A second conference has been posted on the docket for the U.S. Supreme Court over the issue of Barack Obama's eligibility to occupy the White House, this one scheduled a week after Congress is to review the Electoral College vote tabulation.
The latest issue posted is a request for an injunction on the election results pending the resolution of a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by attorney Philip J. Berg, a case that is docketed for a similar conference among the justices on Jan. 9.
Berg's original case raises questions about Obama's eligibility and his injunction request first was filed early in December. It was submitted to and rejected by two different justices before it came before Justice Antonin Scalia on Dec. 18. Then just before Christmas the docket was updated to reflect that the motion had been "distributed for conference of January 16, 2009."
On Berg's Obama Crimes.com website, he said Congress is scheduled to hear the Electoral College results on Jan. 8. Then on Jan. 9 there's the conference scheduled on Berg's case itself, with the injunction issue to be addressed a week later.
WND has reported Berg's case, one of the first legal challenges to Obama's eligibility to reach the Supreme Court, alleges he cannot constitutionally be inaugurated.
"I know that Mr. Obama is not a constitutionally qualified natural born citizen and is ineligible to assume the office of president of the United States," Berg said in a statement on his ObamaCrimes.com website.
"Obama knows he is not 'natural born' as he knows where he was born and he knows he was adopted in Indonesia; Obama is an attorney, Harvard Law grad who taught Constitutional law; Obama knows his candidacy is the largest 'hoax' attempted on the citizens of the United States in over 200 years; Obama places our Constitution in a 'crisis' situation; and Obama is in a situation where he can be blackmailed by leaders around the world who know Obama is not qualified," Berg's statement continued.
"The Supreme Court has listed the case of Berg vs. Obama for 'conference' on January 9," the website said.
"I am appalled that the main stream media continues to ignore this issue as we are headed to a 'Constitution Crisis,'" Berg wrote. "There is nothing more important than our U.S. Constitution and it must be enforced. I am concerned that our courts have not yet decided to look into the merits of our allegations."
WND previously reported on a case brought by Cort Wrotnowski. It fell by the wayside when the justices heard about it in conference but refused to give it a further hearing. That was the same fate handed to a case brought by Leo Donofrio. Both challenged Obama on essentially the same issue: allegations that dual citizenship based on a father who was a British subject and a mother who was an American minor disqualified him for office.
Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, join more than 190,000 others and sign up now!
The high court previously turned down a request from Berg to stop the Electoral College from selecting the 44th president until Obama documents his eligibility for the office.
As WND has reported, more than a dozen lawsuits have been filed over Obama's eligibility to assume the office of the president, many have been dismissed, while others remain pending.
The cases, in various ways, have alleged Obama does not meet the "natural born citizen" clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, which reads, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
Some of the legal challenges have alleged Obama was not born in Hawaii, as he insists, but in Kenya. Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.
Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. Such cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.
Several details of Obama's past have added twists to the question of his eligibility and citizenship, including his family's move to Indonesia when he was a child, his travel to Pakistan in the '80s when such travel was forbidden to American citizens and conflicting reports from Obama's family about his place of birth.
A partial listing and status update for several of the cases surrounding Obama's eligibility to serve as president is below:
Philip J. Berg, a Pennsylvania Democrat, demanded that the courts verify Obama's original birth certificate and other documents proving his American citizenship. Supreme Court conferences on the case and its motions are scheduled Jan. 9 and 16.
Leo Donofrio of New Jersey filed a lawsuit claiming Obama's dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court but denied a full hearing.
Cort Wrotnowski filed suit against Connecticut's secretary of state, making a similar argument to Donofrio. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court, but was denied a full hearing.
Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes headlines a list of people filing a suit in California, in a case handled by the United States Justice Foundation, that asks the secretary of state to refuse to allow the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast in the 2008 presidential election until Obama verifies his eligibility to hold the office. The case is pending, and lawyers are seeking the public's support.
Chicago attorney Andy Martin sought legal action requiring Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle to release Obama's vital statistics record. The case was dismissed by Hawaii Circuit Court Judge Bert Ayabe.
Lt. Col. Donald Sullivan sought a temporary restraining order to stop the Electoral College vote in North Carolina until Barack Obama's eligibility could be confirmed, alleging doubt about Obama's citizenship. His case was denied.
In Ohio, David M. Neal sued to force the secretary of state to request documents from the Federal Elections Commission, the Democratic National Committee, the Ohio Democratic Party and Obama to show the presidential candidate was born in Hawaii. The case was denied.
In Washington state, Steven Marquis sued the secretary of state seeking a determination on Obama's citizenship. The case was denied.
In Georgia, Rev. Tom Terry asked the state Supreme Court to authenticate Obama's birth certificate. His request for an injuction against Georgia's secretary of state was denied by Georgia Superior Court Judge Jerry W. Baxter.
California attorney Orly Taitz also has brought a complaint alleging Obama is not a "natural born" citizen and has written an open letter to the Supreme Court asking for the issue to be resolved.
Last month, WND reported the worries over a "constitutional crisis" that could be looming over the issue of Obama's citizenship.
"Should Senator Obama be discovered, after he takes office, to be ineligible for the Office of President of the United States of America and, thereby, his election declared void," argues the Alan Keyes case pending in California, "Americans will suffer irreparable harm in that (a) usurper will be sitting as the President of the United States, and none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal."
With such high stakes potentially at risk, WND earlier launched a letter campaign to contact Electoral College members and urge them to review the controversy.
That followed a campaign that sent more than 60,000 letters by overnight delivery to the U.S. Supreme Court when one case contesting Obama's eligibility for the Oval Office was pending.
A separate petition, already signed by more than 190,000 also is ongoing asking authorities in the election to seek proof Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution.
WND senior reporter Jerome Corsi had gone to both Kenya and Hawaii prior to the election to investigate issues surrounding Obama's birth. But his research and discoveries only raised more questions.
The biggest question was why, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists as his campaign has stated, Obama hasn't simply ordered it made available to settle the rumors. The image his campaign posted online has been rejected by critics since it is a "certification of live birth," not a birth certificate, and under Hawaii law at the time such certifications were given to parents of children born outside the state.
The governor's office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii?
Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro, has named two different Hawaii hospitals where Obama could have been born. There have been other allegations that Obama actually was born in Kenya during a time when his father was a British subject. At one point a Kenyan ambassador said Obama's birthplace in Kenya already was being recognized.
"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce." - President James Garfield
What do Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, and John Kennedy all have in common, besides being assassinated while President of the US?
They all three instated a sovereign currency. This was not friendly to the International Bankers interests.
Ronald Reagan spoke of it, and he nearly died. His public statements regarding the Fed changed in a hurry AFTER he was shot.
LBJ's first official act as President, upon Kennedy's assassination was to abolish it again.
James Garfield said the following just weeks before he was killed:
"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.... And when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate."
President John F. Kennedy planned to exterminate the Federal Reserve System. In 1963 he signed Executive Orders EO-11 and EO-110, returning to the government the responsibility to print money, taking that privilege away from the Federal Reserve System.
Shortly thereafter, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The professional, triangulated fire that executed the President of the United States is not the most shocking issue. The high- level coordination that organized the widespread coverup is manifest evidence of the incredible power of a "hidden government" behind the scenes.
The first, on May 21, headed "Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts" , reported that the entire Alpine "winter sports industry" could soon "grind to a halt for lack of snow". The second, on December 19, headed "The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation" , reported that this winter's Alpine snowfalls "look set to beat all records by New Year's Day". Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.
First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.
Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise. Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).
Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.
Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.
Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for "emissions trading", "carbon capture", building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to "biofuels", are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.
As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming "energy gap" - within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama's US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world.
I must end this year by again paying tribute to my readers for the wonderful generosity with which they came to the aid of two causes. First their donations made it possible for the latest "metric martyr", the east London market trader Janet Devers, to fight Hackney council's vindictive decision to prosecute her on 13 criminal charges, ranging from selling in pounds and ounces to selling produce "by the bowl" (to avoid using weights her customers dislike and don't understand). The embarrassment caused by this historic battle has thrown the forced metrication policy of both our governments, in London and Brussels, into total disarray.
Since Hackney backed out of allowing four criminal charges against Janet to go before a jury next month, all that remains is for her to win her appeal in February against eight convictions which now look quite absurd (including those for selling veg by the bowl, as thousands of other London market traders do every day). The final goal, as Neil Herron of the Metric Martyrs Defence Fund insists, must then be a pardon for the late Steve Thoburn and the four other original "martyrs" who were found guilty in 2002 – after a legal battle also made possible by this column's readers – of breaking laws so ridiculous that the EU Commission has even denied they existed (but which are still on the statute book).
Readers were equally generous this year in rushing to the aid of Sue Smith, whose son was killed in a Snatch Land Rover in Iraq in 2005. Their contributions made it possible for her to carry on with the High Court action she has brought against the Ministry of Defence, with the sole aim of calling it to account for needlessly risking soldiers' lives by sending them into battle in hopelessly inappropriate vehicles. Thanks not least to Mrs Smith's determined fight, the Snatch Land Rover scandal, first reported here in 2006, has at last become a national cause to celebrate.
May I finally thank all those readers who have written to me in 2008 – so many that, as usual, it has not been possible to answer all their messages. But their support and information has been hugely appreciated. May I wish them and all of you a happy (if globally not too warm) New Year.
INDIANAPOLIS -- Two Indiana men filed a lawsuit claiming that President-elect Barack Obama is not eligible to serve as president.
The suit questions whether Obama meets the constitutional requirement that the president must be a "natural born citizen." Obama's birth certificate says he was born in Hawaii, but his father was not a U.S. citizen and some have claimed the document is a fake.
The Indianapolis Star reports the Indiana suit was filed in Marion Superior Court in Indianapolis by Steve Ankeny, New Castle, and Bill Kruse, Roselawn.
It names Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Republican and Democratic national committees as defendants, saying they failed to uphold the Constitution when they certified results of the November election. It asks Judge David Dreyer to throw out the election results.
If Obama was born in Hawaii, why doesn't he just produce the actual birth certificate in a court of law? Problem solved. Millions of dollars saved, courts not clogged up for days with needless litigation..... unless he wasn't born in Hawaii and he doesn't have a real birth certificate.
(NaturalNews) In April of 2008, President Bush signed into law S.1858 which allows the federal government to screen the DNA of all newborn babies in the U.S. This was to be implemented within 6 months meaning that this collection is now being carried out. Congressman Ron Paul states that this bill is the first step towards the establishment of a national DNA database.
S.1858, known as The Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007, is justified as a “national contingency plan” in that it represents preparation for any sort of public health emergency. The bill states that the federal government should “continue to carry out, coordinate, and expand research in newborn screening” and “maintain a central clearinghouse of current information on newborn screening… ensuring that the clearinghouse is available on the Internet and is updated at least quarterly”. Sections of the bill also make it clear that DNA may be used in genetic experiments and tests. Read the full bill: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xp…
Twila Brase, president of the Citizens’ Council on Health Care warns that this new law represents the beginning of nationwide genetic testing. Brase states that S.1858 and H.R. 3825, the House version of the bill, will: • Establish a national list of genetic conditions for which newborns and children are to be tested. • Establish protocols for the linking and sharing of genetic test results nationwide. • Build surveillance systems for tracking the health status and health outcomes of individuals diagnosed at birth with a genetic defect or trait. • Use the newborn screening program as an opportunity for government agencies to identify, list, and study “secondary conditions” of individuals and their families. • Subject citizens to genetic research without their knowledge or consent. Read her entire analysis of the implications of this bill here: http://www.cchconline.org/pdf/S_1858_NB…
Brase states that under this bill, “The DNA taken at birth from every citizen is essentially owned by the government, and every citizen becomes a potential subject of government-sponsored genetic research.” All 50 states are now routinely providing results of genetic screenings to the Department of Homeland Security and this bill will establish the legality of that practice plus include DNA.
Ron Paul has also vigorously argued against this bill making the following comments before the US House of Representatives:
“I cannot support legislation…that exceeds the Constitutional limitations on federal power or in any way threatens the liberty of the American people. I must oppose it.”
“S. 1858 gives the federal bureaucracy the authority to develop a model newborn screening program. Madame Speaker, the federal government lacks both the constitutional authority and the competence to develop a newborn screening program adequate for a nation as large and diverse as the United States. …”
“Those of us in the medical profession should be particularly concerned about policies allowing government officials and state-favored interests to access our medical records without our consent … My review of S. 1858 indicates the drafters of the legislation made no effort to ensure these newborn screening programs do not violate the privacy rights of parents and children, in fact, by directing federal bureaucrats to create a contingency plan for newborn screening in the event of a ‘public health’ disaster, this bill may lead to further erosions of medical privacy. As recent history so eloquently illustrates, politicians are more than willing to take, and people are more than willing to cede, liberty during times of ‘emergency.”
On June 15, 2007, Ron Paul introduced HR 2755: Federal Reserve Abolition Act. There were no co-sponsors, no further action was taken, and the legislation was referred to the House Committee on Financial Services and effectively pigeonholed and ignored.
It's a bold and needed measure to "abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes."
The bill provides for management of employees, assets and liabilities of the Board during a dissolution period, and more as follows:
-- it designates the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to liquidate Fed assets in an orderly and expeditious manner;
-- transfer them to the General Fund of the Treasury after satisfying all claims against the Board and any Federal reserve bank;
-- assume all outstanding Board and member bank liabilities and transfer them to the Secretary of the Treasury; and
-- after an 18-month period, submit a report to Congress "containing a detailed description of the actions taken to implement this Act and any actions or issues relating to such implementation that remain uncompleted or unresolved as of the date of the report."
On November 22, "End the Fed" protests were held in 39 or more cities nationwide (including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, DC), but you'd hardly know it for lack of coverage. Attendee demands were simple and emphatic:
-- end a private banking cartel's illegal monopoly control over the nation's money supply and price;
-- return that power to the US Treasury as the Constitution mandates;
-- end a fiat currency system backed by the waning full faith and credit of the government; and
-- return the country to a sound, hard currency monetary system.
"End the Fed! Sound Money for America!" is their slogan, and writer and US policy critic Webster Tarpley puts it well:
"....the privately owned central bank....has been looting and wrecking the US economy for almost a hundred years. We must end a system where unelected, unaccountable cliques of bankers and financiers loyal to names like Morgan, Rockefeller, and Mellon set interest rates and money supply behind closed doors, leading to de-industrialization, mass impoverishment, and a world economic and financial depression of incalculable severity."
In theory, the Fed was established to stabilize the economy, smooth out the business cycle, manage a healthy, sustainable growth rate, and maintain stable prices. In fact, it failed dismally. It contributed to 19 US recessions (including the Great Depression) and significantly to the following equity market declines that accompanied them as measured by the Dow or S & P 500 average - the S &P's inception was 1923; it became the S & P 500 in 1957:
-- 40.1% (Dow) from 1916 - 1917;
-- 46.6% (Dow) from 1919 - 1921;
-- the 1929 (Dow) crash in two stages - 47.9% in 1929 followed by a strong, temporary rebound; then - 86%; an 89% peak to trough total from October 1929 to July 1932;
-- 49.1% (Dow) from 1937 - 1938;
-- 40.4% (Dow) from 1939 - 1942;
-- 25.3% (S & P) from 1946 - 1947;
-- 19.8% (S & P) in 1957;
-- 26.8% (S & P) from 1961 - 1962;
-- 19.3% (S & P) in 1966;
-- 32.7% (S & P) from 1968 - 1970;
-- 45.1% (S & P) from 1973 - 1974;
-- 20.2% (S & P) from 1980 - 1982;
-- 32.9% (S & P) in 1987;
-- 19.2% (S & P) in 1990;
-- 18.8% (S & P) in 1998;
-- 49.1% (S & P) from 2000 - 2002; and
-- about 50% (S & P) and counting (excluding a bear market rebound) from October 2007.
The Fed is also directly responsible for monetary inflation and the decline in the US standard of living since its year end 1913 inception and especially since the 1970s. From the late 18th century to 1913, virtually no inflation existed under the gold standard except during times of war. Using government data, it now takes over $2000 to equal $100 of pre-Fed purchasing power. In other words, a 1913 dollar is worth about a nickel today.
At that time, a dollar was defined as 1/20 of an ounce of gold or about an ounce of silver. The Fed then changed the standard away from precious metals to the full faith and credit of the government. Ever since (except for periods such as the 1930s) inflation eroded the currency's value and (more than ever) continues to do it today.
It's why one analyst calls the dollar "nothing more than a popular symbol for the tangible substances it once represented - gold and silver." Its true value represents the world's waning confidence in America's ability to honor its debt obligations, and with good reason.
Under the Federal Reserve System (besides inflation), we've had rising consumer debt; record budget and trade deficits; a soaring national debt; a high level of personal and business bankruptcies; today, millions of home foreclosures; high unemployment; the loss of the nation's manufacturing base; growing millions in poverty; an unprecedented wealth gap between the rich and all others; and a hugely unstable economy now lurching into crisis mode.
In a November 24 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Hong Kong-based author and equity strategist Christopher Wood believes "The Fed Is Out of Ammunition." With trillions in personal wealth erased, "there is little doubt that we are witnessing a classic debt-deflation bust at work, characterized by falling prices, frozen credit markets and plummeting asset values."
He notes how "over-investment and over-speculation" on borrowed money got us here. Today, the Fed can control the supply of money but not its velocity or the rate it turns over. The current collapse set it in reverse with no signs of an impending turnaround.
Wood believes monetary and fiscal measures won't work. There are no easy solutions - "not as long as politicians and central bankers (won't) let financial institutions fail," and let market forces wash out excesses over time.
The Fed and Treasury will spend trillions of dollars to correct things, "but will merely compound (the problem) by adding debt to debt." The current crisis will end up "discrediting mechanical monetarism - and with it the fiat paper-money system....The catalyst will be foreign creditors fleeing the dollar for gold. That will in turn lead to global recognition of the need for a vastly more disciplined global financial system" with gold very likely playing a part.
Absent a hard money currency has led to the kind of monetary madness that Nouriel Roubini calls "crazy" policy actions - an explosion of quantitative easing in the trillions with no end of it in sight.
Roubini: "The Fed Funds rate has been abandoned...as we are already effectively at (zero interest rates) that signal a liquidity trap....Even (a sharp) fall in mortgage rates....will be of small comfort to debt burdened households as only those (that) qualify for refinancing will be able to" net out a "modest" monthly mortgage saving of about $150.
The Fed's "desperate policy actions....will eventually lead to much higher real interest rates on the public debt and weaken the US dollar (the result of a) tsunami of implicit and explicit public liabilities and monetary debt." It will get foreign investors to "ponder the long-term sustainability of the US domestic and external liabilities," and why not. They keep growing exponentially, and with nothing restraining a runaway Fed, dollar debasing may continue to the point where no one will want to hold them. It's gotten some analysts to recommend moving a portion of savings out of them into gold - the ultimate safe haven in times of crisis.
Abolish the Fed and Return the Nation's Money Creation Power to Congress Where It Belongs
Ron Paul has been in the vanguard of the Abolish the Fed movement, and on September 10, 2002 on the House floor said:
"Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, middle and working-class Americans have been victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy. In addition, most Americans have suffered a steadily eroding purchasing power because of the Federal Reserve's inflationary policies. This represents a real, if hidden, tax imposed on the American people...."
"It is time for the Congress to put the interests of the American people ahead of the special interests. Abolishing the Federal Reserve will allow Congress to reassert its constitutional authority over monetary policy."
"Abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to a constitutional system (as mandated) will enable America to return to the type of monetary system envisioned by our nation's founders: one where the value of money is consistent because it is tied to a commodity such as gold....I urge my colleagues (to co-sponsor) my legislation to abolish the Federal Reserve."
Paul introduced his legislation in the 106th, 107th, 108th, and 110th Congresses. Each time, it died in committee. On November 22, he attended the End the Fed rally in Houston and addressed the crowd.
He called the current economic crisis as bad or worse than in the 1930s and said: "we know who caused it. It was the Federal Reserve that gave us all this trouble." He explained that we had a "free ride for decades because we've had a system that was devised where the dollar could act as if it were gold."
Not after August 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window, ended the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement, and no longer let dollars be backed by gold or converted into it in international markets. A "new economic system" was created. It let us "spend beyond our means, live beyond our means, print money beyond our means," and it caused our current dilemma.
We created "an appearance of great wealth. But it was doomed to fail," and it became apparent in the past year: "the failure of the dollar reserve standard that was set up in August of 1971. It has ended. The only question" is what will replace it?
There's all kinds of talk, including setting up a new international fiat currency "with the loss of US sovereignty in total. We have to stop this move towards one world government and a one world currency." Otherwise our freedom and Constitution will be lost. When it was written, it contained prohibitions.
Article I, Section 8 gives Congress alone the right to coin (create) money and regulate the value thereof. The founders also wanted gold and silver to be legal tender, not fiat money, nor should there be a central bank. In 1935, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress cannot constitutionally delegate this power to another body. By creating the Federal Reserve System in 1913, Congress violated the Constitution it was sworn to uphold and defrauded the American public. Today's crisis is the fruit of its action, but watch out.
"The writing is on the wall, and the end of this system" approaches. "They cannot patch it up, they can't up it back together again. They know it and we know it. The only argument is what is it going to be replaced with?"
For now, "Central banks in the West especially have been dumping gold to artificially lower (its price) to pretend the dollar is of great value. They're still doing it, but they're running out of time (and) out of gold." It's shifting to stronger economic powers, ones who've been saving money, loaning it back to us, "and are ready to buy up America if we continue to do this. So it is a contest (between fiat) money and hard money, and that is such an important issue." It reflects what Daniel Webster once said:
"There can be no legal tender in this country....but gold and silver. This is a constitutional principle....of the very highest importance." Gold, however, wasn't the original monetary system standard. Silver was, the silver dollar, and only a constitutional amendment can change it.
Paper currency as well, whether backed by gold or not, wasn't the hard money authorized by the Constitution. Honest money is honest weights and measures of silver and gold. Federal Reserve Notes are paper fiat debt obligations. Fiat currency of any kind is a mechanism of wealth transference from the public to a privileged elite - through inflation and loss of purchasing power. It creates debt for the many and wealth for the few, especially when a private banking cartel controls it.
Our existing monetary system combines money, credit and debt into a dishonest system of empty promises in exchange for future ones. There is no eventual payment, only unfulfillable assurances to new generations that will be forced to pay for the debt now accumulated. It's a moneychangers dream - ever-expanding debt and a continuing interest rate stream, masquerading as wealth creation for the people. It's in fact a system of bondage and indebtedness benefitting the few at the expense of the many, a modern-day feudalism. It's how an elite 1% got to own 70% of the nation's wealth.
In the 1920s, Josiah Stamp, Bank of England president said:
"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with a flick of the pen (today a computer keyboard) they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits."
Creating the Federal Reserve System to let bankers and not the government control the price and amount of fiat money debased the currency and is the root cause of today's financial problems. A return to honest gold and silver weights and measures is needed. The Constitution states that nothing but these metals are money and that paper bills of credit (like Federal Reserve notes) aren't allowed. Even ones backed by gold as the Constitution doesn't grant Congress the power to be bankers. It may only coin (create) and borrow money, not loan it out or give it away - and certainly not to bankers at the expense of the public interest.
Further, the Constitution contains no provision allowing Congress to enact legal tender laws. Article I, Section 10 forbids the individual states from making "anything but gold and silver coin a legal tender in payment of debts." However, US Code, 31 USC 5103, establishes US coins and currency, including Federal Reserve notes, as legal tender and has been used to debase the currency ever since - the way Gresham's Law works: bad (or debased) money drives out good (the kind with little difference between its nominal and commodity values).
For example, until 1964, US coins (except pennies and nickels) contained 90% silver. Starting in 1965, dimes and quarters were converted to their current nickel - copper composition. Half-dollars (now produced in limited quantities) had 90% silver. It then dropped to 40% in 1965 and by 1971 all US coins (except pennies and commemorative mintings) contained nickel and copper and no silver - a good example of debasing. As for paper currency, it's just paper.
Under a private banking cartel's control, it's been misused, stolen, and corrupted the way New York Times columnist Floyd Norris suggests in his November 24 article headlined: "Another Crisis, Another Guarantee." First the banks, then the auto companies, and who knows who's next in line for theirs. "As the nation's obligations rise into the trillions, at some point investors (and the public) may begin to question whether a government running huge deficits can also credibly promise that the dollar will not lose its value." How can there be any faith and credit left when it's vanishing and the Fed and Treasury operate like giant hedge funds.
It got UK-based Eclectica Asset Management chief investment officer, Hugh Hendry, concerned enough to say: "All (US) financials will be owned by the government in a year. I bet you. It's not good," but it's coming. US taxpayers will be "paying for this for a long time," and it's deeply concerning considering the amount of money creation - with no end in sight as problems keep mounting and limitless amounts keep being thrown at them.
On November 25 the Financial Times associate editor, Wolfgang Munchau, also worries about the Fed's "weapon of mass desperation" (so-called quantitative easing); focusing only on deflation and risking a currency crisis. He calls it a flawed, dangerous and shocking oversight - the possibility of "a mass flight out of dollar assets (at some point) and a large rise in US market interest rates, followed by a huge recession."
A Bloomberg.com November 24 headline highlights the problem: "US Pledges Top $7.7 trillion to Ease Frozen Credit," and it might as well have said there's plenty more where that came from if needed. With another $800 committed to two new loan programs the total reached $8.5 trillion, according to Bloomberg or nearly 60% of US 2007 GDP of $14 trillion, and the numbers keep rising exponentially because the problems continue to mount.
Bloomberg puts it in perspective saying "the (current) commitment dwarfs (TARP and puts) Federal Reserve lending last week (at) 1900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis," and with the added $800 billion it's about 2100 times pre-crisis levels.
In addition, the Fed refuses to identify recipients of about $2 trillion of emergency handouts or what troubled assets (if any) it's accepting as collateral. Call it lending or spending. They're public tax dollars being spread around like confetti and debasing it all as a result.
The Free Lakota Bank
On November 21, this writer discussed how Lakotahs are treated in an article titled "Fate of Lakotahs Highlights America's Failed Native American Policies." On November 24, the following press release and follow-up information announced:
"People of Lakota Launch Private Bank for Only Silver and Gold Currencies." All deposits are "liquid, meaning they can be withdrawn at any time in minted rounds. Some may confuse our economic system with isolationism....which it is not. Since we currently produce much more than we consume, we have the right to decide what medium of exchange to accept for our effort. And so we accept only value for value. Across our great land, over thousands of tribes and merchants participate in our system of trade. We invite others to trade with us and bring value back into our transactions."
This is the world's first non-reserve, non-fractional bank that accepts only silver and gold currencies for deposit. The Lakotas "invite people of any creed, faith or heritage to unite in an effort to reclaim control of wealth. It is our hope that other tribal nations and American citizens recognize the importance of silver and gold as currency and decide to mirror our system of honest trade."
The bank states that it issues, circulates and accepts for deposit "only AOCS - Approved silver and gold currencies." It calls paper not real money but "merely a promise to pay - a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Since we deal only in real money, we do not participate in any central bank looting schemes." When corruption is rewarded and "honesty becom(es) self-sacrifice....you may know that your society is doomed." Even as victims of adversity, Lakotas are working to prevent it.
End the Fed
Privatized money control is the single greatest threat to democratic freedom. As former lawyer, economist, academic, and Canadian prime minister (from 1935 - 1948) William Lyon Mackenzie King once said:
"Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile....Once a nation parts with control of its credit, it matters not who makes (its) laws....Usury once in control will wreck any nation," and indeed it has, far more now than ever.
It worried Thomas Jefferson enough to call banking institutions "more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies" at a much simpler time in our history. The right to create and control money belongs to the people through their elected representatives. For the past 95 years, powerful bankers accountable to no one have had it. They effectively run the country (and own it), and unless We the People change things, we'll continue to be victimized by economic tyranny and the eventual political kind that's coming.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
London: Conspiracy theories have shrouded the mysterious death of legendary US General George S. Patton for long. Now, 63 years on, a new book has claimed that he was assassinated to silence his criticism of WWII allied leaders.
According to the new evidence, American spy chiefs hatched a plan to assassinate Patton after World War II in connivance with US leaders because he had threatened to expose the allied collusion with the Russians that cost lives of many Americans.
Although Patton had suffered serious injuries in a car crash at Manheim, he was thought to be recovering and was on the verge of flying home. He died in December 1945. But, according to the book, the wartime Head of Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Gen "Wild Bill" Donovan ordered a highly decorated marksman Douglas Bazatato "to silence" Patton who gloried in the nickname "Old Blood and Guts".
"Patton was going to resign from the Army. He wanted to go to war with the Russians. The administration thought he was nuts. He also knew secrets of the war which would have ruined careers. "I don't think Dwight Eisenhower would ever have been elected President if Patton had lived to say the things he wanted to say," the author of the book 'Target Patton', Robert Wilcox, was quoted by British newspaper 'The Sunday Telegraph' as saying.
WASHINGTON (AP) - It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going? But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.
"We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,'" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to."
The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest? None of the banks provided specific answers.
"We're not providing dollar-in, dollar-out tracking," said Barry Koling, a spokesman for Atlanta, Ga.-based SunTrust Banks Inc., which got $3.5 billion in taxpayer dollars.
Some banks said they simply didn't know where the money was going.
"We manage our capital in its aggregate," said Regions Financial Corp. (RF) spokesman Tim Deighton, who said the Birmingham, Ala.-based company is not tracking how it is spending the $3.5 billion it received as part of the financial bailout.
The answers highlight the secrecy surrounding the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which earmarked $700 billion - about the size of the Netherlands' economy - to help rescue the financial industry. The Treasury Department has been using the money to buy stock in U.S. banks, hoping that the sudden inflow of cash will get banks to start lending money.
There has been no accounting of how banks spend that money. Lawmakers summoned bank executives to Capitol Hill last month and implored them to lend the money - not to hoard it or spend it on corporate bonuses, junkets or to buy other banks. But there is no process in place to make sure that's happening and there are no consequences for banks who don't comply.
"It is entirely appropriate for the American people to know how their taxpayer dollars are being spent in private industry," said Elizabeth Warren, the top congressional watchdog overseeing the financial bailout.
But, at least for now, there's no way for taxpayers to find that out.
Pressured by the Federal Reserve Chairman to approve the money quickly, Congress attached nearly no strings on the $700 billion bailout in October. And the Treasury Department, which doles out the money, never asked banks how it would be spent.
"Those are legitimate questions that should have been asked on Day One," said Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., a House Financial Services Committee member who opposed the bailout as it was rushed through Congress. "Where is the money going to go to? How is it going to be spent? When are we going to get a record on it?"
Nearly every bank AP questioned - including Citibank and Bank of America, two of the largest recipients of bailout money - responded with generic public relations statements explaining that the money was being used to strengthen balance sheets and continue making loans to ease the credit crisis.
A few banks described company-specific programs, such as JPMorgan Chase's plan to lend $5 billion to nonprofit and health care companies next year. Richard Becker, senior vice president of Wisconsin-based Marshall & Ilsley Corp. (MI) (MI), said the $1.75 billion in bailout money allowed the bank to temporarily stop foreclosing on homes.
But no bank provided even the most basic accounting for the federal money. "We're choosing not to disclose that," said Kevin Heine, spokesman for Bank of New York Mellon, which received about $3 billion.
Others said the money couldn't be tracked. Bob Denham, a spokesman for North Carolina-based BB&T Corp., said the bailout money "doesn't have its own bucket." But he said taxpayer money wasn't used in the bank's recent purchase of a Florida insurance company. Asked how he could be sure, since the money wasn't being tracked, Denham said the bank would have made that deal regardless.
Others, such as Morgan Stanley (MS) spokeswoman Carissa Ramirez, offered to discuss the matter with reporters on condition of anonymity. When AP refused, Ramirez sent an e-mail saying: "We are going to decline to comment on your story." Most banks wouldn't say why they were keeping the details secret.
"We're not sharing any other details. We're just not at this time," said Wendy Walker, a spokeswoman for Dallas-based Comerica Inc., which received $2.25 billion from the government.
Heine, the New York Mellon Corp. spokesman who said he wouldn't share spending specifics, added: "I just would prefer if you wouldn't say that we're not going to discuss those details."
The banks which came closest to answering the questions were those, such as U.S. Bancorp and Huntington Bancshares Inc., that only recently received the money and have yet to spend it. But neither provided anything more than a generic summary of how the money would be spent. Lawmakers say they want to tighten restrictions on the remaining, yet-to-be-released $350 billion block of bailout money before more cash is handed out. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the department is trying to step up its monitoring of bank spending.
"What we've been doing here is moving, I think, with lightning speed to put necessary programs in place, to develop them, implement them, and then we need to monitor them while we're doing this," Paulson said at a recent forum in New York. "So we're building this organization as we're going."
Warren, the congressional watchdog appointed by Democrats, said her oversight panel will try to force the banks to say where they've spent the money.
"It would take a lot of nerve not to give answers," she said.
But Warren said she's surprised she even has to ask.
"If the appropriate restrictions were put on the money to begin with, if the appropriate transparency was in place, then we wouldn't be in a position where you're trying to call every recipient and get the basic information that should already be in public documents," she said.
Garrett, the New Jersey congressman, said the nation might never get a clear answer on where hundreds of billions of dollars went.
"A year or two ago, when we talked about spending $100 million for a bridge to nowhere, that was considered a scandal," he said.
Many have decried the various bailouts as leading us down the path to socialism. They are wrong. We aren't heading for socialism, we are headed for fascism.
Italy and Germany developed a distinct economic model. The means of production were privately held, but controlled by the government. Facists were neither capitalist or communist.
The fascist economic model believes that profit is private, but loss is public. In other words, if you are making a profit you can keep it. If you have a loss the state will bail you out. In return for this protection, businesses had to allow themselves to be "guided" by the state. The purpose of private business became to serve the needs of the state, not of the owners.
A land owner that raised sheep might be told they must grow wheat instead. An automotive company might be told what type of car to produce (the people's car, or Volkswagon in Germany for example.)
Historian Gaetano Salvemini argued in 1936 that fascism makes taxpayers responsible to private enterprise, because "the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."**
In Nazi economic planning, in place of ordinary profit incentive to guide the economy, investment was guided through regulation to accord to the needs of the State. The profit incentive for business owners was retained, though greatly modified through various profit-fixing schemes: "Fixing of profits, not their suppression, was the official policy of the Nazi party." However the function of profit in automatically guiding allocation of investment and unconsciously directing the course of the economy was replaced with economic planning by Nazi government agencies.** by http://munydews.blogspot.com/
The goals of the USA today are different from the goals of Italy and Germany in the 1930s. They used the econimics of fascism to promote their military aspirations. America's economic planners seem to have a different goal: green.
There is news that Obama may adopt an Israli electric car design to build in the US. Who is going to build this car? Private American auto companies. Who is going to tell them to build it? The government.
We have seen in the past where the government has used regulations to attempt to control private enterprise. Now that we have entered the bailout era, where the government assumes the risk for loses, we are seeing the government taking the next step: bluntly telling companies what they should make and how they should be run. Private companies run by the government for the needs of the state are here.
We have entered the era of American economic fascism.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of state and corporate power." -Benito Mussolini, Fascist Dictator of Italy
A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.
Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.
“As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.”
However, at 2.8 percent, the automatic raise that lawmakers receive is only half as large as the 2009 cost of living adjustment of Social Security recipients.
Still, Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Congress should have taken the rare step of freezing its pay, as lawmakers did in 2000.
“Look at the way the economy is and how most people aren’t counting on a holiday bonus or a pay raise — they’re just happy to have gainful employment,” said Ellis. “But you have the lawmakers who are set up and ready to get their next installment of a pay raise and go happily along their way.”
Member raises are often characterized as examples of wasteful spending, especially when many constituents and businesses in members’ districts are in financial despair.
Rep. Harry Mitchell, a first-term Democrat from Arizona, sponsored legislation earlier this year that would have prevented the automatic pay adjustments from kicking in for members next year. But the bill, which attracted 34 cosponsors, failed to make it out of committee.
“They don’t even go through the front door. They have it set up so that it’s wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise,” Ellis said.
Freezing congressional salaries is hardly a new idea on Capitol Hill.
Lawmakers have floated similar proposals in every year dating back to 1995, and long before that. Though the concept of forgoing a raise has attracted some support from more senior members, it is most popular with freshman lawmakers, who are often most vulnerable.
In the beginning days of 1789, Congress was paid only $6 a day, which would be about $75 daily by modern standards. But by 1965 members were receiving $30,000 a year, which is the modern equivalent of about $195,000.
Currently the average lawmaker makes $169,300 a year, with leadership making slightly more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) makes $217,400, while the minority and majority leaders in the House and Senate make $188,100.
Ellis said that while freezing the pay increase would be a step in the right direction, it would be better to have it set up so that members would have to take action, and vote, for a pay raise and deal with the consequences, rather than get one automatically.
“It is probably never going to be politically popular to raise Congress’s salary,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to find taxpayers saying, ‘Yeah I think I should pay my congressman more’.”
Indianapolis, IN (LifeNews.com) -- A staff member at a third Planned Parenthood abortion business in three weeks has been caught on videotape covering up a potential case of statutory rape. This tape involves in Indianapolis Planned Parenthood and it could lead to a widening of the investigation the state's attorney general has announced.
The first case showed a Charlotte, North Carolina Planned Parenthood covering up an incident of statutory rape.
A second tape showed a staffer named Diana telling Lila Rose, a UCLA student who posed as a 13-year-old girl who had sexual relations with a man more than twice her age, that she didn't want to know any more about the incident.
This third, newly-released footage from this past summer shows Rose, who again claims she is an underage girl who had sex with an older man, hearing from employees about her sexual abuse.
This time, two Planned Parenthood employees say they "don't care" about the age difference between a 31-year-old man and the 13-year-old girl he was reported to have impregnated.
"We don't really care about who, what, the age of the boyfriend," the unnamed Planned Parenthood staff member says.
A second Planned Parenthood counselor adds, "I don't care how old he is."
Like the staff member Diana at the first Indiana Planned Parenthood exposed on tape, the staff at the Indianapolis facility tell Rose that she can get an abortion in another state without her parents knowing: "The surrounding states don't have parental consent. I can't tell you anymore."
As was the case with the Planned Parenthood facility in Bloomington, the Indianapolis abortion center apparently did not report the sexual abuse to state authorities as required by Indiana law.
Rose tells LifeNews.com she additional videotape is very concerning because is shows an emerging pattern of abuse, as more abortion center counselors evade their legal responsibility to report the statutory rape of young girls.
She says the lack of reporting and Planned Parenthood staffers looking the other way makes it so young girls remain trapped in cycles of sexual abuse.
Although the Bloomington abortion center fired its nurse and Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter has launched an investigation, Rose said this is not an isolated incident.
"We have more videos documenting this pattern of law-breaking within Planned Parenthood. There are actual cases all across the country where their failure to follow state statutes has allowed predators to continue their sexual abuse of young girls," she told LifeNews.com.
"We applaud Mr. Carter's integrity and urge him to conduct a thorough and complete investigation, despite any political attacks Planned Parenthood may attempt against him personally or his office," she added.
Rose challenges Planned Parenthood to cooperate in any investigation.
"Planned Parenthood must release files they have previously sued to keep private and allow state authorities to conduct a complete investigation," she says. "Mandatory reporting laws are necessary for the protection of young girls, and Planned Parenthood must not be allowed to sabotage them."
The new footage is the second video in Live Action Film's "Mona Lisa Project," a series of investigations documenting abuses at Planned Parenthood facilities when it comes to protecting young girls.
Related web sites: Latest video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTxsWZz9whg LifeAction Films - http://LiveActionFilms.org
The global elite will not rest until they have undermined the last bastion that stands in their way as they attempt to dominate and subjugate of the once great republic of the United States — the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Over the years — but especially since September 11, 2001, and the creation of the phony GWOT against manufactured terrorists — the government has made great strides in curtailing the Bill of Rights.
On Wednesday December 10th, the Ohio House Judiciary Committee were confronted by members from Campaign for Liberty, Ohio Freedom Alliance, We Are Change Ohio, John Birch Society, Institute for Principled Policy, Constitution Party of Ohio, and the Libertarian Party of Ohio whom testified against HJR, an Ohio call for an Article V Constitutional Convention. Video produced by Ohio Change.
Government has singled out and specifically attacked the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. However, for the global elite and their minions in government, this piecemeal approach is too slow and often results in organized resistance and legal challenges.
So the global elite have decided on another tactic — change forever the Constitution and the Bill of Rights through a Constitutional Convention.
Article Five of the United States Constitution provides an option to assemble a national Convention to propose amendments to the Constitution as an alternative to the process of securing two-thirds approval in both houses of Congress.
Remarkably, thirty two states have called for a Constitutional Convention — allegedly to add a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution – and it takes thirty four to begin the process.
If you have not heard about this, it is not a mistake — the corporate media is not reporting on it. A Google News search produces no stories on the subjected published by the mainstream media.
“A public policy organization has issued an urgent alert stating affirmative votes are needed from only two more states before a Constitutional Convention could be assembled in which ‘today’s corrupt politicians and judges’ could formally change the U.S. Constitution’s “problematic” provisions to reflect the philosophical and social mores of our contemporary society,’” writes Bob Unruh for WorldNetDaily.
“Don’t for one second doubt that delegates to a Con Con wouldn’t revise the First Amendment into a government-controlled privilege, replace the 2nd Amendment with a ‘collective’ right to self-defense, and abolish the 4th, 5th, and 10th Amendments, and the rest of the Bill of Rights,” Unruh quotes the American Policy Institute (API).
API was successful in stalling a vote on a Constitutional Convention in Ohio, thanks to the Constitution and Libertarian parties of Ohio that testified against the bill. “Members from Campaign for Liberty, Ohio Freedom Alliance, We Are Change Ohio, John Birch Society, Institute for Principled Policy, Constitution Party of Ohio, and the Libertarian Party of Ohio showed up in support [and] most of them testified,” reports the PeaceChicken blog.
“After seeing how many of us came, Committee Chairman Blessing changed his mind and decided not to vote on it today. In fact, he acted like it was a mistake that the paper said ‘possible vote.’ [Teri Owens of the Central Ohio John Birch Society] thinks it’ll probably be voted on at the next committee meeting (which will also probably not include further testimony) so we’ll need to keep watching.”
WorldNetDaily should be commended for reporting on this important story neglected by the corporate and much of the alternative media. Unfortunately, WorldNetDaily writer Bob Unruh turns the article into an anti-Obama screed and leans heavily on the false right-left paradigm to make his points, including Obama’s disingenuous calls for wealth redistribution and so-called political and economic justice. In 2001, Obama told Chicago’s public station WBEZ-FM that “redistributive change” is needed.
One has to wonder if Obama’s economic advisors — including Robert Rubin, director and senior counselor at Citigroup, and Timothy F. Geithner, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — are up to speed on taking money from their rich friends and giving it to the poor who voted for Obama.
Tom DeWeese of the American Policy Institute warns that the ultimate outcome of a new con con “will likely be a new constitution, one that would possibly eliminate the Article 1 restriction to the coinage of real money or even eliminate gun or property rights.”
In fact, this is the real goal of the globalists behind the con con scheme: to eliminate gun ownership and turn other god-given rights into state granted privileges that can be easily restricted or taken away entirely. Outlawing firearm ownership in America is part of a larger agenda to dismantle and destroy the United States of America from within and the global elite cannot turn the country into a third world cesspool so long as millions of Americans are armed.
DeWeese told WND that a Constitutional Convention would be “our worst nightmare in an age when you’ve got people who believe the Constitution is an antiquated document, we need to have everything from controls on guns … all of these U.N. treaties … and controls on how we raise our children.”
For now, a few dedicated people in Ohio have managed to delay another state from joining the push for a con con under the cover of a Balanced Budget Amendment, but as the blogger PeaceChicken notes, the government of Ohio will continue to push HJR 8 calling for a Constitutional Convention. It is up to activists and concerned citizens in Ohio to make sure this bill is defeated and the global elite is not allowed to eviscerate the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying it’s allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information. The institution confirmed that a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to some of the requests.
“If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government may take and that’s what they don’t want us to know,” said Carlos Mendez, who oversees about $14 billion at New York-based ICP Capital LLC.
Bloomberg News is a unit of New York-based Bloomberg LP.
The Fed stepped into a rescue role that was the original purpose of the Treasury’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The central bank loans don’t have the oversight safeguards that Congress imposed upon the TARP.
Total Fed lending exceeded $2 trillion for the first time Nov. 6. It rose by 138 percent, or $1.23 trillion, in the 12 weeks since Sept. 14, when central bank governors relaxed collateral standards to accept securities that weren’t rated AAA.
‘Been Bamboozled’
Congress is demanding more transparency from the Fed and Treasury on the bailout efforts, most recently during Dec. 10 hearings by the House Financial Services committee when Representative David Scott, a Georgia Democrat, said Americans had “been bamboozled.”
In its response to Bloomberg’s request, the Fed said the U.S. is facing “an unprecedented crisis” when the “loss in confidence in and between financial institutions can occur with lightning speed and devastating effects.”
The Fed supplied copies of three e-mails in response to a request that it disclose the identities of those supplying data on collateral as well as their contracts.
While the senders and recipients of the messages were revealed, the contents were erased except for two phrases identifying a vendor as “IDC.” One of the e-mails’ subject lines refers to “Interactive Data -- Auction Rate Security Advisory May 1, 2008.”
‘Multiple Harms’
Brian Willinsky, a spokesman for Bedford, Massachusetts- based Interactive Data Corp., a seller of fixed-income securities information, declined to comment.
“Notwithstanding calls for enhanced transparency, the Board must protect against the substantial, multiple harms that might result from disclosure,” Jennifer J. Johnson, the secretary for the Fed’s Board of Governors, said in a letter e-mailed to Bloomberg News.
“In its considered judgment and in view of current circumstances, it would be a dangerous step to release this otherwise confidential information,” she wrote.
New York-based Citigroup Inc., which is shrinking its global workforce of 352,000 through asset sales and job cuts, is among the nine biggest banks receiving $125 billion in capital from the TARP since it was signed into law Oct. 3. More than 170 regional lenders are seeking an additional $74 billion.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system.
‘Right to Know’
The Freedom of Information Act requires federal agencies to make government documents available to the press and the public. The suit, filed in New York, doesn’t seek money damages.
“There has to be something they can tell the public because we have a right to know what they are doing,” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Virginia-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “It would really be a shame if we have to find this out 10 years from now after some really nasty class-action suit and our financial system has completely collapsed.”
The Fed lent cash and government bonds to banks that handed over collateral including stocks and subprime and structured securities such as collateralized debt obligations, according to the Fed Web site.
Borrowers include the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Citigroup and New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co., the country’s biggest bank by assets.
Banks oppose any release of information because that might signal weakness and spur short-selling or a run by depositors, Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington trade group, said in an interview last month.
‘Complete Truth’
“Americans don’t want to get blindsided anymore,” Mendez said in an interview. “They don’t want it sugarcoated or whitewashed. They want the complete truth. The truth is we can’t take all the pain right now.”
The Bloomberg lawsuit said that the collateral lists “are central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression.”
In response, the Fed argued that the trade-secret exemption could be expanded to include potential harm to any of the central bank’s customers, said Bruce Johnson, a lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Seattle. That expansion is not contained in the freedom-of-information law, Johnson said.
“I understand where they are coming from bureaucratically, but that means it’s all the more necessary for taxpayers to know what exactly is going on because of all the money that is being hurled at the banking system,” Johnson said.
The Bloomberg lawsuit is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 08-CV-9595, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Pittman in New York at mpittman@bloomberg.net
“I had no contact with the governor or his office and so I was not aware of what was happening, ” Obama told reporters today in Chicago. “It’s a sad day for Illinois. Beyond that, I don’t think it’s appropriate to comment.”
…versus Axelrod on November 23, as seen below.
Be sure to read Tapper’s post, as he has plenty more on The One’s long history as a friend of — and advisor to — Blago. Axelrod himself begged off Blagojevich’s first gubernatorial campaign because “I was concerned about whether he was ready for … governing.” Not so Obama and Emanuel; they both served as advisors, and they and Blago went on endorsing each other to the bitter end.
Either we get the spectacle of the Illinois legislature impeaching him or we get the spectacle of Blago appointing The One’s successor while in jail. And based on the charges, he’s just stupid/nutty enough to do it.
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” attorney Sheldon Sorosky told reporters after Blagojevich was arraigned. “A lot of this is just politics.” Blagojevich should be in the office Wednesday, Sorosky added.
So, reporters asked, he does not intend to resign? “Not that I know of, no,” said Sorosky, who added that the governor was “surprised” by the day’s events.
One Method is to use terror and fear. Like shooting an unarmed peaceful protestor in the back. WATCH AND SEE
The second method is to put police in with peaceful protestors and incite violence and chaos which can then be blamed on protestors and used to justify further use of military style force against protesters. WATCH AND SEE.
The term doublespeak was coined in the early 1950s. It is when a favorable sounding term is used to describe something which is in reality just the opposite of the term and very unfavorable .
An example would be when abortion is called "a woman's right to choose" when in fact abortion has murdered millions of infant woman and taken away young women's right to life or to choose anything. It's a form of political spin.
Doublespeak is often incorrectly attributed to George Orwell and his 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The term does not appear in that novel, although Orwell did coin newspeak, oldspeak, and doublethink, and his novel made fashionable composite nouns with speak as the second element, which were previously unknown in English. Doublespeak may be considered, in Orwell's lexicography, as the vocabulary of Newspeak, words "deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them." The term double talk (with a similar meaning) dates back to at least 1936
Another example is the treasonous legislation that nullifies a majority of the US Constitution and then calling it "the patriot act" of all things. I am chocking on the deadly irony. Or then there is legislation some are trying to pass which would limit free speech of the press on TV and radio and they calling it "The Fairness Doctrine" when it is ironically inherently unfair.
How important is this? Double speak is at it's heart a lie. Jesus said, "The Truth will set you free." Our Freedom depends upon truth being spoken. Nations are enslaved with lies and set free with truth. As we are feed newspeak and doublespeak 24/7 by the owned media and move toward silencing talk radio and the internet blogs, we will be shackled with the chains of those who control the media with money. If in fact banking and multi-national corporations continue to control major media and all else is silenced, then we will be slaves on their plantation forever.
Confucius once said, “If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”
The Apostle Peter said of these kinds of people, "Promising them freedom, they themselves are slaves to depravity, for a person is a slave to whatever conquers him."
While promising freedom, modern socialistic police states are making politicians Lords and citizens surfs. They are slaves to depravity and a culture of lust and greed. They are slaves to debt and banking organizations. They are slaves to the state through oppressive taxes. They are slaves to the warmongers through a military draft. And if Obama gets his way, our 18 to 25 year olds will be slaves to liberal indoctrination through a civil service draft. They are slaves to ignorance by silencing decent with laws hindering free speech. We are told we are free but do we really have free speech? Are we free to do with our land what we wish? OR are we monitored, regulated, controlled, and taxed into submission to the will of the shadowy international banking interests that funded our leaders elections into office? Are we really free? Or has doublespeak enslaved us?
Right to choose = take away babies right to choose. Patriot Act = Traitor Act Fairness Doctrine = Unfairness Doctrine War on Terror = War on American's Rights
On Monday, December 1st, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized. At some point, the “bad cop” SWAT team was relieved by another team, a “good cop” team that tried to befriend the family. The Stowers family has run a very large, well-known food cooperative called Manna Storehouse on the western side of the greater Cleveland area for many years.
There were agents from the Department of Agriculture present, one of them identified as Bill Lesho. The search warrant is reportedly supicious-looking. Agents began rifling through all of the family’s possessions, a task that lasted hours and resulted in a complete upheaval of every private area in the home. Many items were taken that were not listed on the search warrant. The family was not permitted a phone call, and they were not told what crime they were being charged with. They were not read their rights. Over ten thousand dollars worth of food was taken, including the family’s personal stock of food for the coming year. All of their computers, and all of their cell phones were taken, as well as phone and contact records. The food cooperative was virtually shut down. There was no rational explanation, nor justification, for this extreme violation of Constitutional rights.
Presumably Manna Storehouse might eventually be charged with running a retail establishment without a license. Why then the Gestapo-type interrogation for a 3rd degree misdemeanor charge? This incident has raised the ominous specter of a restrictive new era in State regulation and enforcement over the nation’s private food supply.
This same type of abusive search and seizure was reported by those innocents who fell victim to oppressive federal drug laws passed in the 1990s. The present circumstance raises the obvious question: is there some rabid new interpretation of an existing drug law that considers food a controlled substance worthy of a nasty SWAT operation? Or worse, is there a previously unrecognized provision(s) pertaining to food in the Homeland Security measures? Some have suggested that it was merely an out-of-control, hot-to-trot ODA agent, and, if so, this would be a best-case scenario. Anything else might spell the beginning of the end for the freedom to eat unregulated and unmonitored food.
A group of Washington residents have filed a lawsuit with the state Supreme Court asking the state's votes for President-elect Barack Obama be set aside.
James E. Broe of King County and 12 others claim Obama never established that he is a natural-born American citizen as required by the Constitution, and that Obama ran under a false name.
A similar suit before the election was dismissed in King County.
Obama is set to receive the state's 11 electoral votes when the Electoral College delegates meet in Olympia on Dec. 15.
Dave Ammons, spokesman for Secretary of State Sam Reed's office, said in an e-mail to the Herald that the state's position is that Reed is not required and does not have the authority to investigate the qualifications of candidates for president and vice president.
"Under state law, the Republican and Democratic tickets are automatically placed on the fall ballot after the national party conventions," Ammons said. "Other tickets can qualify by having 1,000 registered Washington voters sign petitions at conventions. The state Elections Division examines the signatures, but does not investigate the qualifications of the candidates."
The lawsuit claims that Reed has known about questions concerning Obama's eligibility since September, but did nothing to determine whether Obama was a lawful candidate.
(Excerpt) Read more at http://www.tri-cityherald.com
HONOLULU, Hawaii – Although the legitimacy of Sen. Barack Obama's birth certificate has become a focus of intense speculation – and even several lawsuits – WND has learned that Hawaii's Gov. Linda Lingle has placed the candidate's birth certificate under seal and instructed the state's Department of Health to make sure no one in the press obtains access to the original document under any circumstances.
The governor's office officially declined a request made in writing by WND in Hawaii to obtain a copy of the hospital-generated original birth certificate of Barack Obama.
"It does not appear that Dr. Corsi is within any of these categories of persons with a direct and tangible interest in the birth certificate he seeks," wrote Roz Makuala, manager of constituent services in the governor's office, in an e-mailed response to a WND request seeking the information.
Those listed as entitled to obtain a copy of an original birth certificate include the person born, or "registrant" according to the legal description from the governor's office, the spouse or parent of the registrant, a descendant of the registrant, a person having a common ancestor with the registrant, a legal guardian of the registrant, or a person or agency acting on behalf of the registrant.
WND was told the official reason for denial of access to Obama's birth certificate would be authority granted pursuant to Section 338-18 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, a provision the anonymous source claimed was designed to prevent identity theft.
Still, the source told WND confidentially the motivation for withholding the original birth certificate was political, although the source refused to disclose whether there was any information on the original birth certificate that would prove politically embarrassing to Obama.
The source also refused to answer WND's question whether the original document on file with the Department of Health was a hospital-generated birth certificate or a registration of birth that may have been filed subsequent to the birth.
The anonymous source made clear the Hawaii Department of Health would immediately release Obama's original birth certificate, provided Obama requested the document be released, but the Department of Heath has received no such request from the senator or from anyone acting officially on his behalf.
In a startling development, Obama's Kenyan grandmother has reportedly alleged she witnessed Obama's birth at the Coast Provincial Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya.
U.S. Federal judge Richard Barclay Surrick, a Clinton appointee, dismissed a lawsuit brought by Pennsylvania attorney Phillip J. Berg who alleged Obama was not a U.S. "natural born" citizen and therefore ineligible for the presidency under the specifications of the U.S. Constitution, under Article II, Section 1.
Berg told WND last week he does not have a copy of a Kenyan birth certificate for Obama that he alleges exists. In Kenya, WND was told by government authorities that all documents concerning Obama were under seal until after the U.S. presidential election on November 4.
The Obama campaign website entitled "Fight the Smears" posts a state of Hawaii "Certificate of Live Birth" which is obviously not the original birth certificate generated by the hospital where Obama reportedly was born.
"Fight the Smears" declares, "The truth is, Barack Obama was born in the state of Hawaii in 1961, a native citizen of the United States of America."
Although the Obama campaign could immediately put an end to all the challenges by simply producing the candidate's original birth certificate, it has not done so. And the "Fight the Smears" website offers no explanation as to why Obama has refused to request, and make public, an original hospital-generated birth certificate which the Hawaii Department of Health may possess.
