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Wednesday, 26 November, 2008
WHERE IS THE SILVER LINING?
There may not be a silver lining. But we keep hearing that the
Fed is simply "printing money" in order to get the sums required for
the big bailouts. That must mean Treasury paper is piling up at the
Fed, though they tell us people are buying Treasury paper. But what happens when
there aren't enough buyers? The securities would simply pile up at the Fed as the
money gets printed and spent anyway.
Sooner or later they will discover that they don't need
investors to buy the securities to produce the debt that backs our money. It's
possible to increase the money supply without incurring additional debt.
Nationalize the Fed, and the problem is solved. Then we really would owe the
debt to ourselves.
It would make a lot more sense to nationalize the Federal
Reserve System than nationalizing
anything else. Make the Fed a real federal agency owned by the people
and part of the Treasury Department. Get rid of it entirely as soon as possible.
Ron Paul advocates a commodity monetary system, specifically
meaning gold and silver. Pridger advocates an agricultural commodity based
"national" system something that relates to the real world needs
of the entire population. Under a commodity based monetary system, greenbacks
could issued in proportion to population increase and new renewable wealth
wealth actually being produced plus the known multiplier of all value-added
industrial processes.
Gold and silver coin (hard money), should circulate concurrently
with the greenback and other national currencies in all nations, but not tied
directly to it in absolute exchange terms. These would provide the international
reserve and trade currency, and investment and savings currency of last resort,
against which national currencies of the various national systems would be
priced on a sliding supply and demand scale. Gold and silver certificates, or
"warehouse receipts" would also circulate as internationally
recognized currencies, redeemable in all nations, but only issued in fixed
proportion to actual gold and silver stocks held in national treasuries or
private banks.
Minting of gold and silver coins should be done on a free
market basis, by both national and private mints denominated in internationally
recognized units of weight rather than in terms of national currency units such
as dollars, pounds, or franks.
National circulating fiat paper and token currencies the
greenback, in the case of the United States would be strictly used for
domestic exchange within national boundaries.
Fractional reserve banking should be abolished. Banks should
not be capable of loaning any more money than they actually have in their
vaults, whether national currency or species.
"National currencies" should be maintained by all
independent nations because every nation has its own distinctive domestic
economic circumstances wherein monetary policy should be specifically tailored
to the exchange needs of its own unique domestic market.
John Q. Pridger
Tuesday, 25 November, 2008
TARPed, TRAPPED, AND HAD!
Our Washington brain trust, and its armies of economic
advisors, and multitudinous "Think Tanks," have delivered us up. We're
like turkeys all dressed up for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.
With the Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve Chairman
apparently vested with the power pluck us clean, skin us alive, and roast us
over a spit, it's clear that the power to incur debt on behalf of the people is
certainly not in the hands of their so-called representatives where it
constitutionally belongs.
Now with Citi Bank biggest boy on the block on the
ropes requiring a bailout, it is beginning to look like a familiar old rhyme has
come to pass.
HUMPTY DUMPTY SAT ON A WALL.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall...
And all the king's horses,
And all the king's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again!
This is incredible. And we need a Mr. Incredible now.
We thought $700 billion sounded like a lot of money. But it
seems our trusty mis-representatives (and the bankers they've entrusted with our
deliverance), have already committed some real money to patch the leaky
inflatable. So far, the money has been going to the financial geniuses
whom we have to thank for our present dilemma. We're talking $7.76 trillion now
a sobering figure, to say the least but figures seem to change almost
daily (a trillion here, a trillion there). It would appear that we are in the
act of doubling
our already crippling national debt! Wow!
U.S. Pledges Top $7.7
Trillion to Ease Frozen Credit (Update2)
By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry
Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government is
prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers
after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges,
amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year,
are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up
15 months ago.
The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $3.18
trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to
an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data
compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the plan approved by lawmakers,
the Treasury Departments $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Federal Reserve lending
last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the
crisis.
Read the rest here: http://bloomberg.com/apps/news
Naturally, all this spending is on credit. And our best creditors are
beginning to feel the pinch too. Thankfully, billions are being pulled our of
the stock market in order to invest in Treasury securities. But that helps to
deflate the already sagging stock market while it increases our debt burden.
You can't fix a broken monetary and financial system when it
was just a Ponzi scheme to begin with. At some point somebody in high places is
going to have to acknowledge this.
All of this would be so laughable if it didn't portend such
dire consequences for all of us. Nobody in Washington knows what to do!
The Wonderful New World is in meltdown, and the Global Village
is getting a taste of what it's like to be so cosmopolitan, metropolitan, and
downright prosperous in the new international economic order. In the mean time,
George Bush is still out selling global free trade and globalism like a traveling
snake oil salesman.
Will Barack Hussein Obama pull our chestnuts out of the fire?
We're hearing about increased federal spending to produce 2.5 million new
jobs and downsizing government spending at the same time. Somebody even
mentioned balancing the budget during the campaign!! Cut taxes, borrow
more, spend more all after having decimating our productive, wealth
creating,
manufacturing base. We're like Humpty Dumpty.
John Q. Pridger
Sunday, 23 November, 2008
THERE ARE PLENTY OF DOOMSAYERS OUT THERE
There are alarmists out there intentionally trying to make the
present economic situation even worse than it is, or could be. They seem eager
to provoke mass hysteria, panic, and chaos apparently for revolution's sake.
Some are right wing radicals who believe this is our opportunity to "take
the nation back."
In times such as this, much depends on public confidence in
the systems in place. Even if those very systems are the ones that have brought
us to our present situation, it's much better to hope (have faith) that they
will continue to function long enough to find a temporary means of stabilizing
the situation. We don't really need mass hysteria and chaos. We need neither
bloody revolution nor generalized mayhem. We need sound solutions emanating from
trusted sources within the establishment a tough call, of course, since so
many of us have lost faith in government and for good reason.
Barack Obama may have a literal nightmare on his hands when he
assumes office. Fortunately, he was elected on a platform of change. There's definitely
going to be change. We only hope it will be positive change. This remains to be
seen. Unfortunately, what we've seen so far doesn't look very positive.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt didn't pull us out of the
slump until he embroiled us in the most devastating war of the twentieth
century. Obviously, our brain trust isn't repeating the initial mistakes made
during the run up to the Great Depression. No indeed! There's no tight money
policy now. Money is flowing like water under high pressure. They are obviously
determined to error in the opposite direction this time around. We'll have to
wait to see what the debt money flood will leave afloat.
John Q. Pridger
COMMON SENSE FROM RON PAUL
A few weeks ago the crud hit the fan and Congress was
pressured into passing a $700 billion dollar financial bailout package. That was
a large enough amount of money to prompt a few to comment that "with that
amount here and there, pretty soon we'd be talking about big money."
So now, it seems we're talking of $2 trillion down the rat
hole with nothing to show for it. In fact, the Treasury and Federal Reserve
won't even tell us where it went. As Ron Paul says:
The Fed has now doled out close to $2
trillion in subsidized loans to troubled banks and other financial
institutions. The Federal Reserve and Treasury constantly brag about the
need for transparency and oversight, but its all just talk
they want none of it. They want secrecy while the privileged are rescued
at the expense of the middle class.
It is unimaginable that Congress could be so derelict in its duty. It
does nothing but condone the arrogance of the Fed in its refusal to tell us
where the $2 trillion has gone. All Members of Congress and all
Americans should be outraged that conditions could deteriorate to this degree.
Its no wonder that a large and growing number of Americans are now
demanding an end to the Fed.
The Federal Reserve created our problem, yet it manages to gain even more
power in the socialization of the entire financial system. The whole
bailout process this past year was characterized by no oversight, no limits,
no concerns, no understanding, and no common sense.
See Ron Paul's Statement
of 11/20/08.
Talk about lack of accountability! Our only consolation is
that the inflationary impact of this huge amount of new money being pumped into
the global economy somewhere, is being somewhat mitigated by the fact that
multiple trillions of dollars have already evaporated from the Stock Market. The
bad news is that the $2 trillion (and undoubtedly much more to come), is debt
piled onto the backs of the American people.
Ron Paul is a hard money man of the Austrian school of free
market economics (See http://mises.org/).
Clearly, our national debt will never be paid by hard money. It can't even be
repaid with fiat Federal Reserve Money we're already too far over the brink
for that.
However, it's beginning to look as though some sort of hard
money policy is going to be the only way to regain public confidence in the
global banking and financial system. But how can it be done? Pridger doesn't
presume to have the answer to that.
What Pridger does know is that the government has the ability
to simply print its own non-interest bearing money and spend, pay, or loan it
into circulation domestically. Because of the problems outstanding, this may be
inflationary but certainly not as doubly inflationary as cranking out
trillions of fiat debt instruments in the form of Federal Reserve currency
all of which adds to the interest bearing national debt.
If there was any common sense left in Washington (which their
isn't), we'd see a return of the good old American greenback to see us through
our current domestic economic woes, while we try to figure out how we might deal
with our international balance of payments.
Greenbacks could deal with the domestic economy, but it would
be foolish to kill the greenback like we're killing Federal Reserve Currency by
presuming to pay the whole world off in greenbacks. But we're truly in a damned
if you do and damned if you don't situation. It will be interesting to see what
eventually turns up.
Of course, the greenback is heresy to the Austrian school,
which believes strictly in a precious money backed money system. But, the way
Pridger sees it, the step from where we are today to a gold backed monetary
system would be practically impossible. And, naturally, it would empower those
who own the gold and that certainly isn't the middle class. And the
government doesn't own nearly enough to get the ball rolling in a convincing
way.
For an Austrian school treatise on the subject by Friedrich
A. Hayek see: http://mises.org/story/3204
Though Pridger see the reasoning, he parts company with the practicality of much
of what comes out of the Austrian school of economics. The idea of
"privately" provided money is putting too much faith in private
parties, from Pridger's perspective. Better to depend on government that is
supposed to be representative of the people.
John Q. Pridger
Saturday, 22 November, 2008
THE INCREDIBLE DECLARATION
LIMA, Peru (AP) President George W. Bush said
Saturday that the pursuit of free trade should not be abandoned in the face of
a worsening global economic crisis. "One of the enduring lessons of the
Great Depression is that global protectionism is a path to global economic
ruin," he said.
Pridger thinks Bush reads his lessons wrong. If we're not on a
path to global economic ruin right now, Pridger would like to know what Bush's
definition of ruin is.
It's incredible that he clings so tenaciously to the machinery
that is bringing us down. Globalism and free trade has
been a disaster in the building ever since we first began to dismantling
national protectionism in a wholesale manner. Of course, we know that Bush is
married, directly or indirectly, to many of the corporate interests that brought
the crisis upon us. And he's obviously just as married to the political and
financial processes that have brought it on.
Hopefully, there are enough
Democrats who have noticed what has brought about our present global economic
meltdown to take what President Bush says with a grain of salt.
If nations had protected their own interests as they should,
the the world wouldn't catch pneumonia when America fumbles the ball and catches
cold. Of course, many things have lead to our present global economic crisis,
but the demise of local and national self-reliance was what made our crises a
global crisis, and makes it so incredibly difficult to resolve. Every turn
reveals new problems.
Remember, it was a domestic housing mortgage crisis in the
United States that set this off, and is reverberating around to world,
threatening to bring us
all down in one big pile one big happy global village. This is the fruits of globalism and the failure of
nations to protect their own economies from the mistakes and downright stupidity
of "others elsewhere."
"In an interconnected world, the gains of any,
advance the interests of all," Bush said at the 21-nation Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation forum. Bush said "we refuse to accept protectionism
in the 21st century."
"That which enabled us to be successful in the
past must be used to help us chart a more successful future for
tomorrow," he said in a speech that came on the heels of another bad week
on Wall Street and renewed gloom about the prospects of a deepening global
recession.
What Bush does not mention is that the era of
"prosperity" Americans have been enjoying in recent years has been the
era of precipitous American decline. American workers have paid for that
prosperity with their jobs and industries. And that wasn't nearly enough to pay
for it. We have been accumulating onerous debt both public and private
in order to make that prosperity possible.
Bush reiterates the false belief that protectionism was the
culprit that caused the Great Depression. Either he knows it not to be the truth
and is lying, or he simply doesn't know that he is merely repeating falsehoods
of the past. The Stock Market crash of 1929 was the result of bubblized
speculative markets of the very nature we've been enjoying for this last era of
our "prosperity." The Great Depression following the crash was caused
by faulty domestic financial and monetary policy. Allan Greenspan himself, if
Pridger remembers correctly, has even admitted as much.
Protectionism was not the problem. It was always one of the
primary keys to our great national success. It has only been since protectionism
has been curtailed that we began our national economic decline. Until then, we
had always had a favorable balance of payments and a positive balance of trade
and we were the most productive nation in the world with the largest, most
prosperous, middle class.
We were prosperous because we were both productive and
innovative. And as long as we were both productive and prosperous, we had
something to offer the world. Today's prosperity is based on consumption and
debt rather than production, and our self-inflicted weaknesses are threatening
to take the rest of our "free trade" partners down with us, no matter
how productive and careful they might have been.
"Protection" is what government is supposed to be
all about. When a government abandons protection of its owe people, it no longer
has a legitimate function. What good is a superpower military establishment, if
protection is not the primary aim? What good is such a Defense establishment if
there is nothing to defend, and the nation is not able to feed and clothe
itself, and produce the array of consumer goods its population needs, through
its own production? Defense of both our borders and our owner-operated
marketplace are the two main functions of any government of the people, by the
people, and for the people.
Free trade and globalism has done a lot for a lot of other
places. But we also see rampant, unsustainable development in nations such as
China and India. We had become an overdeveloped nation, and realized that it was
not sustainable. So, rather than solving that major problem, we exported our
industry and became economically dependent on others elsewhere to produce for
us. We didn't become less consumptive, however. We have been increasing our
consumption becoming not only super-consumers, but super-wasteful consumers.
China's rampant economic development, and that of many other
developing nations, grew to meet our needs rather than their own. And in growing
to meet our needs, they have been developing the same sort of unsustainable
economies that we had built, while undermining their own ability to to be
locally or nationally self-reliant. China and India are unique, however, in that
they are very large nations. At some point they can turn much of their
production inward to their own markets.
So, as we move closer to the necessity of going back to the
horse, bicycle, and pedicab (that China and India are only now trying to
abandon), our ports are overflowing with imported cars that nobody can afford to
buy right now. Our own auto industry, still building an inventory of cars and
trucks, is on the brink of extinction.
John Q. Pridger
Friday, 21 November, 2008
PROSPECTS FOR THE BIG THREE AUTOMAKERS
Unfortunately, even a bailout package probably won't save
them. They have been sabotaged, along with the American industrial worker, since
our leadership opened our market to Japanese automobiles shortly after World War
Two. Sabotaged by those who are now being so self-righteous in withholding
bailout money for what are essentially petty reasons.
Any bailout at this stage will probably be too little too late.
No bailout package will not get their market back. No bailout
will make it possible for increasing numbers of distressed Americans to buy new
cars, American or favored other. Even Japanese cars are stacking up in our ports
now. This is a building crisis piggy-backed on top of all we've already seen.
The new car market is bottoming out. It isn't that the automakers have recently
fumbled the ball. The ball was fumbled decades ago and now the chickens are home
to roost in an amazingly big way!
Our amazing free trade economy (the keystone of the Wonderful
New World), is up against a slight problem. Inventory and
ships are stacking up on both sides of the Pacific. The mega-systems that
have been supplying American markets require precise timing and an uninterrupted
flow of goods. When mega-systems break down, mega-problems develop and quickly
get out of hand. We will soon rue the day that our leaders decreed that 10,000
mile supply lines deliver more value than domestic production.
See: http://www.kitco.com/ind/Laird/nov202008.html
.
Big things are happening. Big things are crumbling. A hundred
thousand factories in China are having to shut down as the Chinese concentrate
on trying to bailout their own heavy players. We're up against a major, MAJOR,
global shake out.
This is not a prediction, but Pridger won't be surprised to see the president
(Obama), declaring a
national emergency that will include the wholesale nationalization of much of
the economy, with or without any taxes, loans, or credit to make it appear
halfway financially legitimate.
As Pridger sees it, we're in the beginning stages of a
gathering crisis that will require action that will make Franklin D.
Roosevelt's New Deal look like Sunday school play.
The worst thing of all is that nobody in the right places
really seems to understand what the real problem has been. The problem is
essentially two-fold. An out of control debt money system, and failure to
recognize the importance of national economic self-reliance. We can neither
control our money, spending, or debt, nor protect our own marketplace. The owner
operators have been betrayed.
The danger of not knowing what the problem is, is that all
solutions will produce even worse results. We're in danger of trading one New
World Dis-Order for a totally new New World Disorder perhaps even (if one is
conspiracy minded), the one which has always been the intended goal.
It's pretty difficult to imagine that the "brains"
and powers behind the scenes, pulling strings, failed to see what was bound to
come, when others, including Pridger, have seen it coming all along.
John Q. Pridger
OBAMA'S QUALIFICATIONS
Amazingly (for this stage of the game), there is an ongoing quest to find out whether
president elect Obama is indeed constitutionally qualified to serve as president
of the United States. One wonders why this would be such a big issue since we've
pretty much abandoned our Constitution anyway.
We heard a lot about the "vetting" process when
Sarah Palin was chosen as McCain's running mate. What if we wake up in January,
2009, to find that President Barack Obama wasn't properly vetted that he was
born in Kenya, thus a Kenyan rather than an American, and is still a citizen of
Indonesia?
What's the difference? A president of Kenyan or Indonesian
citizenship, and Moslem paternal heritage, couldn't do any worse for our nation
than what we've seen in the last few decades.
It will be a wake up call to many, but a lot of us have
already noticed that this country is in much more than an economic tail-spin.
It's been in a religious, cultural, and political tailspin for a long time. The
Constitution is just something the ACLU used to beat us up with. And, this isn't
surprising, since the government doesn't use it any more, and hasn't for some
time.
John Q. Pridger
Thursday, 20 November, 2008
THE PAN CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK?
George Herbert Walker Bush coined the term "Voodoo
Economics" (as a presidential candidate), way back in 1980. But we'd
already been there since long before Nixon was forced to slam the gold window
shut in 1971. Of course, that was the result of a long train of bad economic
policy including war policy. Our national economic trajectory has been in
the exactly wrong direction for a long time.
We have been speaking of Iraq as an "unnecessary
war" for some time now, but Iraq isn't the first unnecessary war we've
waged. And all our boondoggles have been answered by piling more steam on errant
foreign and economic policy.
So, here we are in a major economic crisis that our sterling
leadership "didn't see coming." But Pridger saw it coming. So did a
lot of others. But nobody was listening.
It seems our representatives are a little reticent about bailing the
Big Three automakers out of there present jam. The Big Three executives, it
seems, arrived in the capital in three private jets. Their embodiment of excess,
has undermined their
bid for a taxpayer handout.
Pridger agrees that those executives are obscenely overpaid, and
their respective industries have dropped the ball over a period of at least
three decades. But for our legislators to take them to task for it is totally
laughable. They're the ones who made it all possible! It was Congress that
fashioned the corporate culture, and it appears they are a
little jealous that auto executives are able to travel in private jets, whereas
they cannot. So they are pointing their fingers at the automakers and corporate
excess as the causes of their own corporate problems. But it is a systemic
problem created by government.
What was the real beginning of the housing crisis? One of the
primary sources was when income tax policy was changed to favor mortgage debt
interest deductions. From that point on, mortgage debt and home equities became
cash cows for consumers. The smart thing became to "borrow against the
house" and deduct the interest at tax time. Home owners began operating on
a fiscal basis that resembled that of the government.
Credit card debt was encouraged, and so easy and convenient to
come by but interest was high and non-deductible. So, when the credit card
debts piled up, the smart thing was to refinance the house to pay it off. This
was considered smart, and tax policy made it so.
The auto executives are not the source of the problem.
Congress should look into the mirror and study its own record! Our national
leaders have been forging on toward economic and national suicide for a long
time. Even hay seeds like Pridger have seen this freight train coming for a long
time whereas Congress has always seemed to see the same freight train as a
wonderful beam of light at the end of the tunnel.
Congress our so-called representatives are the ones who have been squandering our national
wealth and undermining the national economy. They are the masters of the public
purse, and the masters of deficit spending. They are the ones who are adept at
raising the debt ceiling and little else. They've been spending us toward national economic
suicide ever since we abandoned all pretense at the gold standard and our
legislators discovered that "the nation debt is good" thus
(apparently), "the bigger the better!"
Over those same thirty years, and many more, Congress has been
dropping the ball (big time!), and that's why we're in the fix we find ourselves
in today, with an eleven trillion dollar national debt and growing at an exponential
rate! And an economy dominated by foreign imports; and a trade deficit that is a
literal crime and disgrace; with unnecessary foreign wars draining our national
vitality; with domestic corporations like the Big Three down and on the ropes;
with war contract corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater (building a
better Iraq and Afghanistan), thriving literally rolling in public moneys.
The Big Three, as well as the war profiteers, are merely
riding the tide that Congress created with their "re-invention" of the
way the nation does business; their free trade agreements; their "most
favored trading nations" licenses to exploit the American economy; their
trickle down economics theories; their cheap food, cheap oil, cheap mortgages,
cheap consumer goods, policies; their multifaceted New World Order initiatives;
their betrayal of their own nation, its workers, its independence, and its
Constitution.
They (Congress) gave away the American markets and made it
increasingly impossible for domestic companies that pay union scale wages, and
benefits like health care and retirement packages, to compete in our globalized
domestic economy. Offshoring of industry and jobs was considered enlightened
economic policy. The government subsidized it to develop "other"
markets rather than our own. They are the ones that put American workers into direct,
unprotected, competition with foreign workers who work for a small fraction of
what had been the American industrial wage. They paved the way for all that has
happened to our economy.
And they attack the Big Three's top executives for dropping
the ball? For extravagance? This is a clear case of the pan calling the kettle
black.
And what if the Big Three fail? Well, maybe we'll have to
depend on the Japanese and Chinese to make our tanks and military vehicles in
any major future war. If the Big Three aren't there to do it, what's the
alternative? Peace?
Of course, the more immediate concern is the three million
jobs that would immediately disappear if the Big Three shut their doors and
the de facto expiration of one of the major dynamos of industrial capitalism.
Interdependence, which has been our national goal since the
national leadership became "enlightened," has caused a global collapse
from which we are likely to emerge as an economic vassal state to the world and
ascending national powers we went out of our way to help create.
Pridger is beginning to see the United States becoming an
economic dependency of China. Recently backwards, communist, China given a
boost by our far-sighted national leaders will have to play a major role in
our recovery.
John Q. Pridger
GAY LIBERATION
The passage of Proposition 8 in California has set off a
firestorm of protest, and it'll be interesting to see if the will of the
majority will be once again thwarted by the will of a activist minority. Pridger
imagines that most of the California Supreme Court justices are heterosexual,
but that doesn't say much. They're probably liberals. Aside from that, they may
be in fear for their lives. California homosexuals are a militant bunch. They
intend to have their way.
What is at stake, of course, is not only the degradation
concept of democracy itself (which, of course, is already pretty much of a
farce), but the very meaning of a term that has had sacred connotations since
the dawn of civilization and religion. Homosexuals intend to redefine
"marriage" for all of us making it into something we could no long
hold sacred.
If the will of the majority is overturned, and the term
"marriage" comes to mean the "union of two people" rather
than the "union of a man and a woman," holy matrimony isn't
necessarily degraded, its our national culture that is degraded. Nothing new in
that. It's already degraded. We aren't the nation, nor the civilization, that we
once were. We're already something very different from what we once were only a
few short decades ago.
With a president elect named Barack Hussein Obama, that has
become perfectly clear for everybody to see. A black president with an American
name and pedigree was certainly something that was reasonably in the cards, but
a black president with the name and pedigree of Barack Obama would not have
seemed possible for a few more decades.
If that could happen, "gay marriage" certainly seems
reasonable too. As for homosexual power overriding democratic processes, we can
only ask, "What's next?" Pedophilia may be accepted in due course. Zoophobia
would perhaps be next, and maybe marriage could be defined as "a union
between a man or woman and any number of warm blooded animals."
It's amazing that the recreational drug minority hasn't arisen
to form an organized minority block to change our drug policy and the definition
of the word "drug." Certainly recreational drug people are just about
as numerically powerful as homosexuals.
Even the president elect has admitted to recreational drug use
in his youth but probably could not have been elected had he admitted to a
homosexual affair. But times are changing. What would be wrong with a homosexual
president?
In fact there is so much change that it boggles the mind.
Pridger's relatively short life has seen the demise of the nation he was born
into. There has been progress, but much more retrogression involved in the
change.
More change is coming. Faster than ever before. Gay marriage
is the least of our problems merely a symptom of the decline of religious,
cultural, and political decline. The police state is effectively already here
(it snuck up while most citizens enjoyed the train of changes that have come
about), and it will only be the police state that will be capable of forcing
some facsimile of order in society. It's already in place, and Barack Obama has
plans to have a "national civilian defense establishment" that will
rival the Defense Department.
John Q. Pridger
Monday, 17 November, 2008
WHAT IN THE WORLD HAS GONE WRONG?
Pridger, through his own perspective, attempts shed some light
here and there on what is going on in our New World DisOrder. But while it's
easy for Pridger to expound on the fairly obvious, as he sees things, he wants
it to be known that there are more careful and capable fonts of information and
enlightenment. So, from time to time Pridger likes to point the reader to real
scholars to explain what sometimes seems the inexplicable. But real scholars
real thinking scholars express themselves in such concise detail that
it makes for difficult reading for the average interested, but sometimes harried
reader.
One such bastion of enlightenment in the field of economics is
Michael Hudson. "In 2007, Dr. Hudson was Chief Economic Policy Adviser for
the Kucinich for President campaign.
He is now writing a new tax policy for the United States." His web site, http://www.michael-hudson.com/,
contains plenty of fodder for reflection.
Saturday, 15 November, 2008
IS GENERAL MOTORS WORTH SAVING?
It's incredible that a companies like GM, Ford, and Chrysler
are on the brink of bankruptcy and in need of a federal bailout. This is the
automotive society. Most of us own two or three automobiles. We couldn't imagine
an America without the Big Three.
But are they worth saving? That's a question now being asked. And
those who answer in the negative, saying, "Let the free market determine
their fate," forget one salient thing. We don't really have a free market
at least not one that is focused on our own national market, the well-being
of the American people, or national security.
Our government totally rearranged the deck on us over the last
three decades and more. If there is a free market out there that rules, it is a
global affair that couldn't care less what happens to the American people. When
our astute leaders committed us to "international interdependence" and
globalism, rather than national independence, the "American free market
began to die." By cutting the legs out from under our once owner-operated national marketplace, they started the slow
slaughter of the goose that had laid the golden eggs the ones that led us to
become the most productive and prosperous nation in history.
Ironically, formerly backward (still communist), China has become the major
benefactor of our leaders' trade and economic policies. The golden eggs are laid
in China these days, gilded and shipped off to the U.S.A. If the China trade
happened to be interrupted for more than a week, Americans would experience some
hardship. If it were totally curtailed it would spell total disaster.
Japan got it's hefty
share of the American market in a whole raft of market giveaway agreements
before we even took our great plunge into globalism. Mexico got a large chunk of
our economic pie as the result of NAFTA. American labor suffered in proportion
to these planned programs of job export.
The so-called free market that has evolved is no longer the American
market, but the global market. And the global market has literally been eating
our lunch with the full support and approval of our so-called representative
government. And the American market has become a consumer market for producers
elsewhere. This market is now geared to serve offshore producers. American
brands are no longer even American. American products produced abroad (APPA), are not
American products, regardless of the corporate ownership of the name. American
production is hostage to the global market.
Just as the American flag many of us proudly fly is likely "Made in China," many, if not most, of American brands fly flags of
convenience too, and are no longer American.
Large American production industries such as the Big Three
automakers, and their employees, are very lucky they have survived as long as they have. If the free
market rules, they won't last another year. Another million jobs will disappear,
and more than that as the ripple effect spreads throughout the nation.
Bailing out the warped and crooked financial sector isn't
"free market" by any stretch of the imagination. Bailing out
homebuyers who bought homes they clearly couldn't afford isn't "free
market" either. But if we would bail them out, we ought to bail out some of
the Big Three "productive industries" that provide productive jobs to
millions of Americans.
Some say that the Big Three corporate leadership is
responsible for their own problems. But they didn't make the warped markets
they had adapted to them. It was our own government that actively gave market
share to the foreign competition, leaving the Big Three to satisfy the
remainder, which happened to be the "American big car" market. The Big
Three could not compete in the small car market because the Japanese had
developed that market and could produce those cars much cheaper than the Big
Three could.
The Big Three had developed in an "American Market,"
under unionized conditions. They paid good American union wages and benefits.
The hourly rate is now about $30 an hour. When foreign companies were invited to
built plants in the American market, they put them in non-union areas and
started paying less than half the wages paid to traditional American auto
industry.
If the Big Three survive, they'll have to downsize wages and
benefit packages to match the already entrenched domestic foreign competition.
Pridger's father worked for GM. In the late 1950s $3.00 an
hour was a good industrial wage. Now that wage is, and should be, about $30.00
an hour on an inflation adjusted basis. In the late 1950s we were looking at the
possibility of a four day work week and maybe a five hour day for industrial
production industries for the same weekly paycheck. That's how productive and
profitable the domestic auto industry was at that time. But Japanese cars
started flooding our market, and those hopes became history.
Today the "fair industrial wage" has fallen to about
$10 to $15 an hour, thanks to inviting the foreign competition into our domestic
markets. In the late 1950s the minimum wage was about $1.00 an hour. To keep up
with inflation, the minimum wage should be about $10.00 an hour now. So we see
that the new "fair industrial wage" is actually closer to the minimum
wage of the late 1950s in terms of purchasing power thanks to
"globalism."
Thanks to organized labor, the Big Three, have maintained
"American" industrial wage and benefit standards. But
"American" standards can no longer be maintained in America, simply
because American workers, in every field, have been sold down the river by their
own government.
The present economic crisis is going to force the Big Three to
conform much more closely to Third World standards of pay and benefits in order
to survive and recover.
It had been the big automakers and other major productive
industries that had led the way to the development of the great and prosperous
American middle class we once had. The American industrial wage Union scale
was the tide that raised all boats. Union scale was the high benchmark for
industrial labor that even non-union plants once had to approximate in order to
draw workers.
With so many well paid workers in the major industries, other
commercial and service industry wages increased. The whole array of federal and
state civil service employment wages rose to approximate union scale, too.
Today the industrial wage has collapsed, and we see a strange
inversion of pay scales, with civil service wages higher than industrial
workers, whose wages once played the major role in raising all boats. Production
(actual wealth creation), now demands a lower wage than workers paid from the
public tax trough.
The various service and parasite classes are now making more
money for their hour of labor than the productive class. And the productive
class has been radically downsized while the public sector and service
industries have mushroomed.
This, of course, was a recipe for economic disaster. Disaster
has finally arrived, and we're asking questions like, "What happened?"
and "Is GM worth saving?"
To answer that, perhaps we should ask, "Is America worth
saving?"
If the prosperous America we once had is to be recovered, the
"national" economic model must be rediscovered, along with rational
market protection.
John Q. Pridger
Friday, 14 November, 2008
GLOBALISM SICKNESS
Our brand of capitalism worked pretty well before the advent
of globalism and the so-called New World Order. Now that we've had thirty years
of globalization, our system is breaking down, and we're being forced to
nationalize our own banks. How ironic that we are having to address our failures
by taking a giant step into what is essentially socialism by bailing out the
greedy capitalists with public funds!
We are being forced to do what exactly the opposite of what we
have been preaching to other governments. Many of them had fairly healthy public
sector service industries. They privatized them in order to qualify for U.S. Aid
or International Monetary Fund and World Bank loans and "favors." And
foreign capital moved in a gobbled up their assets.
Now we have the stranger than fiction specter of our Treasury Department
having to rescue our private financial sector because of its own greed and
incompetence.
In spite of these ironies, President Bush is cautioning
against returning to what worked so well (at least for us), in the past a
"national" free market system, rather than an international free
market system. What worked well for us was isolationism and protectionism.
Globalism has already turned into a nightmare for us, but we insist that it
should continue to be the only game in town. The powers that be are cautioning against a return to what
worked, because it would diminish the powers of the international financial
elite.
We've been through this sort of thing before, and began experimenting with socialism during the depression
years. Ironically, when Franklin D. Roosevelt turned to socialistic
remedies, there was never enough money available to "prime the economic
pump," and the
depression dragged on until it became the Great Depression. And the Great
Depression dragged on until World War Two re-energized our capitalist system and
remade the world, making things ripe for the next step in aggrandizing the
powers of the international financial sector globalism and New World Order
building.
This was global empire under a new name. It was a fascist
financial empire tailored to private international capital interests rather than
a traditional empire or fascist nation state. International finance was given
license to run the show rather than a state or national dictator. It was launched
and matured under the false flag of "global free market capitalism."
It was flawed at its core from the beginning, and now the flaws are coming back
to bight at us in the guise of "unintended consequences." It's a
global affair, for we have intentionally made it so, and the consequences are
global.
We are finding that nation states will have to re-invoke the
prerogatives of national sovereignty in order to protect themselves.
What most Americans fail to realize is that there are three
distinct things that have comprised our national free market capitalist system.
(1) Grass roots free enterprise; (2) Industrial capitalism, and (3) Financial
capitalism. When we had the right mix, things worked pretty well. Things started
breaking down when financial capitalism became the primary engine of American
capital development, rather than the auxiliary engine of capital development.
When monopoly capitalism began to edge out diversified capitalism and healthy
competition, it was because the big boys always have easier access to credit
and credit on a massive scale.
When we lost the old fashioned principles of market
capitalism, our system began to grow out of whack and eventually break down.
Those principle were the "common sense" business principles which had
always served the merchant classes, such as "capital comes from
savings," "spend only profits, never capital," and "expand
on profits, rather than credit." Easy credit made it possible for huge
corporate chains to edge out and destroy Main Street and mom and pop businesses
which were the foundation of American capital.
Just one corporation (Walmart), has bankrupted and supplanted
hundreds of thousands of individual and family proprietorships. And proprietorships
were the backbone of the national free market system. They comprised the natural
"distributionist" system of a grass roots free market economy. It
comprised the family farms, the wholesalers and retailers of Main Street and the
back streets of every town and city in America the variety of stores,
restaurants, service and repair shops, and other mom and pop businesses that
once made up our fundamental national economic landscape.
Walmart, of course, is not really "typical." It was
not only easy access to credit, but access to foreign (near slave labor)
production that has made it capable of displacing so many American businesses.
Walmart was able to ride the wave caused by the opening up of China trade and
the shift of production to its shores. And this is true of most large corporations these days.
During saner times, most large corporations were in the
industrial class, producing the things that those Main Street businesses bought
and sold, and the tools, machinery, automobiles, and consumer goods that we all
required or aspired to own.
When there was a "proper mix" of both small and big
capital, a broad based prosperity, and a growing and prosperous middle class,
developed. But with the ascendance of financial capital as the primary driving
force behind economic activity, "bigger is better in all things"
spread like a disease throughout the economy.
When easy credit, on a massive
scale, became available, monopoly capitalism began to overcome and displace
grass roots free enterprise and change the economic landscape. But then, their
profits were still not sufficient, so they sought "global free trade,"
so they could maximize profits even more by playing the wage differential game
on the world stage.
Government regulation, or abandonment thereof, played the
major role in determining the major beneficiaries of easy credit. Monetary
policy, and the monetary system itself, were the largest single cause of the transition
from small and diverse to big and consolidated. Financial capitalism grew from a
monetary system which itself, was system of extending credit and making money
with money rather than making money through productive enterprise.
A debt money system, and regulatory policies, that favored
financial capital was what made the "trickle down" theory of economics
become the "normal" way of thinking how the economy works. Under this
system, the font of wealth is at the top of the economic pyramid, rather than
the base of the pyramid where it rightly belongs. At the base of the pyramid is
where the largest number of real wealth producers are, as all new wealth,
"real wealth" comes from the soil.
Trickle down economics is exactly upside down.
Our world has literally been turned upside down by globalism.
Look at the plight the big three auto companies are in right now. All three are
on the verge of collapse and are begging for a bailout package from the
government. This is incredible. Those productive industries are the very heart
of our productive industrial capitalist system. It is inconceivable that they
should be losing money at such astounding rates.
Foreign automakers continue to ship their products five
thousand miles to our markets. And they are putting our domestic automakers out
of business. This, in itself, should be a literal impossibility. It cannot be
cheaper to build cars in Japan or Korea and ship them five thousand miles to our
market, than it is to produce cars right here. But it has been done for half a
century just as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world.
The automobile capital of North America is shifting from
Detroit to Canada for related reasons. American automakers are locked into
paying American industrial wages, and providing health care insurance and
generous retirement packages. Canadian taxpayers pay for those extras in Canada.
A free market industrial society cannot compete in such things with a socialized
society.
American labor cannot compete with Asian labor, or Latin
American labor, at this stage of economic disparity. And the economic disparity
expressed in wage differentials is what globalism is actually intended
to exploit. The ability to produce in low wage countries and sell in high wage
countries is extraordinarily profitable for a select few. But it is also
disastrously short-sighted and ultimately destructive.
These problems arise from the fact that our government has
abandoned its own citizen workers in favor of a global vision that profits
financial, and runaway flag industrial, capital.
John Q. Pridger
MESSAGE TO PRESIDENT ELECT OBAMA
"The Union that Lincoln
saved once before might be saved again!"
Mr. Obama, if you would save the Union, one of your first priorities
would be to make sure our government provides its people with an "Honest
Currency," as Abraham Lincoln did during the emergency he faced.
In the words of Charles Walters, Executive Editor
of Acres
U.S.A.) to his readers, if they would invest "in Stephen Zarlenga's
Masterpiece, The
Lost Science of
Money, and a smaller amount in our Unforgiven
(by Charles Walters), a clear public policy might emerge, and the Union that
Lincoln saved once before might be saved again."
Let's save the Union again, by getting our house in order. We
cannot rule the world, and we've been a very foolish nation to presume that we
could and should. But we can lead the world in political and economic
justice. And if we do that, the rest of the world is free to follow.
John Q. Pridger
Thursday, 13 November, 2008
BRING IT ON MR. OBAMA!
IT'S TIME FOR REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE!
At the time of the Constitutional Convention most of our
founders had a very poor understanding of money. To most, the
"perplexities" of money were very simple they could all agree that
gold and silver coin were money. But they avoided defining "money" in
the Constitution, or providing any provisions for a future paper currency. While
giving Congress the power "to borrow money on the credit of the United
States..." and "to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and foreign
coin..." (Article One, Section 8) they omitted a phrase that had been
included in the Articles of Confederation, "to Emit Bills of Credit."
This was a very significant omission, of which Alexander Del
Mar said:
"Never was a great historical event
followed by a more feeble sequel. A nation arises to claim for itself liberty
and sovereignty. It gains both of these ends by an immense sacrifice of blood
and treasure. Then when victory is gained and secured it hands the national
credit that is to say a national treasure over to private individuals,
to do as they please with it! ... They had before them... historical
examples ... the main contention from first to last between the aristocratic
and popular factions arose out of and centered in the monetary system; that
greatest of all dispensers of equity or inequity... They had only to take care
that the seed they planted was genuine and uncontaminated. Nature was certain
to do the rest. Well the planted; and now look at the fruit and see what it is
that they planted! They plated financial corporations... they planted private
money... they planted financial exemptions from public burdens... In a word
they planted another revolution." (History of Money in America,
1899, by Alexander Del Mar, quoted from The
Lost Science of
Money)
While, at the behest of mercantile ad financial interests, the
convention delegates omitted specifically giving Congress that critical power
(to Emit Bills of Credit), it nonetheless went to the length of specifically
denying it to the States "No State shall... coin Money; emit Bills of
Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of
Debts..." (Article One, Section 10)
What was the big deal? To quote Steven Zarenga in The
Lost Science of
Money:
"The coveted monetary power was
contained in the five 'magic' words 'To Emit Bills of Credit.' ...They were
the authority under which the Continental Currency and various colonial moneys
came to be issued."
In other words, the authority to emit Bills of Credit, was the
sovereign authority to issue script currency paper money "legal tender"
without the necessity of precious metal backing.
The moneyed class tried to get a clause forbidding the
emitting of Bills of Credit by the Congress, but failed. Zarenga quoted
Madison's notes on the pro and con exchange:
- (Con) "The moneyed interest will oppose the plan of
government (the Constitution), if paper emissions are not prohibited."
- (Pro) "The Revolutionary war could not have been
carried on had such a prohibition existed."
- (Con) "By withholding the power from the new
government, more friends of influence would be gained to it than to it than
by almost anything else."
- (Con) "...paper money was not legal tender in any
European country."
- (Pro) "...neither was any European country forbidden
from making paper money a legal tender."
So the delegates compromised by omitting any mention of
"Bills of Credit" in the Constituition. Subsequently, bankers and
financial interests did their best to make the omission synonymous with
prohibition in the eyes of both the public and public officials and finally
in the eyes of the Supreme Court. They wanted the privilege of paper money issue
exclusively for
themselves.
Omission is not prohibition, however and when the big
financial crunch came when the Civil War came upon us, the nation began emitting Bills of
Credit, in the form of United States Notes (Greenbacks), to pay for the urgent contingencies
of war.
The greenback laws, known as "Legal Tender" laws,
are still on the books. We could do the same thing today in our present
financial emergency, that President Lincoln had done. And we would save ourselves trillions in
taxes and public debt.
The fact that president Franklin D. Roosevelt failed to avail
himself of this ready expediency during the crisis he faced in 1933 was the
reason he was not able to get raise enough money to "prime the pump,"
as he put it. Had he done so, the Great Depression would not have been nearly as
great.
One reason FDR did not resort to the greenback at that time
was because bankers had succeeded in persuading Congress to make greenbacks
redeemable in gold with the Resumption Act of 1875 (effective in 1879). Thus the
bankers had crippled the government's ability to issue greenbacks as a
"fiat" currency in times of a national economic emergency. Spending
greenbacks would have been just as expensive as spending gold.
Of course, FDR and the Congress could have changed this, but
they declined to do so. Instead, FDR devalued the dollar in terms of gold, from
about $20.00 an ounce to $35.00 an ounce, and continued to spend gold back
dollars rather than resorting to fiat dollars thus his failure to be able to
pump enough liquidity into the economy to effect a recovery from the depression.
There is no such gold barrier to hamstring Barack Obama today,
and he will be facing an economic crisis of even greater
much greater proportions than that faced by Franklin Roosevelt.
If Obama can be made to see the genius of the Lincoln administration in the realm of
emergency finance, and the costs of the failure of Roosevelt to avail himself of
the same remedy, perhaps we could avoid another Great Depression one with much more
dire implications than that of the 1930s.
Our current emergency bailout of Wall Street is costing us
double and triple what the initial figures indicate, because government is still
fearful of exercising it's sovereign prerogative to create and spend its own
currency. The Federal Reserve bankers are still in charge, and the Treasury
Secretary himself is a partisan of the bankers.
Greenback issue would be just the thing to fund domestic
public works projects, and with Obama's plans, it appears he'd like to have
a lot of them. Greenbacks could fund Social Security, pay veterans' pensions,
various "entitlements," and even some sort of national health care
program and do all of these things without borrowing or taxing for them.
With greenbacks we would no longer be a domestically bankrupt nation. There
could be a real "renewal of hope."
Inflationary? We're going to have to fund all of those things
anyway, and we're going to have to do it with Federal Reserve currency if we
don't use greenbacks. And if we use Federal Reserve currency (as we are doing),
we'll have to borrow every penny of it and then be on the hook for the lingering
debts, plus interest. Responding to the crisis in that way is worse than just
inflationary it's literally insane!
The Obama administration will have the opportunity to grab the
bull by the horns and be a revolutionary administration one representing
change in the form of monetary reform change that is long over due.
Mr. Obama, this is your great opportunity to bring about real
change. Pridger didn't vote for you, but he prays that you will be The ONE to
deliver us (and perhaps the world), from the deadly plague of slavery to a
private banker-controlled debt money system a system that made our present
financial situation an inevitability.
Nationalize the Fed, and withdraw it's monopoly on monetary
issue. Return the sovereign right of money issue to the nation (and the people),
to which it rightly belongs. Give us greenbacks the currency that not only
saved the Union, but paved the way to the Emancipation Proclamation!
John Q. Pridger
FOR A PLAN, SEE THE AMERICAN
MONETARY INSTITUTE
WHY AND HOW WE PUNISH OURSELVES
Why do our leaders insist on spending fiat Federal Reserve
money that costs us an arm and a leg rather than greenbacks our own money
that would cost us almost nothing?
We do this to maintain a fiction and a facade devised to
benefit bankers and financial capitalists. Their truism is that "money is a
commodity" (a banker commodity), that mere governments simply cannot
create. They say only bankers can create it.
The fiction and facade is that Federal Reserve currency is a
magical "gold-like commodity," and the only way the government can get
its hands on it is through taxation and borrowing from those who already have
it. (Just like gold and silver.) Their argument was much more convincing when
gold and silver were considered the only "real" money, and all paper
money was backed by them. Government couldn't "produce" gold or
silver, so the only way to get those commodities was to tax and borrow.
But today we treat Federal Reserve Notes just as if they were
commodities the government is incapable of producing for itself. The only way
for government to get any these paper notes (or electronic credits), is through
taxation and borrowing. This is absurd on the face of it. Because government
most certainly can produce such notes. Clearly, it has issued its own greenback
money in the past and it still does it by producing Treasury
"notes," "bills," and "bonds," which are used as
"security" for borrowing "bankers' monetary notes."
Simply put, we use paper securities to secure loans of paper
currency, on which we pay interest.
Why not just use our own notes for paper money, rather than
using our notes to borrow paper money from banks and investors?
The answer is, there is no reason in the world why we cannot
create and spend our own money. The reason we don't do it is two fold: (1)
Ignorance on the part of the public and their representatives; and (2) because
the international banking Money Power is not only very powerful, but downright
dangerous.
There is another major complication as well. Since Federal
Reserve currency has become the international reserve currency, we are prevented
from acting strictly in our own best interests in monetary affairs. This and
other international commitments, are double edged swords. They both make and
break global empire. The empire is being broken, and before it collapses, we
need to re-establish a "national economic agenda" and a "national
currency."
Not what serious visual cracks are coming into the edifice of
our global financial empire, it is also an excellent time to redefine our
national goals and perhaps begin easing out of our ill begotten empire.
John Q. Pridger
Tuesday, 11 November, 2008
VOLUNTEERS WANTED FOR BIG CHANGES!
And Obama saith: "We cannot continue to rely only on our
military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set.
We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful,
just as strong, just as well-funded."
That comment was apparently made in a speech in Colorado in July of this
year. Obama wants to build a new civil service corps, expand the nation's
foreign service, and double the size of the Peace Corps. The latter two "to renew
our diplomacy."
A "civilian national security force that's just as
powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as our military? Wow!
One wonders just what kind of national security objectives
Obama has set? It sounds like he's going to make George W. Bush's national
security objectives look like child's play!
During the election, we saw Black Panthers take on an
apparently self-appointed "security roll" at some polling places. Is
that a precursor of the "civilian national security force" envisioned?
At least they apparently think so. There are so many implications in this idea that Pridger won't
even attempt to go there right now.
Our president elect truly sounds like a BIG GOVERNMENT
revolutionary. He's apparently a super Repulicrat and super Demoblican combined! Like the Republicans, he sees
the need to increase security and cut taxes and he sees a great need to expand the federal
government to a level no Democrat has ever before dared dream. This
goes beyond universal health care!
He wants a bailout package for the middle class. How do you
bail out the middle class? Make "good jobs" for them and put them on the federal payroll? Or perhaps he
wants to make the poor into the middle class by putting THEM on the government
payroll at middle class wages?
Pridger would like to know what school of economics Obama's
advisors are from. It sounds like the School of Super Voodoo Economics. Cut
taxes while conducting foreign wars and exponentially expanding government! In a
"real economy" or "real world" that would be such an
incredible proposal that it would sink like a lead balloon. In a "real
world" simple common sense
would have intervened, and the media would have laughed and made jokes about it.
But this is what presidential candidate Obama was proposing. And he got elected!
Reagan, for whom the term "Voodoo Economics" was
coined, wanted to cut taxes, reduce the size of government, and balance the
budget. That made some sense, though it obviously didn't work out. It didn't
work out because it had already
become an impossibility and other things were obviously already planned. But
Obama's plan doesn't make any sense at all from any sort of traditional economic
standpoint unless he's got a magic potion.
So far, Obama's change sounds downright dangerous.
In the latter days of the McCain campaign words like
"socialism"
and "communism" were bantered about. Some are likening the idea of a
"civilian national security force" to Hitler's very successful Brown
Shirt initiative. Others are warning of a coming Obama dictatorship. But the
McCain campaign failed to exploit those angles, and the media continued to make
Obama appear like the Second Coming of the Prince of Peace.
Pridger wonders how Obama's proposed changes will be financed.
Does he have a secret magic potion or bullet? Are changes going to be so sweeping
that we'll all be carried away, or to a higher level, as if by a giant tsunami?
There is one thing that is fairly certain. Obama has become
the president elect for a purpose. Things like this don't happen by accident.
The media, which is essentially owned and controlled by about five
mega-corporations, makes or breaks politicians, and it chose to make Obama our
next president.
And there is something else that is fairly certain. Obama will
do the bidding of the powers that have brought him to power, and Pridger isn't referring
to the "voters."
Pridger predicts the next four years will be very interesting.
John Q. Pridger
VISIONS OF GRANDEUR
Did you ever notice how Barack Obama sometimes seemed to look
down his nose at us from the podium, with sort of a superior bearing? Pridger had
noticed, but passed it off as appropriate to anyone in his shoes whose first
name meant "The ONE." Someone named Ali noticed too, and read quite a lot
more into it than Pridger. He expressed it well in his article, "Understanding Obama: The Making of a Fuehrer," by Ali Sina (http://www.faithfreedom.org/obama.html)
"I must confess I was not impressed by Sen. Barack Obama from the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident a wholesome presidential package. It is so instinctive for most people to want to see blacks succeed. It is as if all humanity is carrying a collective guilt for what the ancestors of blacks endured. However, despite my initial interest in him, I was put off soon, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words.
"It is surreal to see the level of hysteria in his admirers. This phenomenon is unprecedented in American politics. Women scream and swoon during his speeches. They yell and shout to Obama, I love you. Never did George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt. Martin Luther King Jr. or Ronald Reagan arouse so much raw emotion. Despite their achievements, none of them was raised to the rank of
Messiah..." (read whole
article)
http://www.faithfreedom.org/obama.html
SPEAKING OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES...
Woodrow Wilson, whose administration presided over the passing
of the Federal Reserve Act, and the passing of the income tax amendment and
who took us into World War One after leaving office, significantly said:
Since
I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately.
Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and
manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that
there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so
interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above
their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
The implication is that Woodrow Wilson was somehow coerced
into making the major changes he presided over as president. There were powers
that held sway over his administration that he could not resist.
More than just idle speculation has it that the last American
President who attempted to buck those forces was John F. Kennedy.
In light of this, it is not altogether unreasonable to
speculate that our current economic crisis has happened with a specific
purpose behind it that it was a crisis planned and "allowed to
happen" by some "power... so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so
interlocked, so complete, so pervasive," that even a global economic
meltdown may have a "purpose" commensurate with its goals.
If there is such a power, is it conceivable that our current
economic malaise, which has developed in full view for so long, was simply a
"mistake" or "miscalculation" on its part? If there is
such a power in this world, such a conclusion would be preposterous. As Franklin
D. Roosevelt once quipped, "...if it happens, you can bet it was
planned."
Major crises, whether war or economic, facilitate major
changes. The Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt administrations are two
administrations that brought about major change, and both ultimately culminated
in world wars. And the world wars brought about even more changes always
serving to consolidate financial power.
Let us hope and pray that will not be the role our new
president is expected to play. But the outlook is not good at this stage.
John Q. Pridger
THERE WAS NO CONSERVATIVE IN THE RACE
Barack Obama had plenty of help winning the election. His
trajectory from his roots to president elect was truly incredible. Of course, it
helped an awful lot that he came through as the only one of the two major
candidates that could talk just plain, down to earth, common sense to the common
people. It helped that he was black, too, of course. The very fact he was
black, handsome, collected, articulate, and seemingly so moderate and his
nomination "Oh so historic!" made him something "very special."
His candidacy embodied "Hope." In
effect, he had the benefit of a naturally generated Affirmative Action
advantage.
But he wouldn't have won had the Republican party not done
their share to help simply by going off the deep end and completely
destroying itself these past eight years. The common people, who reelected Bush
in 2004 on the strength of "conservatism" and "family
values" alone, finally tired of
seven years of Bush war and anything but a conservative administration. The
Bush years have been anything but conservative.
Pridger
was amazed Bush could be reelected after he'd already been exposed as a blatant
deceiver of the people. But that's the
power of incumbency in high office especially when there's a war going on.
Clinton was reelected too, even without a war going on, after shamefully disgracing the
nation and the office of the presidency.
Conservatives Lost More Than An Election
by Chuck Baldwin - November 7, 2008
http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2008/cbarchive_20081107.html
MAYBE SARA PALIN?
Maybe Sarah Palin could be called conservative. Maybe not. She
has not yet matured enough politically to really tell. Perhaps she has not yet done enough homework.
In time we will know if she is a real conservative or will remain aligned with
the neo-conservatives and Christian Zionists that have killed the Republican
Party and given conservatism a bad name.
John Q. Pridger
FED BAILOUT A "TRAP"
The Fed's bailout plan is called the "Troubled Asset
Relief Program" (TARP).
Gotcha covered!
It's all supposed to be honest, above board, and transparent
but the Fed isn't telling whose getting the money. To be honest, they say,
might scare the public and cause runs on banks. More accurately put, it's a
"TRAP" rather than a TARP! Congress.
See: http://www.bloomberg.com
John Q. Pridger
Monday, 10 November, 2008
HELLO, PRESIDENT ELECT OBAMA! WHAT ABOUT MONEY?
President elect Obama has a lot of plans that will require
spending a lot of money money the nation doesn't have and would have to
borrow. He apparently plans to use the same old Ponzi scheme monetary system
that has already caught up with us, leaving American taxpayers holding bags of
debt of unfathomable proportions and still growing at an alarming rate.
Our huge foreign debt is a monster that must be handled in
some sort of internationally responsible way on a multilateral basis. We're
locked into our international responsibilities with regard to our foreign debts.
But domestic spending could be done without incurring additional debt simply by
invoking the national currency that we have had since the Civil War the
greenback.
The only thing required to put this most fundamental monetary
attribute of national sovereignty back into service is to redefine our
"domestic" economy as "national" rather than international,
and restore Congress's constitutional duty and responsibility "...to coin
money (and) regulate the Value thereof..."
Perhaps for the time being we could keep the privately managed
Federal Reserve System in charge of international monetary affairs, but return
the roll of managing "national monetary affairs" to the Treasury,
under the oversight of the representatives of the people, where it belongs.
The principle is so simple that it beggars the mind and it
is this: Rather than having the Treasury issue interest bearing Treasury Bills
and Notes solely for the purpose of securing "loans," have them issue
small denomination non-interest bearing Notes as currency! It's that
simple!
Treasury bills are almost universally acknowledged as the
safest of all investments, and people, governments, and institutions are
flocking to them to preserve their capital. So, why would "little
Treasury bills," like U.S. Notes, not make the safest possible currency
note of all? Safe as the "full faith and credit of the United States"
for whatever that's worth. But it's all we've got. It's that very same thing
that backs the Treasury securities which we use for borrowing Federal Reserve
money.
This would be nothing new. It's nothing more or less than the
good old Lincoln greenback! The greenback was nothing more than small
denomination Treasury Notes used as a national currency. $1, $2, $5, $20, $50,
and $100 Treasury Notes! The legislation is still on the books in the form of
the Civil War era "Legal Tender" laws.
United States (Treasury) Notes greenbacks were our
nation's very first circulating paper currency, and were part of our national monetary mix
from the Civil War until as recently as 1969, but they have not been utilized
for their intended purpose since the Civil War. Greenbacks were relegated to a
back seat in our monetary system because private bankers had gained the right of
money issue starting with the National Banking Acts (also of the Civil War era),
and finally the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 with which the Congress largely
abandoned it's sacred function of monetary oversight.
|
GREENBACKS
Civil War Era
1963 |
United States Notes are distinguished by the red
Treasury seal and serial numbers. Otherwise, Federal Reserve Notes look like greenbacks, but
they were only made to look like U.S. Notes in order to be easily accepted by the
public.
National bank notes, gold certificates, and silver certificates also
looked like greenbacks, of course. They all have green backs with essentially
the same imprinted images, though though we've had several different kinds of
"legal tender" over the years, they all looked just about alike.
We still call
Federal Reserve Notes "greenbacks" because the word greenback became synonymous
with "American money" and Federal Reserve Notes are the only paper money
now being issued. But
they aren't what they appear or purport to be. They are not a real
"national" currency but are "bank notes" representative
of debt obligations. And, of course, the Federal Reserve Banks, in spite of
their "federal" name, are privately owned banks operated for private
profit.
The point is that our own "national"
circulating currency need not cost us an arm and a leg as it does now. And if we have to spend
one dollar or a trillion dollars to bale out anything within our national
borders, "real greenbacks" could be used without obligating present and future
taxpayers to trillions of dollars in debt plus billions in annual interest.
Federal Reserve Notes are bank notes, and a
"promise to pay." They are created, more or less out of thin air, and
loaned into circulation. But, as indebtedness instruments, they must be
repaid plus interest.
United States Notes are Treasury Notes
and are simply "money." They are more or less created out of thin air,
and spent into circulation. As money, they satisfy any and all
obligations they are used to pay.
LEGAL TENDER
Money, as "legal tender," is an instrument of law
rather than a commodity, such as gold or silver (which, of course, can be used
for legal
tender too). United States Notes and Federal Reserve Notes are "legal
tender," but one is "ours" and the other "theirs." Why
put our "legal tender" stamp on "theirs" that cost us so
dearly, when we have "our own"?
But this solution is just too simple for most
people to see. And presidents who have seen it in the past have been
assassinated for one reason or another. And for this reason, president Obama
will probably avoid seeing the obvious solution to our economic and monetary
problems. Nobody within the government has seen this simple and obvious
solution.
GOLD STANDARD?
Government cannot provide us with gold. It has no
monopoly ownership of gold. Gold has to be purchased from whoever possesses it.
When we were on a strict gold standard, government generally had to borrow
"gold-denominated money" in order to purchase gold with which to back
the currency. And it had to pay gold-denominated interest on those loans. This
is the great, generally unacknowledged flaw and folly of the gold monetary
standard the veritable oppressive "Cross of Gold" of which much
was said in the late 19th century.
When we had a healthy economy, it was possible
for the government to purchase gold and silver out of national income, i.e.,
from actual taxation. But today, all such purchases would have to be on credit.
What government does have a monopoly on, however
(or should have), is national sovereignty. And a sovereign government can
provide the legal tender with which to purchase the necessities and luxuries of
life including gold and silver to bury in your back yard. That's what the
good old American greenback can do.
Gold and silver are precious commodities, and a
"money" unto themselves. They will always be the money of last resort
and provide a reliable store of value. But they cannot serve as our circulating
currency because they are simply too precious to be passed from hand to hand in
our daily spending and commercial transactions. All past gold standards of the
modern era were largely fictitious in nature, and based on "faith"
that the gold was there to back up the currency. But there was only a fraction
of enough gold to back up the currency. So the value of the currency was based
on public confidence in the currency and the government or bank issuing it.
Today the global monetary system is also based on
faith. In the case of our money, it is based on the "full faith and
credit" of the nation. That's all we have to put our faith in whether
the money is in the form of Federal Reserve Notes, gold or silver backed paper,
or fiat greenbacks.
John Q. Pridger
See the American Monetary Institute: http://www.monetary.org/
ARE GREENBACKS INFLATION MONEY?
The argument against "government
created" fiat money, such as U.S. Notes, has always been that fiat paper is
"inflation money." And lacking honest, competent, administration, this
is true.
But guess what? Federal Reserve money is fiat
money too, and it is inflation money literally on steroids! There's no
comparison. Our current money is doubly, triply, or maybe quadruply,
inflationary when compared to U.S. Notes. Our present money is inflation
personified. Manipulating inflation, by manipulating interest rates, is the
"only" controlling mechanism and it doesn't work when government
spending is totally out of hand.
Whereas greenbacks could be printed until they
were effectively rendered totally worthless, at least a trillion dollars spent
would only mean a trillion dollars spent. With Federal Reserve money, a trillion
dollars spent means a trillion dollars spent, plus a lingering trillion dollars'
of public debt plus compounding interest! In order to satisfy or service
that debt, more money must be created and borrowed or borrowed and created. It's
an unending inflationary chain reaction! In the final analysis, it's nothing
more or less than a giant Ponzi scheme.
The gold standard once instilled a more or less
iron (or gold) clad discipline into monetary inflation management. Now that the
gold standard is no longer in force, the only possible discipline is honesty and
integrity of those responsible for monetary oversight, and there is much less of
that in "bank notes" than "U.S. Notes." Bank notes are under
the control of profit seeking bankers, whereas U.S. Notes are under the control
of representatives of the people (for what that's worth in this day and age).
Our representatives in Congress may not be
competent to oversee the nation's money system, but at least they are answerable
to the people. But leaving bankers to do the job is like hiring wolves, foxes,
and wildcats to operate the hen house.
When you hire foxes to operate the hen house, the
farmer's share of egg production is bound to decline until finally there are no
eggs or chickens left at all. But a farmer would have too much sense to do any
such thing. He would operate the hen house himself.
John Q. Pridger
Saturday, 8 November, 2008
BARACK WANTS AN ECONOMIC STIMULUS PACKAGE
"Economic stimulus package" sounds a lot like George
Bush. He's already had two of them, not counting the recent bi-partisan
wholesale bailout for the crooked financial sector. Little thought has been
given the "real economy" sometimes called "Main Street."
Our core auto industry should be top of the list in any
package aimed at the "middle class."
GM and Ford Motor Company are in trouble for two reasons. (1)
Our leaders began giving our automobile markets away to Japanese automakers half
a century ago. That wasn't a very brilliant move. (2) Once it became clear that
many Americans liked small Japanese cars, American automakers decided to
continue concentrating on big "American sized" vehicles. That wasn't a
very brilliant move either. One of the reasons was that Japanese
automakers were quickly able to flood the American market with cars they could
sell much cheaper than American automakers could produce them for. At that time,
Japan had two great advantages. The first was that they were still a cheap labor
country at the time they started flooding our markets. Secondly, the plants they
built after the war were subsidized by U.S. Aid and American financial capital,
and they were state of the arts facilities with all the latest automation
technology then coming on line.
The question now is whether the government should to do for
the auto industry what it has already done for a several large nests of vipers?
If Obama has any influence, and wants a rescue package for the "middle
class," he'd better vote for keeping those autoworkers on the job. Why bale
out vipers but not help large employers keep their workers on the job? Time is
of the essence for them.
In these increasingly troubled times, Detroit, in addition to
expensive new technology automobiles (hybrids, etc.), should start
putting out some stripped down, fuel efficient, "peoples' cars" like
Germany did after the war with their original Volkswagen "bug." We need something that is more
basic than anything being manufactured in Detroit today and
now is the time to start, because fewer and fewer Americans are going to be able
to afford our standard "luxury" brands. Lacking trade protection,
Detroit has to compete in a whole new line of inexpensive "commuter"
cars and perhaps a new brand of "ultra-lite" vehicles more or
less, back to the "horseless carriage," with enclosed golf carts, etc.
Additionally, a little dose of protectionism (gasp!), would work
miracles, and Detroit would soon regain market share. That's what it really
needs some favor from our own government in the realm of trade. If American car manufacturers didn't have to share the market with
Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and other automakers, the working middle class would
get a big boost.
It's a crime that our markets are full of foreign goods while
growing numbers of our own workers are unemployed, underemployed, or forced into
early retirement. Our roads
are full of foreign made cars, and our vast agricultural lands are full of
foreign made tractors and machinery. Our machine and woodworking shops are full
of foreign made machinery and tools. Our homes are full of foreign made
appliances, electronic, and entertainment devices. Our closets are full of
foreign made clothing.
This trend
of undercutting American workers, and thus the American middle class, is directly
attributable to our quest for international free markets, free trade, globalism,
international interdependence (to the point of total dependence), and a New World Order. The
"new" system has almost ruined us. Maybe it already has ruined us. It's been going on
since the 1960s, and it's time to start waking up!
Protectionism and a degree of isolationism may be forced on us
now that the financial and monetary Ponzi schemes has are collapsing and
revealing our acute, overhanging, vulnerabilities. It would be bitter medicine
for the free traders, internationalists, international finance sharks, and One
Worlders, but it's just the kind of medicine this nation needs.
John Q. Pridger
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
On the day after Obama was elected to be the next president,
the Illinois Lottery Evening Pick 3 was 6-6-6. (Check
it out) This is certain to spark a lot of speculation in certain quarters.
Pridger just hopes we don't have reason to come back and look at this in
amazement later on.
This numeric coincidence came to Pridger's attention while
checking out a very interesting and peculiar news and commentary site known as WhatDoesItMean.com.
This is the "Sorcha Faal" web site. Who is Sorcha Faal? Rather than a person, Sorcha Faal
seems to be some sort of mysterious esoteric "Sisterhood" (in Ireland, Russia, the Vatican, Langley, VA? Who knows or really cares?)
The name Sorcha Faal seems to be the title given to the head of the order of
that name. According to information given on the site, the present Sorcha Faal
is "Sister Maria Theresa."
What the site really is, of course, is difficult to pin down.
Many of the posts begin with something like, "Kremlin reports today are
stating that..." as if Sorcha Faal has some sort of inside track to Russian
intelligence, (see: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1170.htm).
There's a lot of
interesting information, and probably almost as much (if not more),
disinformation, of an alarmist nature. But it also
has plenty of international "alternative" news links. Some believe the site is actually the
handiwork of David Booth, the controversial author of Code Red: The coming
Destruction of the United States. (Apparently not available at Amazon.com.)
Mr. Booth is also an alleged prophet, psychic, and associate
of Sister Lucy of "Fatima" vision fame and, of course, has made
appearances on the Coast
to Coast AM radio program. So he is not really considered a
scholarly source for serious research projects, unless it would be into subjects
like extraterrestrials and UFOs.
Pridger
happened on the site while searching for the source some somewhat alarming information
being circulated via email. The email, which came to Pridger from a trusted and
alarmed friend, consisted included a link to a video of Hal
Turner. Hal is another somewhat
controversial personality who delves into right wing political
commentary (of a somewhat radical variety), as a talk radio host (now only on his Blog).
In the video Mr. Turner alleges that the U. S. Treasury has shipped
800 billion Ameros to
China
in preparation for the collapse of the U.S. Dollar and the adoption of the Amero
as the currency of the soon to be cemented "North American Union." Pridger found that
Sorcha Faal "herself" was the probably source of Turner's information. See: 800
billion "Ameros" have been shipped from the U.S. Treasury to China.
This seems to be pretty bizarre stuff, but as bizarre as it
may seem, it's a rather interesting hypothesis. Something of this nature could
very well be in the cards. Who knows? It certainly is not beyond the realm of
possibility in a world going as crazy as ours is turning out.
What we do know is that our dollar and
entire economic system are under severe pressure, and that the North American
Union (a.k.a. Security and
Prosperity Partnership of North America
(SPP), has secretly been in the works for some time. The "Amero"
has definitely been proposed as a Euro-like NAU (or UNA) currency. And we do owe China
enough money to make them a forced partner in whatever our secret leaders do to
save their fortunes.
As far as we know, Hal Turner's alarmist message
with regard to the Amero is either a sensational "what might happen"
(mistakenly turned to "fact"), or an outright intentional hoax and
or disinformation to keep followers keyed up.
In his video, Hal displayed an Amero which he believed had been minted by
the Denver Mint. But the Amero that Hal Turner displayed is undoubtedly one (of several) privately minted
by Dan Carr as a "novelty medallion" coin.
Visit http://www.dc-coin.com/ to buy some
for yourself. (Alternately, see: amerocurrency.com
to buy and learn about the proposed North American Union).
The "D" (Denver Mint) mark, that Hal pointed out, is probably Dan Carr's
first initial placed on the coins. (See right image below. "D" is
below the wing tips to right).
Be all the sense and non-sense as it may, there's a whole lot
of interesting and informative reading on whatdoesitmean.com.
It's impossible to separate fact from what sometimes appears to be
"conjectural intelligence" and esoteric mumbo jumbo, and perhaps a
considerable amount of plain old "hog wash." So don't believe all you read.
On the other
hand, some of things that may seem most unlikely could be key to making sense
out of the apparently inexplicable that has happened, or will happen in the
future. There's little doubt that whoever is running that site has their ear to
the ground. They definitely have an agenda (they call it truth), but Pridger
isn't sure where it's coming from or where it's going. For example...
 |
Talk
about noticing things! While the Democrats were focused on the cost of
Sarah Palin's wardrobe, other's noticed this... What
is this supposed to mean? |
Mind you, the Sorcha Faal site is not an anti-Obama site, and
it certainly isn't a pro-Rebublican site. Most posts indicate it is an alien
"interested observer" site. The most bizarre articles purport to
be revelations or "rumors" apparently originating from Russian
intelligence networks. Sorcha Faal's take on Michelle Obama's dress was that it symbolized
a "visual warning to her, and her husbands', enemies that she
would not become the black widow they fully expect her to be."
Those enemies, incidentally, are generally referred to as "Bush Clinton
Neo-Con CIA Nazis," or some variation thereof. Posts on the site all have
the following notice:
[Ed. Note: The United States
government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the
United States
except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of
which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very
little personal information is given about our contributors, or their sources,
to protect their safety.]
The following relatively down to earth post from the whatdoesitmean site, telling how the
Obama administration is shaping up to be "four more years" of Bush
wars. (Photos of three of the first Obama administration appointments have been
omitted.)
| In the early morning hours of
November 5th, at a public park in the State of
Illinois
, Barack Obama claimed victory in his quest to become President of the
United States
. Barely noticed, however, was that also on November 5th, in
that same State of Illinois, the winning
lottery numbers for that day were 6
6
6.
Were these lottery numbers signaling a
warning to the American people of what is to come in their
very near future? Apparently many of them believe so,
and the New York Times has reported
this week that fears of an Obama Presidency is causing gun and
ammunition purchases in the
United States
to surge all over their Nation.
In our experience, though, weve found
that the best predictor as to the intentions of any leader is to look at
whom they surround themselves with, and in President-Elect Obamas
case it should raise great alarm!
First of all, Obama has selected as his
Chief of Staff a man named Rahm Emanuel [1st photo] who is known
for mailing a dead fish to an enemy, fundraising in Chicago that has
been compared to gangster shakedowns, threatening the British Prime
Minister not to f**k-up, and plunging his knife into a
dinner table while vowing death to his enemies. Most
importantly about Mr. Emanuel though is his creation
of the pro-war US Congress that followed Bushs orders allowing the
tragic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to begin.
Secondly there is Jane Harmon [2nd
photo], a seventh-term Democrat from Southern California and senior
member of the Homeland Security Committee who chairs the Intelligence
Subcommittee and is being tapped to be Obamas top intelligence Czarina
as his choice to head either the CIA
or Homeland
Security Agency and who has been one of President Bushs strongest
defenders in his breaking of US laws to eavesdrop on American
citizens.
And last, though certainly not least, is Senior
Foreign Affairs Advisor to Obama, Dennis
Ross [3rd photo]. Though few Americans even know of Mr.
Ross, he can arguably be said to be one of the chief architects of US
Middle East policy over these past two decades and has served in both
the George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations. So important to the
future of the
US
is Mr. Ross its worth reading a little more about him:
Dennis
Ross, Bill Clintons Mideast envoy, whose record includes supporting
the pro-Iraq War advocacy campaigns of the Project for the New American
Century and serving as a consultant to the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy (WINEP), a bastion of Israel-centric policy thinking in
Washington.
Generally
regarded as a political moderate who has the ear and respect of both
Republicans and Democrats, Ross, a former Soviet specialist, reportedly
has told friends and foreign officials that he hopes to nab a very
senior post in an Obama administration, one that at least covers Iran
policy, if not the entire Greater Middle East.
Are you beginning to get that as
much as things have changed, the more they remain same feeling?
If so youre exactly right, because the truth is nothing at all
has changed, only the faces set before you designed to keep
you passive, out of their way has. And
more than at any other time in history this new group of
leaders ruling over you need watching so that you can be prepared for
what they have in store for you.
And thats where we come in.
According to the Media
Reform Information Center nearly 100% of the news being reported to
you is controlled by just 5 huge International corporations! They are:
Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany,
and Viacom (formerly CBS), and they decide virtually everything in your
life
whom to vote for, whom to vote against, what to buy, what not to
buy
and on, and on, and on.
In a future World there will no doubt be
many history books written about how these 5 corporations were able to
direct the lives of over 300 million American people while overseeing
their total destruction. But in todays World, the
one that counts, there remains only us and a few other news sources
continuing to do battle against these monsters and keep telling you the
truth
.even if you dont want to hear it, even if you dont want
to believe it.
From: http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/ |
John Q. Pridger
Wednesday, 5 November, 2008
REJOICING OVER OSAMA'S REVENGE
|
COMING TO GRIPS WITH THE
UNTHINKABLE
Only a few short years ago, it would have been
politically, socially, and culturally, impossible to elect a man named
Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency of the United States of America.
It would have been totally unthinkable! The name reflects both African
and Islamic heritage without a hint of American heritage!
However, since our introduction to Osama bin
Laden and al Qaeda, and the events 9/11 and our subsequent defeat
and execution of Saddam Hussein of Iraq the election of a Barack
Hussein Obama is not only a possibility, but has become a done deal! Go
figure!
For better or worse, we have elected a smooth
talking virtual unknown quatity, who has received a lot of help from somewhere. Some
believe his amazing ascendance is evidence of the Second Coming. Others
believe it conforms to the earmarks of the Anti-Christ. Whatever he is,
he has become our president elect.
Regardless of what Obama actually stands
for what extreme changes a few Islamic extremists have been able to
make in our country! Barack Hussein Obama a Savior whose Swahili
first name means "The ONE" has arisen like a Phoenix from the
ashes of folly to save us from ourselves!
Let us hope and pray that Obama will save us
from ourselves, and become an agent of the changes we need rather than
the changes that appear to be in the offing. JQP |
President Bush's War on Terror has backfired big time.
Huge segments of the electorate are rejoicing over the Obama
victory. Pridger isn't one of them, because Obama's election represents not only
a duel
triumph for multicultural liberalism and Osama bin Laden and a great failure of
popular republicanism, not to mention a American nationalism but something
even more alarming. It will take time to fully realize the full implications of
Obama's victory, and what his presidency will actually mean.
Obviously, the great American experiment has gone awry, and
has been going that way for decades. The
people have now spoken, and what they've said is that the electorate has lost its
way and finally turned decisively away from our nation's fundamental defining
culture. It was a desperate act by a confused and fearful electorate.
Obama isn't at fault for any of the forces and circumstances
that have propelled him foreword and made his election possible. He merely
happens to be "The ONE" in the right place at the right time. And
there is something eerie in this circumstance in and of itself especially if
one tends to think in terms of either conspiracy, prophecy, or along the lines
of diverse esoteric thought trains.
We've turned a significant page, and a sharp corner, in our national
history in more ways than one.
Change is already here that our forefathers would never have imagined that none of
us of Pridger's generation could have imagined. And there will likely be radical
changes that most present day Americans even those who voted for Obama
have never imagined.
It's not that Barack is black. We've always know that there
would eventually be a black president. The odds favored it within this century.
What is shocking is that the first black president came like a shot out of
nowhere with so many incongruities that it stagers the imagination to define
just how it could have happened as it did.
At least we can rejoice that blood isn't running in the
streets as the result of a McCain win. Had John McCain won, it would have been
"Burn baby burn!" all over again in spades. The signs were
everywhere along with a surreal euphoria of hope on the part of Obama
followers. Rather than riots and mayhem,
there was jubilant dancing in the streets after the verdict was in. We seem to have
turned from rational politics (with its full array of corruption), to cult politics
(certainly destined to be just as corrupt). We have elected a man whose
multicultural political following is more cult-like than politically rational.
Some surveys are now saying that 70% of the nation's unmarried women went for
Obama. Add to that a whole lot of dissatisfied married women.
Half of the white electorate who voted for Barack Obama
actually believed the contest was not about race. Just as for most of the
African Americans, they believed it was mostly about what the next president
could do "for them" as a Savior! And they found Obama more credible in his pledges
to deliver the goods by redistributing the nation's wealth. Never mind the
fact that the nation is already effectively bankrupt and beholden to the
goodwill of others elsewhere.
In fact, the election was very much about race and if
McCain had won, we'd be finding out just how much it was about race.
We can see a strong hint right now. Not only are African-Americans dancing and
rejoicing, but Moslems around the world are rejoicing too right along
with everybody else who felt threatened by the America George W. Bush's Republican
Party has projected. Obama, in spite of his profession of Christianity, is nonetheless
perceived by Moslems as being "one of them" rather than one of us.
"One of us" would be us Americans.
That "The race was not about race," is like saying
"Affirmative Action was not about race." Something very much like
Affirmative Action has certainly assisted in Obama's election for no young,
inexperienced, white senator, with radical past associations, and a name like Rudolph
Hitler Schmitt, could have ever made it to the presidential primaries, no matter
how brilliant, charismatic, and articulate. If adoring crowds ever began
gathering around such a candidate, the opposition and media would have crushed
him always carefully using his middle name to make their point. McCain felt
constrained not to ever mention Barack's middle name.
There's little doubt that a big grin came over Osama bin Ladin's face when he
leaned of his great triumph over American political landscape. This major defeat of the
neo-con Republican establishment, and their white man candidate, was a major
coup for Osama bin Laden and his motley crew. Incredible, but true! And, whether
we liked the alternative candidate or not, it was also a crushing defeat for the
rest of us who believed there was something salvageable
of the nation of our founders.
More than any other single force, Osama bin Ladin, and Al
Qaeda, were responsible for the Republicans' eight years of unchecked reckless political
suicide. Without Osama, and 9/11, there would have been no global War on Terror.
There would have been no invasion of Afghanistan. And there would have been no
invasion of Iraq. War spending would not have helped trigger the financial
crisis that finally solidly clinched Obama's election. And Obama couldn't have won
the election.
Without all of these things, the Republican Party may have
muddled through these past eight years and survived the Obama onslaught. So,
thanks to Republican folly, we get "The ONE" for president of these United
States though his very name refutes our
national identity.
Unfortunately, the Republicans, fixated on global Empire at
any cost (rather than our own Constitutional Republic), failed to comprehend the
extent of their error and the cumulative alienation of the electorate. They lost
almost all of us to the extent that not even the simple issue of "black
or white" could salvage their sunken ship. Not even the facade of "family
values," or even the claim, "at least we're not Democrats," could salvage their political
fortunes this time around. That's how deep a hole Bush and the neo-cons had dug for
themselves and the Republican Party.
The people perceived that things had become so bad under two Bush administrations, that the election of another Republican president
one who clearly did not have a constructive vision of his own to offer was
considered worse than electing a very unlikely, inexperienced, left-wing
liberal, of peculiar pedigree, with very questionable associations, and a very
lackluster track record.
In short, the Bush presidency was so disastrous, that even a
significant percentage of the naturally racist majority must have cast aside its
prejudices (and secret prejudices) to vote for the black guy. This is the legacy of the Republican Party
during these last eight years, and the triumph of both Osama and Obama.
For better or worse, Barack Hussein Obama is our president
elect. He promises to somehow take the nation in another direction. And there's
little doubt that he will.
He has no choice but it may not be the direction he promised. As vice
presidential elect Joe Biden said, Obama will be tested soon after taking
office. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda don't have to do anything to test Obama.
Our collapsing financial system and the realization that we can't afford to
continue our wars or occupations in either Iraq or Afghanistan will be quite
sufficient.
Yet Obama, like his opponent, claims to be a determined
"War on Terrorism" warrior, and has dutifully sworn allegiance to the
state of Israel in order to be worthy of the office of President of the United
States. Only committed Zionists need apply to that position. But will Obama turn
out to be something else, as many of his supporters hope? We'll have to wait and
see.
The biggest initial change will be the perception, and perhaps the
fact, that we have taken a final departure from our national roots, our national
culture, and our very national identity and we have pretty much lost all
hope for rediscovering the Constitutional Republic our founders envisioned.
The challenges of and to the Obama administration will be
overwhelming. It will have to deal with an array of national problems which will
make those that confronted Franklin D. Roosevelt appear trivial. When Roosevelt faced
a similar major economic crisis, the nation was not only at peace but economically
unassailable in spite of the collapse of the Stock Market. It had a great trade surplus,
and an enviable stock of every kind of national wealth none of which was mortgaged
to the foreign competition. It was a politically and economically independent
nation.
This has all changed now, thanks to both Democratic and Republican
administrations over the last half century of New World Order building.
There will be change, but let us hope the change will not be
national eclipse. We will have an interesting next four
years, and perhaps more. "Interesting times." May it not become the curse of which
Chinese sages have spoken.
We don't know what the future will bring. We don't yet know
who Obama is, or what he really stands for. And we don't really know whether he will, or
will not, be a good president or whether he will have the chance to be a
good president. He may find that the world into which he enters when he takes
office, is not the world in which he thought he was campaigning.
John Q. Pridger
WOULD THE REAL OBAMA PLEASE STAND UP?
Ironically one of Obama's most severe critics is Independent
candidate, Ralph Nader. Read his November 3rd open letter to Obama at:
http://www.votenader.org/media/2008/11/03/lettertoobama/
Nader's vice presidential running mate, Matt Gonzales had
quite a bit to say in his "Obama Craze: Count Me Out" speech or
article in February of this year.
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2008/Obama-Craze-Gonzalez27feb08.htm
This criticism is particularly interesting because Nader and
Gonzales are fellow left wingers. They point they seem to be making is that the
Obama we see and hear on the campaign trail has changed his spots, in quite
remarkable fashion, to garner support. So, as of now we know exactly a lot less
as to who Obama really is and what his agenda may be. Perhaps his agenda was a
one goal agenda to become president.
We do not yet know who Obama really is. But, nonetheless, he
is the president elect.
After passing the $700 billion financial bale out package, a
lot of hesitant supporters awoke saying "Oh, my God! What have we
done?" Will America awaken saying the same thing about our presidential
choice three or four months, or a year, from now?
John Q. Pridger
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