Why Am I So Optimistic?
posted by Josiah Garber on February 19, 2010
in Church, Economics, Fun, Politics, War & Peace
In the End… We Win.
An Hypocrisy of Terms: Liberal and Conservative
posted by Josiah Garber on February 16, 2010
in Politics
by Jake Towne of towneforcongress.com
Back in early 2008, I began writing a column “Yet Another Champion of the Constitution” and my second piece addressed two terms that I sometimes read in newspapers but due to my political apathy up through 2007, I did not really fully understand – the “liberals” of the Left, and the “conservatives” of the Right. With a few minor edits from the original post, please take a read:
As basically a beginner in politics, one of the many things that are confusing to me is the very definition of liberal and conservative. Why, what can stump the walnut-sized brain of your author? Am I just being silly? Well, first some of the definitions from Google search that I most commonly associated with these terms -
Liberal
1) Tolerant of change; not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition
2) Liberalism refers to a broad array of related doctrines, ideologies, philosophical views, and political traditions which hold that individual liberty is the primary political value
3) People who generally like to reform current conditions. Liberals are often referred to as the left wing.
Conservative
1) Resistant to change
2) Conservatism is a relativistic term used to describe political philosophies that favor traditional values, where “tradition” refers to religious, cultural, or nationally defined beliefs and customs. The term derives from the Latin, conservare, to conserve together; “to keep, guard, observe”.
3) People who generally like to uphold current conditions and oppose changes. Conservatives are often referred to as the right wing.
Soooooo…. if I live under a liberal government/society where liberty is the primary value, but I don’t want to change it, am I then a conservative? Why do the terms mix definitions of change/reform attitude with political values? Shouldn’t for one particular value, no matter what it is, have a choice between maintaining that value, changing the value in one direction, or changing it in yet another? Why do we have to insinuate that political Conservatives are stubborn-minded and resistant to change? Why do we have to insinuate that political Liberals are fickle-minded? Maybe these are just terms meant to confuse, divide and conquer.
Ron Paul: Fractional Reserve Banking is Fraudulent
posted by Josiah Garber on February 14, 2010
in Economics, Uncategorized
For more info on this subject see the links below.
9 Minute Video – Explanation of the fraud of fractional reserve banking
47 Minute Video – History of fractional reserve banking.
The FED Seeks Control, Not Profits.
posted by Josiah Garber on February 13, 2010
in Economics
by Gary North
This report is from Fortune. It says that the Federal Reserve System made $51 billion in 2009, and it returned over $46 billion to the government.
If you are a regular reader of my reports, you are well aware of this. I write articles on this at least once a year. Why? Because so few critics of the FED understand this. I keep getting questions on the forums about how the FED works.
The Federal Reserve System is not about making money at the expense of the government. It is about using a government-granted monopoly over money to regulate the economy to the benefit of a handful of large banks. This has always been its primary function.
The banking system is a cartel. The Federal Reserve System is the cartel’s protector and enforcer.
The Fortune article makes these points, all accurate.
The Fed, in a statement on Tuesday, said its members returned $46 billion of that sum to taxpayers. The central bank is an independent arm of the government and its member banks are required to return all profits to the Treasury, after certain deductions.
Those deductions account for the $6 billion difference between the two figures. Federal Reserve banks paid the private banks that control them $1.4 billion in dividends in 2009, while shoring up their own capital by $4.6 billion.
Who owns the FED? Member banks. How much money did the FED make in profit? About $1.4 billion. That’s not bad on $51 billion of income. It’s about 2.7%. But it is a far cry from the standard criticism from anti-FED critics that the FED makes huge profits by creating money out of nothing.
Keynes vs Hayek Rap Video “Fear the Boom and Bust”
posted by Josiah Garber on February 12, 2010
in Economics, Fun
Ron Paul: “USA is Bankrupt”
posted by Josiah Garber on February 11, 2010
in Economics, Politics, War & Peace
Obama to indefinitely imprison detainees without charges
posted by Josiah Garber on February 10, 2010
in Politics, War & Peace
By Glenn Greenwald
One of the most intense controversies of the Bush years was the administration’s indefinite imprisoning of “War on Terror” detainees without charges of any kind. So absolute was the consensus among progressives and Democrats against this policy that a well-worn slogan was invented to object: a “legal black hole.” Liberal editorial pages routinely cited the refusal to charge the detainees — not the interrogation practices there — in order to brand the camp a “dungeon,” a “gulag,” a “tropical purgatory,” and a “black-hole embarrassment.” As late as 2007, Democratic Senators like Pat Leahy, on the floor of the Senate, cited the due-process-free imprisonments to rail against Guantanamo as “a national disgrace, an international embarrassment to us and to our ideals, and a festering threat to our security,” as well as “a legal black hole that dishonors our principles.” Leahy echoed the Democratic consensus when he said:
The Administration consistently insists that these detainees pose a threat to the safety of Americans. Vice President Cheney said that the other day. If that is true, there must be credible evidence to support it. If there is such evidence, then they should prosecute these people.
Leahy also insisted that the Constitution assigns the power to regulate detentions to Congress, not the President, and thus cited Bush’s refusal to seek Congressional authorization for these detentions as a prime example of Bush’s abuse of executive power and shredding of the Constitution.
But all year along, Barack Obama — even as he called for the closing of Guantanamo — has been strongly implying that he will retain George Bush’s due-process-free system by continuing to imprison detainees without charges of any kind. In his May “civil liberties” speech cynically delivered at the National Archives in front of the U.S. Constitution, Obama announced that he would seek from Congress a law authorizing and governing the President’s power to imprison detainees indefinitely and without charges. But in September, the administration announced he changed his mind: rather than seek a law authorizing these detentions, he would instead simply claim that Congress already “implicitly” authorized these powers when it enacted the 2001 AUMF against Al Qaeda — thereby, as The New York Times put it, “adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.”
Obama Seeks Massive Increase in Nuke Spending
posted by Josiah Garber on February 9, 2010
in Politics, War & Peace
by Jason Ditz, January 30, 2010
In a move he insists is somehow consistent with his call for disarmament, President Obama is seeking more than $5 billion in increased funding for America’s nuclear weapons program, aimed chiefly at modernization and building new facilities.
Vice President Joe Biden detailed what he thought was the case for the investment, perplexingly arguing simultaneously for a world without nuclear weapons and for America to make “long overdue” investments in strengthening its own nuclear stockpile.
Though this funding will not actually be used to produce additional nuclear weapons, opponents caution that it will give the administration, and future administrations, the capacity to greatly increase the number of warheads in America’s arsenal, at a time when the administration claims to be trying to complete comprehensive warhead reduction agreements.
Though Vice President Biden portrayed the investment as crucial for creating a “safe, secure and effective” collection of weapons capable of murder on an unprecedented scale, he also pointed to Iran’s illusory nuclear weapons program as one reason for America to shore up its own, already enormous arsenal.
Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup Full Video
posted by Josiah Garber on February 6, 2010
in Politics, War & Peace
Jim Rogers – A Better World Without Central Banking
posted by Josiah Garber on February 5, 2010
in Economics
