiltrated, in the eyes of some) by activists talking up the benefits of a truly freed market, without government giveaways to favored interests or central bank manipulations of the economy. This minority took its inspiration from Texas congressman and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. The confluence between libertarian and progressive activism surprised many, including Paul himself. But it was the strongest indicator yet that the Ron Paul uprising poses a unique challenge—and potential attraction—to the American left.

Paul vs. Obama

During Paul’s latest bid for the Republican Party presidential nomination, his policies were to the left of the Democratic Party and President Barack Obama in many areas. Obama has expanded almost every aspect of the war on drugs, including federal raids on state-legal medical marijuana operations. Paul thinks it’s inherently illegitimate to arrest people for actions that harm only themselves. The Obama administration has deported a record number of illegal immigrants. Paul mocks border walls as essentially un-American. Obama presided over enormous bailouts of the nation’s largest financial institutions, and his economic planning team has been largely run by Wall Street insiders. Ron Paul is opposed to what both he and the Occupiers call “crony capitalism.” Even the president’s signature legislative accomplishment, Obama­Care (which Paul opposed), forces millions of people to buy health insurance from the very corporations progressives claim to despise.

Civil liberties and peace are the issues that first made some leftist hearts beat faster when contemplating this curious Old Right congressman. Obama has started new wars unauthorized by Congress and greatly expanded a civilian-killing drone program. Paul opposes drones, calls for an immediate end to all our overseas wars, and wants the U.S. military to withdraw from the world. By taking these positions, Paul has done more than even leftist icon Noam Chomsky to normalize discussion of U.S. foreign policy as the behavior of a criminal empire rather than that of the world’s great defender of liberty.

Obama has strengthened the PATRIOT Act and prosecuted whistleblowers; Paul opposes both actions and has defended accused WikiLeaker (and progressive cause célèbre) Bradley Manning. Obama has expanded the commander in chief’s powers to unilaterally imprison and even kill American citizens, aggrandizing the executive branch beyond even what the hated George W. Bush managed. Paul inspires thousands of students to boo any mention of Obama’s alarming yet largely unknown National Defense Authorization Act, which gives legal cover to the president’s power of indefinite detention.

On a wide range of issues involving individual liberty and protecting people from oppressive concentrations of power, Paul has been more progressive than Obama. Paul’s fans knew this, and many led campaigns to capitalize on it during the 2012 primaries—from talking with the more socialist Occupiers to calling on Democratic voters to re-register as Republicans in a movement dubbed “Blue Republican.”

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Constitutional Questions Hound Growing Domestic Role for US Military

Created in 2002 without much public discourse, the Northern Command (Northcom) now sees Pentagon activities expanding dramatically across the continental United States, giving the military purview over droughts, wildfires, and public protests.

But is it legal, or even constitutional? That’s a question Northcom’s massive legal team is still struggling to come to grips with, as a command that was supposed to be aimed at defending against incoming missiles is turning into an all-encompassing leviathan with interests across the board.

Exactly how much is already being done is even a matter of legal battles, as the ACLU has been struggling for years to get a handle on how big the active duty military deployments inside the United States already are, and how much bigger they are liable to get.

Seeking Northcom’s aid with hurricane relief has turned them into an all-purpose weather response force. Emergency response morphed into a possible military role in medical quarantines during the swine flu scare. Seeking their involvement into anti-terror operations has raised the prospect of domestic military surveillance at unprecedented levels. And surveillance of “terrorists” inevitably means surveillance of all domestic opposition factions, regardless of what they are opposing.

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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

The U.S. Federal Reserve Should Be Declared a Currency Manipulator

In the two presidential debates that focused heavily on the economy, there was not a single mention of the Federal Reserve. This is clearly worrisome since the U.S. central bank has a huge impact on the economy. With the Federal Reserve largely to blame for the recent financial meltdown and the rapidly declining value of the U.S. dollar, this is an important economic issue that the presidential candidates should be addressing.

However, Mitt Romney seems to focus more on China’s currency than the U.S. dollar. During last Tuesday’s presidential debate, he pledged to declare China a “currency manipulator.”

On Day 1, I will label China a currency manipulator, which will allow me as president to be able to put in place, if necessary, tariffs where I believe that they are taking unfair advantage of our manufacturers.

The extent of the yuan’s misalignment is unclear but the value of Chinese currency has not significantly affected the U.S. economy. Simply put, foreign trade is not to blame for our economic woes.

Retaliation aimed at the value of Chinese currency will likely create more problems than it solves. Mitt Romney’s proposed tariffs on Chinese goods will hurt consumers and could trigger an unnecessary trade war. Taxes are tariffs that will ultimately get passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices for goods. The last thing we need is policies that would hurt struggling families trying to make ends meet during these tough economic times.

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FUTURE OF OBAMACARE: ONTARIO, CANADA MEDICAL SYSTEM IN CHAOS

If Obamacare is not repealed, one may only have to look to Ontario, Canada to see the future of healthcare in America. In the Canadian province, the government unilaterally imposed over $300 million in fee cuts to try to close a $15 billion deficit, which has led to physicians fighting with the government — and their own medical association — over payouts, fees, hours, and what exactly constitutes a proper and appropriate salary for physicians and specialists.

It is pure chaos where government randomly picks winners and losers.

As the National Post reports, Ontario’s doctors are taking the province to court to fight the $340-million in proposed fee cuts, and some doctors are considering setting up an outside collective bargaining organization to negotiate with the province, claiming that the current group (Ontario Medical Association) that represents them is selling them out to government negotiators. The Ontario government unilaterally imposed these cuts, picking winners and losers

The Ontario government, according to the report, commissioned studies from outside experts and have determined “certain physicians earn too much relative to others, partly because technological changes have made some procedures — like cataract operations — easier and faster to perform.”

Meanwhile, Ontario specialists “targeted for fee cuts, however, counter that their income has risen chiefly because they received additional funding to shorten wait lists — meaning they are working harder and longer hours for the extra pay.”

David Jacobs, a Toronto radiologist, feels the medical association is sacrificing specialists like radiologists and ophthalmologists.
“We feel that the government’s belligerence and bullying is being rewarded,” he told the Post. “It’s like asking someone with a knife sticking out of their chest if they wouldn’t mind donating blood.”

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