Schiff on Jobs Report, U.S. Constitution
* Disappointing non-farm payroll report.
* Official unemployment rate drop applauded. 9.8 to 9.4% This is only because 250,000,000 people left official workforce — i.e. aren’t collect unemployment benefits.
* Dollar down against most currencies. Euro concerns probably kept it from really getting clobbered.
* Ben Bernanke said number confirm economy is growing, except without jobs.
* “The reason it’s jobless, is because it’s not a recovery. . . . It’s just printing money and spending it.”
* NY Times article equates Republicans’ reading of the Consitution with racism, ignoring the Constitution with “interpreting” the Constitution. Author claims Legislature should ignore Constitution and only Judicial branch should worry about it.
The Bigotry of the Literati (1954) ~Mises
From Ludwig Von Mises’s book, The Anti-Capitalist Mentality.
British MP John McDonnell calls for people’s revolutionary masses to collect taxes
Cued video here.
He asks to publish a list of the top 100 tax evaders and avoiders. (Tax avoidance is legal. Not working is the simplest form of tax avoidance.) He envisions the angry masses showing up at their offices as tax collectors.
Neo-Conservatism — anything for war
Ron Paul: Why the Government Lies About Social Security
WikiLeaks: Israel aimed to keep Gaza economy on brink of collapse
Israel told U.S. officials in 2008 it would keep Gaza’s economy “on the brink of collapse” while avoiding a humanitarian crisis, according to U.S. diplomatic cables published by a Norwegian daily on Wednesday.
Three cables cited by the Aftenposten newspaper, which has said it has all 250,000 U.S. cables leaked to WikiLeaks, showed that Israel kept the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv briefed on its internationally criticized blockade of the Gaza Strip.
(Read more from haaretz.com)
The unholy DEA and the Drug War
The Panama Deception
The Panama Deception trailer:
21 years ago the US military dropped bombs on the Central American nation of Panama four days before Christmas Eve.
The 1989 US invasion eventually killed an estimated 4,000 civilians and leveled densely populated urban areas. It was vindicated through the notion that then President Manuel Noriega was an imminent threat to Panamanian democracy and American lives.
“Last Friday Noriega declared his military dictatorship to be in a state of war with the United States and publicly threatened the lives of Americans in Panama,” explained former President George H.W. Bush in December of 1989 regarding why the US was invading Panama.
However, journalists and historians insist the real cause for war were maintaining US control of the Panama Canal, Central America and US military bases in Panama.
However, major US media played a key role in selling the invasion to the American people.
Tom Brokaw of NBC reported a week before the war, “The United States declared in effect Panama’s Manuel Noriega is a threat to this country’s national security.”
What wasn’t mentioned that was Noriega had been Washington’s strongman for nearly two decades. While Bush Sr. was head of the CIA, he increased Noriega’s payroll to $100,000 dollars a year.
But as Noriega’s obedience to the US faltered, the US feared losing control of the vital Panama Canal and the closure of its strategically important military bases.
“They demonized Noriega as a means to be able to bomb and attack his country and that is what they did,” said Michael Parenti, an author and political scientist.
“Panamanian deaths were simply not of interest to the major mainstream media. The interest was solely on American deaths. The US media were puppets for this military campaign,” commented Barbara Trent, the director of the academy award winning documentary “The Panama Deception”.
During the making of Trent’s documentary film, she faced barricades from the US military. While filming thousands of refugees living inside plane hangars, military officials tried to detain Trent to prevent her from filming. However, the Panamanian refugees surrounded Trent’s filming crew and they were able to conduct interviews.
One refugee told Trent, “We want to get out of this Goddamn place, we’re tired of this! This is not no democracy! They [US] are worse than Noriega, they are plenty worse!!”
The refugees painted a grim picture that did not reflect in the US media coverage.
“The media stopped acting like the media, and acted as it has done in the Iraq as a cheer leading section,” said Parenti.
Conservatives sell out for war (except for Ron Paul)
The Ozone Scare
Remember when the thinning of the ozone layer was going to cause us all to die of malignant melanoma, just a few years ago? The ozone scare seems to have dropped off the radar entirely.
As you might remember, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were the evil du jour, playing the same role carbon dioxide (CO2) plays today in the global-warming scare. Environmentalists claimed that CFCs would somehow travel 40 miles up above the surface of the earth, despite the fact that CFCs are about five times heavier than air. A common case of floating bricks, no doubt.
By banning CFCs in 1989, the 196 countries who signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer lost a cheap, safe, nontoxic, chemically inert, noncorrosive, and nonflammable source of refrigerants, propellants, and fire-control-system components.
As with most regulations, the CFC ban hit the poor with a vengeance. Millions of perfectly functioning refrigerators could no longer be recharged with Freon, so everyone was forced to purchase new CFC-free appliances. This, of course, was especially difficult for those with low incomes.
Another group that still suffers greatly are asthma patients. The substitutes for CFC inhalers are the HFA (hydro-fluoroalkane) inhalers, which many doctors report to be of marginal effectiveness compared to the CFC version, which provided faster and longer-lasting relief from the agony of suffocation. Many patients have found that, whereas one puff used to be sufficient to reopen the airways, the new product requires two or even three puffs to work. This raises the cost of the medication due to the increased dosage. And to add insult to injury, because of their recent introduction, HFA inhalers are protected by patent law, whereas CFC inhalers were already generic. Prices per inhaler have increased from the $5–$25 range to the $30–$60 range in the United States.
Needless to say, taxpayers are still funding research into this bogus field, and the CFC ban is still alive and well. As always, regulations and funding are very easily put in place — especially when the public is manipulated with scare tactics — but they are very hard to roll back; in fact, regulations are hardly ever repealed, and the institutions in charge of enforcing them are only occasionally dismantled.
It is important to recognize the behavioral pattern of governments, NGOs, and scientists by looking at similar scares, such as acid rain, Y2K, mad-cow disease, H1N1, and now climate change and terrorism. Fear and guilt are the usual tools used to rob citizens of their liberty and money. (Read more from mises.org)
Max Blumenthal debates for BDS at Princeton
Former Marxist guerrilla sworn in as president of Brazil
The new president hopes to keep the country’s booming economy on track while advancing her Workers’ Party social agenda. (Read more from latimes.com)
Rothbard: Incentive problem in socialism and the attempts at creating a “New Socialist Man”
Another brilliant, funny, irreverent lecture by Murry Rothbard, here.
New Year’s Predictions for 2011
My predictions:
1. We will see the beginning of the collapse of the bond market. The truth about flawed fiat currencies will begin to emerge. No one will want government debt. The specter of the choice between government default and hyper inflation will haunt us all.
2. In response to a great, violent threat, President Obama will appear on television and make a heroic speech about security, the American way of life, and preserving our liberty. Despite its design, the speech will not salvage his popularity.
3. Ron Paul will be accused of racism, nazi-ism, and/or homophobia. As Ron Paul popularity grows, and as his long record of accurate predictions becomes increasingly verified by the economic crisis, his message of liberty becomes increasingly threatening to the status quo. Look for slander, followed by more extreme tactics.
4. Governments hate a free press. Look for internet regulation in the U.S. and western Europe. Secret blogging and anonymity services will become increasingly valuable. More scandals will emerge, some directly threatening, incriminating the White House. The Democratic party will attempt to salvage itself by abandoning Obama.
5. Socialist explanations for the economic crisis, which blame greed and private enterprise, will get great exposure on television and in print as government looks for reasons to increase power and taxation to cover its many irresponsible programs. The socialist explanations will gain some support, but the liberty message and the culpability of government will not go away.
6. Faced with plummeting popularity, even in Donetsk, Ukraine’s ruling party, the Party of Regions, will have to chose between failure and tyranny. They will attempt to chose tyranny.
***
Peter Schiff:
* Higher commodity prices will begin to hit consumer.
* Mortgage rates will continue to rise.
***
Gerald Celente:
1. economic crisis wake up call
2. economic unions will splinter
3. government will intensify efforts to take wealth from the people
4. crime waves
5. crackdown on liberty (in the name of fighting crime)
***