Friday, November 29, 2013
from the desk of Denver Snuffer: Tyranny
from the desk of Denver Snuffer: Tyranny: Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion upholding Obamacare reasoned that this burdensome and unpopular law was legal because the Constitution, as am...
Monday, November 25, 2013
Federal government books $41.3 billion in profits on student loans
The $41.3-billion profit for the 2013 fiscal year is down $3.6 billion from the previous year but still enough to pay for one year of tuition at the University of Michigan for 2,955,426 Michigan residents.
It’s a higher profit level than all but two companies in the world: Exxon Mobil cleared $44.9 billion in 2012, and Apple cleared $41.7 billion.
“It’s actually neither accurate nor fair to characterize the student loan program as making a profit,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said during a July conference call with reporters after the Free Press and other news media reported on profits from student loans.
The department did not return calls or e-mails seeking comment before the story was published, but issued a statement today.
“The administration has taken steps to improve college affordability, and thanks to collective efforts, students and families are paying lower rates on their loans today than they would have otherwise,” Stephen Spector, U.S. Department of Education spokesman said in an email to the Free Press. “More must be done to bring down the cost of college, and we look forward to continuing to work with Congress, institutions, borrowers, and other stakeholders to make college more affordable.”
The numbers track the entire fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. They come as concern continues to mount about the level of indebtedness by college students and graduates. Estimates now show the more than $1.2 trillion in student loan debt across the nation, more than the nation owes on credit cards.
Congress is expected to take a look at the issue in the coming months.
In September, the Senate Health
, Education, Labor and Pension Committee launched a series of hearings to look at critical issues in higher education ahead of reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which is set to expire at the end of this year. Among the issues being looked at are the student loans programs, according to Allison Preiss, press secretary for Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, who heads the committee.'Profit' depends on accounting method
Projecting how much money the government will make — or have to pay in a subsidy — on those loans is a tricky, complex formula, based on a variety of factors, experts said.
The federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 set the way the government has to account for its loans. It measures the cash outflow as the disbursement of the principal loan amount and the inflowing money as the payments of interest and principal, minus amounts not paid, plus any fees the government receives from the borrower.
But there are those who say this is a bad way to measure and predict what loans cost the government. They like something called “fair value accounting,” which they say does a better job of factoring in the cost of collecting delinquent or defaulted loans and looking at the risk taken by the government when it lends out money. They say there is actually little to no profit.
This summer, Congress directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct a study on the true cost of the federal student loan programs.
In his call with reporters this summer, Duncan did not get into which method of accounting he prefers, just that he believes the government isn’t running the student loan system in order to make money, but rather to help students afford
college.Debt's effect on economy
The large debt numbers have sparked concerns about impact that debt is having on the nation’s economy.
“(It) is a burden which is affecting, for example, the ability of many young people to buy a first home, affecting other purchasing decisions they might make, affecting obviously their overall financial condition,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said at a conference earlier this month. “To the extent that there’s a lot of student debt held by people who are not working, it's obviously yet another drag on recovery.”
Kelly Wilk, a December 2010 graduate from the University of Michigan-Dearborn, feels the impact of her loans all the time. She graduated with about $25,000 in federal loans and now owes slightly more than $22,000, with a monthly payment of $281.
“For some, this payment may not seem too bad,” the 25-year-old Livonia resident said. “But for me, it is a huge monthly payment; it is pretty much a car payment or half of rent.
“It was especially difficult at first because I was unable to find full-time employment after college, yet I had to start paying my loans six months after I graduated. So there I was, working two part-time jobs and trying to pay off my loans, which eventually forced me to apply for deferment.”
After two years of seeking full-time employment, Wilk said, she was able to land an entry-level job unrelated to her degree in communications.
Now it is slightly less difficult to make those payments, but certainly not the easiest,” she said. “I have cut back on a lot of spending and only buy the necessities.”
Loan rates expected to rise
A report issued in mid-August by the Department of Education shows that 57% of students received some sort of federal aid, and 41% of all undergrads had taken loans, up from 35% four years ago. The average debt for a college graduate in Michigan is slightly more than $26,000.
This summer, Congress passed a law tying interest rates on loans to the market. The law set rates for all the loans at different levels, but based them all on the 10-year U.S. Treasury rate and allowed rates to change each year.
For Stafford loans, both the subsidized and unsubsidized, the interest rate is the Treasury rate plus 2.05%, with a cap of 8.25%. Graduate student loan rates are the Treasury rate plus 3.6%, with a cap of 9.5%, and the parent loans are the Treasury rate, plus 4.6%, with a cap of 10.5%.
While offering immediate relief to students, those rates are expected to rise in coming years and give the federal government $175 billion in profits from student loans over the next decade.
That’s got students who are paying steamed.
“Instead of making a profit on student loans, why doesn't the government try to help
out the millions of students who are struggling financially and at the very least, lower the interest rates?” Wilk said “I don’t understand how the government expects this generation to support themselves after graduation, starting out with a mound of debt and in a lot of areas, no job.”Wednesday, November 20, 2013
I TOLD YOU SO: OBAMA REALLY STOLE THE ELECTION - WAYNE ALLYN ROOT
I don’t mean to say, “I told you so”…But I told you so.
In October of 2012, just before the election, we heard miraculous unemployment reports that made it sound like the economy was turning around. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were supposedly created. Happy days were here again. “Bravo Obama,” said the adoring mainstream media. It was the biggest one month jobs increase ever.
FILE – In this Wednesday, Aug., 14, 2013, file photo, job seeker Kelsey Devoe, of Miramar, Fla., fills out a contact form at a job fair in Miami Lakes, Fla. Credit: AP
But I smelled a rat. I warned again and again in the media that “the books were cooked.” I screamed this was pure fraud and the voters were being scammed. I accused Obama and his friends in the government employees union of fixing the election. Democrats and the mainstream media (I know, I repeat myself) called those charges “preposterous.” They said it was impossible to fake jobs reports.
Surprise, surprise, guess who was right? It turns out government employees faked the jobs reports to re-elect Obama. They wanted the man who protects their bloated salaries, obscene pensions, and corrupt unions, to be re-elected. They would stop at nothing to keep the gravy train rolling, so they made up reports about job increases out of thin air.
The entire election was pure fraud. Based on fantasy. Americans walked into the voting booths hearing fresh news that indicated the economy was improving and jobs were dramatically increasing. It was all fake. The numbers were made up out of thin air by pro-Obama government employees. The voters of America made their final decisions based on pure fraud.
But wait, that’s only the latest reported fraud that stole the election.
President Barack Obama shakes hands with supporters after speaking at a Grassroots Rally September 2, 2012 on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, Colorado. Obama discussed his plan to help the middle class, Obamacare’s impact and the importance of the youth of America getting out to vote in the upcoming election. Credit: Getty Images
Even before the election Obama knew that tens of millions of Americans would lose their health insurance. Yet he knowingly committed fraud by personally lying to the American people. Not once, but repeatedly. He didn’t just tell intentional lies to pass Obamacare, he told those same lies during his re-election campaign to deceive the American voters and get reelected.
Did Obama commit intentional fraud? Without a doubt. His own administration internal estimates were that MOST Americans covered by employer plans would lose their insurance. Obama’s own projections show that 80 percent of small businesses were doomed to lose their insurance.
All of this was known while he told us “If you like your insurance, you can keep it.” Obama’s re-election was based on this fraud. Who would have re-elected Obama if they knew most of us were about to lose our insurance, our doctor, our hospital, our medical choices, and our livelihood- based on a doubling or tripling of insurance rates?
But even that wasn’t enough. Still worried about his re-election chances, Obama ordered the IRS to distract, intimidate, persecute and destroy his political opposition- Tea Parties and conservative critics like me. Rather than spending time and money on stopping Obama, many conservatives were forced to waste our time, energy and money fighting IRS attacks.
Internal Revenue Service Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division revenue agent Elizabeth Hofacre (L) and retired IRS tax law specialist Carter Hull testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill July 18, 2013 in Washington, DC. The witnesses testified as part of the committee’s ongoing investigation into claims that the IRS systematically delayed and scrutinized applications for tax exempt status from organizations with the words ‘Tea Party’ and ‘patriot’ in their names. Credit: Getty Images
The IRS attack directed by Obama effectively neutered the energy and passion of the Tea Parties, conservative fundraisers, and critics that only two years before had produced the biggest landslide since 1936. With the IRS running roughshod over Tea Parties, the energy was gone, and Obama was re-elected. Pure election fraud.
You question whether Obama ordered the IRS attacks? Well, during this exact period of IRS persecution, the head of the IRS visited the White House more than any other person. The head of the IRS employees union visited Obama the night before the IRS attacks began.
If any of this were known before the election would Obama have been re-elected?
But it gets worse. The voting ballots of our military troops were suppressed. And, why do you thinkDemocrats fight so hard against voter identification?
We’ll never know how many Obama supporters voted illegally, or multiple times. We’ll never know how 59 inner city voting districts in Philadelphia wound up with 30,000 to -0- vote totals in favor of Obama. Or, similar totals in multiple districts around the country, including all-important Ohio. We’ll never know theaffect of voter intimidation by Black Panthers at Philadelphia polling places, or Democrat judges ordering GOP poll watchers out for several hours at Philadelphia polling places.
Then just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does. Think Benghazi. Never hesitant to commit fraud, Obama told a story about a nonexistent protest, over a movie no one in the Middle East ever saw. This fraud was either committed to cover up the disaster of Obama’s foreign policy, and provide cover for his statement that Al Qaeda was effectively crushed, or to provide cover for an administration giving arms to rebels who turned around and used those same guns to kill our own Ambassador and three other brave Americans. Either way if the truth about Benghazi was known, would America have re-elected Obama?
In this Friday, Sept. 14, 2012 file photo, Libyan military guards check one of the U.S. Consulate’s burnt out buildings during a visit by Libyan President Mohammed el-Megarif, not shown, to the U.S. Consulate to express sympathy for the death of the American ambassador, Chris Stevens and his colleagues in the deadly attack on the Consulate last Tuesday, September 11, in Benghazi, Libya. Britain’s Foreign Office urged U.K. nationals to immediately leave the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi in response to an imminent threat against Westerners. The Arabic on the building reads, “God is Great, and there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger.” (AP)
Add it up. The 2012 Presidential election was stolen based on the cover-up of murder in Benghazi, a mafia-like conspiracy to use the IRS to silence free speech and destroy Obama’s political opposition, fraudulent health care promises, and fraudulent jobs reports. The Gambino crime family hasn’t got anything on Obama.
In 2000 Democrats talked about a President getting elected under “illegitimate terms.” Well look who perfected the art. Barack Obama committed pure fraud to win re-election. If this doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment, nothing ever will.
So folks…what are we doing about it?
Monday, November 18, 2013
We Are Not Coming Back
It is far and away the most succinct and thoughtful explanation of how our nation is changing. The article appeared in The Israel National News, and is directed to Jewish readership. 70% of American Jews vote as Democrats. The Rabbi has some interesting comments in that regard.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is the spiritual leader of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey
"The most charitable way of explaining the election results of 2012 is that Americans voted for the status quo - for the incumbent President and for a divided Congress. They must enjoy gridlock, partisanship, incompetence, economic stagnation and avoidance of responsibility. And fewer people voted.
But as we awake from the nightmare, it is important to eschew the facile explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among the chattering classes. Romney did not lose because of the effects of Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor did he lose because he ran a poor campaign, nor did he lose because the Republicans could have chosen better candidates, nor did he lose because Obama benefited from a slight uptick in the economy due to the business cycle. Romney lost because he didn't get enough votes to win.
That might seem obvious, but not for the obvious reasons. Romney lost because the conservative virtues - the traditional American virtues – of liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private initiative and aspirations to moral greatness - no longer inspire or animate a majority of the electorate. The simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is impossible to compete against free stuff.
Every businessman knows this; that is why the "loss leader" or the giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool. Obama's America is one in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the 47,000,000 on food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so they did, by the tens of millions; those who - courtesy of Obama - receive two full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course, both disincentives looking for work and also motivates people to work off the books while collecting their windfall) surely know for whom to vote. The lure of free stuff is irresistible.
The defining moment of the whole campaign was the revelation of the secretly-recorded video in which Romney acknowledged the difficulty of winning an election in which "47% of the people" start off against him because they pay no taxes and just receive money - "free stuff" - from the government.
Almost half of the population has no skin in the game - they don't care about high taxes, promoting business, or creating jobs, nor do they care that the money for their free stuff is being borrowed from their children and from the Chinese.
They just want the free stuff that comes their way at someone else's expense. In the end, that 47% leaves very little margin for error for any Republican, and does not bode well for the future.
It is impossible to imagine a conservative candidate winning against such overwhelming odds. People do vote their pocketbooks. In essence, the people vote for a Congress who will not raise their taxes, and for a President who will give them free stuff, never mind who has to pay for it. That engenders the second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable conclusion that the electorate is ignorant and uninformed. Indeed, it does not pay to be an informed voter, because most other voters - the clear majority – are unintelligent and easily swayed by emotion and raw populism. That is the indelicate way of saying that too many people vote with their hearts and not their heads. That is why Obama did not have to produce a second term agenda, or even defend his first-term record. He needed only to portray Mitt Romney as a rapacious capitalist who throws elderly women over a cliff, when he is not just snatching away their cancer medication, while starving the poor and cutting taxes for the rich.
During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai Stevenson: "Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!" Stevenson called back: "That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!"
Truer words were never spoken.
Truer words were never spoken.
Obama could get away with saying that "Romney wants the rich to play by a different set of rules" - without ever defining what those different rules were; with saying that the "rich should pay their fair share" - without ever defining what a "fair share" is; with saying that Romney wants the poor, elderly and sick to "fend for themselves" - without even acknowledging that all these government programs are going bankrupt, their current insolvency only papered over by deficit spending.
Similarly, Obama (or his surrogates) could hint to blacks that a Romney victory would lead them back into chains and proclaim to women that their abortions and birth control would be taken away. He could appeal to Hispanics that Romney would have them all arrested and shipped to Mexico and unabashedly state that he will not enforce the current immigration laws. He could espouse the furtherance of the incestuous relationship between governments and unions - in which politicians ply the unions with public money, in exchange for which the unions provide the politicians with votes, in exchange for which the politicians provide more money and the unions provide more votes, etc., even though the money is gone.
Obama also knows that the electorate has changed - that whites will soon be a minority in America (they're already a minority in California) and that the new immigrants to the US are primarily from the Third World and do not share the traditional American values that attracted immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a different world, and a different America. Obama is part of that different America, knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is why he won.
Obama also proved again that negative advertising works, invective sells, and harsh personal attacks succeed. That Romney never engaged in such diatribes points to his essential goodness as a person; his "negative ads" were simple facts, never personal abuse - facts about high unemployment, lower take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige abroad, a lack of leadership, etc. As a politician, though, Romney failed because he did not embrace the devil's bargain of making unsustainable promises.
It turned out that it was not possible for Romney and Ryan - people of substance, depth and ideas - to compete with the shallow populism and platitudes of their opponents. Obama mastered the politics of envy – of class warfare - never reaching out to Americans as such but to individual groups, and cobbling together a winning majority from these minority groups. If an Obama could not be defeated - with his record and his vision of America , in which free stuff seduces voters - it is hard to envision any change in the future.
The road to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to a European-socialist economy - those very economies that are collapsing today in Europe - is paved.
For Jews, mostly assimilated anyway and staunch Democrats, the results demonstrate again that liberalism is their Torah. Almost 70% voted for a president widely perceived by Israelis and most committed Jews as hostile to Israel . They voted to secure Obama's future at America 's expense and at Israel 's expense - in effect, preferring Obama to Netanyahu by a wide margin.
A dangerous time is ahead. Under present circumstances, it is inconceivable that the US will take any aggressive action against Iran and will more likely thwart any Israeli initiative. The US will preach the importance of negotiations up until the production of the first Iranian nuclear weapon - and then state that the world must learn to live with this new reality.
But this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. There is no permanent empire, nor is there an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the exile. The American empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has been exacerbated in the last five years. This election only hastens that decline.
Society is permeated with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations.. The takers outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years to come.
The "Occupy" riots across this country in the last two years were mere dress rehearsals for what lies ahead - years of unrest sparked by the increasing discontent of the unsuccessful that want to seize the fruits and the bounty of the successful, and do not appreciate the slow pace of redistribution. If this election proves one thing, it is that the“Old America is gone”. And, sad for the world,“it is not coming back”.
The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
THE MYTH OF ENLIGHTENED LEADERSHIP AND THE CHALLENGE OF TRUE FREEDOM
WORLDVIEW
We recently returned from a meeting with Governor José Calzada of Querétaro, Mexico, where we were invited to address 1,500 youth leaders from throughout his country. Mexico has more young people now than ever before in its history — over 40% of the overall population — and they are making some bold and intelligent moves to empower the youth. The Governor, a front-runner for the Presidency of Mexico, along with his cabinet of young people, consider the information in our film THRIVE, and the accompanying whole-systems Solutions Strategies, to be a critical part of awakening the next generation and wanted these youth leaders to join the more than 20 million people (in 24 languages) who have seen THRIVE since its release in November 2011.
Our meeting with Governor Calzada was a great and somewhat surreal experience: There we were in a formal meeting with high-level government officials talking naturally about UFOs and the transport technologies they use to travel through the cosmos — and how that informs new energy technologies on our planet. Topics like these, which are controversial here in America, are normalized in Mexico, as they are in a host of other countries where imperialist wars of aggression to maintain control over fossil fuels is not the overriding agenda.
We were reflecting on how what is controversial in one arena is taken for granted in another. Interestingly, the one topic that seems to inspire the most controversy isLiberty — more than ETs, or the conspiracy for global domination. One of the first times we publicly encountered the issue of Liberty was during the light brown apple moth spray issue here in Santa Cruz County.
INALIENABLE RIGHTS OR MAJORITY RULE?
After learning about the proposed spray program, we joined with others to introduce the 12-sector solutions model to help coordinate our efforts to stop the spray. The 2007 spray program was a billion dollar earmark by then-President Bush to spray ten chemicals, some of them known carcinogens and endocrine disrupters. The program proposed aerial spraying over an area inhabited by seven million people throughout northern California for nine months every year for up to 10 years — all supposedly to eradicate a tiny moth that was doing no damage. The coalition ended up successfully defeating the program, after just six months of coordinated effort. But at one point in the process, one contingent of the activists working to stop the spray suggested that we organize to put the issue on the ballot so people could vote on it.
This is where things heated up. We were not willing to support a vote on the issue. It felt to us like voting on whether or not the government should allow rape. Not only was there a very real chance that the vote would be rigged, but if they had a billion dollars for the campaign, they could certainly invest some of that into propaganda to convince people that it was a safe and necessary program.
But apart from that, we were prompted to ask: What about inalienable rights? What about the right we have not to be violated with toxins against our will? What about the right to clean air and water? It was a striking confrontation with the limits of “majority rule” because whether or not the majority could be convinced that the spray was safe, we believed that the right not to be violated was non-negotiable, and that this was a chance to lay claim to that.
LIBERTY FOR ALL
Liberty — not to be confused with the Libertarian political party — is a trans-political, principle-based philosophy that holds the non-initiation of force as the core navigating tenet. In this system, polluters would be personally prosecuted instead of allowing corporations to buy their way out of accountability with “cap and trade.” It is a system of self-organizing that transcends politics with the core inalienable right to not be violated — for every living thing. It includes rules, but no rulers. And we believe it constitutes one of the most important conversations on the planet today.
While people all along the political spectrum acknowledge the raging disparity of wealth and lack of justice, they each seem to believe that all would be well if only their party were in charge. We call this “the myth of enlightened leadership.” It is fundamentally flawed logically because when one party “wins,” all is “not well” for the 49% whose wishes are not accounted for. Taxation, which is the funding base of every government, relies on coercively requiring people to fund programs and policies whether they agree with them or not. So there is a built in dis-ease at its core because all people will never agree on the best use of funds.
We do not believe you can achieve freedom through coercion. Some say, “Tough luck, it’s part of what we agree to by being citizens.” But we never made that agreement. Rather, we have found the only thing everyone agrees with is that they don’t want to be violated against their will. This may be the one agreement that can actually move us beyond the political polarity gridlock to a truly thriving society. The principle of non-violation holds the key to real freedom, security and prosperity for all. Rule by the “majority” perpetuates a never-ending flip-flop between one priority and another, while missing the central issues of honest money, peace, and innate human rights.
We have been led to believe that coercive associations and authoritarian governments are the best we can do, but in reality, when people are prosperous enough to be able to, we care for ourselves and each other far more effectively than any government ever has. The Economic Freedom of the World Report shows each year that the more economic and social freedom people have, the more secure, healthy, and prosperous they are.
A DEEPER LOOK AT GOVERNMENT
Governments have actually been responsible for more death and destruction of their own citizens than any other entity. Every government in the history of the world has grown at the expense of the population it was supposedly set up to serve. And every government taxes people’s wages and/or purchases to fund its growth. As Stefan Molyneux points out, “It took little more than a century for the US — founded on the idea of limited government — to break the bonds of the constitution, institute the income tax, take control of the money supply and the educational system and begin its catastrophic expansion.”
Nonetheless, vast numbers of people are dependent on the government for their very subsistence, and the rigged economic system ensures that it is so. It would be devastating to simply eliminate taxes and the services they provide until people are empowered with the money and power they are currently forced to forfeit. But this doesn’t mean we need new taxes, it means we need to redirect tax money currently overfunding the military and fraudulent interest to the Federal Reserve into programs that truly support those people and ecosystems that have been most damaged by the corruption.
The notion of actually transcending involuntary government is so new for most that many questions arise, as they did for us. What about the roads, security, and schools, etc.? Here are links that address the most common myths and misunderstandings:
Common Arguments against full liberty
Top Myths about the Liberty Perspective
THREE STAGE STRATEGY FOR TRANSITION
Eliminating new taxes often sounds callous because it has not been offered with a compassionate strategy for transition. With THRIVE, we designed a process of three overlapping stages to ensure that the needs of people are tended to along the way to a truly voluntary society. It is based on the best of both “the left” and “the right,” and finally transcends the limits of each as it moves to truly open forms of self-organization based on the principles of freedom and integrity.
So many people who are great at pointing out the problems associated with the “other party’s” position are at a loss for viable, just solutions. On the left, socialist scenarios-as-solutions are having a hey-day, and on the right, fascist imperialist strategies are at the fore. But beyond both there is a new model of human organization that can revolutionize world society to release people’s untapped and suppressed potentials. It requires a worldview as radically new as the notion of a round world was to the “flat-worlders.” And it requires a thoughtful, compassionate, strategic transition process to implement.
Stage One carries the Progressive ethic of compassionate action and entails bringing as much integrity as possible to current systems and helping those most in need. Some examples of actions to take in this stage are campaign finance reform, the repeal of corporate personhood, the end of the Federal Reserve’s ability to make up money out of nothing and charge taxpayers interest on it, and the introduction of the precautionary principle, where corporations and governments are required to prove the safety of something rather than that onus being the responsibility of those impacted by their policies — GMOs being a good example.
Stage Two is more like traditional Conservatism — shrinking government to the protection of individual rights and commons such as water, air and fisheries. It involves a return to sound currencies and, with the increased wealth returned to the people from Stage One, it supports a true un-subsidized free market of voluntary exchange. Both these tracks include an end to wars of aggression — foreign and domestic.
In Stage Three, the wealth and well-being that people have as a result of Stages One and Two enable people to care for themselves and each other through voluntary associations that operate with non-violation as the core principle. This stage represents a means, an end, and an insight. Complete Liberty, or Voluntaryism as it is sometimes called, represents a society of free association. It does not argue for the specific form that voluntary arrangements will take, only that force be abandoned so that individuals in society may flourish. In this model of Liberty, the means determine the end; people cannot be coerced into freedom.
FROM POLITICAL VIOLENCE TO PRINCIPLES OF PEACE
The Nolan Chart, represented below, illustrates the shared strategies that both Liberals and Conservatives rely on, i.e. coercion-based funding of programs, be they war or welfare. Liberty is the strategy that allows us to lift off the spectrum of coercion and two party gridlock.
What on Earth will it take? This is the question we ask in THRIVE. The point of the movie is to provide the minimum sufficient information we feel is needed to inform truly leveraged solutions. Thrive’s Solutions Hub currently hosts over 900 groups from more than 90 countries — all organized around principle-based solutions to a range of 100+ different issues. These solutions require deep and thoughtful reflection and bold, unprecedented action. We invite you to join the conversation, and to begin with some questions:
CORE QUESTIONS FOR HUMANITY
If there were a way to have accessible and good roads, education and healthcare, help for the poor, a respected system of justice, etc. — without anyone being violated against their will, including an involuntary income tax — would you want that?
When, if ever, is it OK for someone to coerce or violate someone else except in authentic self-defense?
Do you think that an authoritarian power using coercion is necessary in order for humans to be compassionate?
Can violence ever be a sustainable basis for a peaceful society?
For more information, we invite you to visit the Liberty section of our website.
Resources
THRIVE website on Liberty
A New Declaration of Independence
Videos
Statism is dead
“Government Explained” — to an ET
If You Were King
Books
Practical Anarchy by Stefan Molyneux
The Most Dangerous Superstition by Larken Rose
Websites
The Daily Bell
Freedomain Radio
Free State Project
Complete Liberty
Free Talk Live
Strike The Root
LarkenRose.com
Voluntaryist.com
Ludwig von Mises Institute
Titania — Ethical Creative Society
Friday, November 8, 2013
KUHNER: The prince of deceit
President Obama is losing the support of the American people. He is now facing the greatest crisis of his presidency — Obamacaregate. His repeated lies and deliberate distortions are leading many — including some liberal Democrats — to finally question Mr. Obama’s character. He has betrayed the public’s trust. Once that is lost, Mr. Obama’s credibility is finished. He is becoming a lame-duck president, distrusted, neutered and increasingly irrelevant.
The central promise of Obamacare is that it would ensure universal health care without affecting the health plans of the vast majority of Americans who already possessed coverage. In fact, Mr. Obama vowed that his signature law would reduce the health care costs of the average family by about $2,500. Instead, the truth has been revealed: Millions of people will lose their health insurance, while premiums and deductibles are skyrocketing. The average family will have their health care costs rise by more than $7,500.
Moreover, the president knew this was going to happen. The administration had drafted rules that guaranteed millions would be forced to change their coverage and enroll into the Obamacare exchanges, especially those whose plans were not “grandfathered” prior to March 23, 2010. On numerous occasions, Mr. Obama brazenly and cynically lied. He repeatedly told Americans: “If you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctor, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan.”
His goal was simple: Deliberately deceive the public in order to establish government control over health care. Yet after being exposed, Mr. Obama refuses to be held accountable. He even refuses to apologize. Instead, he continues to lie and dissemble. On Monday, the president claimed, “what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed.”
This is utterly false — and he knows it. For example, previously he said, “You will be able to keep your doctor, period.” He also said, “You’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
Leftists, such as those at MSNBC and The New York Times, still defend Mr. Obama, arguing that all politicians engage in mendacity. For them, the ends justify the means. They’re wrong. The president didn’t just lie; he repeatedly misled the public for more than three years on the seminal issue of his presidency — one that affects the most intimate aspect of anyone’s life: their health. This calculated decision to deceive is greater than either President Nixon’s cover-up of Watergate or President Clinton’s perjury over Monica Lewinsky. It is the biggest, most destructive lie in modern American history.
If the public had known the truth, Obamacare would never have been passed. Mr. Obama would have never won re-election. We would be spared the ongoing national torment. Instead, it is estimated that as many as 93 million Americans will have to change their health insurance, millions will lose coverage, millions more will see their premiums dramatically increase, countless jobs will be lost or employee work hours slashed, and one-sixth of the U.S. economy will be revolutionized. The finest health care system in the world will be destroyed — and all of this will be done based on a pack of lies.
From the beginning, it was obvious that Obamacare was destined to fail. Its fatal flaw lay in its very design. Mr. Obama pledged that the United States could add more than 30 million citizens to the health care rolls, and construct a massive bureaucracy to administer and enforce the new command-and-control system while simultaneously slashing health costs. That’s akin to claiming you can eat anything you want and still lose weight. It is snake oil masquerading as public policy.
Yet it is not just Obamacare. The president has a disturbing pattern of mendacity and deception. The Internal Revenue Service scandal, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the National Security Agency spying program, Solyndra and the Justice Department’s targeting of journalists and whistleblowers — Mr. Obama seems incapable or unwilling to tell the truth. He is an incorrigible liar.
Mr. Obama’s strong suit — in fact, his greatest asset — is that Americans have generally viewed him as a likeable, decent man. His mask, however, is coming off. To their increasing shock — and horror — they are discovering that he is willing to do and say anything to achieve his socialist revolution. He is the prince of deceit. This is the real scandal engulfing his presidency.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/7/kuhner-the-prince-of-deceit/#ixzz2k55ML7Np
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Monday, November 4, 2013
He warned us about the Military Industrial Complex in 1961...
President of the United States (and five-star general during World War II) Dwight D. Eisenhower used the term in hisFarewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961:
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction...This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.
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