Original Articles – Page 11 – Monica Perez Show

"Not One Conservative Agrees with Ron Paul"

January 6, 2012 by Monica

Sometimes talk radio makes me crazy! It didn’t always, though. As a matter of fact, I used to find great comfort in listening to my favorite hosts when I lived in Southern California. During those years, there were several hosts I relied on to keep me sane, one in particular I dubbed “the Voice of Reason.” These hosts’ rational arguments against the false hope of entitlements and the impossibility of a centrally-controlled economy provided me a constant palliative to all the liberal rhetoric to which I was daily exposed in LA. I sloughed off the growing social agenda these hosts seemed to be pushing and also decided to give the benefit of the doubt to Bush & Co. on invading Iraq–who was I to presume to understand the complexities of geopolitics? Eventually, however, I stopped listening to talk radio, in part because I couldn’t get worked up about cultural issues (and I am opposed to legislating morality), but more because I finally started to notice that we were making the situation in the Middle East worse not better and all of a sudden there was an agenda there beyond preventing another terrorist attack on American soil. At this point, I didn’t know if the talk show hosts were lying or stupid or blind or what, but I couldn’t listen to them anymore. Once the scales had fallen from my eyes and I saw that the right had become a fake-out for a different kind of Statism, there was no going back.
Since beginning to do talk radio myself, however, I have had to listen to other hosts to get a bead on things like rhythm, timing, and what they call in the business “formatics.” So I tuned in to my former favorite, “the Voice of Reason.” Big mistake. He was talking about Ron Paul, and as so often is the case these days with right-wing talk show hosts talking about the good doctor, the gloves were off. To me, the New Right’s vehemence in opposing Paul betrays their desperation, and their universal preference for Rick Santorum over Ron Paul betrays their true priorities: they are OK with big government and limitless debt if they get to legislate morality and continue to battle for control over the Middle East. In my mind, the New Right have revealed themselves as just as disrespectful of the Constitution and the liberty and justice they pretend to defend as the left whom they are pretending to defend us against—and what’s worse, they actually take the place of, and in Ron Paul’s case, denounce, real liberty-loving fiscal conservatives who are trying to fight the good fight.
Listening to the radio today only drove me further from being influenced by the lockstep hosts of prime time. After taking a call on Ron Paul (which I have noticed this host does just to give himself an opportunity to make his anti-Paul case), the Former Voice of Reason said, “I bounce things off people all the time and if I bounced a view off of everyone I knew and they all disagreed with me I would doubt myself. For all those people who like Ron Paul, how do you respond to this: Not one conservative figure agrees with Ron Paul. Are they all fools? Charles Krauthammer is a fool. Ann Coulter is a fool. George Will is a fool. Only Ron Paul sees the light! He’s a prophet! He can prophesy!”
This is when I started to lose it. The Former Voice of Reason gets to say all this and I can’t answer him back! I could refute every sentence, every phrase, yet the host rants on unchecked! I was actually tempted to call in—but what for? They always cut off Ron Paul defenders when they start making sense. So for all of those who are frustrated as I am by the latest media bias and have heard these same specious arguments before, here is my rebuttal to the Former Voice of Reason….
First, this particular host is quite self-assured in his intellectual superiority and I highly doubt he goes around taking surveys to help him form his views. He did say he would talk to his friends, which might be true, but that’s not what he suggested for us–he suggested we take a survey not of OUR friends but of HIS friends! In truth, he’s suggesting the sheeple do what he claims he would never do: go along with the crowd rather than think independently and stand on principle. By suggesting that listeners take a survey of what media bobble-heads are saying rather than think for themselves, he shows that he views his listeners and their associates as beneath himself and his. Isn’t the fact that 26,000 out of 130,000 Republican Iowans voted for Ron Paul and “not one conservative figure agrees with [him]” more evidence that it’s the host’s posse of self-selected “conservatives” who are not questioning their own views?
Second, I would dispute the premise that not one conservative figure agrees with Ron Paul (unless by “conservative” he simply means “neo-conservative”). Stuart Varney, Andrew Napolitano and John Stossel all have shows on Fox—they are libertarians, fiscally conservative and in favor of small government. If there are only two choices—conservative and liberal—these guys are conservative. The fact is, I’m sure the Former Voice of Reason would like to close the circle and get these guys off the air, which is precisely why everyone on the air ends up agreeing with each other—they are all in it together to keep their jobs and push their agendas without dissenting voices that might stimulate independent thought. Both arms of the liberal-fascist media have one nearly universal criterion for inclusion: staunch support for the establishment. Either wannabe bobble-heads know conformity is the price of admission to the media club and they gladly pay it, or they are actually smoking the kool-aid and believe in it. Any way you slice it, though, left or right, opportunistic or sincere, the mainstream media are a self-selected group of dedicated Statists.
Third, depicting Ron Paul as a prophet implies he has some kind of cult of personality working. Anyone who has ever seen or heard Ron Paul knows this notion is laughable. A cult of personality requires first, personality, and second, ego. Ron Paul’s personality is practically undetectable and he appears to be pathologically egoless. People don’t follow Ron Paul on blind faith with reverent awe for a soothsayer, they follow him because he makes sense and is offering up facts and conclusions he obviously holds to be true. He never uses arguments like “follow the crowd” and “everyone agrees with me” as the Former Voice of Reason apparently now favors. He explains his theory and why history, morality and human nature support it and how he applies the theory to the facts at hand. At that point, Dr. Paul’s message is in the listener’s own hands—or should I say, in the listener’s own mind. Following Paul depends on the listener evaluating the theory and the facts, observing the world around him, and yes, maybe bouncing ideas off friends, and then drawing his own conclusions. Paul’s view is not a prophecy, and he’s not a cult-leader. With Ron Paul it’s all about reason, principle and respect for individuals, both under the law–in protecting civil liberties–and personally–in his belief that individuals can and must handle their responsibilities as free people, including seeking and finding the truth.
Perhaps the problem is that the Former Voice of Reason is creating a tautology—defining the term “conservative” in such a way that one must per force disagree with Dr. Paul’s views on foreign policy or not qualify as a conservative. Is this fair? What is a conservative after all? I think Barry Goldwater, “Mr. Conservative,” who galvanized the conservative movement in the Sixties with his book The Conscience of a Conservative, would say that a conservative wants to limit the government to its constitutional functions, keep government a negative institution (it stops people from having their rights infringed upon and nothing more), and have government exercise restraint in both domestic spending and foreign entanglements. I think Senator Goldwater would agree with Congressman Paul across the board. Here are some Goldwater quotes that I think support this conclusion:

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
You don’t need to be straight to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.

Unfortunately, however, the concept of conservative has been redefined to mean neo-conservative, a term which refers to a movement that began to thrive when the Republicans won the evangelical vote during the Reagan era and continued to gain dominance with the Republican Party adopting a foreign-interventionist view in order to promote the New World Order under Bush pére. The Former Voice of Reason is only right that “not one conservative agrees with Ron Paul” if we redefine conservative to mean someone who believes in pre-emptive war and legislating morality and who is willing to compromise on fiscal conservatism (i.e., talking about cutting entitlements while spending money to police people’s bedrooms and bloodstreams, not to mention policing the world, is not fiscal conservatism, it is not small government, and it always means compromise with the other side for more spending all around.)
But semantics and pressure to conform won’t stop Ron Paul or his supporters. Libertarians will keep popping up every time the corruption of the State demands that the People turn from their jobs and families and step in to try to beat back a government they had foolishly credited for a period of peace and prosperity. The term “Classical Liberal” referred to the first wave of modern libertarians beginning in the 19th century, but over time, the left co-opted the word “liberal;” then Goldwater launched the “conservative” revival but the neocons have apparently hijacked that word in the same way; so now, those who want to restrain government are called Libertarians—a term which the liberal-fascist center is already trying to misrepresent by equating it with the Tea Party movement (with whom Libertarians differ on important issues including the Drug War and the War on Terror). But there will always be defenders of liberty who champion the individual over the State, and Statists in disguise will always try to steal their identity, because these people of principle earn and re-earn a reputation for integrity and justice that when co-opted is politically invaluable. But this uncompromising “remnant” will always be there with the same rich, consistent, principled ideology of individual rights, no matter what name you give–or deny–them.

Our Enemy the State

January 2, 2012 by Monica

I recently found Our Enemy the State, by Albert Jay Nock, under a chair in my kids’ playroom–I must have bought it long ago and misplaced it. I flipped the book open to a chapter: “Politics and Other Fetiches,” and despite the unpromising chapter heading I was immediately riveted. Although written in 1935, Our Enemy … Read more

What Ron Paul Thinks of America–Rebuttal

December 26, 2011 by Monica

Here is a letter I sent to the editor of the Wall Street Journal regarding an article published on December 22. (I imagine they get millions of letters after they slam Ron Paul, so I doubt it’ll get published there, but hey, this is what the Internet is for!)
Dear Sir:
In her opinion piece, “What Ron Paul Thinks of America,” Dorothy Rabinowitz implies that Ron Paul, like Barack Obama, hates America. This could not be further from the truth. Dr. Paul loves America, but it’s an America that makes people so proud and patriotic that they take certain basic principles for granted, blinding them to the realities of the New American Way. Ms Rabinowitz also suggests that Dr. Paul disregards the suffering of the victims of 9/11. This too is untrue. Dr. Paul actually wants to prevent such suffering in the future by objectively evaluating what it is in our power to control. While, as Ms Rabinowitz points out, President Obama traverses half the globe making speeches apologizing for Bush’s America, the President’s actions reflect and even magnify his predecessor’s foreign policy–a policy that on the campaign trail he claimed to abhor and then was elected to reverse. In contrast, Dr. Paul has a deep respect for America and would not renege on his promise to return her to her principles.
The voters want the War on Terror to end if only because it’s not working: Radical Islam continues to fill the voids we leave in our wake and there’s no end in sight to our destabilizing policies. We The People are being forced to look more critically at our government’s actions. Unfortunately, it’s hard for us to get the facts and think for ourselves with both wings of the mainstream-media spouting the same propaganda in support of endless war. At least Dr. Paul prompts us to look past the jingoism and think a few things through.
Sincerely,
Monica Perez
I just read a great article in the Foreign Policy Journal also rebutting this WSJ article.

Also, Hornberger’s Blog at The Future of Freedom Foundation goes into great depth in his rebuttal of Rabinowitz’s piece.

"Merry Christmas, Sheriff!" Homeland Security Treats Texas Town to a Brand New Surveillance Drone!

December 14, 2011 by Monica

“What? You Don’t LOVE It?!”

I read in today’s Wall Street Journal that Homeland Security bought Montgomery County, Texas, a $300,000 surveillance drone. Not only does this smack of both the surveillance state and crony capitalism–the US government is promoting drone sales abroad as well–but it’s an abuse of taxpayers’ money to use federal funds to pad the policing power of municipalities. Federal funding of municipal responsibilities eliminates even the indirect possibility of connecting the costs and (alleged) benefits of government spending. (In this case in particular, the benefits themselves are clearly mixed. The title of the article tells the story: The Law’s New Eye in the Sky: Police Departments’ Use of Drones Is Raising Concerns Over Privacy and Safety.)
The Articles of Confederation and Thomas Jefferson’s own philosophy both forbade forced taxation at the federal level. American citizens were meant to have control of their government and that meant keeping taxing and spending decisions close to home. It is the disconnection of spending decisions from even the implied consent of the taxed that allows government to get out of control. Faced with the direct connection between spending and taxation, a citizenry will push back when an expense is clearly not worth the money, or worse is actually potentially harmful to the people–local governments reject such initiatives all the time. However, as taxes go underground and spending decisions become more remote, it’s harder for taxpayers to identify when enough is enough, much less to stop the madness.
The government, of course, does all it can to forestall tax resistance. Providing the mechanism to obfuscate excessive taxation and circumvent tax resistance is what makes the Federal Reserve such an insidious tool of big banksters and crony capitalists. The Fed, which is and always has been a private corporation owned by large banks, makes an agreement with the Treasury: abdicate to us your right to control the money supply, and in turn we will print money to buy the bonds that finance your profligate spending and allow you to shift the tax burden onto a future constituency.
The withholding method of taxation is similarly devious. By forcing one’s employer to make it a condition of employment that he pays your tax bill before he pays your wages, the government has eliminated its traditional stooge, the tax collector, and the natural resistance he engenders. Co-opting employers masks the use of force inherent in all taxation and emasculates a powerful tool of taxpayer resistance, the tax revolt.
In the case of Montgomery’s drone, not only is the tax side of the equation manipulated by using federal funds for a purely local purpose, but also the spending side is manipulated by masquerading cronyism and intrusiveness as a public good, i.e., defense. Nothing will push the tax resistance threshold higher than fear of physical danger. . . .Enter the Drug War and the War on Terror.
In these cases the government creates an ever-increasing demand for its own services because it is both the antagonist and the hero. The more the government spends battling reactionary and amorphous opponents such as drugs and terror, the greater the dangers become, and there can never be a definitive victory because there is no definitive enemy. The Drug War is surging in Mexico and Guatemala and at the same time heroin production in Afghanistan is going through the roof thanks to both the Great American Drug War and the Glorious War on Terror. In its own right, the War on Terror has eliminated the two most powerful opponents of radical Islam in the Middle East, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. (I am not defending these two murderers, just making a point.) The government gets bigger, the cronies get paid, the people acquiesce to higher and higher spending, and it can go on forever.
Well, almost forever.
The obvious underlying horror of Montgomery’s drone is not that you and I paid for it, it’s that Homeland Security didn’t donate the drone in an altruistic effort to help local law enforcement investigate accidents and keep good citizens safe. There are myriad self-serving reasons that Homeland Security would want down-home drones like this one. Among these reasons, I fear, is to monitor those same good citizens for signs they’ve had enough of spendthrift and overreaching government and might finally be mounting a resistance. When that day comes, the citizens of Montgomery County might wish they had left this particular present under the tree.

Feds Seize 150 Websites for Selling Counterfeit Merchandise–Kind Of

November 29, 2011 by Monica

I saw this article titled “Feds seize 150 websites in counterfeit crackdown” and thought to myself, could the Feds actually be acting within the confines of normal law enforcement? After reading last week about a fisherman who was robbed by the Feds of the largest tuna ever caught, I was in the mood to have my faith in government restored. (As if!) So I was willing to overlook two of my own peeves in the case at hand, specifically: I don’t want the Feds anywhere near the Internet, and as an anarcho-capitalist I don’t actually believe in using government to enforce copyrights, patents and trademarks (more on that below). But busting counterfeiters is at least an example of government action NOT in the service of gratuitous revenue generation or the ubiquitous Drug War, so I was encouraged and read on. I was at once amused to read that even the federal agent being interviewed for the article found it noteworthy that the Feds were cracking down on real crime. The article actually quotes ICE Director John Morton as saying, “This is straight crime. This is people being duped into buying a counterfeit.”

This quote demonstrates to me that Mr. Morton knows full well that most of what he does has nothing to do with “straight crime” (mala in se crime, or crime that is bad in itself), but rather he is almost always enforcing prohibitions (mala prohibita crime)–drugs, guns, prostitution–and fighting the inevitable violence that arises in black markets that perforce operate outside the law. The way I see it, mala prohibita crimes are crimes created by the government because authorities not only refuse to enforce otherwise valid contracts but actually attack people for making voluntary arms-length transactions. It drives me near to madness to think my tax dollars go to creating and then enforcing immoral laws that result in so much death and destruction. (I have actually thought that if there’s a Judgment Day the greatest sin I will have to answer for will be having paid taxes that were used to finance theft, murder and injustice.)

Director Morton’s quote genuinely delighted me, though, for another reason: he was claiming to fight counterfeiting as the fraud of selling knock-offs under false pretenses and not for trademark infringement. As I mentioned, anarcho-capitalists such as I don’t believe the government can tell people what to do with their private property even if what they do with it is copy an idea someone else came up with and then put out in the world for all to see. It’s rather a nuanced argument and it was my last reservation about anarcho-capitalism, however, through the persuasive arguments of Stephan Kinsella, I am now totally convinced of the correctness of this position. (Concidentally, patents et al are powerful tools of crony capitalists.)

I should have stopped reading this article right there, though, ’cause wouldn’t ya know it? Director Morton was so uncomfortable with the idea of fighting “straight crime,” that he felt he had to further justify his actions. He went on to say, “Typically we don’t track the volumes of sales of these particular sites. . . . We are worried about organized crime and [that profits] are going to fuel other criminal activity.” So it IS about the Drug War after all! Or he hopes it is. In any case, it most certainly is NOT about protecting taxpayers from fraud–that would be too paltry a goal for the mighty federal government!

Maybe I shouldn’t get bent out of shape about something as apparently minor as this, but earlier today I read about a former marine, Jose Guerena Ortiz, who was suspected of selling pot. A SWAT team snuck up to his house and he, awakened by his fearful wife, grabbed his gun and the cops mowed him down in his living room in front of his four-year old. This counterfeiting article made me hope that law enforcement was doing something OTHER than trying to figure out the next guy who might be selling something they don’t like and killing him. But I guess that’s what it was all about anyway. I should’ve known.

Read the article here: Feds seize 150 websites in counterfeit crackdown

CDC: More People Die in the US from Prescription Painkillers than from Cocaine & Heroin Combined

November 9, 2011 by Monica

How much are we spending on the Drug War? How about the FDA? According to the Drug War Clock at drugsense.org, the Drug War cost the US $15 billion so far this year. In addition, President Obama’s budget request for the FDA topped $4 billion. Unfortunately, these programs not only cost an insane amount of money and keep the government all up in our shorts, they apparently do more harm than good. I have long noticed that government-controlled drugs seem to be killing people. Heroin felled quite a few stars back in the day: Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Sid Vicious and John Belushi to name a few. Celebrities of today, however, die from drugs that are highly regulated and controlled: Anna Nicole Smith, Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger and Brittany Murphy all died from prescription drugs.
It seems that the more we spend to have the government protect us from ourselves, the more we suffer at its hands. It could be gross incompetence, or it could be that government and its controllers are self-protecting entities who are not going to make us safe if our fear is the source of their power. The current mentality of citizens who fear an end to the Drug War or who cannot envision free market regulation of drugs reminds me of what I have heard about the behavior of the abused child. The abused child clings to his parent thinking, “If this is how someone who loves me treats me, how would someone who doesn’t love me treat me?!” It’s time to realize things will NOT be worse without government control of everything from the food we eat to the thoughts we think. Unfortunately, this study will probably be used to justify more government control, not less.
Here are a few highlights of the CDC study from the Sydney Morning Herald (sometimes you have to go out of the country just to get away from the spin!)

Income inequality is increasing. So what’s the big deal?

October 28, 2011 by Monica

In a truly free society there would be no way for anyone to amass great wealth or earn high levels of income without offering a product or service commensurately valuable to the individuals in society—the nature of voluntary exchange guarantees that. But do we have a truly free society? People are upset about a CBO report showing an increase in income inequality between the highest earning 1% and lesser paid earners (see chart below). But why exactly? I don’t think people are upset because they think it’s unfair for someone like Steve Jobs to get rich selling us what we want, but because they don’t think most of the rich are really adding the value their earnings imply. They know instinctively that the system is rigged and I’m beginning to think their instincts are right.

When I first got out of college I had a friend Steve from South America who said to me, “Don’t you think that anyone who’s really rich has done unethical things to get his money?” I was horrified. I felt it was a poor reflection on Steve’s character that he couldn’t see any possible connection between being good and doing well. Only a few years ago I recalled the statement to my husband who replied, “What is he talking about? Happens all the time. There are plenty of good, rich guys in this country.” That was the key: “In this country.”
But now I am beginning to see signs in America of what Steve saw in his country. I now believe that if you want to make it BIG, you have to be connected, make a campaign contribution, drop a stock tip—whatever it takes—even if you would rather reach the top on the up and up. This is what has been aptly coined “crapitalism”—crony capitalism—and it’s the rat that everyone is beginning to smell.
The Occupy Wall Streeters smell it but don’t know where it’s hiding, so they believe the people they trust, who happen to be the Unions and the Big Government—nay, World Government—guys who tell them it’s the bankers, although the rich in general are the target. (See my blogpost of October 4 with hidden audio of SEIU’s Steve Lerner planning OWS back in March).
But amassing riches is not de facto immoral—voluntary exchange is a moral exercise that benefits both parties. It’s only when riches are amassed unfairly that it’s a problem. But how can you get rich unfairly? Only by using force or fraud. And who is using force or fraud? Are the Citibank guys taking their security guards to GM and forcing or tricking them into taking loans? Are GM goons coming to your house and forcing or tricking you into buying a car? No, they aren’t doing it that way, which is why they are not in jail. What they ARE doing is using the government to do those things through laws, regulations, bailouts, and of course through the ubiquitous and secretive Federal Reserve. And why do those in government voluntarily engage in these practices and often initiate them? Because they can. Government has the power to force some economic actors, particularly tax payers and small businessmen, to do things for the benefit of themselves and their cronies, so that’s what they do.
Both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party know something’s rotten, and probably know it’s crony capitalism—even Michael Moore’s movie “Capitalism” was about government bailouts not truly free markets. But which of the two protest groups really gets it? To me, Occupy Wall Street is further from the truth. They are on Wall Street when they should be on Liberty Street outside the Fed. The Tea Party is getting warmer—they go to Washington—but they don’t totally get it either. From what I could tell when I marched alongside the Tea Party against Obamacare, they continue to support the Drug War and the War on Terror, probably because of fears of social instability and personal insecurity, which in turn keeps them beholden to the government they know is destroying the very society they are clinging to.
Unfortunately, fostering base fears has been a tactic of the state for centuries if not millennia. If the masses on the left continue to let their leaders prey on their fear of financial insecurity, and the masses on the right continue to let their leaders prey on their fear of personal insecurity, we will continue to have tyranny and instability—along with crony capitalism and invidious income inequality.

Mommy, do you love America?

October 14, 2011 by Monica

When my seven-year-old daughter asked me this question last night, I was gutted. Do I, the daughter of a Harley-riding, ultra-conservative, flag-flying World War II veteran, love America? I, who lives the American Dream? Granddaughter of orphan and immigrants; waitress and community college student-turned-Harvard and Stanford grad, do I love America? I have always been a patriot! I welled up with tears when I first heard that the most highly decorated regiment in the history of the United States armed forces was the 442nd Infantry Regiment in World War II–an all Japanese regiment, many of whose soldiers had family in internment camps. (I’m getting goose bumps right now!) I could weep with gratitude and respect for the many, many fine soldiers who died for America and what she stands for.
Or perhaps I should say, what she stood for. I’m afraid my patriotism has crossed the Rubicon.

Until a few years ago, I was of the mindset that no matter how far America had fallen, she was still the best country that ever existed. I never gave up hope that her foundations would withstand the vicissitudes of special interest politics and the pendulum would swing back to her birthright: defense of liberty and respect for private property. Unfortunately, I have come to believe that America will not swing back. It seems inevitable that rather than returning to a free and prosperous America within the system that made her great, America will fall and have to be rebuilt on a new foundation.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want the system to collapse! As the youngest of nine growing up in a small house, I dreamt of having a big enough share of the bed and a dry towel to use. I have these things now and they are better than I imagined! I’m as happy as a clam to be living at the pinnacle of 10,000 years of civilization’s progress, better off than almost every single one of the 125 billion people who have come before me (as is everyone reading this). But the fact is, I think Ron Paul is right about the future of America. During a recent interview on LewRockwell.com, Dr. Paul said he didn’t think our politicians would do the things that needed to be done to save the system, and particularly that the currency would have an irremediable crisis. He said that his goal is to make sure people are ready with the right ideas to try to rebuild this once-great country instead of being swept along in the wrong direction. (Recall Rahm Emanuel: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” The globalists are lying in wait.)

The question remains, however: Do I love America? For the first time ever, I have to think seriously about this question. I think blind patriotism is dangerous, and that good feeling you get when you salute the flag and feel proud to be an American is exactly what lets our government get away with murder. But what about the American Experiment? It does make us different from any other nation, doesn’t it? I think so. The idea that a government was dedicated to liberty and justice for all instead of privilege for some was unique and it spawned many of the greatest achievements of mankind. Unfortunately, the experiment was destined to fail and it has. (See my review of Democracy: The God That Failed.)

In puzzling over the answer to my daughter´s question, I realize that I have come to recognize a more sophisticated understanding of nationhood. The idea that America as a nation ís the same as America as a country is the essence of the American Experiment. ´We the People´ were the government for once, in contrast with the traditional tension between citizenry and government personified in the hated tax-collector. America´s democratic republic was supposed to bring government under the control of the people and by so doing allow us to identify with government as protector of liberty and of individual rights. The reality is, however, to quote the great Ludwig von Mises, ¨Government is the negation of liberty,¨ and the failure of the American Experiment proves this once and for all. Through the evolution of my political philosophy and in recognizing the error that is government, Í acknowledge that a society´s identity is independent from the identity of its over-arching coercive state. I now see that America and its people are not only separate from the government, but that we are in conflict with that government.

So, yes, in short, I do love America. I love the libertarians and the drop-outs and the billionaires, I love the Ron Pauls and the Steve Jobs, I love the truckers and the waitresses and the day-traders and the bloggers, I love the pot-head comedians and the crazy New York City cabdrivers, and I love the seven-year-old girls who actually want to know the difference between a libertarian and an anarcho-capitalist (well she is my daughter!) Yes I do love America, but no longer for its flag or its rhetoric, but for the fact that if society is ever to triumph over government it will be here, where Americans still know that America is ¨We the People¨ and not ¨It the State.¨

The Plot Thickens: Could Soros Be the Real Mastermind of Occupy Wall Street?

October 7, 2011 by Monica

It defies credulity to think anyone actually believes the following virtually universal mainstream account of the Occupy Wall Street story:
“The Occupy Wall Street protest movement may have finally caught the attention of the hedge fund world, and to a larger extent, the financial world.
What began on September 17 as a couple hundred protesters gathering on New York City’s Wall Street – to demonstrate against what they see is corporate greed, the U.S. government facilitating that greed and a host of other issues – has grown in less than three weeks into a grassroots phenomenon gaining adherents across the globe.
That support has included legendary hedge fund manager George Soros, a longtime patron of progressive causes but also one of the Wall Street billionaires who are part of a system that Occupy Wall Street is targeting.”
This appeared on hedgefund.net under the title “Occupy Wall Street Catching Hedge Fund Industry’s Eye.” Are we really expected to believe this? “May have finally caught the attention of the hedge fund world”? How about this instead, “George Soros, behind-the-scenes Sugar Daddy of Occupy Wall Street, feigns spontaneous empathy with unwitting puppet protestors”? And does this guy seriously believe that Occupy Wall Street “has grown in less than three weeks into a grassroots phenomenon gaining adherents across the globe”? Maybe it’s closer to: “First leaked in March as a scheme organized by Steve Lerner of SEIU, it has taken seven months for the Soros machine to roll out this class warfare reelection campaign tactic designed to give plausibility to Obama’s actual or orchestrated win next November.” I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes here, but that something is going on behind the scenes I’m sure and I’m also sure that I won’t get any closer to the truth reading the mainstream media.
The truth is, I’m dying to know the truth and I think the truth is out there, but what is it? Although hearing Steve Lerner order a dome full of AstroTurf on hidden audio in March convinced me that Occupy Wall Street was totally staged (see my post of October 4), I’m not sure of the bigger plan. I had been wondering how protestors outside a few downtown buildings anywhere could really disrupt the weighty and complex but at the same time lighter than air, largely electronic, financial system. It’s not like the protestors are lying down in front of ambulances until the patients die of blood loss. How could world markets really care what these kids are doing? I realized of course, it’s politics–it doesn’t have to be real to have real power. I am beginning to suspect that Occupy Wall Street is an obvious (to all but its participants) but stupefyingly effective re-election campaign that has power because the advertizing agency that is the mainstream media and the so-called elder statesmen of the power elite (Soros in Occupy Wall Street and Buffet in the tax-the-upper-middle-class Buffet Rule) go out of their way to make this stuff seem real and important. Now I’m thinking, like so much in this Coke-vs-Pepsi oligopoly we call a two-party system, this movement is a total scam, a Truman Show and we are all Trumans.
But what is the big picture here? As a conspiranoid, I posit the following: It started four years ago (or a hundred depending on how big a picture you’re after.) In order to bring to America European-style Social Democracy and a continuation of bankster-elite world dominance, the government must control more than 50% of the economy–that way more than half the voters’ interests are vested in expanding government revenue and power and no one who wants to cut it back can ever win an election. The last piece of this puzzle in the U.S. is to socialize all or most of the healthcare system. The Clintons tried once but weren’t willing to sacrifice a second term in office to force it down our throats–they had already proved that–so they had to go. Enter Obama, out of nowhere. He would do what he was told because, unlike the Clintons, he had no independent power base on which to mount resistance against his backers if things got tough. So if Obama was asked to fall on his sword and risk not getting a second term just to get the healthcare bill passed, he would have been assured not only that this would be a worthy sacrifice, but also, that these guys had plenty of tricks up their sleeves to get him legitimately reelected or at least to make an ACORN-type victory plausible. The first two of these tricks could easily be Occupy Wall Street and the Buffet Rule. These are tactics. The strategy, of course is to manufacture class warfare and the appearance that Obama is hitting a nerve with the unnumbered masses. What I bet those middle class kids on Wall Street don’t realize, though, is that for a real class war to work, the middle class has to be eliminated, which may be the ultimate goal in all of this anyway (if you’re with me on the bankster-elite world domination stuff).
Despite what to me are the transparency and obviousness of these tactics, they are likely to be successful next November, especially if Obama’s opposition in the election is a two-faced compromiser as appears inevitable no matter which frontrunner wins the Republican nomination.

Keep your mitts off my food!!!

October 4, 2011 by Monica

When Bloomberg implemented rules in New York that food chains such as Starbucks had to list the calories of their food on the menu, I was, of course, disgusted if only for the fact that the megalomaniac mayor has no right to dictate to private businesses that they engage in self-defeating advertising. (Shouldn’t they be able to plead the Fifth like the Solyndra execs?) Why doesn’t Bloomberg have the Yankees post warnings underneath player stats listing all the drugs a specific player has done or how many prostitutes he has gone with, just so parents know whom their kids should and should not emulate? When what I call the Starbucks Law was first implemented, I figured Bloomberg was acting in a typically monarchical fashion and perhaps was on a diet and didn’t want to bother googling calories, but a more sinister thought occurred to me.

Some background first: The Progressive Movement, I have read, was spearheaded by big businessmen whose profits were naturally being eroded by maturing industries’ declining margins. These businessmen correctly recognized that regulations (accounting, tax, legal, environmental, health and safety, etc.) create a need for such massive bureaucracies that huge barriers of entry emerge against upstart companies favoring the existing and larger companies who are able to meet these regulatory rules. Once the barriers exist, the big businesses can increase their margins despite increased costs because it will take that much more per unit sold for the upstart to compete with the established industry. These big businesses already have lobbying apparatuses in place, contribute to campaigns, have political relationships, and have a great-sounding story of protecting the “hapless consumer”–all tools they can use to close the door to new entrants in their otherwise competitive industries. You can see the success of these so-called Progressives’ efforts as many mature industries in America are marked by oligopolies despite the fact that the oligopolistic firms are much larger than mere industrial economies of scale would dictate. This business-government relationship is, of course, the foundation of the crony capitalism that plagues our country and destroys the credibility of the free market.

All that being said, I noticed that one large industry in the country is not totally dominated by oligopolies and still has room for the scrappy entrepreneur: the restaurant business. I had been wondering how the existing chains and the government could crack the code on this one and I concluded Bloomberg’s Starbucks Law would work perfectly. For now, it’s only the big chains that are required to mark their calories on their menus under the argument that the small guy can’t afford the compliance costs. Sounds great. Eventually, however, this will change….screwing the little guy will be viewed as a small price to pay for Saving the Children. As Michelle Obama ramped up her childhood obesity campaign, I realized the Starbucks Law might well go viral. (See how much death and destruction has been and still is being wrought as a result of Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No campaign? These First Ladies are dan-ger-ous!!) As regulatory barriers such as menu disclaimers and strict nutritional guidelines proliferate and the field of competition shrinks, the result for the “hapless consumer” will be higher prices, lower quality and fewer choices. Thanks Big Sister.

But this is not the end of the story. Food regulations are on the agenda in a big way and I fear the cantaloupe-listeria deaths will bring us that much closer to more direct government control of the food supply. I first started keeping one ear open to the food control issue when Obama got elected and despite our myriad problems with the financial crisis and endless war, he started spouting off about food safety. I thought, what is this guy talking about? I do plenty of traveling and get sick fairly often when I’m out of the country but rarely here. Maybe because I’m used to our food and not theirs, but either way if Americans don’t get sick from American food, why mess with it? So I was watching and waiting to see how this foreshadowing developed into a full blown plot. I did not have to wait long. Last year, Congress came out with their plan to rewrite decades-old food safety laws. But how to justify all this attention on an issue that causes surprisingly little trouble in the face of so many issues that are causing a great deal of trouble? Wait for a crisis. So now I’m wondering if the cantaloupe deaths could be the 9/11-type catalyst for more government action on controlling food. I don’t think either 9/11 or the cantaloupe deaths are inside jobs, but I do believe that policy-makers lay-in-wait for events like this to implement their plans. As Rahm Emanuel said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”