Our Money is Worth What?

LRC

The U.S. Mint offers its newly minted dollar coins, featuring the Presidents of the United States. The US Mint has spent millions of dollars attempting to coax Americans to use these tinny coins in commerce, but nothing doing. If you've had one of these coins in your hand you would get the feeling it is counterfeit in some way. And that is because it is largely made of copper with some zinc, manganese and nickel thrown in. In other words, you are getting what a penny used to be made of in a coin that is represented as a dollar. The U.S. Coin Values Advisor reveals these "dollar" coins only cost the U.S. Mint about 10–15 cents. Buyers of these commemorative coins will essentially be donating 80–85 cents to the U.S. Treasury. Newly minted U.S. quarters with each State of the Union imprinted on them, only cost the U.S. Mint about 5 cents to produce. But you get the thrill or doing something patriotic by donating money back to the U.S. Treasury, that paragon of ethical banking and currency practices (I'm being facetious).

The U.S. Coin Value Advisor says it this way: "a fully circulating dollar coin would net perhaps as much as $500 million for the government annually, because for each presidential dollar coin distributed to the public, somewhere between $0.85 and $0.90 profit returns to the Treasury." That's a pretty good return on investment. The metal coins also don't have to be replaced as often as paper dollars.

And this is the complete and utter failure of fiat and monopolized currency.  Our coins are worth only a mere percentage of what are paid to put them into circulation.  We are being robbed blind by the same people we send to see after our interests.  A private mint would be run out of business for selling something that was only worth 10-15% of the asking price. 

This is why we need to replace the Federal Reserve with competing private mints.  We have absolutely zero say in how much our money is worth, who we get our money from, or how sound it is.  We are slaves to the banksters and politicians who created this despot organization in 1912.  End the Fed.

Bernanke is Still Clueless

CNBC

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke went before Congress last week looking to emphasize the "unusual uncertainty" surrounding the US economy and wound up pledging, in no uncertain terms, that the Fed was prepared to take unusual steps to fire up growth.

"We are ready and will act if the economy does not continue to improve, if we don't see the kind of improvements in the labor market that we are hoping for and expecting," Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee last Thursday, following a similar briefing to a key Senate panel Wednesday.

"Helicopter" Ben thinks he can inflate us out of this drepession by lowering interest rates to "stimulate" the economy.  He is apparently devoid of any economic knowledge, or he would recognize lowering interest rates under Greenspan was the cause of this current depression. 

Why do people view him as a competent economist?  Because we are being taught the wrong kind of economics.

Fed Gets More Power

Wall Street Journal

After fending off most challenges to its independence and winning new powers to oversee big financial firms, the Federal Reserve has emerged from a bruising debate on the overhaul of U.S. financial rules as perhaps the pre-eminent regulator in the sector. But that could only bring it added blame if things go wrong again.

Just a few months ago, amid populist anger at the Fed for failing to prevent the financial crisis of 2008 and bailing out Wall Street, Congress was talking of stripping the central bank of its supervisory oversight of banks or forcing it to submit to congressional audit of its interest-rate decisions.

Instead, the new law gives the Fed more power and a better tool box to help prevent financial crises. It will become the primary regulator for large, complex financial firms of all kinds, such as American International Group, the insurer which built a massive derivatives portfolio that regulators didn't see until it was too late.

After the Federal Reserve caused the 2008 crisis, a push was made by many in the liberty movement to have their power greatly reduced by revealing their true dealings.  Ron Paul introduced his legislation, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, was introduced in February of 2009.  It had over 300 co-sponsors.  Paul was getting interviews on national syndicated shows like Glenn Beck, and was appearing on every major new network.  The message that the Federal Reserve was a danger to the US economy was growing. 

Then, the Financial Regulations bill was introduced and debated.  The blame, some rightfully deserved, was placed upon Wall Street again.  The Senate passed the bill after completely watering it down.  The Fed has been given more arbitrary powers over the financial sector, being made the primary regulator for the Too Big To Fail banks.  The same banks that the Fed loaned artificially cheap money, enabling the fraud and leveraging Wall Street revelled in.  The Fed has been completely forgotten by the mainstream media, leaving the bill wide open to give more powers to the direct cause.  I urge everyone reading, however few that may be, to contact their state representatives and let them know that this cannot be tolerated, and it must be nullified immediately.  Let them know it would be good for the to do some light reading by suggesting Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse and End the Fed.

More Violence from the Failed Drug War

CNN

A car bomb killed at least four people in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, authorities said.

It was the first time a car bomb has been used to attack federal police, said the city's mayor, Jose Reyes Ferriz.

The incident happened about 8 p.m. Thursday in the city's most violent zone.

Juarez municipal police spokesman Jacinto Seguro said Friday that federal police were responding to a call that a police officer had been killed.

"When they went to check the car, there was a dead body in there, dressed up like a police officer, but it wasn't one of ours," Seguro said. "They put him in a civilian car but dressed him up in a municipal police uniform. That's when the bomb went off. It's like an act of terrorism."

Two police officers, a paramedic and a civilian were killed, federal police spokesman Ramon Salinas said.

Four more people have been killed because of the violence caused by the immoral War on Drugs.  This war is nothing but an repeat of the Prohibition era, which gave rise to the likes of Al Capone, Bugsy Siegel, and Charlie Luciano.  Now we have the meteoric rise of the Mexican cartels, who are responsible for more and more deaths each week.  Common sense tells us that if you make something voluntary illegal, people will break the law to get it.  Now if only government could realize that.

Tom Woods Press TV Interview on Nullification

Mass Forclosures Ahead

Fox News

More than 1 million American households are likely to lose their homes to foreclosure this year, as lenders work their way through a huge backlog of borrowers who have fallen behind on their loans.

Nearly 528,000 homes were taken over by lenders in the first six months of the year, a rate that is on track to eclipse the more than 900,000 homes repossessed in 2009, according to data released Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure listing service.

This isn't going to be ending anytime soon.  We have a whole other set of subprime mortgages yet to reset at their higher interest rates and commercial real estate is soon to take its largest hit.  And yet the economy is "recovering".

Sarah Palin Loves the Warfare State

CNN

During a speech at an event called "Freedom Fest," former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin warned Tea Party activists that while government spending was a bad thing, conservatives should not go too far and start calling for reductions in the military budget.

While Palin told the crowd in Norfolk, Virginia, "Something has to be done urgently to stop the out-of-control Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending machine," she also told them, "We must make sure, however, that we do nothing to undermine the effectiveness of our military."

Sarah Palin thinks we shouldn't do anything to the ever exploding "defense" budget.  News for you Sarah, the military budget, all discretionary, is another huge chunk in our ever expanding deficit and govenment control.  We spend nearly as much on "defense" as the rest of the world combined.  I agree that our spending on the welfare state is egregiously too high.  But that doesn't mean her precious "defense" budget is off limits. The only true fiscal conservative in DC, Dr Ron Paul, completely disagrees with her. 

And as always, the other dangers of  the Military Industrial Complex:

I Pledge Allegiance

In my senior year of high school, I stopped standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. It was at that time that I discovered the libertarian works of Mises, Rothbard, and Rockwell. I began to discover that nationalism was very detrimental to the cause of liberty. You see, the pledge was used as a way to convince students, since schools are where you will hear the pledge these days, the US government was ultimately good, even if in reality it wasn't and had never been. Even though this was done covertly, I saw through the ruse. I got ridiculed by some people. Well, most people, actually. They would say I hated America, or I was just trying to cause a disturbance. But what struck me as odd was no one asking me why I wasn't standing for the pledge. Not one single student. Not one single teacher. They all just assumed I had ulterior motives. In reality, I was protesting the worship the citizens of this country feel must be bestowed upon the Leviathan government that currently resides in the Beltway. Though, I don't think it would've made much of a difference then.

But that is why I am writing today. Because someone, somewhere, may read this and discover what I did five years ago. We have only a few things that we should pledge our allegiance towards: family, friends, truth, and liberty. A nation is not one of those. Especially a nation like ours, with draconian drug laws, never ending foreign invasions, and immoral tax laws. Local governments are putting in regulations to 'curb' our food habits and try to save us from ourselves. Our country has not been the Republic that is referred to in the pledge since the first Republican president, the tyrant Abraham Lincoln. It was in that presidency the founders' view for this nation were eliminated by a man hellbent on controlling everything that he deemed his, which consequentially was everything. But that is a story for another time.

The last few weeks I've decided to regard the national anthem in the same light as the pledge. It is nothing but beating of the chest for a government that has been tyrannical for more years than it has been of freedom. We as people have no obligation to the state. No obligation to give it praise or give it money. We only have an obligation to freedom. An obligation to take the moral high ground so our future generations may reap the rewards of a free society in which we currently live. We must all remember the famous quote from Benjamin Franklin, “Where liberty dwells, there is my country.”

The Threat from Mexico

Part 2

In part 1, I tackled the issue of the Arizona immigration law from the perspective of worker illegal immigration and how Arizona went about solving the problem using the same failed tactics that the federal government used to initiate the problems at the beginning. Part 2 will be taking on the issue of the Mexican Drug Cartels that have been the leading cause of violence in Mexico and in border towns across the US and how Arizona can alleviate these problems in the state.


To first understand what brought the rise of the cartels, we have to look at the origins of the beginnings of the Drug War. Before the turn of the 19th century, we did not have any illegal drugs in the US. This started changing in the early 1910s, when newspapers started using sensationalized headlines such as “Negro Cocaine Fiends” and “Cocainized Niggers”. This led to hysteria among the white populace, and they pushed for prohibition, leading to the Harrison Act of 1914. The same things started happening with the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, only they started attacking those of Hispanic descent. So, as we can see, drug prohibition began out of sensationalized stories that removed all facts in the debate.

The Mexican Cartels are criminal gangs that have no care for life among their ranks. We know this by the extreme amount of violence they perpetrate against each other and the civilian population. In one instance, a cartel took a rival, skinned his face, and stitched it to a soccer ball. Kidnappings and murders along the border towns in the US have risen exponentially as the pressure on the cartels from the Mexican government has been on the rise. Corruption among the ranks of the Federali ( Mexican Federal Police) and the Mexican military has hindered the government's advances against the cartels. And all of these problems stem from one thing: The immense amounts of money the cartels are capable of collecting from the illegal drug trade. Joaquin Guzman Loera is the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. Forbes Magazine listed his net worth at over $1 billion in 2009. The magazine reports that his daily earnings are at least $1 million. These statistics give a good indication about how much money is currently available in the illegal drug trade.

These cartels are constantly at war with each other over the lucrative smuggling lanes into the US. This war is similar to the wars fought by organized crime in the US during Prohibition. The prohibition of alcohol brought the rise of many unsavory characters, such as Benny Siegel, Alphonse Capone, The Purple Gang, and the Five Families, and brought them into an industry that was once full of upstanding citizens. This is what has happened in Mexico today. And the results are spilling over into the US border states, such as Arizona. Once Prohibition in the US ended, violence attributed to the illegal liquor industry vanished. This would happen if the US Federal government would follow suit on all recreational drugs.

Seeing the federal government currently does not have any plans to legalize drugs, Arizona has one way to solve this problem. The state legislature must nullify the federal laws pertaining to the Drug War and legalize all drugs. This is the only action that can end the violence pertaining the cartels in the state. By bringing these products, products the populace already has access to and access that is used, to vendors that are legitimate and can settle claims in civil courts, the violence will all but be eliminated.

This action is also the only moral action that could exist. We are seeing people who voluntarily do something that effects their bodies having to deal with unsavory people that care not of other's livelihoods. Prohibition also forces many addicts into hiding due to fear of prosecution if they do come forward for help. By legalizing these drugs, we will see a drop in violent crimes such as robbery to pay for these addicts' fixes.

If Arizona is honest about alleviating there problems with Mexico, they will have to do the only logical and moral actions. They must lobby the federal government to end the disastrous War on Drugs, legalize all recreational drugs, slowly eliminate the mandates and welfare programs that illegals apparently abuse, and raise the quotas for the lower level immigration programs to make it easier for Hispanic immigrants to enter the country legally. If the federal government refuses to follow through on these actions, as I suspect they will, then the state of Arizona has no other choice than to nullify the laws that pertain to these areas and create their own, moral legislation.

The Threat from Mexico

Part 1

The Arizona state government has passed a bill that takes a hard stance against illegal immigration. Arizona Senate Bill 1070 requires immigrants to carry their alien registration documents at all times and requires police to question people if there is reason to suspect that they're in the United States illegally. It also targets those who hire illegal immigrant day laborers or knowingly transport them. Sounds very extreme, and it is. An extreme answer to an extreme situation in the state of Arizona. And I completely understand why the people of Arizona feel that this bill is just.


I feel great empathy for the Arizona residents. Illegal immigration and Mexican drug cartels have been reeking havoc on the social services and residents of Arizona. Crime has steadily increased in the Phoenix metro area and along the border towns. Phoenix has moved into the number 2 spot in kidnappings per capita in the WORLD. Yes, the world. Illegal immigrants have been a strain on the social services of Arizona, from food stamps and WIC to nonpayment to hospitals for emergency room visits. So it is understandable that the people of Arizona are fully frustrated by the lack of action from the federal government. In fact, I commend the Arizona legislature for asserting their sovereignty by taking the issue head on, but they are going about the solutions by the same failed ways that the federal government has gone in the last 30 years.

12-40 million illegal immigrants reside in the United States today, depending on which reports you read. Many are what we in the United States would consider uneducated. And many of those most likely do not speak English. This is a recipe that breeds underground, black market labor forces due to the fact that very few uneducated, non English people will be granted visas in the US for work. The US, although it is the largest accepter of immigrants, does not put much stake into taking immigrants that come here for labor intensive jobs, such as agriculture, construction, and many hospitality services. A common misconception among Americans is the idea that most illegal immigrants want to stay in the US when they get here. Some do. Many illegal immigrants are young men looking for work. By the time they have the money to go back and live comfortably, they may have an American wife and multiple kids. So they stay. But most go looking for work to get ahead monetarily so they can return to Mexico and live comfortably. Another common misconception is illegal immigrants work for below minimum wage. I can attest personally through my employment in the construction industry that most made more than I did. This argument is a fallacious at best.

Now, there are many problems associated with illegal immigrants. One of the most prevalent issues is that of identity theft. Many cases have been reported where nearly 50 people were working from a single person's Social Security Number. This may cause mass amounts of problems with the IRS and federal government for this person. Tragic as this may be, it is completely avoidable if the federal government would allow a worker visa program that is friendly to the lower educated immigrants the US receives from Mexico and Latin America. This one, simple action would help bring the illegal immigrants out of there homogeneous neighborhoods and into the main populace, because much of the resentment stems from there lack of “accountability”, which usually means that they can be tracked down by agencies such as the IRS. The best and truly only way the government can actually solve the problem of immigrants coming across illegally is to create a worker visa program that has its emphasis on lower-level workers, such as those that work in agriculture, and allow it to have a quick succession to citizenship. This will also keep businesses from having to worry if their workers are legal or not and keep wages in a consistent level.

Another problem that has put hardships on county and state governments is the abuse of emergency room visits by illegal immigrants. But illegals are not the only ones abusing this situation. Many of the poor are doing it because of the mandates set upon hospitals by the federal government forcing them to take all patients whether they can pay or not. This is simply an anti-market, revenue distributing piece of legislation that forces prices up on those that do pay for the hospitals services. Before these mandates, many hospitals had charities set up to handle the cases from the poor. But since, it hasn't been a wise business decision to keep these open. A simple solution for this is for hospitals to disallow admissions, or to resort back to the days where charities and churches were very good at providing payment for services rendered to the poor. This in turn would allow prices on customers of the hospitals to drop, making it more affordable for all.

The third problem pertaining illegals is the use and abuse of such programs as WIC, Food Stamps, and HUD. Many illegals use these entitlements because they qualify in the income brackets. Many people are upset that the illegals have access to them. But is it the illegals fault the entitlements themselves are being used? In a short answer, no. These programs open themselves up to abuse because of the poor oversight brought about by the immense bureaucracy of the federal government. These programs are used very well to keep those that are poor with just enough money to not get uncomfortable. These programs themselves were once covered by the same charities and churches that helped with health care costs. They were private donations that could be used as seen fit. None of the monies were taken by force, like those that are used to fund the current programs. The solution to this problem is to privatized the programs. Allowing the charities to fund them gets the taxpayer off the hook while the poor can still receive help.

Illegal immigration is a moral issue just as much as it is a political one. The need for one to feed his family and provide for the future out ways any action taken by a government. While I understand the frustrations of the Arizona and its residents, their current law will only acerbate the problems. The only common sense choice, and only moral choice in the name of liberty, is for the state to circumvent federal laws and phase out entitlement programs, end certain hospital mandates, and start a worker visa program that encourages those that aren't as highly educated to still come to the state legally, therefore taking them out of the shadow society they live in and openly contribute to economy that sorely needs production.