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Monday, 10 December, 2007

THE COLLAPSE OF "ONE NATION UNDER GOD"

http://www.babylontoday.com

http://www.babylontoday.com/national_debt_clock.htm

http://mwhodges.home.att.net

A COLLAPSING NATION – THE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK

Michael Hodges in his "Grandfather Economic Report" puts the economic malaise of our nation into comprehensive perspective through the use of many charts and graphs and ample commentary to bring things into perspective and clear context. If you want more than just a snapshot of what is ailing us as a nation, in economic terms, then spend some time perusing his site.

Mr. Hodges is a protégé of Milton Friedman, the much celebrated free market economist. And Dr. Friedman endorses what Mr. Hodges has presented and what he has to say. Friedman, of course, knows his economics as few other economists ever have, so his endorsement is a good indication that the Grandfather Economic Report is well worth studying.

This said, Pridger isn't much of a Friedman fan. Not because he disagrees with Friedman's basic economic theory, but because of his role in promoting and facilitating a global free market economy at the expense of the American national economy, and the American consumer. As Pridger understands it, it was Milton Friedman, perhaps more than any other individual, who inspired President Reagan's initiation of "deregulation," free trade, and today's economic "globalism." Mr. Reagan enthusiastically introduced it as "a new international economic order," adding that America was entering into a post-industrial era and was destined to become a "service economy."

Pridger doesn't for a moment think either Friedman or Reagan intended to be party to the future collapse of the American economy, and ultimately the collapse of the great American experiment, of course. But it appears they fell into a trap that was set for them (and us), in their zeal for a global free market system (so the rest of the world could enjoy the same economic benefits Americans had learned to take for granted), they overlooked something of momentous importance – preservation of a self-reliant and distinctly "American economy."

At the very core of that critical "oversight" were the most fundamental lessons of economics. Namely, that a "service economy" simply cannot fund itself. That, and the fact that capital, and big business, are next to government itself when it comes to keeping them working in harmony with the people. Fail to regulate them and soon they will work strictly for others elsewhere. Furthermore – and this should have been abundantly obvious – it is national strategic suicide to expect foreigners to fund our economy. When that economy happens to be the world's largest, most prosperous, free market economy, not to mention the world's biggest superpower, such an oversight is totally mind boggling.

Friedman had so much faith in free market economics and "businessmen," that he would take the nation's economic destiny away from the elected representatives of the people and hand it over to private business corporations.

While the elected representatives of the people may have already proven their collective incompetence over a long period of time, at least the people possess the wherewithal to vote them out of office and otherwise influence legislation. And, for all their incompetence, the nation had become both great and prosperous under their lack-luster supervision. But the idea of placing the national destiny in the hands of greedy businessmen, who are not answerable to the voting public, should have been unthinkable.

Congress had already made the unthinkable blunder of placing the nation's monetary system into the hands of private banking corporations. This was certainly bad enough! But to take the next step and empower private corporations to develop and supervise a globalized market economy which would ultimately control our economic and political destiny as a nation was simply beyond the pale.

Yet this is the economic system Friedman helped Reagan facilitate.

ECONOMICS OH-ONE!

Perhaps the most fundamental lesson of economics can be expressed in a simple formula – as Charles W. Walters (of Acres U.S.A.) puts it: P X $ = I (Production, times price, equals income). There is no real income at all in "service" because while price is there, there is no actual tangible wealth production, though out of "goods" (production), come the necessity for an array of services. Goods and services are natural economic bedfellows, but services without the production of goods is an empty baloon.

Friedman, of course, must have been well aware of this. But his faith in "businessmen" to do the right thing on behalf of the people and the nation was as irresponsible, or naive, as Congress handing of the monetary system to private banking interests. The result of that blunder is readily apparent – we now have about a four cent dollar rather than a hundred cent dollar, and it will soon be a fraction cent dollar.

The "profits" in the service sector are largely a matter of paper shuffling. There's consumption, there is work accomplished, there are sales, and there is always price – there may even be benefit and value – but there is no actual harvesting of raw materials or production durable goods.

Without production, there is no real wealth creation, which is necessary to fund and sustain not only the industrial sector of the economy, but the service sector too. So, the industrial economy cannot be replaced with a service economy without dire economic consequences – the evidence of which we are seeing today.

When production of real wealth falls short, the service sector (which can only be considered "the rest of the economy"), must draw on other sources for its sustenance. The only other sources available, of course, are taxation and debt.

Naturally, production and real wealth creation has continued and increased under our new service economy – but it has continued to increase elsewhere and has been shrinking here. When the primary American production plant is in China, the Chinese prosper and profit rather than Americans. "American" corporations that move their plants to China, along with their stockholders, may prosper too – and the stock market and GDP may go forever upward – but Main Street doesn't prosper. Main Street merely shares in the debt that has been created to fund the system.

American workers do not prosper. And most American workers who do prosper do so only because there is sufficient credit available to finance and fund what is essentially a phony, Never-Never Land, consumer-oriented economy. But our once great economic bastion – once the greatest production machine in the world – is now a castle built on shifting sand.

The only relief for increasingly strapped and indebted American consumer is in the cheap prices of imported goods flooding the once self-sustaining market-economy of the nation. This has been the big carrot of globalism. In spite of cheap imports, many consumers are resorting to deficit spending, increasingly living on credit or the equity in their home. The nation's savings rate has already slipped to below zero. Falling incomes and a declining dollar are the stick of globalism.

The American economy is no longer self-sustaining. It increasingly requires foreign input, in both goods and credit infusion. This deadly national dependency was sold to our astute politicians, and the American public, as "international interdependence" – professionally marketed as the golden, free market, salvation of mankind. It was really metaphorically more akin to the Biblical Golden Calf and a Trojan Horse combined into one.

Khrushchev once threatened that the Soviet Union would bury the United States and its capitalist system under that very system. The Soviet Union crumbled (even after we had assisted it in becoming a viable superpower adversary), but we have now empowered China to do the very thing that Khrushchev threatened – and, unlike the Soviet Union, China is perfectly capable of doing it. And they are well positioned to do it should they ever determine it is in their interests to do so.

China has become a major industrial and military superpower, using our capital, technology, our capitalist system, and our consumer market to solidify and grow its position. China also has a domestic and regional market that is so vast that it has hardly begun to develop its full potential as a consumer market. When it does, it will no longer need the American consumer market for economic survival. But the American consumer, and the American economy, will remain hostage to Chinese economic power. Hopefully, the Chinese will make benevolent masters.

One of the other big smoke screens of globalism, as it is marketed to the American public, is that 90 some-odd percent of the world's population resides outside of the United States. Americans are supposed to believe those are going to be "their" market, their future salvation, and the source of their future prosperity.

Amazingly, our astute Washington brain trust seems to have fallen for this smoke. Those vast foreign markets will not be the promised font of wealth for American workers. Like the American consumer market of today, it will be the great font of wealth for multinational corporations – and they will continue to bypass American workers as long as others elsewhere will work for less.

Don't count on too many special favors from the Chinese, however. How much of their market are they going to share with "American" capital? Unless Pridger is mistaken, precious little – they're far too smart for that.

China is still "Red China" and its government will undoubtedly maintain tight control over it's own economic destiny while arming to the teeth to become the world's next mega-superpower. It's pretty darned ironic that our government refuses to trade with Communist Cuba, right next door, but not only trades with China, but has allowed American capital to "partner" with the Red Army!

All of this in spite of the fact that, along with its long history, the Chinese have a long memory. It is unlikely to forget its many old grievances with the United States and former European colonial powers. It would seem to be perfectly natural for China to wish to see the United States defeated at its own game. But we stray from our subject.

Government, naturally, in its increasing role as the granddaddy of all "service industries" turns first to taxation, and then to debt to fund its national excesses and obsessions. Where the nation's monetary system is itself a private service industry, capable of unleashing unlimited quantities of debt in order to fund the government's shortfalls in taxation, as well as the financing needs of the private sector of the economy, we have a recipe for disaster. (And we can't blame the Chinese or anybody else for this reality.) In short, we have the very prescription that has resulted in where the nation is today in economic terms – on the brink of disaster.

Friedman and Reagan certainly didn't intend to put the nation of a trajectory toward economic Armageddon, but they did more than their rightful share – with the ready and able assistance of Congress, of course. Their intentions were good. Reagan merely wanted to unleash the productive powers of private capital – a proven powerhouse of energy and innovation – but Reagan was not an economist. Friedman should have known what the consequences would be, because he was an economist. But, as Pridger said, he must have overlooked something.

One reason he may have overlooked it was that, as an academic, he probably had very little practical experience as, say, a farmer or working man. And, perhaps he, like Reagan, was naive about the true nature of global capital interests. He saw the nation and the world in macro-economic terms with little careful consideration for the workaday masses. He felt that if the free market could work the wonders it had in the United States, why not in the world as a whole?

Perhaps it could. But it should certainly not have been done in the way it has been attempted – by putting the entire cost onto the backs of American consumers while pulling the rug out from under them as the primary producers of their own wealth! And doing it all on credit!

But, of course, there was another agenda that had little to do with the Stock market, GDP, or national debt. This was the agenda of the social Utopians who envision the demise of the nation state system itself, and the advent of one big, happy, global village. This agenda was promoted by the left hand of government, compliments of liberal activists, while privatization and deregulation were promoted by the right hand of government and big business interests.

The vision Friedman had was too big for such considerations as "national economics" and American workers. He was a free market economist who saw a better world if all economic borders and barriers could be torn down like the Berlin Wall was destined to be torn down. The key to a prosperous and progressive world was to unleash capital for the benefit of all mankind – release it from the regulatory fetters of government. And he apparently equated the liberation of capital with the liberation of "people" everywhere. But there is a big difference between "capital" and "the people" – just as there is a big difference between "capitalism" and "individual free enterprise."

To the Milton Friedmans of the world, apparently "free enterprise" means big capital, not tens of thousands of independent family farmers, small sole proprietorship shops and locally owned businesses. Those things are too petty to consider. The hope was for American entrepreneurs to sprout from every American garage and build all the American dreams necessary to realize the American dream in the "Wonderful New World." If Bill Gates could do it, and Donald Trump, everybody can do it. If Rush Limbaugh can become a multi-millionaire by being a great talk show host, why not you and I?

Yes, there's a very big difference in what we call "private capital" and "We the people." "We the People" once included hundreds of thousands of small productive farms and shops that were once the very essence of the American free market, free enterprise, system. Big corporations had their place too, of course, in the realm of industrial production for a modern economy. But Wal-Mart, for example, is not the equivalent of the tens of thousands individual and family owned businesses that it has managed to displace.

In a truly market-driven domestic economy, under enlightened government, with a sane and honest monetary system, financial resources would never be so grossly mal-distributed as they have been this past half century.

In the end, Friedman seems to have been very much of a Utopian himself, with the same flawed vision and magnitude of blind spots as the social Utopians.

The Utopians of both genders recognized the flaws and shortcomings of the American capitalist system and American governance – which existed, and festered, in spite of the nation's spectacular successes. Rather than fixing America, however, they thought they might just as well fix the world – spearheading the fix with the flawed systems that were already bringing the United States toward a day of reckoning.

The entire brain trust behind the New World Order (at least those that actually "meant well"), hatched up a monster, falling into a trap carefully prepared by those who didn't necessarily mean well. For the latter it would be enhanced security and increased profits, and for the rest of us it would be "control."

Friedman blamed regulatory fetters for crippling our economy. But the regulation of business that he blamed, had served a purpose that went far beyond just "protecting American manufacturers" from foreign competition, causing inefficiencies, and limiting "consumer choices" in the marketplace. They also kept most American capital at home where it belonged, and American manufacturing at home where it belonged, and the great American wealth production machine intact. They kept Americans producing the wealth that once funded their own increasing high standard of living.

The irony is that both Friedman and Reagan believed in smaller, more responsible, government, with reduced roles and maintenance costs – but government has continued to mushroom in size nonetheless, in spite of "deregulation."

It is noteworthy that only "big money" interests were effectively deregulated. "We the people" were not deregulated – our regulatory shackles continue to increase in weight. And once the global free market genie gained some momentum, the people progressively lost – their small businesses, good jobs, and much more. Behemoths like Wal-Mart were facilitated and empowered, while sole proprietorship merchants – the real heart of the free enterprise system at the Main Street level – were increasingly tagged for extinction – as the small family farmer had been tagged only a couple of decades before.

When globalism really gained a head of steam, the goose that laid the golden egg began to atrophy in spite of a world increasingly flooded with Federal Reserve money. The bastion of industrial production and wealth creation could no longer pay its own way. It was during the Reagan administration that we went from being the world's greatest creditor nation to the world's greatest debtor nation. This should have been viewed as the important leading economic indicator that it was!

This starling transition from being a net producer of wealth to a net consumer of wealth happened so soon after Reagan took office that the blame cannot be put on his administration. It already had a mighty head of steam when he came in. But the Reagan economic revolution, for all the fortunes it generated for those who were well positioned, was a formula for accelerating national economic decline.

America's great industrial plant could no longer pay for the American life style to which we had all become accustomed. But the growing service economy workers still required wages. Consumers, who were no longer producers, still required the wherewithal for the good life. But, in the Federal Reserve System, there was in place a limitless source of easy credit with which to make do.

In spite of the appearance that huge, extraordinarily profitable, corporations are now paying our way, most Americans would be shocked to know that the share of economic activity that is now attributable to government largess (at the Federal, state, and local levels), is now pushing the 50% mark! And from whence do those government entities draw their wherewithal to do this? Taxes and deficit spending, foreign credit, and by selling some national assets and mortgaging the rest – and binding our children and grandchildren to massive, un-payable debts.

Now we have the specter of still being the richest, most conspicuously consumptive nation on earth, while expecting the rest of the world to finance our increasing debauchery. Our economic independence is gone, and so is much of our real political independence, not to mention personal liberties.

Today we're more dependent on China for our necessities, in terms of both financial credit and consumer goods, than the original thirteen colonies were on the mother country prior to the Revolutionary War. And China is only one of our financial benefactors. Japan and Saudi Arabia, and a few other nations, in addition to China, now literally hold the economic destiny of the American Republic in their hands. Though it wouldn't be in their best interests to do so, they have the ability to literally pull the plug on the American (and the global), economy. This is not good planning on the part of our economic policy makers.

American economic and military power may still seem to permit us to presume to police and perhaps rule the world – but the charade is coming under increasing strain. The web of international interdependencies (and more binding foreign entanglements), in which we have willfully and intimately harnessed ourselves, is the only thing that can keep the American economy afloat!

Having literally abandoned a "national economy," we no longer have a whole lot of control over the situation. The Federal Reserve no longer has a lot of control either, as other currencies gain increasing dominance in relation to what was at one time called the "almighty dollar" – once known to be as good as gold.

As an economist and thinker, Friedman should have foreseen all of this. Reagan was elected on a Conservative platform to balance the budget. He should have studied American economic history. When he came into office, it was already impossible to balance the budget, as he soon found out. There was, per chance, more that needed to be fixed than met their eyes – and it should have been done before totally rearranging the economic deck of cards.

Like Thomas Jefferson and John Q. Pridger (as Mr. Hodges put it)...

"Dr. Friedman was an advocate of limited government. He shared the views of that great Thoreau quote – 'government is best that governs least.' Friedman said, "Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens against crimes against themselves or their property."

"Defense of the nation" entails much more than keeping a well outfitted Army, Navy, and Air Force to repel invading armies. It also entails defending the nation's economic independence, and the nation's owner-operated marketplace. For, without economic independence, what good is an Army, Navy, and Air Force? (Except, perhaps, to go and take what is not ours.) Soon such armed forces will have nothing "domestic" to defend. They will fight elsewhere defending what have become "our national interests abroad" while the nation back home rots or is taken over by moneyed interests from elsewhere.

In the following paragraphs, quoting Dr. Friedman, the devil is found in a few details (which Pridger has taken the liberty of underlining and emphasizing in red, along with other items in brown, all of which Pridger will comment on as we proceed.)

"When government – in pursuit of good intentions – tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the costs come in inefficiency, lack of innovation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player. In the United States, government has gone far beyond the basics."

"When government – in pursuit of good intentions – tries to rearrange the economy..." Under the Friedman inspired global free market, the American economy has been rearrange to such a degree that it is no longer recognizable as an American economy! It has literally been turned upside down and inside out! And it has been so rearranged, not by the representatives of the people, but by private commercial interests for their own profit – given license by our mis-representatives. We are paying a terrible price for this already! And in the future we will pay much more – possibly in ways that we never before dreamed possible!

Perhaps it was true that some government regulations and subsidies for business contributed to lingering business and production inefficiencies. The individual family farmer on a small farm, and a family grocery, drug store, hardware store were very inefficient compared to a modern corporate sized commodity farm, factory livestock operation, or Wal-Mart. But any nation – even any capitalist nation – should care more for the people than pure efficiency.

Large corporations can be very efficient – or apparently so (for there are always hidden costs to this efficiency) – but in a nation (or world), where people matter, corporate efficiency should never be made a god. "Speed" itself should never be made a god – nor should it ever become a necessity. In fact, few realize that one of the great overhanging problems of the capitalist system that needed to be addressed, was the problem of efficiency and overproduction.

It was this very efficiency that caused advanced nations to go out an conquer and colonize the world. That efficiency required larger and larger markets than the producing nations possessed, and those home economies required raw materials that were often only to be found elsewhere. This was the beginnings of "free trade" – forced (in those early years), by invading colonial armies, naval forces, and gunboat diplomacy.

The colonial limited liability companies, such as the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company were the forbears of the great American multi-nationals that have replaced the colonial companies as imperial conquerors of the "now civilized" world.

In the promotion of free trade doctrine, the causes of trade wars has conveniently articulated backwards. "If trade doesn't cross borders," they told us, "armies will." They are right, of course. And our armies are the only ones crossing borders these days, to prove it – because we are the biggest, and most powerful, trade bully in the world. Out military is now over in Iraq to make the point, so there will be no further misunderstanding.

It's not that we need Iraqi oil so badly, it's a matter of principle. They simply weren't being very cooperative. They didn't like our program. But the point is neither free nor fair trade. We are saying to all nations that do not buy into our New New World Order economic program, "You will do as we say!" (But, obviously, not as we do). And, of course, what we do best is termed "freedom and democracy" – "Get it our else!"

Be we no longer do this for America or the American people (though they say we do [while at the same time saying they do it for all of mankind]). We do this on behalf of the big capital interests of the world. This is the BIG game, and the world is their market whether any two-bit dictator, any other democratic Utopia, or any electorate anywhere, likes it or not!

Free trade, in the final analysis, is usually forced trade, and (more importantly), the forcing of markets everywhere to succumb to our economic model and relinquish their resources, both natural and human, to the will of international capital.

The New World Order is about destroying all of the older orders, whether they worked well or not, so that capital can exploit the globe on its own terms and profit on every single single private transaction.

The government, indeed, should be a referee. But, in addition to that, it should also set the ground rules (for somebody has to set the rules) – and it should set those rules with people in mind rather than the profitability or efficiency of limited liability companies (corporations). What our trusty leaders have done was to abandon their constitutional role in regulating American capital, the American economy, and commerce with foreign nations. And they have abandoned the American worker, by ceasing to regulate the national economy for their benefit of We the People. They have put a global system in it's place, handing regulatory affairs over to global capital interests themselves, and their proxy regulators at the United Nations.

People should not only be provided with an economic playing field whereby they might enjoy "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but they should also be given the opportunity (the natural opportunity), to be individually and collectively productive in ways that materially contribute to their own keep and well being – actually paying their own way by their own labor and initiative.

In our present consumer society, we're scarcely able to find an item on our backs or in our homes that was Made in the U.S.A. This was not the case prior to "the Wonderful New World" known as globalism. The "Wonderful New World" is what Pridger's old Pappy called President Johnson's "Great Society" and "War on Poverty" – a gift of the left hand of government. But since then it has grown and metamorphosed, with input from the right hand of government, into what we now call the New World Order – a creature of both the left and right.

Today the rules are set in secretive corporate boardrooms in which unaccountable executives plan for our future in ways that will result in maximized security and profits for themselves and their stockholders.

True, the government had indeed already gone far beyond the basics, long before the Reagan era. But nothing in the global economy has changed that. Government has continued to expand, and now is a factor in almost half of what passes as the national economic pie. This is not a real free market economy that we are in. It's very much a manipulated market economy, with private corporations doing most of the manipulating – and it is manipulated globally where labor (i.e., the workers of the world), has become just another commodity to be exploited by globe-straddling corporations.

Few realize that our national debt, and ongoing federal deficits, are not only a measure of government overspending its budgets, but measures of current and increasing shortfalls in real wealth production in our nation.

About government deficits and spending Friedman has said, "It is my view that what is important is cutting government spending, however spending is financed. A so-called deficit is a disguised and hidden form of taxation. The real burden on the public is what government spends (and mandates others to spend)...

True enough. A deficit is a form of taxation. But it's not so disguised or hidden – it's merely being ignored out of self-interest of both private industry and the governing powers. Actually, most of it is right out in the open and has been there for everybody to see at every stage of deficit and debt expansion. Ironically, we've heard very little about balancing the budget since the Reagan years – except for that false blip during the Clinton years when a surplus mysteriously seemed to appear on the horizon (only creative bookkeeping could have done it).

Deficits are more of a tax on our children and future generations than a tax on the present generation of taxpayers – thus it's easier for "us" to let "them" get away with it. The only thing that Congress has excelled at in recent decades has been its ability to continuously raise the debt ceiling. Deficits buy off the present generation by not requiring us to pay as we go as they should. They allow the entire economy to live beyond its means today, with the intention of billing future generations tomorrow.

Inflation is the real disguised and hidden form of taxation that impacts everybody every day in the here and now. It's sneakier than deficit spending, and (like deficit spending), it has become institutionalized as part of the American and "global" economic system. Inflation is literally built into our crazy, privately operated, monetary system. Inflation insures that the dollar the working man earns today, will be worth less when he spends it tomorrow, and worth much less when he draws it from his savings a few years down the line. The interest paid by savings accounts never overcomes the effects of inflation – and that is how this secret tax is so stealthily and efficiently extracted.

..."My central theme in public advocacy has been the promotion of human freedom. It is the theme of our books, 'Capitalism and Freedom' and 'Free to Choose'; it underlies our opposition to rent control and general wage and price controls, our support for educational choice, limitation of government spending, privatizing social security, free trade, and the deregulation of industry and private life to the fullest extent possible..."

Pridger's central theme in public advocacy is the promotion of human freedom too. While "private life" should not be subject to any more regulation than the "Ten Commandments" addressed, industry is altogether something else. Human freedom was not enhanced by the deregulation of industry, in spite of the professionally promoted idea that it was.

When Friedman champions the "freedom to choose" he isn't talking about abortion. He means the consumers' freedom to choose cheap imports, while overlooking the consumer's twin duty to produce and be well rewarded for that production. If consumers chooses to purchase somebody else's product (or is finally coerced to do so because local production is no longer available), his fundamental economic lifeline has been severed, and his liberties will soon be curtailed to match. And another thing Friedman obviously meant by "Free to Choose" – he believed American corporations and businesses should be free to choose to go offshore where they might have advantage of cheap labor. This is considered a patriotic act, in order to give consumers better prices. He considered that a win-win situation. And look at us today!

Privatize Social Security? It may be true that Social Security is a socialist institution, and it might even be argued that socialized institutions have no place in our Constitutional Republic. But the fact is, Social Security has been institutionalized for so long now, that most of the retired population would starve without it. Most people have forgotten how to save for their future on their own, believing that Social Security will be there for them when the time comes.

Actually, Social Security has been working amazingly well. The only problem with it is that our trusty politicians in Washington never figured out what a "Trust Fund" was – or even what "trust" itself is. (If they knew what trust is, their oaths of office would mean something.) Regardless, privatizing Social Security would take a lot of the security out of what is now in the System, and potentially subject it to Enron types of efficiency in accounting. We may not be able to trust the government, but we can always rest assured than none of our politicians would risk losing the "I intend to get mine" vote.

If our Washington brain trust knew what "Trust" was, they would have instituted honest money with which to pay its citizens to whom it owes obligations. In fact, honest national money has been available to them since the Civil War. And why the Roosevelt administration chose not to utilize it when it was needed during the Depression is a major mystery of American history. The Greenback – "United States Notes" – could have been paid out by the Treasury to fund all of his public works projects. They could be paid to Social Security retirees today – and there would be no worry about any "Trust Fund" going broke. But U.S. Notes were dropped as anachronisms back about 1969. The government refused to use its own power of money issue, in favor of taxing and borrowing every last cent it spends!!!! As they say, "Go figure."

This is a "modern," 1963, Greenback. Real, debt-free, "American" money that our government refuses to use. It prefers to borrow money at interest.

Privatizing Social Security would be like privatizing our federal highway system. Private corporations would probably make it more efficient until people finally forgot how well it worked before it was privatized. Then they'd likely sell it foreign at a handsome profit (if the government hadn't done that in the first place). Let's keep things as they are now – but simply change to honest money. Both Social Security and the federal highway system still belong to the people. If things don't work in the end, at least the American people still hold title.

Social Security may be a socialist program, but a privatized Social Security System would be more of a National Socialist Program – still a forced "private" savings program – whereby savers would be required to entrust their savings to financial shysters – or worse, to a wobbly, top-heavy, Stock Market on the brink of collapse. Corporate types have been just as good at raiding retirement funds as the government, with this significant difference. They don't leave any IOUs in place of the heisted funds.

As long as the government stands, there is nothing any more secure than a stack of federal IOUs in the Social Security Trust Fund. Each one is as good as the government itself, in all its "full faith and credit." And the Treasury's credit is unlimited under the Federal Reserve System. But why not get real and use real American money?

We may as well face it. Because the president and Congress can treat the Social Security Trust Fund as general revenues for current government expenditures, Social Security taxes are merely extra federal taxes we pay so the government will send us a monthly check after we retire. Government has assumed responsibility for the support of the elderly. What difference does it make if the funds come from the Social Security Trust Fund, or loans from Communist China?

As with Medicare, the so-called Social Security short-fall problem is one that should wake us up to the fact that our monetary system is a dangerous failure which is playing the major role in bankrupting the nation. There is only one way to fix both the government and the Social Security System, and that is to fix the monetary system. Rather than borrowing the money from international creditors at high interest, why not merely print old fashioned fiat greenbacks?

The only difference between fiat greenbacks and fiat Federal Reserve money is that when the government pays out Federal Reserve money to, say, satisfy a Social Security obligation, the government still owes that money, plus interest, to somebody else. With greenbacks, the act of paying a Social Security obligation satisfies that obligation, and doesn't have to be paid back.

Greenbacks satisfy government obligations, and Federal Reserve money creates cost-plus indebtedness – always increasing the public debt. Thus, Federal Reserve notes are more than twice as inflationary than old-fashioned so-called "inflation money" and almost infinitely more expensive to the taxpaying public and future generations.

"...The public has increasingly recognized that government is not the universal cure for all ills, that governmental measures taken with good intentions and for good purposes often, if not typically, go astray and do harm instead of good. We are close to being enmeshed in that 'network' of petty, complicated rules (regulations) that Tocqueville conjectured might be the inevitable effect of an excessive drive to equality. There doubtless are many causes for the loss of freedom, but surely a major cause has been the growth of government and its increasing control of our lives. Today, government, directly or indirectly, controls the spending of as much as half our national income.

Clearly, Friedman is correct in saying that the government is not the universal cure for all ills, and good intentions seem to go astray more often than not. But the only alternate to allowing our elected representatives to run the country, is to put un-elected and unaccountable foxes and wolves in charge of the chicken house. And that, of course, is what we've done.

And it's true enough that our "excessive drive to equality" has a great deal to do with how "we the people" are over-regulated by complicated rules today. But privatization is not the answer to the transgressions of government. That merely opens avenues of manipulation and corruption to unaccountable private corporations. If free elections can do nothing, the next best thing would be a revolution of and by the people. This will probably only come about after privatized corporate rule suffers a catastrophic collapse, and Americans learn for the first time what it is like to be hungry and desperate.

But there is little hope even there. We have become a nation of helpless sheep. Sheep need a shepherds in order to survive – and there will always be a group of wolves to volunteer their services.

Like government itself, industry has no other real purpose than to serve the people. That is, it should be the servant of the people rather than their master. Should the people not set some rules for its servants to follow? Obviously, not even Friedman would deregulate government, and give it license to throw off the fetters of the Constitution. Under the Constitution, Congress is the peoples' governing board, and the people are the sovereigns behind that board. And one of that board's functions is to keep industry (at least by in large), working for and on behalf of the people.

"...Judged by ideas, we have been on the winning side. The public in the United States has increasingly recognized that government is not the universal cure for all ills. The growth of government has come to a halt, and seems on the verge of declining as a fraction of the economy. We are in the mainstream of thought, not, as we were fifty years ago, members of a derided minority." - - 'Two Lucky People', memoirs by Milton & Rose Friedman (From http://mwhodges.home.att.net/friedman.htm)

For a while during and after the Reagan administration, it did appear to many that we were on the winning side too, in spite of growing deficits. But the temporary prosperity that came from unleashing American capital into a global free market was built largely on debt expansion – both public and private – something that anybody should know cannot be done to our lasting benefit. You simply cannot build prosperity on debt – at least not the kind that you can pass on to your children and grandchildren.

Business has prospered, but not the generalized working working population. Flim flam men have prospered, but the great middle class has received cheap imports to ease the pain of contracting wealth and expanding debt.

Corporate business, and many quick-witted entrepreneurs, gained ground. Corporations were free to adopt the runaway flag, and discard the high costs of American labor while tapping the stored wealth and good credit of the nation. And, if their former workers were still to be their customers, they simply had to learn to stretch their credit cards, mortgage the house, and maybe do well at the local casino.

When capital was unleashed from the national regulatory fetters that had kept it loyal to the nation and the national workforce, it naturally reverted to its most predatory nature. Friedman should have thought of this, and even Reagan should have thought of it.

Protectionism was not just about protecting a few hoggish American businessmen from foreign competition. It was about protecting the nation itself, and working people, against the depredations of Mammon unleashed. It was about national security, both economic and strategic. It was about protecting the national owner-operated marketplace and factory. Our founders knew this, as did many of our politicians and statesmen until relatively recent times. And it was just as important as maintaining an armed force to repel invading armies – which, of course, is itself very clearly a form of "protectionism."

The federal government had only a few functions granted it by the Constitution. One of them was national security, and another was the regulation of trade with foreign nations. Indeed, tariffs and duties funded the entire federal government until the big monetary cons of 1913 (the Federal Reserve Act, and the Income Tax Amendment) – one of the great transition years of our national history. A nation has borders that must be defended. And economic borders are just as important as the physical frontiers (which we have also been neglecting to protect).

The national debt now stands at about $9 trillion dollars, or about $30,000.00 for every man, woman, and child in the nation. And it's increasing at the rate of about $1.5 billion per day! The minimum wage earner (assuming a $7.25 an hour minimum wage), makes about $15,000.00 a year.

It had taken over 200 years (from 1776 until the Reagan administration), to reach the $1 trillion mark. What has been happening during the 25 years since the Reagan administration (when our brain trust in Washington embraced the "new international economic order"), should take our breath away. It certainly took away our prospects for a secure and prosperous future.

Let's look at another eye opening figure. The annual interest alone on our $9 trillion national debt is approximately $430 Billion – more than the entire federal budget as recently as 1977, when it was $409 Billion. Think of the time when you might have lived on the amount of interest you pay on your debts today! Today you are lucky to be able to live on your income after making you interest payments.

The debt apologists say "no problem – the people aren't in debt, just their government, and the government has the unlimited ability to create money with which to pay its bills." And, of course, they point out that much of the debt is owned to ourselves, or at least to our government. Almost half of the government's debts are owed to other U.S. government accounts – such as to the Social Security Trust Fund, Federal and Military Pension Trust Funds, etc. Even some of "We the People" own a thin slice of the debt in the form of federal savings bonds. And, the government hasn't defaulted on a debt payment yet, they tell us.

The trouble with government's unlimited ability to create money under the Federal Reserve System is that every avenue of money creation compounds the debt and interest payments. This would not be so if the government merely printed up greenbacks and used them to pay its debts. But it is so under our present system.

Our Washington brain trust has totally hamstrung itself by allowing a privately owned debt money system to run the money game for it. So, although government has the authority to print and spend its own money merely for the cost of paper and printing, it cannot do that. (Just why it cannot do that, nobody seems to be able to tell us.) The government only has two ways of getting money with which to satisfy its ravenous spending appetite. (1) Tax it from the people, which is legal theft from taxpayers, and (2) Borrow it, which is stealing it from future generations.

Increasingly, it has to borrow it, from the people, from banks, from foreign governments and central banks, and from the peoples' own "Trust" Funds. In short, it has to borrow it from anybody or any entity willing to purchase it's Treasury securities. Then, of course, it has to pay those borrowers high enough interest to make it worthwhile to the lender. This, in turn, naturally requires more borrowing and even more interest in order to redeem the securities. And remember, these securities, are nothing but pieces of paper bottomed on nothing more or less than "full faith and good credit" of the nation. This is not sane fiscal thinking on the part of a supposedly All Powerful sovereign Government. The bookkeeping alone is totally absurd in its complexity, and it seems to prevent us from seeing simple, sane, answers to our growing dilemma.

Real revenues, of course, have to come from taxation, but the interest on the public debt is now so large that it literally threatens to eclipse all legitimate tax revenue sources.

The traditional "American Way" of taxation was not to tax the people to death, but to collect revenue from tariffs and duties on imports. Just think what our present volume of foreign trade could provide! True, it would raise the prices of imports, but it would also make it increasingly feasible to produce for ourselves again.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine that this Ponzi scheme cannot go on forever. There has to be a reckoning in the fullness of time. It will probably come as foreign producers and creditors begin to leave the dollar in favor of Euros or some other currency less infected and troubled with macro fiscal insanity. When the American consumer begins to show signs of pulling in his horns, things will start happening. It's already happening in the growing housing slump and the ripple effects that will continue to produce, along with the increasing cost of imported energy.

The irony of our present monetary system is that it is now a strictly a fiat money system – but one operated for the profit of what can still only be called the "money power." It's even more inflation prone than most other fiat money systems have ever been – because inflation itself has been institutionalized as one of the Fed's primary control systems. It is build on inflation because inflation IS money creation. Inflation is intentionally built into the system. It is a necessity, because at every stage of business and exchange principle, plus interest, are due. This chain of compound interest begins with the creation of each Federal Reserve Dollar that come into existence.

The Creature from Jykell Island is still very much alive, and is now on steroids – and it has infected the entire global economy, making constructive monetary reform almost totally impossible without totally upsetting the apple cart. When the dollar became the world's reserve currency, it lost its strictly national character. And now not even the Federal Reserve can effectively control the nation's monetary destiny.

Globalism compounded the problem many fold. The Fed is now confronted with a crises it can't manage. We're in that classic, damned if you do and damned in you don't situation. The Fed must lower interest rates to stimulate the economy in order to prevent a depression. And it must raise interest rates to prevent inflation. It can't lower interest rates much more. Who would loan the nation money at zero interest? As long as interest rates are low, people will be encouraged to go into debt, and corporations will have access to cheap money. But, all the while that interests rates remain low, the value will continue to leak out of the dollar like rain through the limbs of a pine tree.

We need two distinct kinds of money. National and international money. In other words, we need to go back to something that worked passably well in the past, but was never perfected. National currencies in each nation, and a universal trade money for the conduct of international commerce. This would be gold or "Special Drawing Rights" type monetary instruments – that and good old fashioned barter between nations in instances where this is feasible. (But it isn't very feasible when you don't produce anything to trade. We still produce agricultural commodities, and plenty of scrap, but we generally sell these things at fire sale prices).

The effects of our increasing poverty have been much alleviated by the fact that we now hire dollar a day labor to do almost all of our industrial production, and buy that production in stores like Wal-Mart. But now that we have become so heavily dependent on the Chinese to supply us with the wherewithal of the good life, our government is busily trying to get the Chinese government to revalue it's currency upward against the dollar.

Just imagine the implications of that! Forget the supposed reason for it – to enhance our competitive position in the global free market, in hopes of being able to export more. It has not yet occurred to our astute economists and politicians that a rich nation cannot sell into a poorer world and come out winners. There's simply no profit in it, and there won't be any profit in it until the American standard of living is down on a par with the rest of the world. (And, believe it or not, that, too, is one of the unspoken planks in the New World Order package!)

If our stellar Washington brain trust has its way with our Chinese supplier, that $15,000.00 minimum wage will soon look more like only $7,500.00, in terms of today's buying power. The $14,000.00 annual Social Security incomes of our elderly will become like $7,000.00, because the prices at the Super Wal-Mart counter are bound to rise to almost double if China is kind enough to do Washington's bidding with regard to revaluing its currency.

The cost of our cheap imports have become a great concern to Washington. China, they say, is unfairly keeping its currency undervalued and thereby unfairly undercutting American workers. But, unfortunately, American workers now depend on low priced Chinese production in order to live the good life – or even just to survive.

Our trusty leaders should have thought of all of this before allowing all those production jobs to go to China in the first place – before selling the American worker down the river! Now there is nothing that can be done that will help the situation. All of the options are in the "damned if you do" and "damned if you don't" category. Great thinking Washington!

In the era of the New World Order, this is how Washington operates. It has gone out of its way to make the "One World" dream come true for the corporate elite, but manufactured a massive sink hole for the common working man, who pays all the bills whether he can afford them or not.

There are certainly more votes in the realm of the common man than that rich club prospering from globalism, but the money in corporate coffers, and the pockets of the corporate elite, are the real things that get our Congressmen elected, and the strings that manipulate them and our national policies.

The only votes that count have to do with money. The "popular vote" is in the peculiar position of being posited to vote against itself at every turn. Each purchase at the "local" Wal-Mart is a vote for globalism and continued impoverishment of the common man. Naturally, Americans flock to Wal-Mart in droves – that's how good the system works! That's how ingenious the system is! The common man cannot afford to vote otherwise. So he votes against himself and darkens his future every day. And on election day, he can be counted on to vote for the politician that promises cheap food, cheap prices, and a continuation of his welfare or Social Security check.

We're in a bad fix. And all the proposed remedies, of course, will be corporate mega-solutions for the mega-problems the "system" has already engendered. Congress hasn't come up with a good idea with regard to money in well over a century. Lincoln and Kennedy both died after attempting to tamper with the money powers. Whether or not this fact had anything to do with their assassinations, Pridger cannot be sure. (For some discussion on the subject see: Lincoln, the Greenback, and JFK on this site.) But there is little doubt that the right to create money is taken very seriously by those who are now in the money creation business.

John Q. Pridger

Monday, 26 November, 2007

SNAPSHOT OF CHANGE IN THE WINGS

"Harper's Index" presents interesting snapshots on diverse subjects. For example:

"Percentage of contributions from members of the U.S. military for 2002 campaign that went to Democrats: 23.

"Percentage for the 2008 campaign so far: 35."

But!

"Rank of Ron Paul among Republican candidates who have received the most in contributions from U.S. service members: 1" (Harpers Magazine, December, 2007)

Ron Paul Number One? This is as surprising as it is revealing. Ron Paul is the only candidate from either party who has always been against the Iraq war and has voted consistently against the Republican administration on matters concerning the conduct of the war.

Saturday, 3 November, 2007

GLOBALIST PIPE DREAMS

That was the title of a recent piece by syndicated columnist, Paul Craig Roberts. He was commenting on report published by the Cato Institute entitled "Thriving in a Global Economy: The Truth about U.S. Manufacturing and Trade." Roberts makes so many poignant observations in his column that Pridger will quote it extensively here and then add his own comments afterwards.

"The report confuses a company's offshored products with its import competition and wrongly concludes that U.S. companies with the most import competition are the companies that are thriving.
     "The Cato report never mentions the practice of U.S. corporations of offshoring their production for U. S. markets... The report thus confuses corporation or industries that offshore their manufacturing with those most exposed to import competition.
     "This extraordinary mistake result in an incorrect conclusion. The Cato report finds that revenues, profits, and value added rose most for industries most exposed to import competition and mistakenly attributes this result to the beneficial workings of free trade.
     "In U.S. trade statistics, offshored U.S. production is counted as imports. Offshored production comprises a substantial percentage of manufacturing imports... (in other words) 'Revenues, profits, output and value added rose the most for industries that offshored manufacturing, and they rose the least for those industries that produced their output domestically.'
    "...The goal of the report is to combat protectionist sentiments in Congress that might result in trade restrictions...
    "...The problem is that the collapse of world socialism and the rise of the high-speed Internet made it possible for domestic corporations to arbitrage labor across national boundaries in pursuit of absolute advantage.
     "...Labor arbitage is not trade and does not meet the Ricardian conditions for comparative advantage upon which the case for free trade is based.
     "Few economists have bothered to think about the issue of offshoring, preferring to dismiss concerns about it as manifestation of the old protectionist fallacy. They learned in graduate school that free trade is always mutually beneficial and ceased to think after they passed thier exams. This is especially true of 'free market economists' who believe that economic freedom, which they identify with freedom of capital, is always good. Thus, most economists mistakenly believe that offshoring is protected under the authority of free trade doctrine.
     "However, free trade doctrine is based on the assumption that domestic capital seeks its comparative advantage in its home economy, specializing where its comparative advantage is best and, thereby, increasing the general welfare in the home economy. David Ricardo, who explicated the case for free trade, rules out an economy's capital seeking absolute advantage abroad instead of comparative advantage at home.
     "Jobs offshoring is not only a problem for displaced U.S. manufacturing employees – displacement that Princeton economist... Alan Blinder says will also impact 30 to 40 million high-end U.S. service sector jobs as well – but also a problem for economic theory.
     "Economic theory assumes that capitalists pursing their individual interests are led to benefit the general welfare of their society by and invisible hand. But offshoring, or the pursuit of absolute advantage, breaks the connection between the profit motive and the general welfare. The beneficiaries of offshoring are the corporations' shareholders and top executives and the foreign country, the GDP of which rises when its labor is substituted for the corporations' home labor. Every time a corporation offshores its production, it converts domestic GDP into imports. The home economy loses GDP to the foreign country which gains it.
     "Recently, Ralph Gomory, co-author with William Baumol, of Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests... pointed out that traditional trade theory has broken down because companies are no longer bound to the interests of their home countries. Offshoring has decoupled the link between a compan's motivation for profit and the nation's desire to improve the wealth of its citizens. 'Most economists,' Gomory observed, 'have not acknowledged this fundamental change and its implications for economic theory.'
     "The Cato report shows no awareness of the problem for economic theory when the profit motive becomes disconnected from the general welfare... The traditional purpose of trade protection is to shield domestic producers from foreign competition. Neither manufacturers that offshore production nor their trade associations favor any tariff or quotas that would reduce their profits from offshoring by treating their offshored production as the products o foreign competitors...
     "Congress and most economists are as confused about the issues as the Cato report. Today the profit motive causes capitalists to create job opportunities and GP in low-wage foreign countries instead of their own. Every job that does not require a 'hands-on' presence can be offshored... the nonfarm payroll jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the U.S. economy can only create new jobs in domestic non-tradable services.
     "The Cato report does not acknowledge that the financial prosperity of U.S. capital is at the expense of U.S. labor. The report does not explain how an $800 billion trade deficit can be closed when domestic corporations face powerful incentives to offshore, and it shows no awareness... that productivity gains and output growth that result from offshoring, and which occur abroad, are mistakenly being counted as U.S. GDP. This phantom U.S. output and productivity growth would explain the disconnect between rapid productivity growth and U.S. real median family income, which is lagging far behind.
     "The financial prosperity that U.S. corporations are enjoying from offshoring increases the U.S. trade deficit and makes American consumers increasingly dependent on imports.
     "...The more U.S. corporations prosper by offshoring, the greater the U.S. trade deficit witll grow and the more unbearable the pressure will be on the dollar's role as a reserve currency.
     "At some point a crises will force Congress, economists and think tanks to deal with the real issues."

Pridger has almost reproduced your entire column, but Robert's message is so on target, and so clearly presented, that Pridger couldn't help it. Hopefully Paul will forgive him.

Wednesday, 19 September, 2007

DISASTER CAPITALISM

"Disaster Capitalism, The new economy of catastrophe" is the title of an essay by Naomi Klein that appears in the October 2007 issue of HARPER'S magazine. When Pridger noticed the title, he thought, Ah, what a good way to describe capitalism since the advent of the global economy! Pridger has always held that New World Order capitalism is "disaster capitalism" on the march, building an economy of catastrophe.

Klein was being a bit more specific, however. But she is describing in detail the effects of some of the significant tentacles of the giant octopus. She wasn't condemning the global economy as a whole, but pointing out something that has resulted from a growing environment of crises that has resulted from terrorism, war, and natural disasters. Our government is increasingly addressing these problems by hiring private contractors. Not just construction contractors as in the case of RMK-BRJ (the "Vietnam Builders"), during the Vietnam War, but security contractors, homeland security contractors, disaster relief contractors, emergency management contractors, etc. – private contractors hired to perform many of the functions that had once been strictly functions of government.

She correctly points out that this trend has been one of the answers in the war against "big government," which was part of the so-called "conservative agenda" that fully got its head during the Reagan years, calling for "deregulation" and "privatization," and a "new international economic order." The way to smaller government has been to hire contractors to do all the things government wanted to do – let the "free market" handle all the intricate details. The result is what is becoming the corporate ruling infrastructure of the New World Order which promises to be even more oppressive than "big government" as we once knew it. To reduce taxes, we are confronted with rising "user fee" and tolls – market solutions to big government.

This is big business becoming central to national security, disaster management, and a host of public services – and it is also a transfer of public assets to private hands. It's the next step in the natural growth progression of the "military-industrial complex" that President Eisenhower warned of almost fifty years ago. Our government has found that, given unlimited monetary means, mega-corporations can get a lot done that government itself would otherwise have to fret over and bungle through. It's so much easier to simply hire a contractor. Funding? The free market will work all that out. In the mean time, the national debt is compounding at an alarming rate while our public assets are being transferred into a few strong private hands.

Klein's essay focused primarily on actual disasters, both manmade and natural. She used the Green Zone in Baghdad as a illustration in the case of our ongoing manmade disaster in Iraq. The Green Zone is a picture of relative peace and security, manufactured by private contractors in the midst of war. The rest of the country is the Red Zone. She used several other types of disasters to make her point, including the Katrina in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and the tsunami in South Asia. Green and Red Zones are increasingly developing in other places besides Iraq – the divide increasing between those who are protected and those who live outside the motes and walls.

The direct corporate descendants of RMK-BRJ are still major players, along with a host of other companies, such as Fluor, Shaw, Bechtel, CH2M Hill. Added to the construction giants are security corporations such as Wackenhut and Blackwater. It's rather ironic that our government is now hiring private contractors not only to build a secure city within a city and its infrastructure but "protect our diplomats and military assets" in a war zone.

The Katrina disaster opened new doors of opportunity for both security and construction contractors recently either created or invigorated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Within week of Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Coast became a domestic laboratory for the same kind of government run by contractors that was pioneered in Iraq. The companies hat snatched up the biggest contracts were the familiar Baghdad gang: Halliburton's KBR unit received a $60 million contract to reconstruct to rebuild military bases aloong the coast. Blackwater was hired to protect FEMA operations, with the company billing an average of $950 a day per guard. Parsons, infamous for its sloppy work in Iraq, was brought in for a major bridge-construction project... top contractors in Iraq—were handed contracts on the Gulf Coast to provide mobile homes to evacuees just ten days after the levees broke. Their contracts ended up totaling $3.4 billion, no open bidding required. To spearhead its Katrina operation Shaw hired the former head of the U.S. Army's Iraq reconstruction office. Fluor sent its senior project manager from Iraq to the flood zone. 'Our rebuilding work in Iraq is slowing down, and this has made some people available to respond t our work in Louisiana,' a company representative explained. Joe Allbaugh, whose company, New Bridge Strategies, had promised to bring Wal-Mart and 7-Eleven to Iraq, was the lobbyist in the middle of many of the deals. The feeling that the Iraq war had somehow just been franchised was so striking that some of the mercenary soldiers, fresh from Baghdad, where having trouble adjusting. ...(One said) "It's pretty Green Zone here.'"

Friday, 31 August, 2007

RATIONAL REVOLUTION?

Pridger doesn't get out surfing very much, but has recently discovered a web site well worth spending some time on. http://www.rationalrevolution.net. There's a lot of enlightenment there, not all of which is Pridger's cup of tea. But the writing is obviously the product of a superior mind (perhaps a giant step or two above the magnitude of Pridger's own primitive and ill-informed backwoods rendition).

R.G. Price, who is presumably the brains behind RationalRevolution.net, is the author of A Very Jewish Myth, a book which makes the case that Jesus Christ did not exist as an historical person.

This is a book based on the two recent articles I have written on the historicity of Jesus. The book uses a lot of the material from those two articles, but there is additional information as well and much of the information has been reformatted. This book not only makes the argument that the evidence indicates that Jesus Christ never existed, but also argues for a very particular view of that position and argues against some of the other claims about the nature of the Jesus story. Specifically this work makes the case for the story of Jesus being heavily dependent on Jewish mythology, and argues against claims that the story of Jesus is based on so-called "pagan" myths or celestial deities.

Another work in progress is: A book on the role that the rise of Christianity played in setting back the understanding of the world in Western Civilization, specifically as it relates to the theory of evolution.

The articles upon which the book is based are on the web site. As for breaking the bubble of Christian faith, Price probably makes about as good a case as could be made this many years after the fact. But Pridger isn't interested in arguing whether anything in the Bible is true or not, nor deflating the faithful or spoiling anybody's faith (whether Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, or Confucian). What's the point in "proving" that Jesus never actually walked the earth, or that Moses, Noah, or Adam never showed up on an official census? R.G. Price would probably have a handsome price on his head if he were writing about the Moslem religion, and some fire breathing Christians would probably like to see him delivered to Hell in a hand basket.

Are we also to seriously investigate, in order to prove by historical documents, rational analysis, and maybe DNA testing, that the Emperor of Japan was never a god descended from the sun? Can we expect our best and brightest scholars to devote equal time to proving that Buddha (in any or all of his incarnations), never actually drew breath in the lotus position sitting under a banyan tree?

We know that the stories in the Bible (and all of those left out of the Bible), were written by men who didn't even know what a rocket scientist was. So why waste time trying to use rocket science to discredit it's literal historic veracity?

One can rationalize such things for another two thousand years, and it'll make little difference in what people believe or how they behave. In fact, if we destroy all the religious icons alleged to have taught "Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men", "Righteousness", "kindness", "tolerance", "forgiveness", "love thy neighbor", etc., the result might even turn out to be a net negative. This in spite of all the bloodshed and suffering that has resulted from errant religious fervor.

Mr. Price also goes to considerable length to prove that the Ten Commandments are not, and never were, the basis for our legal system. His prognostications are certainly carefully researched and thorough, and Pridger probably could not refute a word. But he misses the point. The point is that perhaps 99.% of Americans at the time of Independence were professing Christians of one stripe or another. Even Thomas Jefferson, Deist and free thinker, said he was a "True Christian" in the essential sense that he was devoted to the teachings of Jesus above all others.

Jefferson was an avid proponent of the strict separation of church and state, and with good and sound reason. But the founders produced a government wherein the people were to be the true sovereigns. A nation of self-governing people, who govern themselves according to their personal, and collectively held, religious beliefs, cannot but produce a Christian nation. For the government, in the final analysis, is supposed to be the body of the governed.

Of course, the Ten Commandments are not Christian Commandments at all. They were supposedly handed down to Moses for what were supposedly God's single Chosen People. Jesus (if he can be considered to have existed), had a new message. But be all of this as it may, such things as "Though shalt not kill... covet..." etc., are still our law – universal in almost all religions and cultures as they are (even if they were also the law in Rome or ancient Greece). To any rationalist, the Ten Commandments are merely a symbol of "God's laws" and, in our Christian society, remain a symbol of Law. So why go to great lengths to refute an ancient Judaic mythological symbol which Christians have generally opted to retain as a "symbol" of God's Law?

Pridger doesn't know what Price's motives are, but one thing is clear. He is joining with many others in devoting his scholarship and writing talents in a broad based attack on the Christian religion and the notion that the United States does not have, nor ever had, anything like a "Christian identity."

A man's identity can be determined by his finger prints, or DNA. A nation must be identified by its people. The people, and their beliefs, religious or otherwise, are in the national DNA and the national fingerprint.

Strip Christians of their Savior and what's left? Only the message – but whose message would it be? And who would listen to it if it was all exposed as a lie, or just another "Jewish Myth"? Who would gain?

Most influential Jews long ago became a very pragmatic and rational people – so maybe the most influential Jews are right all along the line after all, their ancient mythology and role in planting the seeds of Christianity not withstanding. Maybe "Never forget, and never forgive" is a much more rational motto than the more Christian "In God We Trust", "Love thy neighbor" and "Forgive and forget," that Jesus allegedly advocated. Maybe it is supposed to be America's role to defend Israel and the the Jews' "God given right" to the Holy Land after all, rather than "Christian values." Never mind that that "God given rights" itself is also based on a Jewish myth.

Are we to believe that people will behave better when they know that all religions were the fabrications of men, and that religion was born when the first priest met the first fool? That God never existed until somebody rationalized the concept and thought of a word for it?

Will the lot of mankind be served when we have forgotten the the rationalization that God lit the spark that we consider our genius, and Himself facilitated our rational mind? Darwin certainly didn't do it. He was already a rational man (either by the grace of God or happy happenstance), and he, along with many other rational men, merely lit a very small match in a very deep, dark, cavern of human ignorance.

The way Pridger sees it, Darwin perhaps got a small, and perhaps imperfect, insight into how "God's creative processes continue to work." It didn't disprove anything of importance with regard to religious essentials. It merely shined a small light on one of the hairs on the hind leg of a tick climbing the hair of an elephant's tail.

Will faith in Darwinian evolution, and the "inherent goodness of rational man" produce the peace and understanding that religions have often tried, and frequently failed, to produce? Or will survival of the fittest in the human species simply rise to new levels of conflict, violence, and bloodshed, unfettered by any of the moderating influences of religious faith?

Will a civilization of men without fear of God, or punishment or reward in the afterlife, be a more peaceful and loving civilization than the ones we have known? Is the purely rational man a better person than spiritual man, or even the spiritually deluded man? Is "enlightenment" really the sole prerogative of the purely rational man of scientific mind?

To play the role of the cynic, would a nation with half of its population made up of vicious barbarians and the other half comprised of practicing humanists be superior to one made up of half of fools and the other half hypocrites?

To the anti-Christian, of course, the "fools" are the religious faithful, who try to live by the Good Book and follow the teachings of Jesus. The hypocrites are the unfaithful who merely pretend to be believers to get by. Would not even the hypocrite attempt to appear righteous, and obey most of the Commandments?

Personally, Pridger thinks its a good idea to keep as many people as possible believing there are Divine causes and effects in this world, and a Force that punishes evil and rewards righteousness, either in this life or the afterlife. There simply are not enough "good rational men" to keep evil in check in the sea of human ignorance that continually defines and threatens to overwhelm the human condition even in this scientifically enlightened era.

In the supposedly "better" secular nation developing today, one of the great challenges has obviously become how to finance enough prisons to incarcerate those who have both lost faith and all moral compass – and how to finance and empower the police powers required to stay on top of keeping an orderly society.

In the absence of broad-based religious faith, the police state almost certainly becomes a necessity. It is developing here today, in the name of freedom and liberty in an increasingly Godless State. The new secular society preaches "tolerance" on the one hand and requires "Zero Tolerance!" rules and laws on the other – to keep the rabble in line. And in the end, We the People are the rabble, because the rational State does not discriminate or recognize any distinctions. There is one glaring exception, of course. Money! Money remains a recognized distinction. Only money can purchase a good defense lawyer and hope for justice.

Yes, there are good rational men. They can be as good as men of faith. Maybe better. But can they produce a better civilization and society? History has already proven that education and scientific knowledge have not really worked in that direction. For example, the A-bomb and the H-bomb were the gifts of very rational men of scientific minds. And the A-bomb was dropped upon innocent people by the rational leaders of a supposedly Christian nation that aspired to be the leader of a free world.

Our present wars, in spite our our trusty leaders' profession of religious faith, are also the products of very "rational" men who are perfectly willing to use "faith based" initiatives (if necessary), to justify anything that will preserve the wealth and power of "their class."

Could "Be good for goodness sake" be more compelling and effective than "Be good, for God's sake" has been? Will assurances that there are no rewards or punishments after death alleviate our school shootings and incarceration problems?

Obviously, without acknowledgement of God, the closest thing to a "Heavenly Father" we could have would be the Almighty State, or Big Brother. As the result of globalization, it would likely eventually become a global police state. And, as Pridger has speculated, it might appropriately be called GOD (Government Omnipotent and Deified).

Be all of this frivolity as it may, and all joking aside, Price's insights and knowledge on a wide array of subject material are worthy of our attention. He is a very astute observer and brilliant writer, and packs his articles with references and illustrative images.

Pridger would like to point you to four articles grouped under the title of "Understanding Capitalism." This is important because Americans have become confused as to what freedom and Capitalism really are, and the distinctions between individual free enterprise and corporate capital.

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/capitalism_economy.htm

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/capitalism_property.htm

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/capitalism_wages.htm

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/capitalism_culture.htm

Another article of particular interest is "The Contradictions Inherent in American Conservatism" – another term which has evolved until the public is totally confused as to its meaning. If you are confused about what "conservative" means, or wonder why the so-called "conservative agenda" has become the "corporate agenda" of globalism, then read this article. Reading it will give you some invaluable insights into to what has gone wrong and why – and why the religious right is, apparently unwittingly, supporting the agenda of radical change and almost everything but true conservatism: http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/contradictions_inherent_in_ameri.htm

All of Price's writings are interesting and informative, whether or not one appreciates his interest in shaking faith and tearing down religious icons in the name of a "Rational Revolution." A full list of articles are linked at: http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/index.htm

John Q. Pridger

THE EGALITARIAN, RACE-LESS, UTOPIA

Pridger has often speculated that if all religions were abolished, and the human specie has evolved into a race of uniform complexion and hair color, the blood will still flow as profusely as before – perhaps even more readily. Wars may start as the result of a contentious soccer game – between those with the red shirts and those with the green shirts. Or those with the shaved heads and those with the long hair, or those who wear rings in their noses and those who wear them in their belly button. Bloody contests between the haves and have-nots, or the big boys and little boys, or the brilliant men and the stupid ones, would be just as likely in a post-religious civilization as we have seen in a world resplendent with revealed religions that admonish us to "be good!"

No – eliminating race is no answer to human conflict. For there has never been a time when men have not segregated themselves into families, clans, tribes, or nations. Every major religion has similarly segregated itself into opposing sects and churches. And there will never be a time when men will not coalesce into opposing groups. The bloodiest wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were essentially between kindred peoples of similar race and religious faith.

All else being equal, wars would be small tribal affairs. But today we war principally in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere in the world where (for purely economic reasons), we perceive we "possess American interests" – abroad. It has nothing to do with any sort of altruism.

Today we hear a lot about of a "clash of civilizations". The big clash is now the "enlightened," rational, secular, West (the spawn and remnants of "Christendom" and Greco-Roman civilization, with a very strong Judaic influence) against Islamic fundamentalism. But that isn't really what the wars are about. As always, they are founded in, and all about, covetousness. Israel would never have been planted right in the midst of somebody else's territory without it. And, if the Middle East was not overflowing with that coveted commodity petroleum, secularized Christendom would have had very little interest in the Middle East. There would have been no "clash of civilizations" – at least as we know it today. There certainly would be no reason to send oil companies or armies there to get access to natural resources there.

Our national leadership could care less about whether or not there is a just or democratic government in any other nation. It's all about maintaining or gaining access to coveted natural resources. Race, religion, and culture, makes no difference. There will never be a major war effort unless there is something valuable "they have" that "we want." We're not in Iraq because "We're Americans and we want to help you" – we're there in an effort to maintain stable access to what the region has.

Modern Israel was not planted in the area because God promised the Holy Land to his Chosen People. It is there, essentially, because military strategists of the British Empire and American Imperialism (between WWI and WWII), thought it would be nice to have a Western friendly "base" in the oil-rich Middle East. Unfortunately, the strategists were somewhat short sighted. The "founding powers" that facilitated the creation of a "Jewish Homeland in Palestine" lost control of events. Israel took on a life of its own, and the rest is unfolding history. Clearly, our "friendly state" in the Middle East has been more trouble than anybody had foreseen. Had Israel not come into existence, we would have undoubtedly have been able to maintained much friendlier relations with the Arab World than we have.

Israel developed "the bomb" way back in the 1960s. Now we are worried that Iran is on the brink of doing the same thing in self-defense. Of course, we don't look at it as self defense on the part of any Arab or Moslem state. Had our Iraq adventure gone a little more smoothly, we'd probably already be at war with Iran to keep Israel the only nuclear power in the region. But it isn't that our government loves Israel so much – or even because Jews wield so much political power in the United States – but because we covet what the Arabs and Iranians have.

Ironically, we are in the position of having to defend Israel, right or wrong, because Israel is deemed to be "our baby" for better or worse.

In spite of the preponderance of propaganda to the contrary, our wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. Race and religion have never been a cause for war in modern times. Our forefathers didn't conquer the North America continent because the Native Americans were ignorant savages, heathens, and of an inferior race unworthy of consideration by racists. They conquered it because they coveted the land and its vast resources. And, in the case of the conquest of the Americas, it was done before the modern concept of political correctness was invented by the comfortable and overfed beneficiaries of that conquest.

The bloody and fratricidal Civil War wasn't fought on behalf of the slaves. It was fought to preserve the Union, and the power inherent in ruling a continental sized nation, as opposed to ending up with only half that nation to rule. It was white man against white man, and Christian against Christian – even brother against brother. Emancipation of the slaves, of course, put an altruistic face on the struggle – to prove that, after all, the best (most Christian, and most rational), had "right" on its side. (This was at a time when even professing Christian men could still be considered rational. Not that the South was not equally, or more, God fearing than the North – but the South did have that peculiar institution that tended to belie its complete understanding of the Christian faith. But there was not a man in a hundred (or maybe ten thousand), even in the North, who was eager to see men of African race officially recognized as his equal, though they [as with as many in the South] could readily see the inherent injustice in chattel slavery.)

John Q. Pridger

Friday, 17 August, 2007

RON PAUL AND MONETARY POLICY

Pridger is a Ron Paul supporter. He seems to be the only presidential candidate who actually still believes in the Constitution. The rest of them sometimes pay a little lip service to such antiquities, but they don't really take it seriously. To take the Constitution seriously is to put a major obstacle in the way of almost everything our latter day politicians do, have done, and want to do, and labels all of it "illegal."

In supporting the Constitution, Dr. Paul is saying many very courageous things – things that will brand him radical and exceedingly dangerous presidential material. Because of this, the establishment candidates aren't too worried about him. They figure he doesn't have a chance of winning the nomination, and they're probably right.

But what if there was a great and unstoppable groundswell of popular support that could not be suppressed? Such things are conceivable.

Ultimately, "People Power" can move mountains. Look what happened in Batista's Cuba, Simosa's Nicaragua, Marco's Philippines, the Shaw's Iran, and many other places where the governments had long been agents of U.S. commercial interests and extensions of U.S. imperial power. Sometimes People Power can overturn governing establishments ordained by the "powers that be" in the world. It's conceivable that such an upset could happen here. Gore almost became president in the 2000 election when Bush was obviously the establishment's anointed one.

Whenever an upset seems inevitable, the invisible government must make hard choices. Take a chance on backing a losing establishment man, or turn on him and get behind the inevitable winner – with the intent of subverting, commandeering, and controlling his administration. They carefully assess how his popularity and some of his "good ideas" can be used as tools to further their agenda.

In many cases it doesn't work. In Cuba the American establishment abandoned Batista and embraced Fidel, painting him as a nationalist hero (which he was). But, in spite of their help, they were never able to control him as they had hoped, and Castro has defied American imperial power ever since, surviving every attempt to dethrone him – though old age is now finally easing him from power. Iran backfired too, and we're still trying to bring it to heel.

If the wrong presidential candidate simply cannot be stopped, the men in the back rooms of geopolitical power pass the word to the media, "He's our man." And they take the necessary steps to make sure his administration will be stacked with men who will do their bidding and keep the administration on track.

In the case of Ronald Reagan's presidency, it worked splendidly. We got a wonderful president, but he was unable to divert the establishment program for the nation and the world (assuming he wasn't secretly a willing party to it). Reagan was able to say many of the right things, and he was able to do some of the right things – but only those that did not conflict with the ordained New World Order agenda.

In the end, the overwhelming result of Reagan's two terms was to further the corporate global agenda while putting a false face on what was actually happening. Reagan's talent as an actor stood him in good stead. He was able to put the best face on things under appalling conditions.

If Ron Paul were elected president, would he stand a chance of putting the nation back onto a constitutional track? What chance does one man have, against an establishment antithetical to everything he stands for? And, if things don't pan out to the satisfaction of the established powers, would he stand a change against the dirty-tricksters and saboteurs with the mass media at their beck and call? Lamentably, Popular support for a president is no protection against sabotage or assassination.

Taxes and monetary policy are two areas where Paul stands tall and literally alone among the various candidates of both parties. "Monetary reform" has become an untouchable subject in Washington. The very mention of monetary reform is considered radical, but Paul says he would abolish both the income tax and the Federal Reserve. These are things that are much more easily said than done, of course, and are downright dangerous things to tinker with. The powerful vested interests involved are pretty formidable.

Among other things, Paul is a hard money man. He believes gold and silver should bottom our currency. There's much to be said for hard money – money that not only represents value, but is itself a valuable commodity. Hard money is inherently self-disciplinary and would instill the sort of monetary and fiscal discipline we have not known for well over a quarter of a century. Gold and silver retains its value, no matter what, and is thus almost immune to inflation – and it cannot be manufactured out of thin air as our present credit dollar is.

But there is one big problem with hard money. Government can mint gold and silver into coins, and print certificates representing it, but it cannot "manufacture" it (certainly not out of thin air!). And this is both the wonder of it and the big problem. The main problem is that gold and silver are subject to the very same supply and demand market principles of other scarce resources – and they are scarce resources.

The only way for government to get its hands on gold or silver is to buy it from those who have it to sell – or confiscate it from them. The very "money power" we wish to defeat by instituting a sane and honest monetary system, has much more than it's rightful share of these coveted monetary metals. And, unlike "the people," it is effectively immune to confiscation because of its unassailable position of global financial power.

And, even assuming all the hot air is let out of markets and the global economy, there still wouldn't be enough gold and silver available to back the money for a necessary and desirable level of commerce and personal exchange. In short, Gold and silver production cannot be made to expand to keep up with the exchange needs of an increasing national or global population.

It would seem that if gold and silver were to be re-monetized, the prices of gold and silver would skyrocket, and hope of keeping the dollar pegged to such a spiraling target would be impossible without nationalizing all gold and silver supplies and mines.

Perhaps Dr. Paul has worked this problem out, but Pridger has not had the pleasure of seeing the details of his monetary vision. But there's one thing that Pridger and Dr. Paul definitely agree on with regard to our monetary system. And that is the criminal and destructive nature of the present debt money and credit system operated by the Federal Reserve.

John Q. Pridger

Tuesday, 14 August 2007

ANOTHER HOT STOCK TIP BURNS PRIDGER'S INBOX

H.u*g'e N e w,s To Im pact C Y+T.V
Ch*ina You_TV C.o_r.p,.
Sy-mbol: C'Y-T-V
We h a-v-e a lready s_e,e n CYTV'-s ma+rket imp.act befor-e climbi-n g to o*v.e-r $2. 00 w.i.t h n.e+w s*.
Pres s Rel_ease:
Chin,a Y'ouTV's Cn-Boo W.e'b S-i+t-e Ra,nks N+o+..1 on M,icrosof,t L.i.v_e S*earch Eng+ine
CnB_oo Traf_fic I'ncr eases 4 9 % O*v.e+r T_w,o Month-s
R-e a*d t+h e n*ews, thi-nk abo*ut t h'e impac-t, and
j.u*m+p on t'h.i,s fi-rst thi.ng T,om_orrow m_*orning! $ 0_.42 is a g*i'f_t at t+h,i+s price...*._.
Do y.o_u r homew+-ork a+n-d w-atch t+h*i s trad.e Mond.ay m'orning.

When Pridger opened this email, he thought he'd probably unleashed a virus. On closer inspection, however, it's obviously just an "encoded" hot stock tip – only decipherable by those interested enough to read it. Pridger wasn't really all that interested, but thought he'd use it here to show the crazy lengths some people will go to to promote a certain stock that they hope to make a killing on. Cyberspace must be full of these tips.

The Internet is rife with tips like this, and there must be millions waiting to get suckered by them. The "encoding" is to make it look like it is a big secret opportunity being passed on to certain "select" individual "insiders" – and those "smart" enough to figure out the valuable information being passed on. In this case, apparently the select few, and sma't ones are supposed to jump at the rare opportunity to make a bundle in the rarified Chinese stock market.

Buy a block of ten thousand shares today for $4,200.00, and sell on Monday for $20,000.00! A cool $15,800.00 profit. How could you loose?

John Q. Pridger, Investment advisor

GETTING RICH IN THE STOCK MARKET

Speaking of the stock market, and the housing market too, things aren't looking all that rosy right now. A lot of people are beginning to be a little nervous – even those who are into solid, usually dependable, stocks and real estate investments.

Pridger knows a guy who got into computerized stock trading a while back in order to avoid having to hold on to a steady job. He didn't have enough seed money to put into a solid and diversified stock portfolio and get rich over a period of years, so he followed the smart crowd, employed a sharp stock broker to lead him on to quick riches, and went for the sure thing.

It worked like a boat works for many people – a hole in the water that you pour money into.

Of course, the only way to get rich quick on a small amount of capital is to highly leverage one's investments, and that's what Pridger's friend did. But the stocks always went down rather than up after he bought. And when the margin calls started coming in, he was forced to borrow from friends, neighbors, and family to meet the calls. Naturally, he took full advantage of his credit cards.

This guy went from being debt free to being a big time debtor. Had he owned a home, it would be mortgaged and second mortgaged, of course. But, fortunately, he doesn't own anything much.

What's worse, this guy isn't much on keeping records. It seems he "made" somewhere around $700.00 in his stock ventures, but his multi-thousand dollars in losses somehow ended up on record with the IRS as income! Now, after losing all his meager savings, and going head over heels in debt, the IRS is billing him for a few thousand in unpaid income tax. And the poor guy doesn't know where to turn to get things straightened out.

It's beginning to look as though he's going to have to resort to some sort a job again to pay his debts, and if he can't prove that he lost all that money, rather than gaining it, his IRS tail is going to grow and become rather uncomfortable.

John Q. Pridger, Investment advisor

ANOTHER EMAIL

Following is the winning entry from an annual contest calling for the most appropriate definition of a contemporary term. This year's term: Political Correctness.

"Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."

The only changes Pridger would make would be to add "academia" (which was probably inadvertently omitted), and clean up the vernacular somewhat in the interests of clinical propriety and acceptable English usage – the word "turd" being somewhat objectionable to a few ladies, biologists and English majors, and thus often unrecognized by some word processor spelling checkers. Perhaps "fresh human feces" could be appropriately substituted.

"Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by academia and an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up fresh human feces by the clean end."

John Q. Pridger

Monday 6, August, 2007

MORE MAIL BAG

A few "Government Truisms" found their way into Pridger's inbox the other day. Some of them are a little dated, but all are true indeed. Pridger has added comments where it seemed appropriate.

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself. (Mark Twain)

Mark Twain lived in a more tolerant era. "Idiot" is too strong and inflammatory today. It's almost as bad as using the "N" word. So, in the interests of political correctness, Pridger would substitute the term "clueless."

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. (Winston Churchill)

The science of Voodoo Economics had not been perfected in Churchill's day. Today our government can both tax and borrow itself into prosperity. We are like a nation standing in a bucket reveling in the euphoria of being able to lift itself up with a bungee cord handle.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. (George Bernard Shaw)

Thus, democracy plays itself out, as the number of Pauls are fruitful and multiply the Peters' wives troops off to the abortion clinic because they can't afford children, or feel a little guilty about introducing children into an increasingly crowded and troubled world. Our democracy is just about spent. For an example of a fresh and new democracy, we have to look at Iraq.

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man....which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. (G. Gordon Liddy)

...and your children's children's money – perhaps unto the seventh generation.

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. (James Bovard, Civil Libertarian, 1994)

Of course, in these times of diversity, multiculturalism, and enhanced social sensitivities, it's illegal (or at least politically incorrect), to differentiate between wolves and the sheep. And, if the wolves happen to devour the sheep, the sheep are equally suspect. On the other hand, the government itself can play the role of wolf and do what it will with suspected terrorists (whether sheep or wolves).

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. (Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University)

This is natural. Productive working taxpayers are what make rich people and nations rich. The rulers of poorly managed nations, lacking productive taxpayers to make them sufficiently rich, have no other way to become super-rich than through the generosity of the guilt-ridden rulers (and brothers in crime), of rich countries.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. (P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian)

And "giving" (or withholding), money and power to government is no longer a democratic option. Government already has the power to take what it pleases. When it has become impossible to elect quality representation, government's power to tax produces a broad road to tyranny and puts tyranny itself on cruise control.

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. (Frederic Bastiat, French Economist, 1801-1850)

We have progressed to a point where not only does the government payroll include almost half the population, but the whole nation has been given the "freedom" and means by which to live off of the labor of poorer people elsewhere.

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. (Ronald Reagan, 1986)

Those were wonderful observations. Unfortunately, the corrective measures taken were aimed at business corporations rather than "People." People continue to be highly taxed while corporations pay very little and are free to flee offshore. People continue to be, and are increasingly, literally micro-regulated to death. And People who stop moving, and fall into unproductive life styles, continue to be rewarded with subsidies.
We have found that if we quit regulating business corporations, they loose all sense of national commitment, and naturally gravitate to the run away flag, where they find even less taxation and much cheaper labor. We find that if we quit subsidizing inefficient domestic industries, those industries will close their domestic facilities and set up much more efficient plants and factories in Mexico, China, and elsewhere. And while we have ceased to subsidize many American businesses to keep them safely at home where they belong, we continue to subsidize the foreign competition and profitable American companies taking advantage of cheap foreign labor. They are paid to "develop foreign markets" deprive Americans of production jobs, and to reward them for this loss with cheap imports.

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. (Will Rogers)

And the facts (as mentioned above) are not only funny, they are downright scary!

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free! (P.J. O'Rourke)

The really strange thing is that government could provide free health care for almost "free." It would be rather simple, but nobody in government has figured it out yet. It could begin with restoring to government the franchise to coin money and regulate the value thereof. We labor under the false assumption that the key to wealth, and the only way to "get money" is through the issue of credit by private bankers, rather than the issue of money by responsible government.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. (Voltaire,1764)

We thought our founding fathers had found a way around this. Limited government, by consent to the governed, no taxation without representation, guaranteed freedom and liberty, etc.

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you! (Pericles, 430 B.C.)

And which government agencies are most likely to take an interest in us? The IRS, the FBI, the BATF, the Department of Homeland Security, the Draft Board, etc., etc., etc.

No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. (Mark Twain, 1866)

Generally true. However, in the latter part of the twentieth century, gridlock did allow us to relax from time to time. But not nearly enough.

Talk is cheap...except when Congress does it. (Unknown)

This is why congressional gridlock was so important to us. Much talk and no action on the part of Congress is an exceptional bargain. But we insist on legislative action. And legislative action, by misrepresentatives, is exceedingly expensive.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. (Winston Churchill)

We have progressed since Winston's day. Since winning the contest with the Soviet socialist system, capitalists have figured out how to spread the misery by preventing "trickle down" from functioning as originally advertised. And they can now do this while making us believe we are getting an exceptionally good deal. (Good deals like cheap imports and home mortgages with zero down and only interest payments for life or the next sale.)

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. (Mark Twain)

True, but most taxpayers hardly miss their skins. They have learned to be satisfied with the abundance of cake and circuses.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. (Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher, 1820-1903)

When a nation is led by fools who have gained control of all educational processes, everybody ends up fooled – and the nation ends up a nation of fools. It is far too much to hope for a Congress that would shield the rest of us from the folly of the executive and judicial branches of government – and an executive branch that would shield us from the folly of the legislative and judicial branches – and a judicial branch that would shield us from the folly of the executive and legislative branches of government. Checks and balances, originally designed to shield us from folly, have become a humorous juggling act.

There is no distinctly native American criminal class...save Congress. (Mark Twain)

We've progressed since Mark Twain's day. Now we have several distinctly native and immigrant criminal classes besides Congress – including the executive and judicial branches of government.

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.- Edward Langley, Artist (1928 - 1995)

Better yet, politicians required to work for their keep back home on the farm – who meet briefly once a year at public expense to patch up the cracks in the Liberty Bell and keep the executive and judicial branches from rewriting or ignoring the Constitution.
Few, besides Pridger, have suggested that we'd be much better off if we outsourced all our our government elective officers and top functionaries. Filipinos or Indians (working in Manila or Mumbai, of course, not Washington), could do the jobs much more cheaply and probably better.

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. (Thomas Jefferson)

Our government reached that state about a century ago. And now government is scientifically organized on a model designed to fool the public into believing it isn't so – through the skillful use of such devices as smoke and mirrors.

"Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?" (Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, 1/20/1981)

And this endeared President Reagan to us like nothing any other president had ever said before. Truer words had never been spoken.
     The Great Communicator saw the main problem, and said a lot of wonderful things. Unfortunately, he mistook the corporate wolves for guardian angels and gave them carta blanc to manage the hen house.
     Thinking corporate "capitalism" the primary font of our national success, he mistook business capital for "We the People." It turned out that Reagan felt that internationalized business corporations, given full reign under a "new international economic order," could, and would, solve all of the problems that troubled not only the nation, but the world. This, in Pridger's opinion, was a big, "Whoops!"
     An era of great capitalist prosperity followed, and convinced (almost) everybody that we must be on the right track. But – wrong train – wrong track – wrong tunnel – wrong light. The middle class began a long decline. But there's no turning back. Solution? Pour on more coal on the fire and more super-heated steam – we're almost to the light at the end of the tunnel!

John Q. Pridger

Sunday, 5 August, 2007

MEDICAL COSTS

Due to heart problems and a stroke, Pridger's wife has been firmly caught up in the medical system for some time. Fortunately, we have decent insurance coverage, because the costs of medical care have simply gone astro. It's an amazing system, with amazing costs, and the system feeds heartily on itself. It's obviously out of control. So much so that almost everybody is aware of it – even our politicians.

Take a minor ear infection for example. The old doc looked in the wife's ear, said "Hmmm," and prescribed some antibiotic ear drops and an oral antibiotic. The drops came in tiny bottle – maybe a quarter of an ounce worth in weight. The price was $112.49!! The stuff is nearly worth its weight in gold! The co-pay was $17.81, which is probably a lot more than the drops are actually worth.

The pills, six of them, were $44.72, or $7.45 each! Co-pay was $7.50, which would perhaps be a more realistic, but still inflated, retail price.

About four years ago, while Pridger was away sailing the seven seas, the wife had an itchy hemorrhoid flare up. She confided her problem to a friend, and the well intentioned friend fixed her up with a specialist. The result was a half hour procedure called a colonoscopy. Price tag: $2,550.00! Co-pay was about $700.00, certainly more than enough to pay for a half hour procedure. But all she needed was a little overpriced tube of hemorrhoid ointment.

Doctors don't think twice at ordering expensive procedures and high priced medications. A mere word from them and people become bound to crushing medical costs. One informed source claims that 90% of the medical operations performed in the nation are totally unnecessary – many very dangerous to the health. As a result, health care "mistakes" or "overkill" take more lives every year than guns. To add sufficient insult to injury, health care professionals have the gall to lobby for gun control!

The wife was having a little trouble sleeping, and mentioned it to her doctor. He prescribed a sleep aid – one that's frequently advertised on TV. When we got to the pharmacy and found out the price, we didn't have the gall to gouge our poor, long-suffering, insurance company for it. A few sips of wine before going to bed has had to suffice (and it does).

These unreasonable prices are not solely the fault of the medical and pharmaceutical industries. The insurance companies have an awful lot to do with it too (not to mention being aided and abetted by government policy since the government has become an agent for corporate interests). Yet Pridger feels guilty seeing his insurance provider gouged for such outrageous prices for medical care and prescription medications.

It may seem ironic that some of us feel sorry for your insurance providers, since the insurance industry is such a large part of the problem. But it's true. The more the insurance companies have to pay out, the higher health care prices go! And the higher premiums go – and the higher co-pay goes. And the more employers try to get out of providing health insurance to their employees. It's a circular feeding frenzy – and the costs are all ultimately borne by "consumers."

Ironically, insurance companies manage to get significant discounts on medical bills and pharmaceuticals. But if a poor working man doesn't have insurance, he has to pay the full, inflated and padded bill. His only alternative is to refuse to pay, and hope they'll give up billing him. Either that, or just quit his job and go on public aid and Medicaid.

Pridger knew one young man who had to quit a decent job in order for his wife to have a baby. His employer didn't provide medical insurance, and the expected cost of delivery of the child was more than his wages would bear. The solution was to become unemployed and let the State pay the bills.

Little wonder that national health care has become such a hot political topic. Certainly something must be done. Unfortunately, we're playing with the wrong options for a solution. In keeping with our national philosophy that corporations should run the world, we're looking at somehow having national health care with the insurance industry as an integral part of the package! In fact, any national health care solution likely to be passed will be one written by the medical, pharmaceutical, and insurance industries! In other words, continue to let the wolves and bears shepherd the chickens and lambs with significant funding input from the taxpayer.

One idea on the table is that everybody be required by law to purchase private insurance, and the government will help out – paying part of the premium. The individual will still have a co-pay, and naturally will have to pay the taxes that pay the industrial providers. It sounds to Pridger like a lose lose situation.

Anything provided free by the government is going to cost plenty, of course. But if the issue is quality health care as a national birthright, the industrial and institutional interests ought rightly to be cut out of the equation to the extent possible. You can't successfully have a socialized health care system by simply employing the capitalist driven health care industry at public expense. Doing so would be absurd. If you are going to have a socialized system, make it a real socialized system that would be under the control of the government.

"Gawld a'mighty!" the capitalists scream, along with all the other anti-socialists. "Everything the government touches turns to doo doo?"

But the fact is that the government has a history of providing many free services at a very reasonable price. Of course, everybody complained about them. They complained so loud that the United States Postal Service (for example), was "partially" privatized. So far as Pridger can tell, the service has neither got better nor worse, but postage fees have continued to rise, and the Postal Service is still subsidized and "controlled" by the government. Amtrak is another example. It, too, has to pay part of it's own way, and people scream that we can't afford it.

Had the government not built the highway and Interstate systems, private passenger rail would never have disappeared in the first place, and we wouldn't be dependent on foreign oil for getting everybody to where they want to go. But everybody thinks our highway system is the greatest thing that every happened to the country. That was great, but we don't want anything that smacks of socialism! We still expect the government to do just about everything for us anyway, just as long as it isn't called either socialism, paternalism, or tyranny.

As a result, a growing number of what were once free government services are now partially "privatized" or funded by a growing array of "user fees." But the tax burden has nonetheless continued to increase, and the government is still, and increasingly, buried in mountains of debt in spite of making users pay for formerly free government services.

For those who find a socialized health care system a threat, the private system would continue to operate for those who can afford it, or can afford private health insurance. Those who opt for "free" government provided health care, have to take their chances with what is provided. Sometimes, when they start itching near the seat of the pants, they may have to settle for hemorrhoid ointment rather than a full blown colonoscopy.

So, in Pridger's opinion, any comprehensive national health care system should be based on the U. S. Public Health hospital system we once had. Yes, we once had a fully functioning socialized health care system in this country. The United States Public Health Service served seamen, Indians, and a few other miscreant types for two hundred years. There are still fragments of it left today, though much downsized. It owned and operated its hospitals and clinics, employed the doctors, nurses, and service personnel – all of whom were federal civil servants. The system worked well, though it never attained perfection. Nothing ever does.

The Veteran's hospitals are similar to the U.S. Public Health hospitals, and many state operated health clinics that serve the poor are operated in a similar way. The military services operate similar hospitals.

The United States Public Health hospitals began to downsize and disappear as more and more employers provided private health care insurance. Merchant seamen, such as Pridger, lost their U.S. Public Health services privileges during the Reagan revolution. The rationale, of course, was that it made no sense to provide free care at public expense, to well paid seamen who have private health insurance.

Ironically, the union busting that began during and the Reagan administration, and the downsizing and outsourcing caused by the globalization that has followed, have resulted in millions loosing their health care coverage.

In other words, we downsized our already functioning socialized national health care system at the very time when we needed to be expanding it exponentially. This is typical of how our government fails to work. Our present situation is due to the government held philosophy that private providers are always better and more cost effective. This is a flawed philosophy. There are some services government is actually more suited to provide than private interests driven by greed.

We have developed a very peculiar system. Since people cannot afford health care or health insurance because the health care industry has mushroomed into an expensive monster, government is toying with the idea of hiring that same system to provide "free" health care. Something is wrong with the reasoning that leads in this direction.

John Q. Pridger

Thursday, 2 August, 2007

SPEAKING OF EMAIL

Pridger doesn't get much feedback. It's a little puzzling, since somebody is bound happen onto the blog and be offended or amused by some of Pridger's insights. But he receives neither praise nor hate mail. We can only assume that the word isn't getting out to a very broad audience due to some sort of blocking mechanism, or because this blog is simply set too far back off the main information super highway – deep in the bushes where few apparently dare to tread.

So, the few feathers in Pridger's cap are tattered and time worn. But every once in a great while something comes through, at least indirectly, to perk up Pridger's flagging ego, and give him something to crow about.

"A professor at Texas University read your article that I down loaded and was very impressed. He said you were probably one of the few Americans that actually knew what was going on in America."

The professor didn't communicate that to Pridger via email. Another reader printed out Pridger's Blog and let him read it in hard copy, and kindly passed the remark on. Perhaps the University computers would display some sort of a warning if someone tried to visit Pridger's Index or this blog. At least that's the way Pridger imagines it (after all, he's a paranoid conspiracy theorist).

There's a web site called "Ego Search" or something like that. Pridger happened upon it once and typed in his own name. The search returned a score of "absolute zero"! Zip! That seemed rather strange, because the search engine showed the URLs it paged through during the search. They included "Pridger's Index of Politically Incorrect Studies," a lot of Pridger other pages, articles, and this blog, before coming to that revealing conclusion – a big, fat, ZERO!

Maybe there's something Pridger is doing wrong. He doesn't post very often. But one reason he doesn't is because nobody seems to be out there. Maybe Pridger is invisible.

There's one thing for certain – Pridger isn't going to allow his popularity and renown to go to his head, nor his lack of readership discourage him.

Almost none of Pridger's friends ever read or comment on this blog, but some of them do forward jokes – this one is making the rounds again – it's both humorous and scary.

Dear Abby:

My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning,
And, when I confront him, he denies everything. What's worse, everyone
knows that he cheats on me. It is so humiliating.

Also, since he lost his job six years ago, he hasn't even looked for a new
one. All he does all day is smoke cigars, cruise around and shoot the
breeze with his buddies while I have to work to pay the bills.

Since our daughter went away to college he doesn't even pretend to like
me and hints that I may be a lesbian. What should I do?

Signed: Clueless

Dear Clueless:

Grow up and dump him. Good grief, woman. You don't need him anymore!
You're A United States Senator from New York running for President of the
United States. Act like one.

It's scary that Bill Clinton was reelected to the office of the presidency after having so thoroughly shamed himself, the office, and the nation. It's scary that Hillary is now a popular New York Senator with a chance at the presidency. It's not so much Hillary, but the thought that Bill Clinton might be returning to the White House he defiled.

The fact that Bill Clinton was re-elected, and Hillary is actually in the running for president, gives a strong hint as to why our nation is in decline. It isn't Bill or Hillary so much as the processes by which presidential material is selected these days, and the totally unsatisfactory choices the voters have to make on election day.

When it came time to vote Bill Clinton out of office, the alternative was Bob Dole, who (having lost the election), went on to fulfill his destiny as a pitchman in Viagra commercials – and that's how we'll be obliged to remember him. He was a war hero and a good man, but not presidential material – and certainly nobody to put up against someone as erectily functional as Bill Clinton.

The Clinton administration wasn't all bad. One of the few good things about it was that few American G.I.s were killed during the Clinton years. Clinton knew when to get out of Somalia, and when he did go on a killing spree, it was with missiles, bombers, and jet fighters, leaving death and destruction on the ground but our fighting forces in tact. He took some long shots at Osama bin Laden, and a medical facility in Sudan, and bombed the Serbians into submission. And he dutifully lobbed bombs and missiles into Iraq – which worked a quick miracle cure in the case of his festering impeachment sickness.

Ironically, but typically, the unintended consequence of Clinton's Yugoslavian action was that the Moslem fighters he saved from the Serbs, so Pridger understands, are now playing a role in supporting our enemies in Iraq.

The Democrats don't have anything on the Republicans, however. The reelection of Bill Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky affair and impeachment proceedings was upstaged by the reelection of George Bush II after everybody knew he'd tricked us into war in Iraq, and the war had already gone very sour. But the voters wanted him to finish the job rather than handing the scepter to the alternate, who ran as an admitted, but duly repentant and reformed, war criminal. (How do we end up with such choices?)

The way Bush originally won office is still a little puzzling to many people. The only thing that Pridger finds puzzling, however, is how Gore could have won the popular vote when Bush was the one anointed for the job at hand? Apparently those new computerized voting machines haven't been perfected yet.

Of course, supposedly nobody imagined Bush was going to be a war president. His most appealing campaign promises had to do with fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, family values, and beginning the process of extricating us from some of our foreign entanglements. But somebody knew we needed a man of iron will and distain for due process – a man able to bring peace and democracy to nations such as Iraq. Gore didn't have what it took, and the anointers knew that very well.

George Bush apparently feels that he still has a chance at leaving a great presidential legacy. At least he's doing a heroic job of maintaining appearances of a firm upper lip. The most revered American presidents in American history, of course, were those who managed to get the most Americans killed. Bush, apparently knows that. Abraham Lincoln is still at the very apex when it comes to presidential legacies (with 600,000 notches on his sword) – followed by Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Truman comes in for honorable mention because of the Korean War, though he only managed a stalemate there (in all due respect for the Chinese and Soviets). Presidents Johnson and Nixon fell on their swords in Vietnam, so didn't make the great legacy grade. Though 50,000 Americans gave their final measure of devotion, the war has to be won, or at least stalemated, in order to claim any measure of presidential greatness. Only then does the number of American casualties become a measure of accomplishment.

"Peace with honor" in Iraq will be the challenge the next president will be confronted with. And "Peace with honor" is really going to be a tough one – maybe even impossible. A war that was based on lies and deceit from the onset is nothing new, of course. But Iraq is quite unique in American history. In the course of this war, we have become a lot like "them." "Them" being the enemies of what was once known as "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." Our motto has become "Never forgive, never forget," and our war cry, "Safety and security at any price!"

STAVING OFF WORLD CONQUEST

Another email Forward came into Pridger's inbox recently, equating the Islamic Jihadists with Nazi Germany, and the War in Iraq, and on Terror, to the great World Wars of the Twentieth Century.

We're engaged in a great "Clash of Civilizations" – a war between those who have the oil and those who need the oil and have a lot of weapons of mass destruction.

The message conveys the standard propaganda line – that "we've got to go and defeat them over there so we don't have to fight them over here." If we don't, Islamic extremists are going to swallow the world up like Hitler intended to, and complete the Holocaust he had begun.

No doubt Hitler had some pretty big and diabolical plans. But in the end, he was a rather small guy. Small and diabolical as he was, at least he told the world what he intended to do, and set about trying to do it. There was little or no deceit or deception there, and (at least initially), he had his people firmly behind him with their eyes wide open. (Whereas we seem seem to be a nation of the blind and deceitful leading the blind.)

Contrary to public opinion, Hitler didn't want to destroy either the British Empire nor the United States, as he admired both. His initial aim was to regain Germany's World War One losses, followed by neutralizing the growing power of the USSR. Hitler envisioned a world dominated by the great powers of Western civilization – principally Britain, Germany, and the United States, with their own spheres of influence. In that sense, he had a lot in common with Cecil Rhodes and the Round Table groups who had a similar vision for the more exclusive "English speaking peoples."

For its part, Soviet Russia, under Stalin, had Hitler and Germany in its cross hairs too – as well as the rest of the Western World. In fact, The Soviets made no bones about its intention to spread the workers' paradise over the entire Western World, and eventually the Globe.

Hitler recognized where the real threat lay, but the Roosevelt administration chose to see only the threat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Once war was arranged between Great Britain and Germany (the Round Table groups of England and America being involved), it was relatively easy to sell most of the American people on the threat of Nazi Germany. Hitler had the idea that Western Europeans and Americans should be friends and that the enemies were of other races rather than just languages.

So, the Soviet Empire was enthroned and empowered, and the British Empire wilted – though American power and prestige soared. The world was ripe for the great contest between two Utopian New World Order concepts – the communist or capitalist models.

Ironically, China went communist after the war with very little help or encouragement from Russia. We were more responsible for the communist victory in China that the Soviets were. Stalin didn't care two hoots for Mao Tse Tung, and considered that a communist China would threaten Soviet leadership of the communist movement. We went soft on Mao and his revolutionaries while getting tough with our Chinese ally, Chang Kai Shek.

Russia was interested in communizing Western Europe, and had little interest in China or South Asia. Russia cared little for North Korea, though it encouraged North Korea's invasion of the south, and was very happy to see us bogged down in a war on the Korean Peninsula – a war that turned into our first "no win" war, due to our respect for the Soviet Union and the newly communized China.

Likewise, Soviet Russia was very pleased to see us bogged down in South Vietnam. As with China, the Soviets didn't give two hoots for Ho Chi Minh and Communist North Vietnam. But they backed them, of course, mainly to give us a hard time – and we experienced not only another "no win" war, but a humiliating defeat and total withdrawal.

Had the United States not influenced the British to go to war with Germany over Poland, chances are the British Empire would have lasted a lot longer than it did. There would have also have been a resurrected German Empire. There would probably have been a slightly expanded Japanese Empire in the East. But had Roosevelt not started trying to boss Japan around, Japan probably wouldn't have attacked European and American outposts of empire in South Asia – and certainly would not have attacked Pearl Harbor.

THE HOLOCAUST – THE TOUCHIEST SUBJECT IN THE WORLD

The Holocaust, which today colors and dominates all media coverage and thinking about Hitler and World War Two, has become the great moral justification for the war on the part of the United States and Allies. Yet, in the end, we're told that we share the blame with Hitler and the Nazis. Many Jews still chastise us for failing to bomb the concentration camps as the end of the war approached (as if that would have saved the prisoners). Had we bombed them, of course (as we bombed Dresden and many other German cities), we'd stand accused of materially assisting in the "Final Solution." But, in fact, the Holocaust was only a small part of a much larger picture, and the Final Solution was undoubtedly, at least to a significant degree, the result of the Allied imperative for "unconditional surrender" with no quarter given, and no possibility of honorable surrender – not even by anti-Hitler elements. If the "Final Solution" was indeed willful policy, it was greatly increased as a last act of desperation.

But the Holocaust has become so important, that to doubt, or even wonder, whether everything happened as we have been told, is a punishable crime in many supposedly free Western European nations. In the United States, the "crime" is not yet a punishable offense, but it constitutes the very epitome of political incorrectness, and to doubt or wonder out loud is considered tantamount to "Holocaust Denial" and anti-Semitism.

To keep the record straight, Pridger is NOT a Holocaust Denier. But World War Two was the most massive holocaust to ever visit mankind in recorded history. The Jewish Holocaust occurred within the context of the mass slaughter that cost perhaps fifty million lives. The fact that we focus almost exclusively today on the loss of six million Jews illustrates how important the Jews are, and how powerful they have become when it comes to molding public opinion, educational standards, and standards of political correctness.

John Q. Pridger

Monday, 30 July, 2007

MAIL BAG

Alexander Tyler's quotes and insights have been around for over two hundred years. Though they are now making the email circuit (again!), one wonders why our politicians continue to act as if they've never seen them (just as they act as if they've never read Washington's Farewell Address). The quotes in the email are not exact (for example, "largess" was used rather than "generous gifts" and "benefits," if Pridger remembers correctly), but are close enough to convey the exact message.

How Long Do We Have?

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

     "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government."
     "A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
     "The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage."

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law,
St. Paul , Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

Number of States won by -
Gore: 19 Bush: 29
Square miles of land won by -
Gore: 580,000 Bush: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by -
Gore: 127 million Bush: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by -
Gore: 13.2 Bush: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

Pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.

Just how Professor Olson figures the 2000 election statistics fit into Tyler's predictions is unclear. Apparently he is a Republican and Bush supporter. Of course, the Democrats have been the traditional the "tax and spend" party, handing largess from the public treasury to a widening assortment of supposedly "disadvantaged" Americans. And (after the Civil War), the Democrat Party gained the reputation of being the "war party." Yet recent Republican administrations (and certainly those of the George Bushes), have emerged as more of a threat to the Republic than any Democrat administration in the history of the nation. The Republicans have become the "tax-cut" and "spend" party – and the "war party," spending on war and national economic suicide projects.

Still, the comparison between the numbers that voted for Bush and Gore are interestingly revealing. The Democrats won the votes of their main supporters – a combination of the well heeled social utopians, and that of the classes most personally dependent on largess from the public treasury for personal comfort and survival. The Republicans won a combination of the rural, religious right, family values, up-scale suburbia, and the business vote. Surprisingly, they managed to win most of the same voters in the 2004 election, plus the militant warrior vote, and a not-so-surprising share of the traditionally Democratic Jewish vote.

The professor focuses on "government dependence" in the context of 40% of the people depending on government for handouts or retirement security. But he ignores the even more significant developments whereby the people, the government, and the nation itself on the whole, are being made evermore dependent on foreign trade and foreign credit for mere national economic survival. The entire edifice of government control, power, and largess now depends on the labor and continuing extended credit of others elsewhere.

This being the case, Pridger would say that we are far beyond the "complacency and apathy" stage and well into the bondage stage. And the Bush administration is doing its darnedest to work toward a bona fide dictatorship stage, using 9/11 and the war on terror as the lever.

As for illegal immigration and potential loss of our nation in five more years, Pridger feels we lost our nation well over a generation ago. And, ironically, we lost it because the government decided to exert its power to "do good." Public apathy set in when the federal government took power away from the states and their peoples – a process that began with the Civil War and was finally made complete when federal troops marched into Southern cities to integrate the public schools against the will of the majority.

From then on, public policy has used largess from the treasury to "manufacture" social and economic "equality" (for the poor and disadvantaged), and effectively purchase the votes (or passive support), of those receiving largess from the public treasury. The recipients of special treatment, and largess from the public treasury, are not only the poor and disadvantaged. The many already well heeled corporate powers shaping the New World Order into a global capitalist Utopia are also recipients of both money and policy largess. And both political parties have been very actively contributing to this poisonous and suicidal stew.

Of course, we have been trained to consider that the great "Civil Rights" coup by the government in Washington a gallant, positive, and necessary, way to deliver justice on behalf of the theretofore disadvantaged classes. Of course, it was justice in a superficial and academic sense. But it was also, demonstrably, a miserable failure. Losers far outnumber the winners, though even the losers receive enough to keep them fat, sassy, and politically complacent and lethargic (as long as benefits continue to flow).

Most significantly, this do-gooderism, through unconstitutional military force, followed by equally unconstitutional judicial activism by the Supreme Court, entailed the de facto repudiation of majority rule and any concept of government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," in the context of majority rule. The beaten majority, continuously brow-beaten ever since, became apathetical toward government, which had, in the name of justice, become an all powerful juggernaut the majority could no longer control.

As William E. Simon, a former Secretary of the Treasury, observed in his 1979 A Time For Truth:

"The United States, in changing with relative speed into a social democracy, has undergone an alteration that is more fundamental than any other nation's. It has actually repudiated its own identity... It is widely sensed that a 'mysterious' malady is eating away at the core of our society, but we are drowning in shallow explanations... The mysterious malady is that the freest land in the world is becoming unfree... America's unique historical attributes... are slowly being destroyed."

Thomas Jefferson correctly said (running four separate quotes together here):

"Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests, by the most lasting bonds... The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body... When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there... If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption."

The independent family farmer class, as a percentage of the population, has been reduced to near extinction, and most of the successful survivors are dependent on large, petrochemical based, operations. We have become piled upon one another in great cities, and we demand more and more government as a result – especially monetary benefits and police protection. And this vast nation is under a single, all-powerful, and increasingly corrupt federal government.

English writer and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, wrote to an American friend in 1857:

"Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand; or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the Twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the Fifth – with this difference... that your Huns and Vandal will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions."

It's amazing how insightful individuals such as Tyler, Jefferson, Macaulay, and Simon (and many others), repeatedly hit the nail right on the head, but our trusty leaders in Washington act as if all none of them had left a decipherable message, and that even the Declaration of Independence and Constitution are open to some sort of new interpretation – as if George Orwell wrote the script that is being followed.

Our country was plundered by Huns and Vandals during the twentieth century – and they were engendered within our own country by our own institutions. And though no Caesar or Napoleon has yet come to power, George W. is at least making a significant power grab, though he lacks the wherewithal to rule. And our Congress has effectively become a house of mis-representatives which has shepherded to fruition the policies that are destroying what great men and hardy pioneers had built.

Today, "Survivor Man," and "Reality TV" (among many other things), convey reality to our children. And any disinterested alien observer visiting and touring the nation would come to two major conclusions. (1) Rev. Martin Luther King was the "Father of the Nation"; (2) Pornography and "adult language" (as defined by Hollywood), have always been central to "American Culture." The fact that we have some two million of our citizens behind bars would undoubtedly leave quite a profound impression also. But enough social commentary.

Naturally, state governments have been infected, too. With the loss of most of their sovereign powers to the federal government, they have become agents of, and for, that federal government and its social policies. The states themselves have become major recipients of largess from the federal treasury. And this largess insures their loyalty to all major federal programs and agendas. This constituted a total reversal of what the founders intended in a "federal Republic." And, had Ben Franklin not expressed doubt that we would be able to keep what the founders had bequeathed to us – our Republic?

After forced integration, the nation naturally re-segregated itself, and race relations haven't improved, but have deteriorated. Before Civil Rights and forced integration, disadvantaged minorities had to live by the rules set down by the the majority. Now the supposed tyranny of the majority has been transformed into another sort of tyranny – the tyranny of minority leaders and special interests. And what's worse, the majority actually fears all minorities, while most people kid themselves about "equality" and the wonders of multiculturalism and diversity, as the formerly predominate race has come to fear being considered racist or politically incorrect. In the end, everybody fears the government. Fear, of course, is the father and nursemaid to hatred (secret though it may remain). And, naturally, suppressed fear and hatred, over a long period, transcends into an explosive power keg.

The point here is that when government used its executive, legislative, judicial, military, and police powers to overcome and overturn the will of the majority of the people, democracy died on the vine (in the very name of democracy egalitarianism), and the Republic began to wilt and become perverted. What justice was done was overwhelmed by new injustices and perversities of policy.

Since the majority can no longer control the government, nobody (in the realm known as "We the People"), can control it. Actual control has totally passed to moneyed "institutions" – corporate, foreign, and minority lobbyists, foundation think tanks, and hidden planners. The federal government has become an unassailable, self-feeding, power into itself – and unassailable power breeds not only corruption, but apathy among already powerless voters.

So the very final stages of Tyler's predictions are already here, though most of the people don't yet realize it, or are happy with their lot – and thus not lethargic at all, but willing to actively support the status quo regardless of where it is leading. Many of us who have a smattering of understanding about what is going on are too few to have a significant voice, and generally opt out of the political processes.

"Your vote counts," they tell us. But it doesn't count for much. The public doesn't get to vote on anything of importance. They only get to elect their representatives, who are usually misrepresented to them during the election campaigns.

As the Declaration of Independence said:

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But..."

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guard for their future security..."

Those, of course, were, and are, seditious statements under a government that has become a despotism. And if any American of political prominence where to utter them today, referring to our present government, they would never come close to any elective office. And any individual "patriot" or "patriot group" who employed or peddled such inflammatory rhetoric would be swiftly dealt with by the various tentacles of the Department of Homeland Security.

Generally speaking, honest and candid candidates for high political office, with knowledge, understanding, and true political insight, need not apply. The government is set in its ways, and its ways have become wrong. And those wrong ways must be protected.

But there is little danger that we will have a revolution any time soon. With 40% of the population directly beholden to the government for their daily bread, and most of the rest indirectly beholden to government for their privileged positions – and literally all of them over-fed, over-entertained, and over-indulgent in a whole array of ways – political lethargy will survive until some major catastrophic event, natural or man-made, totally upsets the apple cart.

For now, the apple cart appears pretty stable. But when huge castles and massive systems are constructed on shifting sands, and houses are built of cards, a rude awaking is always a strong possibility.

John Q. Pridger

Wednesday, 25 July, 2007

ROCKS AND HARD PLACES

The innumerable ironies of recent history – all of which are perversities actively pursued by our mis-representatives in Washington – have placed us in a difficult situation. Consider the following observations.

Free Trade and the global free market give the American consumer the ability to purchase the best goods at the lowest available prices from global sources.
Protectionism, was effectively a special government subsidy to American businesses and corporations. It permitted them to charge higher prices for things that could be produced more cheaply in foreign countries. It often subsidized inefficient production methods.

If cheaper is better, as most people take to be a immutable truth, that's all we have to know. In fact, that's all we're supposed to know, so that we can be happy with our cheap imports. But consider the following:

The global free market is the playing field of big international capital, not the common people – and, in spite of cheap prices of imports being delivered, consumers are the ultimate losers, because they soon become dependent on others elsewhere for their every consumer need.
Free Trade is an euphemism for "license" for major players – internationalized corporations – to exploit natural and human recourses on a global basis, exercise their natural predatory tendencies, and maximize profits to the fullest, without regard to local, community, or national interests – and largely without the necessity of employing domestic labor.
Free Trade is an incentive to American corporations move production and jobs offshore and engage in all other potential outsourcing, effectively flying a false flag. And this "incentive" becomes coercion to companies that would rather maintain domestic production, but must move offshore to complete on the globalized market.
The incentives are abundant, persuasive, and very costly to the American people. Subsidies have been, and are, paid to American companies that were already operating very profitably exclusively within the American market – to go "over there," wherever labor is cheapest, and "develop markets."
The markets primarily being developed are not export markets for American products, made by Americans, but for foreign made goods to be sold into the American market – by formerly American companies now producing "American products Produced Abroad" (APPA)! The carrot, is to seduce the American consumer into thinking he's getting an exceptionally good deal on foreign imports.
There is, and will continue to, be no benefit for American producers. In fact, the American industrial producer is now being sold down the river just as the American farmer was. American producers, earning American wages and benefits, simply cannot compete with Third World labor.
They tell us the solution is for America to export more. But there is no profit for American producers if we must sell our production into lower priced markets. The supposed "solution" merely compounds the problem. There is no substitute for domestic production for domestic consumption.
In an export based economy, labor is merely a cost to be cut to the bone, for the producer is not also the consumer. This is why the economies of almost all poor and under-developed nations are export economies, and labor is generally paid wage-slave wages. The economy of the antebellum South was an export economy. Slaves provided the necessary labor to make it work.
There is no longer any technology that can enable Americans workers to compete in the global marketplace, because that technology was owned by the runaway flag American companies that set up shop in Mexico, China, and dozens of other countries. So our brilliant politicians decided that Americans shouldn't be producers at all. Ours should be a "service economy"! And the nation bought it!!!
The only things we can sell to the rest of the world in significant quantities are agricultural commodities which American farmers can still produce more cheaply and abundantly than most under-developed nations. And we must sell at cheap international prices to do it – and we can only do it by poisoning our topsoil and environment, and making the American farmer into industrialized factory farmers who not only sell their tainted commodities into international markets, but the domestic food market as well.
Protectionism is what nations and governments are all about. If you do not protect and defend your own country, pretty soon you will have none.
National defense is "protectionism." The War on Terror is "protectionism." Guarding the national borders (if we did that), would be "protectionism." Attempting to educate our youth is a form of "protectionism" – in hope our youth will mature into good and productive citizens that can successfully compete.
Economic and trade "protectionism" is simply "minding the national store" – the national owner-operated American marketplace – so that the profits and abundance of that rich marketplace will accrue primarily to those owner-operators rather than the foreign competition and greedy capitalists.
Protectionism not only protected "domestic" American businesses from foreign competition (unfair or otherwise), it protected American workers from being forced to compete head on with slave and peon labor in underdeveloped countries. It protected them from the full potential array of debilitating predatory excesses available to internationalized business corporations in a "globalized economy."
Protectionism defined our economic borders, and prevented "hostile" import invasion that undermines domestic productivity and national independence.
Where protectionism "subsidized" inefficient domestic industries and production, those industries often provided decent jobs for American workers, and the pride of production and economic self reliance. "Productive efficiency," carried to its logical end, means eliminating as many "production" jobs and workers as technologically possible. The "ideal" factory or farm would be a huge complex or county-wide farm operated by one man with a joy stick.
Protectionist "subsidies" did not cost the people anything. Tariffs and duties on imports were an important sources of revenue to the government, relieving the people of a great deal of tax burden. But our cheap imports cost us plenty – installments on that cost falling due ever April 15th.
The up front cost of "protectionist subsidies," born by American consumers, are American prices in the domestic marketplace, and the "Made in America" label that stands for good American jobs at American wages. This is a small price to pay for American independence, and the only way to have it.
Under no circumstance should consumer "necessities" be imported. When they are, it means we have relinquished national self-reliance, economic independence, and national security itself. In fact, when we do import a significant portion of our necessities, "national security" is necessarily broadened to include "American corporate interests abroad" – interests that we should not have because they are the spawning grounds of foreign entanglements and current and potential warfare and conflict.
A lack of protectionism really doesn't deliver cheap prices, if freedom, liberty, and national independence are considered valuable.
In fact, the price we are paying for our cheap imports is extraordinarily high. But those high costs are not reflected at the Wal-Mart checkout counter – nor even in the increasingly high cost of gasoline at the pump. They are reflected in our increasing tax burden, national indebtedness, and an array of increasing national vulnerabilities. They are reflected in the extraordinarily high costs of port and ship security, the costs our our Homeland Security Department, and the costs of our national defense establishment, which now has a presence in about 130 foreign nations. The price is being paid by our gallant men and women who have been sent to fight and die for "freedom and liberty" in a nation that never attacked or even threatened us, and certainly didn't petition us for their freedom and liberty. The taxpayers foots the bill for all of this, and these are a large part of the "hidden costs" of our "cheap imports" and making the world safe for "American capital interests abroad." And future generations are being burdened into the distant future with the costs – costs which are part of the price of our "cheap imports."
We spend billions on national defense (everywhere in the world but in our own nation), and Homeland Security, while trade protectionism might be paying billions into the national treasury while protecting truly "American" businesses and industries and American workers – giving those workers the wherewithal to pay American prices for American goods in their own domestic marketplace.
Free trade and free international markets are only pursued as national policy because of the great profit potential of global wage differentials – and those profits accrue to the owners of capital rather than the continuingly impoverished and exploited workers of the world. The global trading system is made up of carefully planned and managed mega-systems, owned, operated, and coordinated by a network of giant corporations, and these systems (in spite of the best laid plans of mice and men), are subject to catastrophic failure at some future time.
The global free market isn't free – it managed for the benefit of international capital interests. The profits may show up in GDP and on Wall Street to make everything appear rosy, but they don't show up very much on Main Street.
If the global population becomes totally dependent on such mega-systems for its every morsel of nourishment and every consumer necessity, as planned, we are allowing ourselves to be set up for a very troubled and dangerous future.
Common sense used to govern most human systems, including governments, but in this age of mega-wealth and super-conspicuous consumption (in some areas and dire poverty and exploitation in others), common sense is no longer a significant governing factor. The focus of ruling capitalists is relatively short-term, and always on profits. Capitalists rule through monetary influence over political policy decisions, and that influence is superceding that of rational government today. Long-term planning is focused on sustained profit growth and perpetual expansion of globalized corporate systems. This is a world of very finite resources, unstable political establishments, and perhaps a God capable of really rattling our cage at some point in time. Caution, conservation, and common sense should rule.
Rather than common sense, all our present major policies goals behind trade policy and the entire New World Order concept rest on carefully crafted scientific rationalization processes. But no amount of scientific rationalization can bear desirable fruit if they rest upon fundamentally flawed initial premises which have been carefully covered and hidden from view so as to be ignored, and finally totally overlooked in a sea of convincing of scientific rationalization.
All of those now ignored fundamentals were well known to national leaders in the nineteenth century (and were often discussed and debated) – and to that happy circumstance we owe our great national successes of the nineteenth and twentieth century. They can be roughly categorized as common sense (and very rational), degrees of national isolationism and protectionism – policies that led to our national success.
"Isolationism" in this context is not what modern day propagandist say it was. It was simple "constructive" nationalism, and a desire to be an independent nation of free people. It meant (at least once the continental boundaries were firmly established), minding our own business and looking to our own best interests without warring with neighbors or overseas nations. "Protectionism" was part of it – protecting our national owner-operated store. Why? Because it was ours! And it was the greatest success story in the history of nation states!
The "free market system," of course, was a key to our national success. But that meant a free market system within and among the several states of the union. It didn't mean hiring Chinese workers to produce our goods because they worked cheaper. It meant Americans producing just about everything Americans needed, and borders that were established to define what was ours and what was not ours.
Under our so-call "isolationist" policies, we engaged almost all nations of the world in both friendly relations and mutually beneficial trade, and had very few occasions to go to war. And, during what many today would call those dark old days of isolationism, the United States of America was always an inspiration to the world, and a model to be emulated.
We have now repudiated isolationism, protectionism, and economic independence. We have returned to dependent status, with "international interdependence" our official national ideal. We're now more dependent on a newly industrialized China than the original thirteen colonies were dependent on the mother country. We're no longer independent at all, or at all secure within our own national boundaries.
We have courted trouble for the better part of a century, and received our due share, with much more in the making even today. No nation today looks to America as an example of good and just government. We're reviled by an increasing number of peoples and nations. Though we've attempted to buy off the entire world with our consumer markets, we reap the rewards of dependence, indebtedness, and the escalating costs of warfare and defense against combined real threats and phantoms of terrorism.
Our national battle cry has become, "Give us safety and security at any price!" A sure recipe for tyranny to grow and prevail.
We have liberated Iraq, and will be burdened with the human and material costs of that act from now on. We have encouraged American capital (subsidized it), to go offshore and develop foreign markets and foreign industries, undermining our own. We have materially helped raise up increasingly powerful enemies and potential enemies, and are obliged to spend more for war and national defense than on anything else by "social spending" – while depending on potential and future enemies to underwrite the expense and extend credit (so we can continue our wars and social spending). We consume more than we produce, with no end to gross imbalances in sight. But there will be an end to it in the fullness of time.

This list could go on forever. It has barely scratched the surface. And that is a major problem. It is very difficult to reduce our present situation to a short and concise post.

John Q. Pridger

RON PAUL FOR PRESIDENT (http://www.ronpaul2008.com/)

Ron Paul is one representative who breaks the mold, and doesn't qualify for Pridger's stereotype, blanket condemnation, of Congress as two houses of "mis-representatives." A few good men do get elected, and Ron Paul is one who gets elected repeatedly.

We seldom get a chance to vote for an "America First" president. Of all the Democratic and Republican candidates presently in the presidential race, there is only one with a truly "American" track record. By "American" Pridger means, one who actually honors his oath of office – who actually supports and defends the Constitution, in the only context in which it has clear meaning and relevance, as it was passed and intended to be observed by our founding fathers. Congressman Paul is the only representative who, in his many decades of service to the American people has...

Never voted to raise taxes.
Never voted for an unbalanced budget.
Never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
Never voted to raise congressional pay.
Never taken a government-paid junket.
Never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.

Who voted against the Patriot Act.
Who voted against regulating the Internet.
Who voted against the Iraq war.

Who does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program.
Who returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.

Little wonder that he is often referred to as "Dr. No." Congressman Paul introduces numerous pieces of substantive legislation each year, probably more than any single member of Congress. But because his legislative proposals are aimed at forcing our government to return to a Constitutional operating basis, his mis-representative colleagues usually vote "No" to them in chorus, and "yes" to big government, more spending, and the wholesale repudiation of national sovereignty and independence.

How many other congressmen, senators, and high public officials do not participate in their lucrative pension programs for the simple reason that they don't need them? (And a high percentage of them are independently wealthy, if not multi-millionaires.) How many independently wealthy "public servants" return a portion of their budgets or salaries to the Treasury, because they simply don't need it? The rule is, of course, to spend every cent, accept every cent and benefit, and vote for more!

Pridger actually supports the Ron Paul candidacy. Nobody else is in the running as far as Pridger is concerned. And if Paul gains the nomination and is on the ballot, come election time, Pridger is going to troop off to the polls and vote for him.

The last time Pridger had such an impulse was when Ronald Reagan was the Republican candidate. But in spite of Pridger's continuing personal admiration for Reagan, the man, his administration was destined to become the very first bona fide "New World Order" administration. Jimmy Carter could not have done any worse in that line. But Reagan did have some positive effects nonetheless, based on the power of his personality alone. He was a great man, and good presidential material even though his presidency was swiftly commandeered by the agents of corporate internationalism and Reagan himself had been seduced by global free trade economists.

Though Ron Paul may not be the great communicator that Reagan was, his conservative message is just as pristine. And Pridger doesn't believe Dr. Paul suffers from blind spots Reagan had, nor the backing of global capital that appeared so rational and and proved so seductive. Nor will Ron Paul have to contend with the Cold War and a long-held anti-communist national policy commitment that had helped molded much of Reagan's foreign policy in ways so favorable to the interests international defense giants and mega capital in general.

As for our current wars and foreign policy, Dr. Paul has been aware from the very beginning that our problems in the Middle East are the result of long-time foreign policy mismanagement as well as active deception on the part of the current president and the influential power brokers behind the presidency – in pursuit of wrong-headed imperialist ambitions and goals (in the name of globalism). He intuitively knows, as do all thinking individuals, that we have no business committing our entire national defense establishment to a global war against "terrorism" because of a tragically successful criminal coup pulled off by a small rag-tag group of Muslim extremists. And in invading Iraq and deposing the anti-jihadist regime there, we have effectively handed Iraq to the extremists.

"The war in Iraq was sold to us with false information. The area is more dangerous now than when we entered it. We destroyed a regime hated by our direct enemies, the jihadists, and created thousands of new recruits for them. This war has cost more than 3,000 American lives, thousands of seriously wounded, and hundreds of billions of dollars. We must have new leadership in the White House to ensure this never happens again.

"Both Jefferson and Washington warned us about entangling ourselves in the affairs of other nations. Today, we have troops in 130 countries. We are spread so thin that we have too few troops defending America. And now, there are new calls for a draft of our young men and women.

"We can continue to fund and fight no-win police actions around the globe, or we can refocus on securing America and bring the troops home. No war should ever be fought without a declaration of war voted upon by the Congress, as required by the Constitution.

"Under no circumstances should the U.S. again go to war as the result of a resolution that comes from an unelected, foreign body, such as the United Nations.

"Too often we give foreign aid and intervene on behalf of governments that are despised. Then, we become despised. Too often we have supported those who turn on us, like the Kosovars who aid Islamic terrorists, or the Afghan jihads themselves, and their friend Osama bin Laden. We armed and trained them, and now we’re paying the price.

"At the same time, we must not isolate ourselves. The generosity of the American people has been felt around the globe. Many have thanked God for it, in many languages. Let us have a strong America, conducting open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations." (Quoted from Ron Paul's web site at: http://www.ronpaul2008.com/)

Of course, we shouldn't absolutely "isolate ourselves," (as China and Japan once did, but we never did), but we ought to mind our own business a lot more than we have grown accustomed to doing. The old policy of minding our own business was called "isolationism" but it didn't mean we didn't engage the rest of the world in constructive diplomacy, exchange of ideas, and mutually beneficial trade.

John Q. Pridger

Wednesday, 4 July, 2007

INDEPENDENCE DAY

We still have plenty to celebrate on Independence Day, thanks to the good offices and lingering legacy of our founders, and almost two centuries of government dedicated to national independence. But our nation is no longer the independent nation we once had. In the last generation government has ceased to be dedicated to anything like an ideal including national independence. While few in our "elected government" acknowledge devotion to the New World Order or world government, almost all have been actively or passively involved in destroying national independence by promoting free trade and the idea that international interdependence is, and should be, the wave of the future.

The international interdependence that is being promoted and facilitated is predicated upon globe-straddling corporate business systems which are destructive of all local, regional, and national self-reliance and independence. In other words, as individuals, we're all being made dependent on corporations to satisfy our every need – including every morsel of food we eat and each and every consumer item we require for a decent life. As a nation we have become increasingly dependent on foreign producers to stock the national marketplace.

As Pridger has pointed out many times before, we are now a more dependent on others elsewhere than the original thirteen colonies were dependent on the Mother Country. Once established, the English North American colonies became food independent in a very short time, and the new nation became largely industrially self-reliant soon after the Revolutionary War. During the first two centuries of our history economic independence was considered a requisite of political independence.

Today we are increasingly embarrassed by our dependence on foreign oil resources – but that's only the tip of the dependence iceberg. "Made in China" and a dozen other places far exceeds the "Made in U.S.A." label on our consumer shelves, and we're increasingly becoming dependent on food imports. Eat at any restaurant, and likely the food originates in half a dozen different countries. Meats from Argentina and Australia, fruits and vegetables from Mexico, Central and South America. Our pets eat food from China, and we may even brush our teeth with Chinese tooth paste.

None of this makes any sense. We could still feed ourselves very well. But since it is now considered better to import everything possible, and export everything possible, nothing can make any sense.

We no longer owe our national debt to ourselves, or even to the friendly Eastern Bankers, or European-based "International Bankers." We're beholden to China and Japan and other foreign countries to carry the debt required to sustain our dependence on foreign production and other bad habits.

Independence Day? We certainly can no longer celebrate any meaningful national independence in the here and now. Independence is gone. All we can do is celebrate what happened in 1776, and the nation we once had – until our trusty mis-representatives got totally off track.

John Q. Pridger

PRIDGER vs. The New World Order
John Q. Pridger's COMMENTS ON NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Politics, economics, and social issues as seen through Pridger's mud-splattered lenses.
E-Mail pridger@heritech.com Why Pridger writes this Blog?	WHAT PRIDGER'S CRUSADE IS ALL ABOUT The question is no longer whether or not there has been a conspiracy to bring about globalism and the new international economic order (a.k.a. New World Order). Whether you believe in a grand conspiracy or not, the New World Order materialized several years ago, ready or not – whether we like it or not – and it effects all of us intimately. It arrived as a "done deal," a fait accompli, compliments of a combination of our elected misrepresentatives and unaccountable global movers and shakers. It came with no advanced public advertisements; no public assessment period; no comment period; and, of course, no up or down vote. In other words, both democratic processes and the "informed consent" of the governed were scrupulously avoided. Ignorance, apathy, and complacency, provided the only "consent" required – that, and a rush to buy cheap imports. If it was not a conspiracy, then what was it? An act of God? Little doubt there is evidence of "Intelligent Design." But, of course, the New World Order isn't done yet. It's very much still a work in progress – being accomplished without the informed consent of any electorate. And along with the "building" it is a process of destruction, and of burning bridges, to insure that we cannot easily correct our course or go back to what has worked well in the past, for it entails the end of local economics, and local self-reliance. For all the high sounding rhetoric and possible good intentions on the part of many, the New World Order is about consolidation of global corporate hegemony, under the regulatory umbrella of United Nations agencies – world governance with international capital interests in the driver's seat. This is what globalization and our current Crusades abroad are essentially all about. Pridger laments that we Americans have been sold down the river by the collective national leadership, and that the nation of our founders – of which we were rightfully proud – has effectively ceased to exist!
Pridger's Home Page Pridger's Web Host Heritech.com NAAAP Archive	The questions are: is there any way for We the People to regain control? And, is there any hope for a return to government of the people, by the people, and for the people? Is there even a place for government of the people, by the people and for the people anywhere in a globalized corporate world? A pretty comprehensive history of the New World Order can be read on the Overlords of Chaos web site. The material presented is very extensive, and the annotations well written. Though presented with an obvious religious bias, the facts presented stand on their own merit. Even the most pragmatic and skeptical will find the information very enlightening. (See: Why Pridger writes this Blog?)

WHAT PRIDGER'S CRUSADE IS ALL ABOUT