isn't it lack of government oversight that got us into this mess in the first place???

Were the riots of the 60s a result of government failing to enforce Jim Crow laws? Rather than put law enforcement under a single umbrella, you need to understand the difference between a good law and a bad law. Before you even make the jump to regulation, ask yourself if the regulators are being regulated by the constitution? Nope. Sort that one out first, there's your problem. "Regulation" is an extremely general term used by politicians to great effect to blame others for problems and changes in market behavior that they create. We have a central bank in this country that price fixes interest rates since 1913. This is a socialist idea that was passed on the basis of its objective rather than its result. It turns out that letting a pseudo-government agency set interest rates results in an artificial lowering to delay politically inconvenient recessions. This artificial price fix results in the wrong kind of investment decisions and incentives, leading to phony bubbles that carry with them the seeds of their own destruction. I'll explain below.

In order for credit to exist, savings must exist. That's what credit is, someone else loaning their money out to someone at interest rather than spending it. Everyone wants a low rate of interest as a borrower. Everyone wants a high rate of interest as a saver. By definition, savings is underconsumption. Someone, somewhere, has to be saving rather than spending money in order for real credit to exist. These two forces are at odds with each other, to find the happiest medium between savings and production. That's completely perverted by a price fixing system where the government is dictating the interest rate for political purposes. Too easy dictation in the 90s caused the tech stock bubble, worthless tech stocks were trading at hundreds time earnings. When that "growth" came crashing down in 2000, Bush didn't want to have the recession occurring under his first term or he wouldn't get re-elected. So he and Greenspan lowered interest rates to 1% for a whole year to keep businesses borrowing and consumers consuming. The problem is, where is the savings coming from to allow both to happen at once? Overseas. We are the world's largest debtor nation now, borrowing from everyone to consume products that they make. They accumulate our paper money. We get their products. 70 billion a month trade deficit and still going. That's our economy the last twenty years. We abuse a reserve currency of the world status gained under the gold standard to export our now inflationary currency all over the world. That's coming to and end at some point. The Fed is increasing its balance sheet like there's no tomorrow, trying to replace the credit no longer being loaned to us with a printing press. It won't work. It didn't work in Weimar, it didn't work in Argentina, it didn't work in Zimbabwe, and it won't work here. The inflation is in the pipeline, it will hit during Obama's term. Obama and McCain are both socialists, the pork filled bailout bill they voted on ought to be evidence of that. Neither one understands that the recession needs to happen like the druggie needs withdrawal, and the more you try to stop the failures and painful reallocations with more drugs, the longer you're going to be in rehab.

So where did all that money from tech stocks filter into? With such low rates of interest and a removal of houses from the government's own inflation calculations, inflation shifted from tech stocks into real estate rather than being purged in a recession. So nobody but a few libertarian economists who learned a type of economics that isn't taught here could see the problem, one of them being Ron Paul's economic advisor Peter Schiff. In that mania, lending standards were abandoned to take advantage of the artificial demand created by the dictated low interest.

In other words, the market got drunk, but it was the FED THAT SPIKED THE PUNCHBOWL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfascZSTU4o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucDkoqwflF4

You can see the austrian view (Schiff) directly in conflict with the pro-government keynesian/monetarist view that is predominantly taught in this country (Laffer/Swonk). That's why none of the so-called "harvard educated, brilliant, phd holding" managers of a these banks and investment firms were not only oblivious to what was going to happen, but regularly confuse weaknesses for strengths. It's that ass-backwards, we teach the economic equivalent of astrology. Why? Because who has the most to gain from a sexy interventionist theory that says inflation is necessary to prevent hoarding and politicians spending its citizens' money for them can stimulate economic growth? Why, it's the benefactors of inflation!

I'll address Necrodancer later, I gotta go. He seems awfully confused on what socialism is and how socialist we are.

You say: Europe is choking to death from socialism.

No, they're deteriorating from it and on the path to serfdom. But as I said, they live within their means, and their lack of military spending and their lack of domestic oil reserves has resulted in better energy efficieny and policies, because they were spurred by high gas prices that we never had. You can HAVE a benevolent dictator that works to your advantage for a while, but the enablement of certain powers gaurantees inevitable costs that outweigh those benefits. You need to understand this, and why our forefathers bothered with a constitution limiting government from the get-go. They knew it, they lived it, they saw it happen, and as a result of this document, gold money, and unmitigated markets, we rose from nothing to the most powerful, affluent country in the world. Government was miniscule on the way up, it will be humongous on the way down.

It was 1913 the path to destruction began, the federal reserve and the income tax were passed in the same year. The Fed's inflation of the 20s caused the correction of 29, then turned into a long depression by Hoover and FDR's interventionist policies. The Smoot Hawley bill was a protectionist reaction resulting in retaliatory tariffs on American exports. Taxes then went from 20% to 63% under hoover, then 90% under FDR. Anyone with any money to hire people, sat on it. What revenue did come in from those taxrates, government used it to pay government workers to basically dig holes and fill them back up again. The policies always destroyed more wealth than they created, decreasing unemployment for the sake of it. You simply can't centrally direct the desires and wealth brought about by millions of diverse individuals freely transacting and trading with each other. They also ordered farmers to plow under fields and slaughter livestock to reduce the supply of food, because they believed falling prices would hurt the economy. This is also the same guy that confiscated people's gold (for which he should have been arrested), absolved the banks of having to pay people back despite their fraudulent lending, and allowed Pearl Harbor to be a massacre. It wasn't until he died and Europe was ransacked by a world war that we got out of it.

Europe is getting there. One thing you can always count on when you're putting your faith in benevolent dictators spending other people's money, is that it will invariably corrupt and cascade in on itself. Socialism has failed in every country that's tried it, including ours now. It fundamentally perverts the risk reward system of capitalism. Because if you're gauranteed the same share regardless of your contribution to the pool, why excel? Where's the incentive? If you're spending other people's money, why be thrifty? It's not like you're wasting something you worked hard for.

Fannie and Freddie were pseudo-government institutions in many democratic congressmen's campaign coffers, formed originally under the socialist ideal of making housing more affordable. Every one of their managers got golden parachutes. They accomplished exactly the opposite in the end, prices are now exorbitant, bid up by inflation equipped flippers, who left the banks with the mortgage after they realized that the appraisal price was phony and that legitimate buyers had been priced out of the market. Now the banks are stuck with the collateral, homes they loaned money out to buy at the appraisal price, well above what they can sell it back for. The market would have them decline in price, good for savers.

Or how about the Federal Reserve? Why self-regulate from a fear of bankruptcy when the government creates an arm to backstop it with inflation? If there's no risk of consequence, what is the disincentive to taking huge gambles with other people's money? Likewise, if you're a depositor, why not invest in the highly leveraged bank down the street offering a 5% yield by gambling on subprime? The government insures your deposit if they fail, so you have zero disincentive to give them your money with which to make those bets. If there was no FDIC, no one would be reckless enough to do it, thus that business model would have never existed.

If people don't start realizing how government policies change human behavior that create economic distortions and disruptions, we are gauranteed an inflationary depression.

I say: Check your facts again, Europe is excelling, and we're declining, and between the two, we're vastly closer to libertarian philosophy.

We are nowhere near being 90% capitalist. The majority of our GDP is controlled communally by the government, making us a socialist nation by definition. We are absolutely drowning in socialist failures and my list should have convinced you of that. Yet you sit here and tell me to vote for someone who just passed a trillion dollar bailout mortgaged on my children to reward someone else's bad behavior.

You say: Monopolies don't/can't exist.

I say: Google Enron and California.

Enron wasn't a self-sustaining one like government monopolies, it died a quick death, thank god (today, it would probably be bailed out by your money). It was a scam business enabled by ignorant employees and citizens who have been completely brainwashed into company directed 401k programs, as well as speculative, non-dividend paying investments. Enron never had to prove it was making money by paying a dividend because people allow themselves to be fooled by wall street valuations of stocks. If you're buying a stock without a dividend, you're purely speculating on the price going up or down. Just like the tech stocks of the 90s. People thought they were rich on paper, but when the stocks crashed, they had nothing. Because they didn't sell at those paper prices, they didn't complete the gamble by guessing the top like Mark Cuban did, who was one of the lucky ones. People illogically shirk responsibility on learning basic economics and stock principles and then flail helplessly for the government with which Enron was colluding to help them. It's idiotic. Rather than admit the mistake and educate others, they flip out emotionally, call on the government to recompensate their loss with their neighbor's money, and resign themselves to repeating the same mistake. It never would have been possible if they had taken twenty minutes to be skeptical and educate themselves.

Why don't you start listening to libertarian Ron Paul advisor Peter Schiff? The guy is brilliant in explaining this stuff, and predicted most of this mess years in advance while most economic types were dumb enough to confuse problems for strengths.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhJaVEWAG24
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfascZSTU4o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-a_r4qx4WE


When's the last time you saw a small, independent grocery store?

Yesterday. I go to several. The big chains won't carry most of the organic and specialty items that I want. And I purchase my grass fed meat directly in bulk from a local cattle farmer, stuff's amazing.

You say: Regulation of banks with pesky laws is impossible, so let's get rid of them so that people are forced to police the banks themselves.

I say: Why stop there? Why not get rid of property laws too, and let people engineer their own way of defending their property from thieves?

That would actually be a good start because banks would start fearing failure again. But I want fraudulent fractional reserves banned. You can't currently take them to court for it, because it's federally sanctioned. See, politicians are big spenders with a symbiotic relationship with the inflationary banks. They don't want honest money, they don't want a system where they are limited to direct taxation, because taxes are overt appropriations that elicit a lot more resistance. The average citizens can SEE how much exactly he's being taxed. Not so with inflation, it's very confusing and has a lag effect. The trillions that the Fed is adding to the balance sheet over the next year is going to result in hyperinflation, not immediately, but down the road.

Reading jwray's stuff makes me want to hurl.

Absolute capitalism without any welfare, inheritance/gift tax, or income tax would become practically indistinguishable from the worst sort of absolute monarchy as the vasy majority of the wealth is concentrated in a smaller and smaller percentage of the population.

Actually, socialist policies have done nothing but increase, and the problems you describe have gotten worse. Still waiting for that socialist idea that actually increases the wealth of the bottom. Prior to 1913 we never had an income tax. Special tax credits as a form of anti-competitive subsidy were thus impossible, and charity was at its highest in American history. Actually, the funniest part is just the idea that increases taxes on the rich helps in some way. All it does is incentivize those people to sit on their money, or move it into a tax haven, or leave the country altogether. Precisely what happened when Hoover raised marginal rates to 63% and FDR to 90% succeeding him. Would you go through the trouble of running a business if government is taking 90% of what you make if you make anything? Didn't think so.

Whoever owns all the means of living could dictate the terms of their use down to every detail such as what you're allowed to read in your apartment.

Epic fail. In a republic, a constitution prevents rights from being infringed, regardless of how much money one person has over the other. You can't even vote it away with a majority, that's the difference between a republic and a democracy. Who is responsible for electing politicians who follow it and punishing those who don't? You. You are the regulator for the regulators. 98% of the public didn't vote for Ron Paul, therefore 98% of the people don't believe the supreme law is important or should be followed. The end. You have no one but yourself to blame. You've chosen the benevolent dictator route, no law, no concept of barring certain powers under any circumstances. Good luck with that.

Ayn Rand fails to consider that if her pure capitalist system were followed absolutely, someone with enough money could have the same power over everyone as a fascist police state via owning all the media, owning all the land upon which the food is grown, etc.

In order to make that kind of money in a free market system that protects rights, the person to whom you're referring would essentially have to create every product and service with the utmost quality and awesomeness. Remember, with small government, he can't bribe a politician for forcibly appropriated money because the politician doesn't have it. He can't get an anti-competitive tax credit, because income taxes don't even exist for anyone, just like pre-1913. Fraud isn't an option because he would be taken to government courts and lose. False advertising either. Theft either. Rights are protected. What the hell does this person do to get wads and wads of money? Well... they essentially have to create a product or service that millions and millions of people will buy. Need workers for that. No problem, let's hire some workers for a penny a piece. What? They won't work for a penny because someone else is offering them a nickel? Shit, we'll offer them a quarter and still make money! WHAT YOU SAY, HE OUTBID ME ON THAT SKILLED LABOR AGAIN. CHRIST, THIS IS GOING TO TAKE FOREVER, MY PROFIT MARGINS ARE GETTING KILLED BY GODDAMN COMPETITORS TRYING TO DO WHAT I'M DOING AND BIDDING UP WAGES.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUFdj103G60

Anyway, Ayn Rand's brand of libertarianism is not the popular brand. You're dreadfully confused to be building up this kind of strawman in your fearmongering of capitalism. I think this Milton Friedman link ought to clear it up for you, as well as some other things, such as how dirty technology invariably contributes to its cleaner successor, and how government cannot possibly spend other people's money with as much thrift as people would spend their own. This stuff seems so obvious once you hear it, but you'd be amazed at how clueless most people are at these basic fundamental behaviors. They assume that because 100% capitalism doesn't work, that the optimal system must be 50% or even less capitalism. In reality, just a little bit of government force is necessary and it should require no more than 10% of a people's capital in order to exercise the functions of defending rights and offering courts. It was never intended to appropriate 50% of our money for undeclared wars like Vietnam and Iraq, or subsidize industries in exchange for campaign financing, or fund pet projects, or forcibly manage retirement and health care via unsustainable ponzi schemes.

Remember, outside of nominal appropriations (taxes), the government inflates with a non-market determined money that it is capable of duplicating at no labor or material cost. Even a poor family not paying any income tax and getting welfare payments is having their wages and purchasing power diminished by the inflation tax. This is the key. This is the root cause, it's how despite everything they are getting with the left hand, government is taking more from the right via inflation. This is how our economy came to be in shambles, how markets distorted, how wealth started to transfer from the bottom to the top, like every fiat economy before it. Because those who use the money the Fed is creating increase their bidding power with it while those who have no money can't get their themselves because their wages and savings are being perpetually debased by it. How do you accumulate so much money that you can live off interest on stock for a living when your cost of living continues to rise faster than your wages? Bingo, you've figured it out. Congrats. Inflation is how government finances most of its activities today and this is how our economy has been destroyed. We let go of the gold limit in 71, we had one decent Fed chairman that took away the punch bowl to wipe the slate for another bull run, and that was it, the inevitable collapse of our fiat money is assured from the current hole we've dug. We now abuse our reserve currency status of the world gained under gold to export our inflation worldwide, which is why the problems today are so global. 10 trillion national debt, 70 billion a month trade deficit, 60 trillion in unfunded liabilities, a negative savings rate, two income households barely making ends meet, and an economy that since the early 90s has depended on perpetual credit extensions from the savings of the world to consume imported products that those creditors make in exchange for paper interest that they can recycle back into us or lock in a vault. They get paper, we get products. Yay for them. Yeah, don't delink from the dollar, don't use those savings to invest in production, keep loaning it to us to consume products you can't afford because of it.

These, of course, are policies you support. Libertarians don't want government to have the ability to inflate, because it makes no sense. You can't give government instant access to every person's purchasing power and expect them not to mortgage it. That's precisely what fiat money enables. And chances are that some lawyer spending millions of dollars to get in a low-paying position of legislating and distributing other people's forcibly appropriated money isn't going to be a very honest or incorruptible individual. Not sure why you haven't figured this out yet or why you think this is more efficient or moral than an individual trying to convince you give him your money in exchange for a product or service you want and think might improve your life.

The threat of starvation is just as effective as the threat of violence.

Where are people most starving today and throughout history? Exactly in the types of places where people are least able to keep and spend their own money as they see fit. Did China have to build walls to keep people from going into Hong Kong, or did Hong Kong have to build walls to keep people from going into China?

I think the best proposal I've heard is to offer a gold and silver currency as an option to the current Fed paper money. This would allow people to choose which currency they'd prefer. I believe you could back every dollar with gold, but it would be worth significantly less than a dollar worth of gold would be worth twenty years ago. The problem is the circulation of money is too great, so worth of the dollar against gold is too little and will continue to drop as long as there's nothing backing it.

To put it into perspective, a nickel's worth in 1913 (before we lost our gold standard) would buy a dollar's worth today.

^ amen, sister.

according to many of my fellow libertarians, it hasn't since 1913.

though with varying degrees of militancy, we often refer to it as The Coup of 1913.

I have to disagree with you on a few points. The idea that lower income earners bear the greatest tax burden in the US is false. The top 50% of wage earners in this country pay more than 95% of income taxes collected. The top 1% is paying at least 10 times more than those below 50%. These numbers are coming straight from the IRS as of September of 2002.

The idea that tax cuts only benefit the rich is also false. Numbers from the Treasury Department have shown the effect cuts have had on low income earners from 2001 all the way to estimated values in 2011. They are substantial compared to the tax estimates when the cuts lapse. It most certainly does not push more people into a lower segment. Numbers from the tax foundation detailing income tax rates from 1913 all the way up to 2008 demonstrate that the idea of cuts only for the rich is a myth. Low income earners experienced substantial decreases. In fact, a family making less than 30K a year is saving more in taxes than a family making 100K a year.

As for the Clinton surplus, that is completely false. Just check the US Treasury. Cooking the books and claiming a surplus does not make it true. At the end of Clinton's last fiscal year in 2001, the deficit was $133.29 billion with a national debt of $5.8 trillion. However, there was a point when we came somewhat close to a balanced budget. Funny enough, it was Republicans that controlled congress at the time and pushed for the spending cuts that decreased our deficit. You just can't keep a low or non-existant deficit if you don't stick to decreased spending though.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html
http://www.treasury.gov/press/releases/reports/taxrelief_20012011_052708.pdf
http://www.letxa.com/articles/16
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

>> ^jwray:
Good luck getting enough money to build roads, put out fires, and catch murderers with only voluntary donations. Governments exist to moderate individual selfishness for the greatest good of the greatest number of people.


Sorry to interrupt your pointless argument with anarchists, but government does have a legitimate duty. A voluntary system works on paper for these things, the problem is that it can't last because other nations won't do the same. If you have ZERO taxation for national defense, you will be bowled over by a country that does. Charity can work for minor problems, but you can't privatize nuclear warheads and so forth. Libertarians like myself understand this and recognize that the government has legitimate duties for protecting the infringement of rights (police/fire/environment), non-preemptive national defense (some roads, military), and offering recourse for disputes (courts).

Most of the people on this site are soft socialists. Where socialists (called liberals or neo-cons today) go wrong, is the belief in policies going beyond this, particularly when it comes to the markets. Good intentions but terrible results because they're not fully understood by the people enacting them. A socialist might say allowing government to bail out bankruptcy is a good thing. A libertarian would say that by sparing true consequence and rewarding risky behavior, you get more of it: that the fear of bankruptcy is one of the pillars of an efficient economy. And the socialist will say: but look, we never bailed them out before and they still took insane risk, therefore we need regulation. And the libertarian will say: the market got drunk, yes, but it was BECAUSE of another socialist policy, thus you cannot justify further socialism based on problems other socialist policies create. Central banking is a socialist policy. If the market got drunk, it was The Federal Reserve that provided the liquor and egged them on. Because of their ability to set interest rates far lower than where the market wanted them, they sent a false signal to profit-driven markets that created enormous artificial demand for housing during what was supposed to be an interest-hiking recession/correction in 2000 when the last bubble they birthed collapsed, the NASDAQ bubble.

Thus, you can see how socialism builds on itself until eventual all-out collapse. Since no one understands economics, and no one wants the pain of a recession, they don't see how a socialist enablement (the central bank) under either party and not the free market was the actual root cause of the problem. So a politician gets on a pedestal and promises to make this impossible by abolishing the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and returning to a full gold standard (Paul), and loses, while a person who promises to bail everyone out with inflation and ease people's fears with even more Federal Reserve powers wins. People want the easy answer, and it will result in hyperinflationary collapse like every other fiat currency before it. It's inevitable, the powers you gave these benevolent dictators can't help but be abused.

Let's try another one: subsidies. I hear it all the time, "big bad corporations. It's the corporations. Their greed is the problem and we need to regulate it through government." And yet, these same people support subsidies. What is a subsidy? A subsidy is forced payment (tax) by government, which is then dished out by a politician who didn't earn it, to whichever company financed his/her campaign the most. Since it's a bidding contest, the largest companies always beat the smaller ones. The end result is that individuals and small businesses are effectively subsidizing larger ones, eroding the competitive pillar that makes free markets produce better and cheaper products. The idealist objective behind this is, of course, the academic argument that intellectuals in government can decide a product better than the market. In reality, politicians are just as greedy if not moreso than regular individuals, and when given the opportunity to make such a choice, it rarely gets made with any logic or thrift, because it wasn't their hard-earned money being spent. Why would you be thrifty with stolen money? It's true that the companies are doing some bribing here, but it's made possible by subsidies. You can't bribe a politician for a special privilege if that power is made illegal.

Let's try another one: Social Security. The flaws are endless in this one. It started at 2% of wages and has worked its way up to 12%. The retirement age has continually been increased so that more people are dying before they can get anything back. People from one generation were made to pay for existing recipients, creating a weird dependency gap reminiscent of ponzi schemes now that the trust fund annually raided. I'll just post a few videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh-NqdmEDq4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS2fI2p9iVs

Enough said. And again, Ron Paul in one of the debates said that the problem gets worse as time goes on, and it should be phased out immediately in favor of private savings not controlled by government. But no, that would be the "radical" thing to do, say the socialists. Meanwhile, they commit their grandchildren to possibly 30% of wages and a recipient age of 80 as a way of keeping it "solvent."

Nice pick, T-man. This should be on the Sift.


Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 short animated film by Winsor McCay that inspired many generations of animators to bring their cartoons to life. Although not the first animated film, as is sometimes thought, it was the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality. The appearance of a true character distinguished it from earlier animated "trick films", such as those of Blackton and Cohl, and makes it the predecessor to later popular cartoons such as those by Walt Disney. The film was also the first to be created using keyframe animation.

The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, and was named #6 of The 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time in a 1994 survey of animators and cartoon historians by Jerry Beck.

Gertie the Dinosaur was originally created to be used in McCay's vaudeville performances. McCay started performing "chalk talks" on vaudeville in 1906, as a sideline to his regular newspaper cartooning. In 1911, he began presenting animated films on stage, first an animation of Little Nemo in Slumberland, then How a Mosquito Operates. Plans for Gertie were announced in 1912. The episode of McCay's newspaper comic In the Land of Wonderful Dreams published in newspapers on the 21st of September 1913 showed the reader some of the creatures from the upcoming film: a diplodocus, a sea serpent and a four-winged lizard. In January of 1914, the drawings were photographed by Vitagraph Studios. The first presentation of the film was at the Palace Theater in Chicago on February 8, 1914; later performances were at the Hammerstein Theater in New York City.

The performance consisted of McCay interacting with Gertie, a cartoon Diplodocus. McCay would stand on stage in front of a projection screen, dressed in a tuxedo and wielding a whip. He would call Gertie, who appeared from behind some rocks. He then instructed her to perform various tricks, similar to a circus act. He would appear to toss a prop apple to her — McCay palmed the apple while Gertie caught an animated copy of it. Gertie was also seen to swallow a large rock, play with a Mastodon, and drink an entire lake dry. At one point, McCay would scold Gertie for misbehaving, at which she would begin to cry. For the finale, McCay disappeared behind the screen just as a cartoon version of him climbed onto Gertie's head and rode off.

More...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertie_the_Dinosaur

We did just fine without an income tax prior to 1913.

We did just fine without an interstate highway system then too. Welcome to the 21st century.

it's not the federal government's responsibility to redistribute wealth from citizens, regardless of the situation

Taxes are exactly that - a redistribution of wealth - in all forms. Medicare? Interstate highways? NSF grants? The list goes on. The purpose of redistributing wealth is to enable the creation of greater wealth for everyone. The rich get richer, and the poor get richer. It's called the common good.

FEMA has proven itself to be an horrendously wasteful and inefficient government program

That is because of cronyism, which is far worse at the local level.

If the federal government had answered years of calls from folks in Louisiana to help rebuild the wetlands and improve the levee system, that tragedy would likely never have happened.

jonny,

If you would listen to Dr. Paul, you would realize that those issues wouldn't be a problem.

1) Get rid of the department of education? It should be one of the most heavily funded departments and, imo, should be reorganized to include NSF, NIH, NEA, etc. To leave curricula up to local control is madness, and is the reason we have local school boards trying to shove creationism down our kids throats. And additionally, notice how he thinks the federal courts should not prevent public schools from organizing prayer. While correct from a strict constructionist point of view, it's also crazy. It is true that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," it seems to me that on the same legal basis, Congress should be able to prevent local authorities from doing the same.

The DoE is one of the most under-performing government agencies. Ever since it was created, the amount of federal money spent on education has increased while the quality of education for the average student has gone down. In any free market, such a department would be closed down, not given more money. But that's not even then point. The federal government has no authority to regulate education without a Constitutional amendment, as you mention. So, if you think federal government control of education would be better than local governments despite 225 years of contradictory evidence, by all means, change the Constitution. Otherwise, it's un-Constitutional.

2) Get rid of income tax? Well, what do you plan to replace that with Dr. Paul? A national sales tax that overwhelmingly favors the rich? Or perhaps you intend to institute a wealth tax?

Dr. Paul has already explained his position on the income tax quite thoroughly. You do realize that the income tax only covers approximately 30% of federal spending, so if you cut spending, it would be quite easy to do without an income tax. So, why replace it with anything? We did just fine without an income tax prior to 1913.

3) How about the federal goverment passing out money to people in New Orleans. Shameful and irresponsible. We should've just let it sink into the Gulf, right Ron? I wanted to jump through the tubes and throttle him for that one.

Once again, it's not the federal government's responsibility to redistribute wealth from citizens, regardless of the situation. At the same time, FEMA has proven itself to be an horrendously wasteful and inefficient government program, like most federal institutions.

Dag wrote:

Abolishing income tax - great for slashing the Pentagon budget, I'm all for that. But what happens with Social Security and Medicare. I'm sure he has answers on his site.

In Ron Pauls own words...

April 10, 2006
"But could America exist without an income tax? The idea seems radical, yet in truth America did just fine without a federal income tax for the first 126 years of her history. Prior to 1913, the government operated with revenues raised through tariffs, excise taxes, and property taxes, without ever touching a worker's paycheck. Even today, individual income taxes account for only approximately one-third of federal revenue. Eliminating one-third of the proposed 2007 budget would still leave federal spending at roughly $1.8 trillion-- a sum greater than the budget just 6 years ago in 2000! Does anyone seriously believe we could not find ways to cut spending back to 2000 levels? Perhaps the idea of an America without an income tax is not so radical after all. It’s something to think about this week as we approach April 15th."

Please understand that this country is NOT the singular "United States of America," as you may perceive it - it is the PLURAL "United," "States," "of America," which is outlined in the Constitution, effectively giving each MEMBER state the rights and responsibilities of those of an entire nation, EXCEPT when they choose to allow the bureaucratic oversight of the Federal branch of the government to manage something for them.

Please also understand how the media's role has changed in these united States in the past 100 years. 100 years ago, the media would report on a proposed law - some even publishing the full text in their local papers, when it was important enough - and the public and member States would both provide and actually HAVE a discourse about the law before it were voted on.

That behavior(by the media and the public) continued up until two infamous laws of 1913 were proposed. One of the laws established the Federal Income Tax. The second law, conveniently voted on and passed on December 23, 1913 - 2 days before Christmas, when most members of Congress, the Senate, and the public were getting ready to celebrate Christmas - was the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

Since then, it has been portrayed as though this country is behest to those that sit in the District of Columbia, as to what laws we are to live under. The majority of the public neither has the money, or the influence, to provide the Congress with their own discourse on any particular law - only to protest it when they do learn of it.

That is a fundamental change in the media's role, if you haven't noticed.

Screw the religious shit and look at the tiny little bit of historical timeline it describes. I've expanded on it somewhat, below, as this video really focuses on religion too much.

It starts with 200 years ago, when England made usury legal.
As per Ben Franklin's own words, among others, the Revolutionary War had more to do with money than it did with independence.

1913 - Federal Income Tax and the Federal Reserve created.

1933 - USD no longer redeemable for gold for American citizens, but since it is still redeemable for gold for foreign citizens and foreign countries, it becomes the reserve currency of the world.

August 15, 1971 - USD no longer redeemable for Gold for foreign citizens/countries(even though foreign citizens/countries had tons of it). Essentially, Nixon defaulted the reserve currency of the world.

1972/1973 - Nixon and OPEC work out a deal where all OPEC countries would accept only USD as payment for oil.

November, 2000 - Iraq starts accepting Euro for oil. Since it is an OPEC country, they are directly threatening the global value of the USD by doing so, as demand for the USD would drop if oil could be purchased in something other than USD.

May, 2006 - Iran opens it's oil commodities exchange

Technically, this guy's right that if the Third World defaults, and we support it, the banking system would screech to a technical halt...but not for long - they've dealt with worse calamities than that in just some media play.

This guy is wrong on both religion and income tax.

income tax law: an overview

In 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment (http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.amendmentxvi.html) to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It empowered Congress to tax "incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration." The Internal Revenue Code is today embodied as Title 26 of the United States Code ( 26 U.S.C.) and is a lineal descendant of the income tax act passed in 1913, following ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment. While some states do not have an income tax (Nevada), all residents and all citizens of the United States are subject to the federal income tax. Not everyone, however, must file a return. The requirements for filing are found in 26 U.S.C. § 6011.

The Constitution does not give any power to the Federal branches of the government to define the meaning of words that are vague within the Constitution, therefore the power is given to the States or the people as per Amendment X, that they should define those vague terms for the current period in time.

As per Amendment IX, the interpretation of vague meanings within the Constitution must not be used to "deny or disparage" rights retained by the people. Therefore(in concordance with Amendments IX and X), if government does rule AGAINST a case brought by the people pertaining to a vague definition within the Constitution, that judgment must then be subject to the scrutiny of Amendment IX - that IF it DENIES or DISPARAGES the rights of the people, or of the states, from rights not explicitly stated within the Constitution, that judgment is invalid, and probably should not have happened in the first place.

In other words, for things like "excessive bail," "cruel and unusual punishment," or "just compensation," the founders of this country meant for the states to initiate a Writ of Elections to determine what would fit those definitions - it is most certainly NOT up to the Federal branches of the Government to determine them at all(because that right has not been given to the Federal branches of the government, and therefore is reserved for the States or the people, as per Amendment X), and for the States to define them, without a public inquiry, would only incite lawsuits by the public(as we see all over the United States today) to redefine vague terms like what is considered "excessive bail," "cruel and unusual punishment," and "just compensation."

That is the literal translation of Amendments IX and X applied to the interpretation of the body of the Constitution. The Founders realized that certain definitions could not be contained within the Constitution, and were dependent on both time and locality within the country, and, by not having given the right of definition of those terms to the Federal branches of the government, they inherently gave the right(as per Amendments IX and X) to define those terms to the States, and to the people.

Since the Federal government is not allowed to regulate intra-State commerce, court cases to decide things like "excessive bail" could not be appealed to, because the Federal Branch of the government would have to cede to the People in every case that the Person filing the case could show that such "excessive bail" would "deny or disparage" rights retained by them that the States had not regulated, or not been allowed to regulate by the Constitution(think about how easy that would be - "I was going to go to church(a right retained by the people that the State governments do not have the right to prohibit the 'Free exercise thereof') but I could not because of the excessive bail imposed by my State".

With such an easy abuse of power, it is only logical that the States therefore hold Elections on those matters, which is a right granted to the States especially for the purpose of defining terms within the Constitution that are reliant on time and locality. No amount of persons can avoid the use of time/locality-dependent terms in the creation of any document of constitution, especially in one that is to stand for the totality of the duration of existence of the country in which it founds.

Actually - please look through the United States Constitution and list the terms that are dependent on time and locality.

It should be easy - language is like an equation, and those terms are just variables.

Do the founders of a country need to form their Constitution using a standardized programming language for you NOT to argue against it?(Just FYI - Turing-style computation/programming was not documented until 1936 - 160 years AFTER the United States Constitution was written)

Nowadays, there's Neuro-Linguistic Programming which concerns the foundation of words into programmatic functions, but back when the Constitution was written, the Founders wrote it as specifically as they could, evidenced by how they handle branch functions and commercial regulation. In order to believe otherwise, one must be ignorant of the evolution of the English language.

Please do discontinue the use of the ADL as a source of news for this conversation, as they neither claim, within their charter, to be a source of news, nor do I hold faith in their ability to be an unbiased source of news.

"The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens." - ADL Charter; October 1913

This conversation:
    1) Does not concern
        a. "The defamation of the Jewish people"(of which I am one)
        b. Biases that pertain TO "any sect or body of citizens"
    2) Does concern
        a. The organization and structure of a virtual creation that is that of a country, namely the United States of America