WASHINGTON (AP) — Sidestepping controversy, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., declined to take sides Monday on a proposal for higher taxes backed by fellow Republicans on Congress’ supercommittee, yet expressed confidence the panel would agree on a deficit-reduction plan of at least $1.2 trillion by a Nov. 23 deadline.
So let me make this clear: our REPUBLICAN House Leader has REFUSED to “take sides” in a proposal for higher taxes — “BACKED BY FELLOW REPUBLICANS” and considered by our Mr Obama’s so-called Congressional “Supercommittee.”
The only conclusion I can draw is this:
Republicans — confident, easy and comfortable in having been installed now in DC — have completely forgotten the reason for their being there and the strife that occurred this past November. They have forgotten their “promises.” You note, of course, the quotation marks.
And this is how easily Conservatives are betrayed.
With: $300 billion of tax hikes to be achieved by limiting the mortgage deduction and by limiting charitable deductions, state and local income tax deductions.
No Republican of which I am aware, ran on this platform. This wasn’t our “message” in November.
These ARE TAX INCREASES. No matter what you call it, these are tax hikes.
What the GOP cannot do is fold and accept tax hikes, especially on the fragile housing market and the reeling not-for-profit sector. Limiting the mortgage interest deduction is the worst of many bad economic ideas bandied about by the Beltway wizards who first brought us Fannie and Freddie, and the canard that people don’t give to charity because of the deduction marks anyone who utters it as simply ignorant of how the world of churches, universities, hospitals and the hundreds of thousands of crucial not-for-profits from homeless shelters to disease prevention and research groups all operate.
Politically, Obama says that without these agreements in the Supercommittee, he will gut the military even further. The threat. The cheese and the whip.
Politically, the Republicans should stand firm and say:
First, we’re not buying tax hikes, and
Second, you want to gut the military, then it will be done in the bright light of day
And its results will be on YOU
And it may cost you, Mr Obama.
Call the fucker’s bluff.
You will literally kill the already-execrable housing market and guarantee that charities are abandoned.
If you’re a Demorat, you don’t care because it means more money.
If you’re a Republican, you simply want to be loved and for everyone to just “get along.”
To my readers: and THIS is why Republicans took back the House?
It has been postulated, I’ve just recently been made aware, that there may in fact be no gold in the United States Bullion Depository, otherwise known more simply as Ft. Knox, in Kentucky.
It is alleged that Ft Knox holds 5,046 tons (147.2 million troy ounces — as gold is customarily measured in ounces) of gold. In contrast, The Federal Reserve Bank in New York‘s Manhattan underground vault is alleged to hold 7,716 tons of gold, but some of it held “in trust” for foreign nations, central banks and international organizations.
The necessity for the USBD at Ft Knox came about by then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s — to be blunt — illegalExecutive Order 6102, which resulted in the physical confiscation of gold in all forms from private American citizens on April 5th of 1933. What is known now as Ft Knox was completed in 1936.
EO 6102 criminalized the possession of physical gold by anyone other than the United States government. People were paid $20.67 per troy ounce for the gold they possessed. People who, then, had large amounts of gold sent it physically to countries such as Switzerland because of various private banking laws.
The Gold Reserve Act had economic ramifications far beyond national finance. At that time many contracts stipulated that their monetary terms could be demanded in gold.
Such gold clauses were intended to protect against the United States devaluing the dollar.
When the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 and the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 outlawed the use of gold, then such contracts became sources of controversy.
In the gold clause caseNorman vs. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co., 294 U.S. 240 (1935), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that gold clauses were invalid. However, Congress later reinstated the option to use gold clauses for obligations (new contracts) issued after October 1977 in accordance with 31 U.S.C.§ 5118(d)(2).
A viable country runs on what is called the Gold Standard. Meaning that, basically, whatever paper money exists is backed by an actual physical asset.
But note this:
The total amount of gold that has ever been mined has been estimated at around 142,000 metric tons.[25] This is less than the value of circulating money in the U.S. alone, where more than $8.3 trillion is in circulation or in deposit (M2).[26]
Therefore, a return to the gold standard, if also combined with a mandated end to fractional reserve banking, would result in a significant increase in the current value of gold, which may limit its use in current applications.[27]
In retrospect, that one move placed this nation — by extension, later, the entire world — into the situation it finds itself now. The die was cast. [A great UK article is here.]
From then on, until today, the dollar has not been “backed” by anything resembling a physical asset, but by trust and confidence.
Let me repeat that again, for those of you who may just have tuned in:
From then on, until today, the dollar has not been “backed” by anything resembling a physical asset, but by trust and confidence.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is quite how precariously our current dollar stands.
With this in mind, your understanding of the US stock market should have expanded exponentially.
It’s not solely predicated but upon physical assets or hard commodities, but primarily upon emotions.
Feelings.
As in: how do you feel about your money today? What trust do you have in your portfolio?
Even more base: what kind of CONFIDENCE do you have in your American government?
You, I’m certain, see where I’m going with this.
With that in mind, you remember about Ron Paul, don’t you?
You remember that Ron Paul is about the only person in DC politics who has called for an actual audit of the Federal Reserve? And that would include the Treasury Department. Which, by extension, would call for an audit and examination of our United States Bullion Depository at Ft Knox.
This is the one crucial point that I credit to Ron Paul.
The last president, to my knowledge, who actually visited Ft Knox — for reassurance — was then-President Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Please allow me to cut to The Proverbial Chase:
Our US government alleges that there is still over 5,000 tons of gold in Ft Knox.
With that in mind, there are those persons — locally as well — who say that there is little if any gold left in Ft Knox and that, over the years, it has been sold, ransomed, distributed, sown to the four winds, for political purposes.
Which brings up a literal host of excellent questions, to include:
1. If that is true, do you want, in this economy, an actual audit of the Federal Reserve to include the USBD at Ft Knox?
2. Do you really want to know if Ft Knox is packed with gold, or if it merely hosts a primarily-empty room surrounded by an incredible series of over-the-top security measures?
3. Do you want to make that result public?
4. Or is that an issue that should lie dormant until the country is emplaced into a much stronger political and economic position than it is now?
Because here is what would occur:
If Ft Knox were found to contain little or no gold as the result of a physical, public audit, the local, national and global confidences in the Unites States of America and its dollar would plummet, literally, overnight.
The average American could wake up one morning to discover that his or her assets were mostly worthless, that the dollar was predicated solely upon paper, and that this paper was just that: paper.
Do the math and what I call The Logical Extension:
A running flood on banks, not nearly enough physical paper to cover everyone’s assets and investments, a run on commodities, a run on water, food, fuel, hard assets, an absolute hoarders’ mentality.
Because of our current thinnest of margins on warehousing and the perilous but necessarily demanding transportation of products within not just days but hours — current supplies in most any realm would last, at most, perhaps three days. Trains and trucks. Stalled by a national dollar paralysis.
And that gets back to a few of my more Basic Questions.
Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal
A company controlled by a longtime political donor gets a no-bid contract to supply an experimental remedy for a threat that may not exist.
By David Willman, Los Angeles Times
November 13, 2011
Reporting from Washington—
Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.
Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.
Mr Obama and his Administration — corrupt to the core?
Imagine that.
I am shocked. Shocked, I tell you! I had clearly envisioned nothing more than simple, honest, courageous, trustworthy Hope and Change.
With this exception: Mr Obama Hoped that the Change he brought to DC would help to line his personal pockets and those of his philosophical minions.
I suspect (though I could immediately be proven wrong) that Mr Willman will not be paraded “front and center” on Letterman, on the Rosie Show, on OWN, on CNN, on MSNBC, on The View, even on Wolf Blitzer. On NBC, ABC, CBS.
That said: you think that Mr Obama is any different from, say, Joseph McCarthy?
I’ll submit this: Joe McCarthy did this nation a favor. Infinitely more than Mr Obama has and ever will.
BZ
P.S. KGB records proved: McCarthy was correct. Go here and here and here and here.
Because when you do, the Leftists are revealed for the ignorant, evil and violent barbarians they are.
All OCCUPY camps should be LEFZs, or “Law Enforcement Free Zones,” in my opinion. It’s essentially what they want; it’s what they truly should receive.
First, because the local governments, mayors, city councils, county supervisors and other aligned boards don’t have the courage to delineate the OCCUPY camps as illegal, profane, unhealthy and in most cases, outright criminal and lawless.
In that regard, many local law enforcement heads have been told to stay away, to stand down. To allow whatever happens, to occur.
And in response, I say to my fellow law enforcement officers: do it. Step away. I know that it grates against every fiber of your being, but it will enable you to not only achieve a lengthier career, but reveal your upper echelons for the cowardly quislings they truly are.
Ensure that your fellow officers are safe. Ensure that your own family is safe. But, where the OCCUPY camps are concerned, carry out the orders that your Leftist government delineates — to the letter.
Let the OCCUPY camps live in their own excrement, squalor, bile and violence.
A rash of reports of sexual assaults at Occupy Wall Street protests across the country has both police and activists raising red flags.
Nearly a half-dozen assaults have been reported at Occupy camps, including three at the New York City protests, which have prompted protesters to set up a “women only” tent in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park to provide a safe haven.
“The concern would be the rapes and attacks that aren’t reported,” said Sgt. Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, a police union in New York City. “We have no way of really knowing. If you have three or five crimes reported, you really don’t know if it’s eight or 10 that happened.”
Conclusion? In general, the OCCUPY camps are festering cesspools of violence and disease, displaying the worst of unsanitary conditions and indifference — with the overarching thought that Someone Else will take care of these issues and is “responsible.” Notthemselves.
But here’s the true kicker. Which made me wonder when I actually stepped into the Alien Vortex Of Insanity:
OAKLAND (CBS SF) – Both Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and the Oakland police officers’ union have again called on Occupy Oakland protesters to leave Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of City Hall, where they have had an encampment for a month.
They ASK these people.
Yes, Oakland is actually that stupid.
Once again, to my Law Enforcement Brothers and Sisters:
STOP pushing against the tide.
Simply give your bosses, managers and governmental managers what they want.
Step aside.
With two very important caveats:
Cover your fellow officers and BE SAFE, plus
Collect your paycheck.
You have to be smarter than your so-called “superiors.”
