The Truth Or The Fight

Hilarious…

Bookmark It Punk!

Hide Sites

Congressman Ron Paul discusses the latest in the efforts to get a full and complete audit of the Fed as well as the future of Fed transparency.
See a list of H.R. 1207 cosponsors who voted against the motion here:http://www.campaignforliberty.com/mat…

Bookmark It Punk!

Hide Sites

Article HERE

“Central planners are incapable of predicting what forms of production or even what products a society needs at any given moment. Only in the free market, where investors are able to meet on a level playing field, can funds ever be directed toward the appropriate product or means of production.” -(C4L)

Bookmark It Punk!

Hide Sites

Falling pensions, cuts and the banking crisis will impoverish many families, says Edmund Conway.

By Edmund Conway

You don’t usually expect radical neo-Marxism from the International Monetary Fund – the last great bastion of capitalism, spreading the gospel about the free market to the furthest reaches of the world. And yet, hidden away in an obscure IMF report a few years back is a short sentence that explains precisely the problems that Britain, and the rest of the Western world, have been sleepwalking towards for years.

At the time, the idea received little attention. But it has truly radical implications for economics and politics around the world. This is not merely about the financial crisis, but something more deep-seated: the way in which wealth is distributed around society. It is about the middle classes, and why they have become the biggest victims of all.

The problem is that families face a threefold threat to their prosperity. The first issue – the one that the IMF was originally focusing on – is pensions. Not so long ago, households were lucky enough to receive gold-plated pensions that would guarantee a certain pay-out upon retirement. Most companies have closed their schemes after realising they are simply unaffordable. The public sector at last looks like following suit, if the BBC’s decision this week to reduce the generosity of its pension plan is anything to go by.

This is, in the IMF’s words, a “quantum leap”. Suddenly households have gone from being able to rely on a constant stream of legally protected income from their employer to having to manage their own investments (as they technically do under the new breed of pensions).

This would be fine if one could be assured that most people would have either the time or the inclination to understand these new responsibilities. But every piece of evidence – academic and anecdotal – suggests that they do not. The result is that the majority of households are heading blindly towards a future of relative poverty.

The second issue is that the welfare state has become unaffordable, and yet many of Britain’s poorest families have become overly reliant on it. Here, too, there is to be a reckoning. Whereas Gordon Brown used his first Budget to save money by grabbing an annual £6 billion from pension funds (and the middle class), George Osborne used last month’s emergency Budget for a similar-sized grab on the welfare class. Re-indexing tax credits against a lower measure of inflation will cost Britain’s poorest families billions by the end of this parliament.

And it is not merely that the middle class and the poorest have found themselves squeezed so hard: it is that so much of the extra cash generated during the boom years (and even after them) has been actively funnelled towards the most wealthy. The median wage in the US, adjusted for inflation, has been stagnant for pretty much three decades. But the figures at the high end of the scale have soared; whereas in 1970 the average US chief executive made $25 for every dollar of their typical employee’s salary, today the figure is more like $90.

Much of this disparity is down to globalisation. When the world is changing fast, those qualified to deal with the technology du jour (be it the steam engine or the internet) will earn more than their peers. But the fact remains that not only is inequality at the highest level since the Thirties, the pension and welfare systems set up then for the express purpose of levelling this divide are in an exponential decline, threatening to widen the gulf further.

Moreover, there is good reason to suspect, as Raghuram Rajan points out in his new book, Fault Lines, that policy-makers have only been able to persuade people to live with this manifestly unfair situation by pumping up ever bigger booms in the property and stock markets to give them the impression that they are actually making money. Now that the bubble has burst and debt is harder to procure, that illusion has evaporated.

All this before one even takes into account the third problem for households – that they are having to bear the costs of the clean-up for the financial crisis. The austerity budgets being imposed across Europe will mean that families are taxed more and receive less in the way of welfare and public services. Police numbers will be cut; university fees are likely to rise further. In other words, the cost of trying to live a stable, contented middle-class life will balloon.

So I have one simple question: when do the politicians intend to let the public know about the fate that awaits them? The longer they put it off, the nastier the reaction, the bigger the strikes and the greater the chance that governments will fall. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/7865154/Middle-class-families-face-a-triple-whammy.html

Bookmark It Punk!

Hide Sites

By Gary Howard

This week the Supreme Court of the United States, or SCOTUS, ruled to overturn gun restrictions imposed by the Chicago city government on its citizens. No matter how wrong or misguided you may believe the city of Chicago’s gun laws are, the Court’s ruling—and the way they came about it is nothing to be pleased about.

The Court’s ruling, that the Second Amendment extends to all 50 states, seems like common sense to those of us who see the right to bear arms as a constitutionally-protected right. But I guess the Court needed to spell it out for some lawmakers. There is a problem with this ruling however, and the problem is twofold: 1) how the Court used the 14th Amendment to reach its ruling–which is how many bad Supreme Court decisions have been reached—should make anyone claiming fidelity to the purpose of the Constitution suspicious; 2) celebrating this ruling harms the credibility of those who claim to be in favor of state and local sovereignty.

The 2nd Amendment establishes the right to bear arms as a right that cannot be abridged by the federal government. Read the previous sentence again. Now ask yourself: What was the purpose of the Constitution, and subsequently the Bill of Rights?

The Constitution established the federal government and its powers; the Bill of Rights limited those powers and asserted the rights of individuals and states. Ultimately, the Constitution is in place to protect the individual from infringements imposed by the federal government, not the states. At least that’s how things used to be—until the 14th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment brought about the incorporation doctrine, essentially applying the Bill of Rights to the states in the same way they had been applied to the federal government. There is ample debate about whether that is a good or bad thing, which usually depends on if one is for or against a particular issue —which is somewhat of a hypocritical position.

States created their own separate constitutions because they are sovereign entities (an existence having been tentative for some time now). Some of those state constitutions have even stricter limits on government than the U.S. Constitution. It is the right of the states, and localities, to make their own regulations and restrictions regarding any issue. As an example, take the sale of alcohol into consideration. Despite the federal repeal of prohibition in the 1930s, some localities are still ‘dry’ counties to this day, restricting the sale of alcohol inside of their boundaries. They are within their rights to do so.

As it relates to handgun restrictions, my view as a citizen who believes in gun rights is that gun bans are no good. But as a Constitutional question, from the view of someone who believes in strict limits on federal power, localities are within their rights to place regulations as they see fit on handgun ownership.

Originally, like Justice Thomas, I thought the decision was right, but the use of 14th Amendment as reasoning was suspect to say the least. After some thought, I am leaning even further toward being against this ruling on grounds that it further expands federal power. And if I want to remain consistent about limiting federal power, I must oppose such a ruling.

To assert that the gun ban can be declared void by federal fiat, simply makes the problem of federal overreach even worse. What happens when that same federal judicial power is used to declare something you are in favor of as void?

UPDATE:

In response to the disagreements with my assessment of the Court’s ruling in the comments section, I have a couple of points to make. If the broad application of the 14th Amendment is taken away, specifically with this ruling–but generally in any case where such broad application has taken place–let me remind folks that:

1) No — a state cannot just do anything it wants–all US states have constitutions that are closely modeled after the US Constitution in the restrictions placed on government and the rights of citizens–and if the citizens of those states are actively engaged (as they should be) and ensure that lawmakers pass legislation that most closely reflect their views.

2) If a state’s laws are objectionable to you, you can either fight against those laws by lobbying for change, or electing lawmakers you find acceptable–as mentioned above.

3) Another option is to move to a state where you find the regulatory environment acceptable. Either way, it’s your choice, and that’s how the system is supposed to work. We already see examples of this every day, when people and companies move to other states when they have had enough of the way a state or locality restricts them in their daily lives or business dealings. The mass exodus of New Yorkers to Florida or Californians to Nevada, in order to avoid high taxes, comes to mind.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=983

Bookmark It Punk!

Hide Sites

Ron Paul explains why sanctions on Iran might not be that good. The idea of sanctions means war against another country. Ron Paul explains that they can’t afford to be at so many places at once. The US spends $1 trillion a year to operate.  He explains that the US is flatout broke and at the same time looking for another war. He says that according to information he has, the CIA is working on a nuclear weapon.  Ron Paul also says that Iran has never been found guilty of breaking the non-proliferation treaty. He says the hype about “weapons of mass destruction” is war talk exactly like what sent the US to Iraq where no weapons of mass destructions were found.  What the US is doing is driving Iran to the Chinese as he explains. The US is trying to take over the world with natural resources Ron Paul says.

Bookmark It Punk!

Hide Sites