Lots of nice places to see here in CA we are taking road trips on my weekends off. I will be posting more photos in the coming weeks.
The End Is Near
Friday, August 31, 2012
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Free Books
New giveaway for two books:
Description:
American Red Cross Standard First Aid & Personal Safety: Second Edition
- Paperback
- Copyright 1979
- Procedures and advice may be out of date. Use with caution.
Description: THE OFFICIAL BOY SCOUT HANDBOOK - 1979
Boy Scouts of AmericaHow to win: Post a comment to this giveaway and tell me why you do or do not think the collapse is coming! Just a short reply is OK but if you want to go into detail go ahead and do it. I will give it a few days and then the little lady will pick a name out of the hat and we will have a winner!!
Thanks for reading!!!
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
The Conspiracy of an Empire: A Letter to Those that Serve the System:
August 27, 2012 in Activism
By Shawn Helton and Neema Enriquez
Your way of life has been pre-determined, you just don’t realize it yet. The tyrannical empire you serve is full of depraved, sociopathic eugenicists whose goals are to consolidate wealth and take precious resources from around the globe. Through planned economic terror and preemptive wars in the guise of humanitarian interventions, the United States and western interests are pushing towards a shock phase of expansionism. The carefully crafted illusion of what globalization is has convinced you that we need the democratization of non-democratic states. This is cover for a greater power grab that you blindly clock in for each and every day.
The shadow network of government is the ultimate change agent. Since 9/11 we’ve seen a systematic erosion of civil liberties in the United States by means of illegal wire tapping, hyper surveillance, warrant-less searches and an ever-increasing police state. Our forefathers warned us about the dangers of an expansionist, authoritarian government which you have readily accepted. You have unknowingly sacrificed your freedoms for a moment of false security and a paycheck.You’ve been led to believe that there are both internal and external threats, opening the door for a larger police and military presence here in the U. S. as well as around the world. You have approved lethal, pharmaceutical drugs that have not been thoroughly tested for safety. You have turned a blind eye to companies that chemically engineer our food supply, compromising human sustenance for generations to come. The very agencies that claim to protect our national security have abused your trust.
I don’t blame you for being idealistic in thinking that by working for these government institutions, you can be part of the solution. You probably graduated from a highly respected liberal arts college, participated in events designed to help your local community and discussed “ground up” reform from “the inside out” with other concerned students just like yourself. Sadly, our education systems have also been infiltrated by this shadow government network and it’s very likely that the speeches you received on altruism and putting the care and concern of your fellow man before yourself has also been carefully crafted to deceive you into a socialist or Marxist ethos. Carroll Quigley, former professor at a number of “well respected” institutions of higher learning such as Harvard, Princeton and Georgetown University was deeply involved with advocating for this Marxist empirical network. In his 1,350 page book entitled “Tragedy and Hope” Quigley writes:
“I know of operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years… and was permitted to examine secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims…” Quigley continues to describe the goal of the network which is: “nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. His [the individual's] freedom and choice will be controlled within very narrow alternatives by the fact that he will be numbered from birth and followed, as a number, through his educational training, his required military or other public service, tax contributions, health and medical requirements to his final retirement and death benefits.”
The academic community is a continued part of the network’s system of control and indoctrination into a far reaching destructive plan seeking to control the minds of the next generation.
You were fortunate enough to get a great government job right out of college. You passed the background checks, the personality profile and lengthy applicant screening process. Generally, you feel pretty good about the work your department is doing but something doesn’t feel quite right. You heard a rumor about someone in another department who was a “whistle-blower” and they were fired for speaking up about your company’s illegal business practices. You have noticed the same activity since you’ve been here but are worried about retaliation if your boss finds out that you are questioning this misconduct where you work. You keep your mouth shut and your head down.
The slow dismantling of our Constitution is taking place. At every level, the Bill of Rights is being stripped due to the need for modern day applications and interpretations to what the Founders intended. To any Constitutionalist, these intentions are very cut and dry, however the need for Constitutional awareness by Americans has never been more necessary. This has become even more evident with unconstitutional arrests of U.S. citizens who are critical of government policies or illegal business practices.
See Something, Say Something. This tenet taken right from the pages of Orwell’s “1984” is being used more frequently against the American people. There are growing numbers of cases where whistle-blowers from all nearly every government agency have “seen something and said something” in their place of work and have been threatened with everything from disciplinary action, tax penalties, loss of employment, prison to physical threats. As an employee of any company, government or private sector, you have a right to speak out against any dishonest or illegal business practices that you discover through the course of you conducting normal business. The Government Accountability Project (GAP), an organization dedicated to the protection of corporate, government and international whistle-blowers since 1977, has taken a firm stance on finding the best way to defend “people who commit the truth”. GAP hosts a television program, “Whistle Where You Work” that airs nationally on the Free Speech TV channel on Dish Network, on over 70 community access stations around the country, and in parts of Europe.
The obstruction of dissent is not limited to the workplace. Just recently, an honorably discharged U.S. Marine, Brandon J. Raub, was taken into custody for expressing his political views on his private Facebook account. Raub’s comments came under a firestorm of criticism from government officials deeming his posts “terrorist in nature”.
John W. Whitehead founder and defense attorney for the The Rutherford Institute came to the aid of Raub, supporting his Constitutional rights which eventually led to his release. Whitehead had this to say about the incident : “For government officials to not only arrest Brandon Raub for doing nothing more than exercising his First Amendment rights but to actually force him to undergo psychological evaluations and detain him against his will goes against every constitutional principle this country was founded upon. This should be a wake-up call to Americans that the police state is here,” Whitehead is quick to remind us that according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memos, “ Veterans are listed as extremist” We are seeing an unprecedented rise in what the DHS and other various security agencies consider thought crimes against the state. This is the age of pre-crime where our freedom is dying everyday.
In another unjust case , David C. Gorczynski was arrested for displaying signs that expressed his opposition to the banking system during a peaceful protest outside a Wells Fargo branch in Easton, Pa. The occupy protester is accused of terrorist threats, bank robbery and disorderly conduct. It is astonishing that U.S. citizens are being targeted for their political dissent in a way that would make North Korea envious. Isn’t our greatest domestic threat coming from an out of control system which now openly admits to taking orders from foreign financial institutions? The question you should be asking is, why would you want to serve a system that is destroying the very foundation we built our country on? It doesn’t matter which wing you work for, both the left and right political parties have signed us up for a total collapse.
Well known author, social critic and political activist Naomi Wolf covered the break down of a free society in her book titled The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. Wolf outlines the ten steps to a closed society, examining the same blueprint that has been used repeatedly throughout history. In a recent interview with Elmhurst College, Wolf described how our society has spiraled out of control:“It’s worse than ever, and it has happened more quickly than I imagined when I wrote the book,” she said. “There are financial incentives to maintaining a hyped-up terror state and police state. I knew that a change of presidents wouldn’t change this but I didn’t expect the capitulation to be so dramatic. Four years ago we didn’t have a president claiming a right to preventive detention without trial, which Obama has done.”. Wolf herself was arrested at Occupy Wall Street last year for peaceably protesting on a NYC sidewalk.
Under this current administration we’ve descended into total authoritarianism having extending the Patriot Act, passing the NDAA, which in it’s pure description is the indefinite detention of American citizens, thus, stripping us of our constitutional rights without evidence of any crime. Just recently, an army manual was leaked describing plans for internment resettlement operations or re-education camps here in the U.S., during the event of “military or civil conflict”, or if we had a “natural or man-made disaster”. As free people we should be extremely concerned and we have been warned.
By working for this system you are agreeing to the reformation of the United States Constitution and are condoning the actions of a corrupt, government, devoid of morals that has been taken over at the highest levels by global criminals.
This is a letter to those who serve the system. You need to accept that our country has been taken over by a financial and scientific dictatorship. Those in charge of our wealth and resources have pledged to a dark empire. We need reject the predatory and illegitimate war making used to crush liberty. As the world is in decline, you will have to make a choice between freedom and tyranny. Future generations depend on it. Dissent is still the highest form of patriotism. Will you speak up for your country?
Friday, August 24, 2012
So What Do You Think?
How will the vote go in November? Who will win the race, because who ever gets into office or stays in office I think we are dead! Both groups are the same with a little difference in the wrapping! So tell me how you see the vote playing out and then tell me how you see the next year(2013) and the next few years after that playing out. Will the collapse hit soon or do we still have some time? Did the collapse hit already and are we on a slow ride down? Are we dead already and most don't know it? Or are the walking dead right, will everything be alright? Post a comment and let me know what you think.....
Veteran Declared ‘Mentally Defective,’ Has Guns Seized
News of similar case emerges day after release of Brandon Raub
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Friday, August 24, 2012
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Friday, August 24, 2012
Just a day after Brandon Raub was released following his incarceration in a psychiatric ward over political Facebook posts, news has emerged of a similar case involving a veteran who had his guns seized after being labeled a “mental defective’ and faces being committed by a judge.
Radio host Steve Quayle was sent news of an Army combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient in west central Ohio who was the victim of a police raid on the evening of August 22nd during which Miami County Ohio Sheriff’s deputies executed a search warrant to seize the man’s firearms for the “safety of the defendant and the general public,” according to the warrant.
The veteran, who is currently unnamed, had his guns taken because he was adjudged to be mentally incompetent, despite the fact that his previous VA psychiatric evaluations were all clear, he is not on medication, and he had no criminal record. The man appears to be a respected member of the community – he works for a Christian company and his father is a police officer and a pastor.
“The person is under adjudication of mental incompetence, has been adjudicated as a mental defective, has been committed to a mental institution, has been found by a court to be a mentally ill person subject to hospitalization by court order, or is an involuntary patient other than one who is a patient only for purposes of observation. As used in this division, “mentally ill person subject to hospitalization by court order” and “patient” have the same meanings as in section 5122.01 of the Revised Code,” states the warrant.
Amongst the items confiscated were a .45 caliber pistol, one .380 caliber pistol, a 12 gauge shotgun, two AR-15 rifles, a stripped AR-15 lower receiver, as well as a hunting knife.
“In addition to the confiscations, the deputies attempted to question my friend and his fiancée,” states the email sent to Quayle by the man’s friend. “I didn’t get specific details on the questions asked. They refused to answer any questions without an attorney present. When my friend stated, “This is bullshit,” one of the deputy detectives remarked, “Look man, I’m just doing my job.”
The veteran now faces “an evaluation of mental competency” with a judge who will decide whether he should be committed to a state psychiatric ward. If any more weapons are found on the man’s property in the interim he will have committed a felony and will face a jail sentence.
Since the veteran is active in the so-called truth movement or patriot community, it is assumed that his involvement in this field is part of the reason why he has been targeted for psychiatric evaluation.
“Unlike Brandon Raub’s case, however, the state of Ohio won’t allow law enforcement to involuntarily commit a person unless there is an immediate need to do so, such as holding a gun to their head or another person’s head,” states the email. “Ohio law requires a judge to make the decision on having a person evaluated for mental illness. Of course, you’re then evaluated by a state-appointed psych, and that isn’t exactly going to play out in your favor. Had my friend lived in Virginia, he may be sitting in a metal hospital (prison) right now. Or worse.”
The veteran’s lawyer has already filed motions attempting to discover who asked the judge to sign the search warrant and for what reason he was declared mentally defective.
Earlier this year, we reported on a similar case involving David Sarti, one of the participants in the National Geographic Channel’s Doomsday Prepper show. Sarti visited his doctor complaining of chest pains, only to have the doctor later commit him to a psychiatric ward and alert authorities, before Sarti was declared “mentally defective” and put on an FBI list that stripped him of his second amendment rights.
Brandon Raub, a former veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, was also involuntarily detained for psychiatric questioning last week by authorities in Virginia’s Chesterfield County for leaving anti-establishment messages on Facebook which questioned the official story behind 9/11 and referred to corruption within the U.S. government. Raub also posted song lyrics on a private message board.
The FBI claimed Raub’s posts were “terrorist in nature” and yet within a week Raub was ordered to be released by a judge who found that the original petition for his detention contained no facts whatsoever on the reason for his incarceration.
Raub’s lawyer John Whitehead revealed that shortly before his release, psychiatrists had threatened to forcibly medicate Raub in order to “brainwash” him.
Whitehead warned that there were 20,000 recent cases in Virginia alone of people being snatched from their homes having been declared mentally defective by the state with virtually no due process whatsoever and with the victim having committed no crime.
Critics have made comparisons to the infamous psikhushka psychiatric prisons in the former Soviet Union where dissidents were sent to be isolated, brainwashed, and have their political ideas discredited amongst the general public.
Given the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly demonized veterans as likely domestic terrorists, it’s clear that former servicemen are being targeted as part of an effort to chill free speech and discourage other veterans from being politically active.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.
Republicans Consider Returning To Gold Standard: Real Or Red Herring?
Zero Hedge
Aug 24, 2012
Stranger than fiction perhaps but the FT is reporting that the gold standard has returned to mainstream US politics for the first time in 30 years with a ‘gold commission’ set to become part of official Republican party policy.
While this could simply be a reach for as many Ron Paul marginal voters as possible (with the view that the GOP would never really go for it); it appears drafts of the party platform from the forthcoming rain-soaked convention call for an audit of the Fed and a commission to look at restoring the link between the dollar and gold. The FT, citing a spokesperson, adds that “There is a growing recognition within the Republican party and in America more generally that we’re not going to be able to print our way to prosperity,” but “We’re not going to go from a standing start to the gold standard,” although it would provide a chance to educate politicians and the public about the merits of a return to gold. Interestingly, the Republican platform in 1980 referred to “restoration of a dependable monetary standard”, while the 1984 platform said that “the gold standard may be a useful mechanism.”
The FT does its best to placate the hysteria and walk it back with:
One could argue that the most recent three ‘Golden-Era’ mega-business-cycles are ‘unsustainable’ fiat-driven monstrosities. The business cycle appears to be naturally shorter but we have centrally-planned it by creating more and more debt since 1971 – perhaps a return to the gold standard or hard money will increase the frequency of recessions but they can be projected and planned for and managed – as opposed to the cliff-like plunges and bubblicious thrusts of their current unsustainable experiment.
Aug 24, 2012
Stranger than fiction perhaps but the FT is reporting that the gold standard has returned to mainstream US politics for the first time in 30 years with a ‘gold commission’ set to become part of official Republican party policy.
The FT does its best to placate the hysteria and walk it back with:
A return to a fixed money supply would also remove the central bank’s ability to offset demand shocks by varying interest rates. That could mean a more volatile economy and higher average unemployment over time.But we remind readers of the actual lengths (and volatilities) of economic cycles over time (as per Deutsche’s Jim Reid):
…we think that the three ‘super-cycles’ between 1982-2007 were the exception rather than the norm and existed largely because of a near 30 year secular global decline in inflation that transcended the business cycle.
…every business cycle threatening incident was dealt with using aggressive intervention. This led to more and more confidence in the ability of the authorities which coupled with lower and lower interest rates increased public and private leverage to previously unthinkable levels.
One could argue that the most recent three ‘Golden-Era’ mega-business-cycles are ‘unsustainable’ fiat-driven monstrosities. The business cycle appears to be naturally shorter but we have centrally-planned it by creating more and more debt since 1971 – perhaps a return to the gold standard or hard money will increase the frequency of recessions but they can be projected and planned for and managed – as opposed to the cliff-like plunges and bubblicious thrusts of their current unsustainable experiment.
America’s Descent into Poverty
Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
August 24, 2012
The United States has collapsed economically, socially, politically, legally, constitutionally, and environmentally. The country that exists today is not even a shell of the country into which I was born. In this article I will deal with America’s economic collapse. In subsequent articles, i will deal with other aspects of American collapse.
Economically, America has descended into poverty. As Peter Edelman says, “Low-wage work is pandemic.” Today in “freedom and democracy” America, “the world’s only superpower,” one fourth of the work force is employed in jobs that pay less than $22,000, the poverty line for a family of four. Some of these lowly-paid persons are young college graduates, burdened by education loans, who share housing with three or four others in the same desperate situation. Other of these persons are single parents only one medical problem or lost job away from homelessness.
Others might be Ph.D.s teaching at universities as adjunct professors for $10,000 per year or less. Education is still touted as the way out of poverty, but increasingly is a path into poverty or into enlistments into the military services.
Edelman, who studies these issues, reports that 20.5 million Americans have incomes less than $9,500 per year, which is half of the poverty definition for a family of three.
There are six million Americans whose only income is food stamps. That means that there are six million Americans who live on the streets or under bridges or in the homes of relatives or friends. Hard-hearted Republicans continue to rail at welfare, but Edelman says, “basically welfare is gone.”
In my opinion as an economist, the official poverty line is long out of date. The prospect of three people living on $19,000 per year is farfetched. Considering the prices of rent, electricity, water, bread and fast food, one person cannot live in the US on $6,333.33 per year. In Thailand, perhaps, until the dollar collapses, it might be done, but not in the US.
As Dan Ariely (Duke University) and Mike Norton (Harvard University) have shown empirically, 40% of the US population, the 40% less well off, own 0.3%, that is, three-tenths of one percent, of America’s personal wealth. Who owns the other 99.7%? The top 20% have 84% of the country’s wealth. Those Americans in the third and fourth quintiles–essentially America’s middle class–have only 15.7% of the nation’s wealth. Such an unequal distribution of income is unprecedented in the economically developed world.
In my day, confronted with such disparity in the distribution of income and wealth, a disparity that obviously poses a dramatic problem for economic policy, political stability, and the macro management of the economy, Democrats would have demanded corrections, and Republicans would have reluctantly agreed.
But not today. Both political parties whore for money.
The Republicans believe that the suffering of poor Americans is not helping the rich enough. Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are committed to abolishing every program that addresses needs of what Republicans deride as “useless eaters.”
The “useless eaters” are the working poor and the former middle class whose jobs were offshored so that corporate executives could receive multi-millions of dollars in performance pay compensation and their shareholders could make millions of dollars on capital gains. While a handful of executives enjoy yachts and Playboy playmates, tens of millions of Americans barely get by.
In political propaganda, the “useless eaters” are not merely a burden on society and the rich. They are leeches who force honest taxpayers to pay for their many hours of comfortable leisure enjoying life, watching sports events, and fishing in trout streams, while they push around their belongings in grocery baskets or sell their bodies for the next MacDonald burger.
The concentration of wealth and power in the US today is far beyond anything my graduate economic professors could image in the 1960s. At four of the world’s best universities that I attended, the opinion was that competition in the free market would prevent great disparities in the distribution of income and wealth. As I was to learn, this belief was based on an ideology, not on reality.
Congress, acting on this erroneous belief in free market perfection, deregulated the US economy in order to create a free market. The immediate consequence was resort to every previous illegal action to monopolize, to commit financial and other fraud, to destroy the productive basis of American consumer incomes, and to redirect income and wealth to the one percent.
The “democratic” Clinton administration, like the Bush and Obama administrations, was suborned by free market ideology. The Clinton sell-outs to Big Money essentially abolished Aid to Families with Dependent Children. But this sell-out of struggling Americans was not enough to satisfy the Republican Party. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want to cut or abolish every program that cushions poverty-stricken Americans from starvation and homelessness.
Republicans claim that the only reason Americans are in need is because the government uses taxpayers’ money to subsidize Americans who are unwilling to work. As Republicans see it, while we hard-workers sacrifice our leisure and time with our families, the welfare rabble enjoy the leisure that our tax dollars provide them.
This cock-eyed belief, on top of corporate CEOs maximizing their incomes by offshoring the middle class jobs of millions of Americans, has left Americans in poverty and cities, counties, states, and the federal government without a tax base, resulting in bankruptcies at the state and local level and massive budget deficits at the federal level that threaten the value of the dollar and its role as reserve currency.
The economic destruction of America benefited the mega-rich with multi-billions of dollars with which to enjoy life and its high-priced accompaniments wherever the mega-rich wish. Meanwhile, away from the French Rivera, Homeland Security is collecting sufficient ammunition to keep dispossessed Americans under control.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously the editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.
Infowars.com
August 24, 2012
The United States has collapsed economically, socially, politically, legally, constitutionally, and environmentally. The country that exists today is not even a shell of the country into which I was born. In this article I will deal with America’s economic collapse. In subsequent articles, i will deal with other aspects of American collapse.
Economically, America has descended into poverty. As Peter Edelman says, “Low-wage work is pandemic.” Today in “freedom and democracy” America, “the world’s only superpower,” one fourth of the work force is employed in jobs that pay less than $22,000, the poverty line for a family of four. Some of these lowly-paid persons are young college graduates, burdened by education loans, who share housing with three or four others in the same desperate situation. Other of these persons are single parents only one medical problem or lost job away from homelessness.Others might be Ph.D.s teaching at universities as adjunct professors for $10,000 per year or less. Education is still touted as the way out of poverty, but increasingly is a path into poverty or into enlistments into the military services.
Edelman, who studies these issues, reports that 20.5 million Americans have incomes less than $9,500 per year, which is half of the poverty definition for a family of three.
There are six million Americans whose only income is food stamps. That means that there are six million Americans who live on the streets or under bridges or in the homes of relatives or friends. Hard-hearted Republicans continue to rail at welfare, but Edelman says, “basically welfare is gone.”
In my opinion as an economist, the official poverty line is long out of date. The prospect of three people living on $19,000 per year is farfetched. Considering the prices of rent, electricity, water, bread and fast food, one person cannot live in the US on $6,333.33 per year. In Thailand, perhaps, until the dollar collapses, it might be done, but not in the US.
As Dan Ariely (Duke University) and Mike Norton (Harvard University) have shown empirically, 40% of the US population, the 40% less well off, own 0.3%, that is, three-tenths of one percent, of America’s personal wealth. Who owns the other 99.7%? The top 20% have 84% of the country’s wealth. Those Americans in the third and fourth quintiles–essentially America’s middle class–have only 15.7% of the nation’s wealth. Such an unequal distribution of income is unprecedented in the economically developed world.
In my day, confronted with such disparity in the distribution of income and wealth, a disparity that obviously poses a dramatic problem for economic policy, political stability, and the macro management of the economy, Democrats would have demanded corrections, and Republicans would have reluctantly agreed.
But not today. Both political parties whore for money.
The Republicans believe that the suffering of poor Americans is not helping the rich enough. Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are committed to abolishing every program that addresses needs of what Republicans deride as “useless eaters.”
The “useless eaters” are the working poor and the former middle class whose jobs were offshored so that corporate executives could receive multi-millions of dollars in performance pay compensation and their shareholders could make millions of dollars on capital gains. While a handful of executives enjoy yachts and Playboy playmates, tens of millions of Americans barely get by.
In political propaganda, the “useless eaters” are not merely a burden on society and the rich. They are leeches who force honest taxpayers to pay for their many hours of comfortable leisure enjoying life, watching sports events, and fishing in trout streams, while they push around their belongings in grocery baskets or sell their bodies for the next MacDonald burger.
The concentration of wealth and power in the US today is far beyond anything my graduate economic professors could image in the 1960s. At four of the world’s best universities that I attended, the opinion was that competition in the free market would prevent great disparities in the distribution of income and wealth. As I was to learn, this belief was based on an ideology, not on reality.
Congress, acting on this erroneous belief in free market perfection, deregulated the US economy in order to create a free market. The immediate consequence was resort to every previous illegal action to monopolize, to commit financial and other fraud, to destroy the productive basis of American consumer incomes, and to redirect income and wealth to the one percent.
The “democratic” Clinton administration, like the Bush and Obama administrations, was suborned by free market ideology. The Clinton sell-outs to Big Money essentially abolished Aid to Families with Dependent Children. But this sell-out of struggling Americans was not enough to satisfy the Republican Party. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want to cut or abolish every program that cushions poverty-stricken Americans from starvation and homelessness.
Republicans claim that the only reason Americans are in need is because the government uses taxpayers’ money to subsidize Americans who are unwilling to work. As Republicans see it, while we hard-workers sacrifice our leisure and time with our families, the welfare rabble enjoy the leisure that our tax dollars provide them.
This cock-eyed belief, on top of corporate CEOs maximizing their incomes by offshoring the middle class jobs of millions of Americans, has left Americans in poverty and cities, counties, states, and the federal government without a tax base, resulting in bankruptcies at the state and local level and massive budget deficits at the federal level that threaten the value of the dollar and its role as reserve currency.
The economic destruction of America benefited the mega-rich with multi-billions of dollars with which to enjoy life and its high-priced accompaniments wherever the mega-rich wish. Meanwhile, away from the French Rivera, Homeland Security is collecting sufficient ammunition to keep dispossessed Americans under control.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously the editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
8 Economic Threats That We Were Not Even Talking About At The Beginning Of The Summer
The Economic Collapse
August 23, 2012
In the crazy times in which we live, it helps to expect the unexpected. Sometimes you can think that you have it all figured out and then this world can throw a real curveball at you.
Very few people anticipated that we would see a massive outbreak of the West Nile Virus in Texas this year or that the Mississippi River would be in danger of drying up after experiencing historic flooding last year. Who would have thought that we would see the worst drought in more than 50 years or that horrific wildfires would burn nearly 7 million acres of land? This is why economic conditions are always so hard to predict. A single “black swan event” can come along and change everything almost overnight. Our world has become incredibly unstable, and so who really knows what the rest of 2012 will bring? Will we see a stock market crash? Will the hurricane season be unusually bad? Will war erupt in the Middle East? Will we see a major earthquake on the west coast or even a volcanic eruption? Will the upcoming election cause an eruption of anger and frustration in America? We don’t know the answers to those questions yet, and the truth is that we will probably see some things happen that very few of us are anticipating at this point.
This is an exciting time to be a “news junkie”, but unfortunately the vast majority of the news these days is bad.
It is almost as if a “perfect storm” is developing. Our weather is going crazy, our financial system is on the verge of collapse, our politicians seem more insane than ever, there is evidence of social decay all around us and the drumbeats of war in the Middle East grow louder with each passing day.
As strange as 2012 has been so far, I fear that things are about to get a whole lot stranger.
Not that we haven’t had some very unanticipated events happen this year up to this point.
The following are 8 economic threats that we were not even talking about at the beginning of the summer….
#1 West Nile Virus
What is up with all of the strange disease outbreaks that we have seen so far this year?
Flesh eating disease and the bird flu have both been making global headlines this summer, but in the U.S. right now it is the West Nile Virus that is getting the most attention.
So far more than 1,100 cases of the West Nile Virus have been diagnosed in the United States and more than 41 people have died from it.
More than half of the cases so far have been in Texas, but we have also seen people come down with West Nile Virus in Mississippi, Louisiana, South Dakota, and Oklahoma.
If you live in any of those areas, you might want to do your best to avoid mosquitos for the rest of the summer.
#2 Historic Drought
This summer, the United States has experienced the worst drought that it has seen in more than 50 years.
This weather has been absolutely crippling for farmers and ranchers all over the nation. As I wrote about the other day, about half of all corn being grown in the U.S. is currently either in “poor” or “very poor” condition.
As the drought has dragged on, many farmers and ranchers have become increasingly desperate. In fact, one farmer has even been feeding his cows candy in an attempt to deal with rising feed prices.
Needless to say, this drought has been causing commodity prices to soar.
On Tuesday, the price of corn closed at a record $8.38 a bushel, and the price of soybeans closed at $17.30 a bushel.
#3 The Mississippi River Is Drying Up
Thanks to this drought, rivers and lakes all over the United States are drying up. In fact, there have been reports thatmillions of fish have been dying because water levels have gotten so low in many areas.
Even the mighty Mississippi River has dropped to dangerously low levels.
At this point, the Mississippi is lower than most people living along the river can ever remember. If it drops much lower, it could potentially have an absolutely devastating impact on the U.S. economy.
A recent NBC News report described what is at stake….
And already there have been stoppages along one 11 mile stretch of the river….
#4 Wildfires
The extreme heat has also been responsible for the horrific outbreak of wildfires that we have seen in the western United States this year.
So far in 2012, nearly 7 million acres have been burned up.
That is an area about as big as the states of Maryland and Delaware combined.
#5 The Global Elite Hoarding Gold
In the past, the global elite and the mainstream media would mock those who are hoarding gold in anticipation of a major financial collapse.
But now it is the global elite who are hoarding gold.
In a previous article, I discussed how men such as George Soros and John Paulson are investing mind-boggling amounts of money in gold right now. The amount of money that these two individuals are investing in gold is difficult to comprehend….
So what are they anticipating?
The central banks of the world have been very busy hoarding gold as well. According to the World Gold Council, global central banks were net buyers of 157.5 metric tons of gold during the second quarter of 2012.
Over the past 20 years there has never been a time when global central banks have accumulated that much gold during a single quarter.
So just what in the world is going on?
#6 Recession In The UK
Everyone knew that Greece was in deep trouble.
And everyone knew that Italy and Spain were in deep trouble.
But it was a surprise to see the UK economy plunge deep into recession. During the second quarter of 2012 alone, the UK economy shrunk by 0.7 percent.
At this point the British economy has contracted for three quarters in a row.
Hopefully things will not get even worse over there.
#7 Major Economic Slowdown In The United States
Considering the fact that the U.S. economy never even came close to recovering from the last recession, it is a bit disheartening to see that it looks like we are headed for another major downturn.
According to Michael Panzer of Financial Armageddon, measurements of economic activity compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia indicate that the U.S. economy is rapidly heading into another recession. If you doubt this, just check out this chart.
And for a lot more reasons why the U.S. economy is entering another recession, check out this article.
#8 Hauled Off To A Mental Institution For What You Believe
Do you ever worry that what you post on Facebook could get you involuntarily committed to a mental institution?
Well, that is exactly what happened to one military vet recently.
A former Marine named Brandon Raub was hauled off to a mental institution because of what he posted on his Facebook page.
This is how the Economic Policy Journal summarized what happened to Raub….
And now he has been transferred to a facility that is 3 hours away from his family, his supporters and his legal team.
What in the world is America turning into?
The Rutherford Institute is defending Raub, and the following is an excerpt from a statement about this case on their website….
This kind of thing is not supposed to happen in America.
But it is happening.
And you know what? Before the authorities start attacking people for exercising free speech on Facebook perhaps they should clean up their own house.
It turns out that thousands of DHS employees have been convicted of crimes in recent years. The following is from a recent CNS News article….
One thing that most people did see coming this summer was the continuing economic decline in Greece.
At this point Greece is experiencing a full-blown economic depression and it gets worse by the day.
If you can believe it, 1,250 companies have shut down in the second largest city in Greece in 2012 alone.
Ouch.
And many in the financial world believe the the situation in Greece is going to go beyond the breaking point fairly soon.
In fact, analysts at Citibank believe that there is a 90 percent chance that Greece will leave the euro over the next 12 to 18 months.
90 percent?
They sound pretty sure of themselves.
Not that the rest of Europe is in such great shape either.
According to Bloomberg, it looks like Europe will soon be losing about half a million auto industry jobs….
Things are falling apart all around us and we seem to be rapidly approaching another major economic crisis.
Central banks, governments and Wall Street insiders all seem to be preparing for the worst.
Are you?
August 23, 2012
In the crazy times in which we live, it helps to expect the unexpected. Sometimes you can think that you have it all figured out and then this world can throw a real curveball at you.
This is an exciting time to be a “news junkie”, but unfortunately the vast majority of the news these days is bad.
It is almost as if a “perfect storm” is developing. Our weather is going crazy, our financial system is on the verge of collapse, our politicians seem more insane than ever, there is evidence of social decay all around us and the drumbeats of war in the Middle East grow louder with each passing day.
As strange as 2012 has been so far, I fear that things are about to get a whole lot stranger.
Not that we haven’t had some very unanticipated events happen this year up to this point.
The following are 8 economic threats that we were not even talking about at the beginning of the summer….
#1 West Nile Virus
What is up with all of the strange disease outbreaks that we have seen so far this year?
Flesh eating disease and the bird flu have both been making global headlines this summer, but in the U.S. right now it is the West Nile Virus that is getting the most attention.
So far more than 1,100 cases of the West Nile Virus have been diagnosed in the United States and more than 41 people have died from it.
More than half of the cases so far have been in Texas, but we have also seen people come down with West Nile Virus in Mississippi, Louisiana, South Dakota, and Oklahoma.
If you live in any of those areas, you might want to do your best to avoid mosquitos for the rest of the summer.
#2 Historic Drought
This summer, the United States has experienced the worst drought that it has seen in more than 50 years.
This weather has been absolutely crippling for farmers and ranchers all over the nation. As I wrote about the other day, about half of all corn being grown in the U.S. is currently either in “poor” or “very poor” condition.
As the drought has dragged on, many farmers and ranchers have become increasingly desperate. In fact, one farmer has even been feeding his cows candy in an attempt to deal with rising feed prices.
Needless to say, this drought has been causing commodity prices to soar.
On Tuesday, the price of corn closed at a record $8.38 a bushel, and the price of soybeans closed at $17.30 a bushel.
#3 The Mississippi River Is Drying Up
Thanks to this drought, rivers and lakes all over the United States are drying up. In fact, there have been reports thatmillions of fish have been dying because water levels have gotten so low in many areas.
Even the mighty Mississippi River has dropped to dangerously low levels.
At this point, the Mississippi is lower than most people living along the river can ever remember. If it drops much lower, it could potentially have an absolutely devastating impact on the U.S. economy.
A recent NBC News report described what is at stake….
About $180 billion worth of goods move up and down the river on barges, 500 million tons of the basic ingredients for much of the U.S. economy, according to the American Waterways Operators, a trade group. It carries 60 percent of the nation’s grain, 22 percent of the oil and gas and 20 percent of the coal, according to American Waterways Operators. It would take 60 trailer trucks to carry the cargo in just one barge, 144 18-wheeler tankers to carry the oil and gas in one petroleum barge.If all traffic along the Mississippi was forced to stop, it is estimated that it would cost the U.S. economy about 300 million dollars a day.
And already there have been stoppages along one 11 mile stretch of the river….
Nearly 100 boats and barges were waiting for passage Monday along an 11-mile stretch of the Mississippi River that has been closed because of low water levels, the U.S. Coast Guard said. New Orleans-based Coast Guard spokesman Ryan Tippets said the stretch of river near Greenville, Miss., has been closed intermittently since Aug. 11, when a vessel ran aground.So what happens if the Mississippi gets even lower?
#4 Wildfires
The extreme heat has also been responsible for the horrific outbreak of wildfires that we have seen in the western United States this year.
So far in 2012, nearly 7 million acres have been burned up.
That is an area about as big as the states of Maryland and Delaware combined.
#5 The Global Elite Hoarding Gold
In the past, the global elite and the mainstream media would mock those who are hoarding gold in anticipation of a major financial collapse.
But now it is the global elite who are hoarding gold.
In a previous article, I discussed how men such as George Soros and John Paulson are investing mind-boggling amounts of money in gold right now. The amount of money that these two individuals are investing in gold is difficult to comprehend….
There was also news last week in an SEC filing that both George Soros and John Paulson had increased their investment in SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s largest publicly traded physical gold exchange traded fund (ETF).Combined, Soros and Paulson dumped more than three quarters of a billion dollars into gold during the second quarter of 2012 alone.
Mr Soros upped his stake in the ETF to 884,400 shares from 319,550 and Mr Paulson bought 4.53m shares, bringing his stake to 21.3m.
At the current price of about $156 a share, these are new investments of about $88m of Mr Soros’ cash and more than $700m from Mr Paulson’s funds. These are significant positions.
So what are they anticipating?
The central banks of the world have been very busy hoarding gold as well. According to the World Gold Council, global central banks were net buyers of 157.5 metric tons of gold during the second quarter of 2012.
Over the past 20 years there has never been a time when global central banks have accumulated that much gold during a single quarter.
So just what in the world is going on?
#6 Recession In The UK
Everyone knew that Greece was in deep trouble.
And everyone knew that Italy and Spain were in deep trouble.
But it was a surprise to see the UK economy plunge deep into recession. During the second quarter of 2012 alone, the UK economy shrunk by 0.7 percent.
At this point the British economy has contracted for three quarters in a row.
Hopefully things will not get even worse over there.
#7 Major Economic Slowdown In The United States
Considering the fact that the U.S. economy never even came close to recovering from the last recession, it is a bit disheartening to see that it looks like we are headed for another major downturn.
According to Michael Panzer of Financial Armageddon, measurements of economic activity compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia indicate that the U.S. economy is rapidly heading into another recession. If you doubt this, just check out this chart.
And for a lot more reasons why the U.S. economy is entering another recession, check out this article.
#8 Hauled Off To A Mental Institution For What You Believe
Do you ever worry that what you post on Facebook could get you involuntarily committed to a mental institution?
Well, that is exactly what happened to one military vet recently.
A former Marine named Brandon Raub was hauled off to a mental institution because of what he posted on his Facebook page.
This is how the Economic Policy Journal summarized what happened to Raub….
The muscle used to grab Brandon Raub was local Chesterfield County, VA police. Also present during the grab were agents of the FBI and of the Secret Service.The claim that Raub is “not under arrest” is completely and totally ridiculous. The authorities came to his door, slapped handcuffs on him and are holding him in a mental institution against his will.
Both the FBI and the Secret Service claim that they were only observing and not participating in the grab. The Chesterfield County police initially stated that they were only carrying out a request from the federal agencies.
The police also claim Raub is not under arrest, even though he was led away in handcuffs and is not permitted to leave the psychiatric ward of a hospital—even though it appears that Raub is not in any way in need of psychological care.
I note this happened in the United States of America, with local police, FBI agents and Secret Service taking part.
And now he has been transferred to a facility that is 3 hours away from his family, his supporters and his legal team.
What in the world is America turning into?
The Rutherford Institute is defending Raub, and the following is an excerpt from a statement about this case on their website….
“This is not how justice in America is supposed to work—with Americans being arrested for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights, forced to undergo psychological evaluations, detained against their will and isolated from their family, friends and attorneys. This is a scary new chapter in our history,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “Brandon Raub is no different from the majority of Americans who use their private Facebook pages to post a variety of content, ranging from song lyrics and political hyperbole to trash talking their neighbors, friends and government leaders.”This is the kind of thing that we have seen under brutal totalitarian regimes in the past. Dissidents are grabbed by authorities and taken to mental institutions where they are conveniently “disappeared”.
This kind of thing is not supposed to happen in America.
But it is happening.
And you know what? Before the authorities start attacking people for exercising free speech on Facebook perhaps they should clean up their own house.
It turns out that thousands of DHS employees have been convicted of crimes in recent years. The following is from a recent CNS News article….
There have been 2,527 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees and co-conspirators convicted of corruption and other criminal misconduct since 2004, according to a federal auditor.Our world is becoming a very crazy place.
One thing that most people did see coming this summer was the continuing economic decline in Greece.
At this point Greece is experiencing a full-blown economic depression and it gets worse by the day.
If you can believe it, 1,250 companies have shut down in the second largest city in Greece in 2012 alone.
Ouch.
And many in the financial world believe the the situation in Greece is going to go beyond the breaking point fairly soon.
In fact, analysts at Citibank believe that there is a 90 percent chance that Greece will leave the euro over the next 12 to 18 months.
90 percent?
They sound pretty sure of themselves.
Not that the rest of Europe is in such great shape either.
According to Bloomberg, it looks like Europe will soon be losing about half a million auto industry jobs….
Efforts by PSA Peugeot Citroen (UG) and Fiat SpA (F) to end losses in Europe could cost more than 500,000 people their jobs as automakers and parts suppliers grapple with the effects of the European sovereign debt crisis.We live in very unusual times.
Things are falling apart all around us and we seem to be rapidly approaching another major economic crisis.
Central banks, governments and Wall Street insiders all seem to be preparing for the worst.
Are you?
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