Ron Paul 2012!!! Your thoughts on who we should pick for our "Cause"?

[BrnCow]

lets have another contest ..total body count from 1950-2012 ..I think the u.s. would win before the end of the 80's

How about from 1900 to today? Let's see what these greedy murderous bastards have really been up to! From all countries. Get the big picture. Maybe billions? These fuckheads do not need to running the world. They need to be in asylums or digging sewer pipe holes and busting rocks in prison. Should have been done when they instituted property taxes and labor taxes! That's when they stole every square inch of the country and started renting it back to us. We don't own shit! They own it and if you get behind on the rent, they will evict your ass in short order! They allow us to sell the right to use it to others who can build on it with permits as long as the taxes and fees are paid. They have turned the tables on society and gained control so they can commit serial murders legally and have an army to keep them from the gallows. Now, they call some plant illegal and put society in jail for using it....and Ron Paul seems to be the only person not trying to extend the current rein of terror on citizens. And they are afraid for their welfare if he gets advertised or elected. As they should be.

 

[bombadil.360]

Sacred, missed your post...

I agree with you in that sending troops to Iran is a bad idea... so are embargos, like I already said in another post.

still, Iran getting nukes is not a great idea either, and something must be done imo.

regarding Ron Paul, I'm too cynical to believe a politician is all it takes to solve the world's problems, or even a country's problems.

I'm more a believer in each one, teach one. no matter how great and wise things a leader may say, it is useless if people do not already knew about it and were already making it happen effortlessly. in which case 'leaders' become kind of obsolete...

 

[toketronix]

still, Iran getting nukes is not a great idea either, and something must be done imo.

lol ..so why doesn't the west set an example by giving up their nukes as a show of good faith? ..do as we say not as we do huh

& who says iran is getting nukes ..pox spews again?

 

[BrnCow]

The USA needs to butt out and revise it's policies and methods for accounting. At least until it is out of debt. Iran can wait for awhile. Someone in the mid east would likely take care of them if they got too far out of line. We need to get the US back on track and eliminate the damage these greed mongers have assessed on our country. There is nothing so pressing that it cannot wait. Then, we might get a little space between the dirty dealing that has been done to foreign countries that pissed them off at us. People don't fly half way around the world to mount an attack for no reason. Why is it always against the WTO? Something us citizens don't know about. Some evil bullshit has been done. And we are venerable to attack just like the perpetrators are and wallowing in our ignorance but innocent of guilt and fault. We have been excluded from the process and the fools are driving the bus! I say vote them all out and start over...before they throw us under the bus...vote RP!

 

[SpasticGramps]

pox spews again?

Right lol. Reads like Hannity signed up to be a member of the forums with bombsaway.360's war mongering going on in here.

 

[bentom187]

banks win in the end as long as they can plunge a country into debt and insert "managers" in their respective governments to protect their investment.
wich in our case and other IMF/WB countries is to make sure we never get out of debt.
lincon + debt free money(green backs) = assasination
its just one example.

 

[itisme]

I saw this a long time ago but found it amazing. I think some of you may enjoy this so I wanted to posted it in here. I hope you all don't mind.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4476899496233661707#

 

[bentom187]

very cool video,im not gonna spoil the movie for others.

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

Quite true. An unstoppable force on a collision course with and immovable object.

View Image

Notice the rise of inflation starts at the same time the federal reserve was formed in 1913.

Ron Paul is right. ban the fed go back to the gold standard.

 

[bentom187]

math lesson for the main stream meadia.

[YOUTUBEIF]2Cj7tUxAKuk[/YOUTUBEIF]

i lil bit of history,RP exposing the conflicts in the middle east.

[YOUTUBEIF]vts0tqsFcJ0[/YOUTUBEIF]

 

[SpasticGramps]

Notice the rise of inflation starts at the same time the federal reserve was formed in 1913.

Ron Paul is right. ban the fed go back to the gold standard.

Without the FED and a debt based fiat monetary system this graph would be impossible. Another unstoppable force (need for exponential debt creation) about to collide with an immovable object (reality).

 

[itisme]

Bentom1987 Newt says. "All deniable" after he spoke of killing their scientists. Sounds like the sidedoor car bomb job too me

 

[itisme]

Ron Paul Openly Calls GOP Election Fraud
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_LWRc5dRM8

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

I find the dove message a bit ironic, coming from a guy who thinks property rights are being eroded because the use of deadly force is subject to pesky scrutiny.

 

[BrnCow]

No Paul = No Vote in November
Saturday, March 10, 2012 – by Ron Holland

Ron Holland

"I would also say of Ron Paul – he doesn't need to win. In his view he is winning already. This is an ideological point he is making. But here's why it's electorally significant – a lot of people, I mean 41 percent in Virginia, only two people on the ballot, still a lot of people voted for Ron Paul. A lot of those voters are portable. They're not Republican – they're not dedicated Republican voters." – Tucker Carlson, Editor, The Daily Caller

It is time for a groundswell of Ron Paul supporters to quietly, respectfully but firmly make their position clear to the mainstream media and the GOP establishment. Simply put, "No Paul on the ticket means no vote for the GOP in November."

The Ron Paul Campaign has the GOP establishment stuck between a rock and a hard place even though they have not won a single state in the primaries to date. Every Paul supporter knows the underhanded tactics used by the Republican leadership at the state and national level as well as the organized smear and news blackout campaign carried out by the mainstream media.

Making Nice For the November Election

As we move into the last months of the GOP presidential nomination campaign, most of the establishment media are now "making nice" with Ron Paul and his supporters. He actually gets questions during the debates, some press coverage and the other candidates seem friendly. The reason is simple. The Republican Party desperately needs the votes of Ron Paul supporters in order to win in November against Obama.

Obviously, Virginia Heffernan didn't get the memo in her typical anti-Paul elitist drivel titled Ron Paul's Pointless Internet Presidency posted on Yahoo earlier in the week but now this is the exception rather than standard procedure for the press. The word has gone out to be nice and respectful to Ron Paul so they can get our votes in November.

Too Little Too Late

The Republican establishment has obviously done its homework with focus groups, polling, etc. and here is their situation. Although they have successfully held back the Ron Paul campaign to date from threatening to win the GOP presidential nomination, in the dirty tricks process they have ostracized the substantial Paul voting constituency even more from the GOP than before.

Paul supporters are far more than portable as suggested by Tucker Carlson; rather they are toxic toward the GOP elites and very few will now support any of the establishment candidates after the abusive treatment given to Ron Paul as well as the crude attacks against Paul supporters.

I well understand these feelings of resentment, as I am a Ron Paul supporter. There is no way I will vote for either Romney, Santorum or Gingrich, although I certainly prefer their fake rhetoric to the Obama propaganda. If Ron Paul isn't the Republican nominee for president, then the establishment nominee desperately needs the votes of his supporters in order to beat Obama in the fall general election.

The establishment knows the Gingrich and Santorum voters in the GOP Presidential primary will eventually vote for Mitt Romney in November if he wins the Republican presidential nomination at the GOP convention beginning on August 27th, 2012. They also know and fear that most Ron Paul supporters will not vote for the nominee and will likely stay away from the polls in droves thus hurting the other Republican candidates for the House and Senate as well for state and local elections. Basically, 15% of the GOP primary voters will sit out the 2012 November election and this almost guarantees the re-election of Barack Obama.

Why Don't I Really Care If the Democrats or Republicans Win in November?

My answer is regardless of whether Romney or Obama wins the general election despite all the anti-Obama rhetoric by the Republican establishment, little will change on major issues. Romney's campaign promises are identical to all other presidential campaign promises, much to do about nothing. Neither Bush nor Obama kept their campaign promises and neither will Romney.

Course of Action

First, we redouble our efforts in voting and funding the Ron Paul Campaign up through the final primary and caucus.

Second, in editorials, articles or discussions with the press or GOP leadership always emphasize your plans to stay at home on election day if a Ron or Rand Paul is not on the ticket.

Third, at the Republican National Convention when the presidential nomination is handed to Romney, assuming he wins, we continue to stress "NO PAUL = NO VOTE IN NOVEMBER."

Finally, we then wait at the convention for the personal phone call from Mitt Romney following private preliminary discussions where Rand Paul is asked to be the Vice Presidential candidate on a Romney/Paul ticket after assurances Ron Paul will be nominated for an appropriate cabinet level appointment such as Secretary of the Treasury or Defense.

Ron Paul deserves some family time off following the years of campaigning and educating the American people about liberty. He has done more to advance the cause of limited government, peace, liberty and free markets than any American since the time of the American Revolution.

Mitt Romney has spent the last seven years running for President of the United States so obviously he really wants to win. Romney and his advisors must know that without the 15% plus of GOP voters supporting Ron Paul who, unlike Gingrich and Santorum supporters, will sit the election out, he cannot defeat Barack Obama without our support. His only option is to put a "Paul" on the ticket.

Although a Vice President Rand Paul is a great tactical victory, this is only a battle in a long war for the restoration of liberty and legitimate constitutional government to the United States.

When I was a young man in the military during the 1970s, I well remember the antiwar crowds shouting "Hell, no, we won't go!" in opposition to the Vietnam War. Today, 40-plus years later, I'm a grandfather and maybe older and wiser but still willing to a little more respectfully tell the same power elites running this country and both political parties, "Hell, no, I won't go." But this time it is to the polls in November unless there is a Paul on the ticket.

Will you join me?


http://www.infowars.com/no-paul-no-vote-in-november/

 

[greenmatter]

if rand paul decides he is willing to be mitt's VP i hope his dad disowns and shoots him.

politics is just plain and simple revolting .... the deals, the game, and the spin are the absolute pinnacle of horse shit

really fuckin' hard to understand why nothing ever changes ****** sarcasm off ****

 

[bombadil.360]

I find the dove message a bit ironic, coming from a guy who thinks property rights are being eroded because the use of deadly force is subject to pesky scrutiny.

Disco, I pointed out the same in another thread.

obviously, they're not open tp introspection and to honestly view things for what they really are and not for what they appear to be.

sadly enough, they're more than willing to march into their own streets shooting the place up and their own country men over politics; while at the same time think Iran getting nukes is a wonderful thing for the world.

 

[whodare]

Disco, I pointed out the same in another thread.

obviously, they're not open tp introspection and to honestly view things for what they really are and not for what they appear to be.

sadly enough, they're more than willing to march into their own streets shooting the place up and their own country men over politics; while at the same time think Iran getting nukes is a wonderful thing for the world.

if your not from america why bother posting your horse shit.(not to seem rude but why not get your gov to do something if it is that important, or is it just more convenient to let america ruin herself by being world police)

i do agree with you that it wouldn't be a particularly good situation if iran got a nuke...

thing is we arent the world police, but we do have the best missle defense systems in the world, ie. HAARP and the Patriot missile system...

if these fuckers think they can get within range of our borders with a nuclear payload they got another thing coming...

just imagine how hard it would be then if we beefed up our border security with all the troops we could bring home by not being world police...

i hate to see innocent people die but when the rich wage war thats exactly what happens, wether it's "pre-emptive" or otherwise...

so imo war is not something to just jump into because of an "existential" threat. (North Korea has nukes i guess we should be bombing their shit too...)

no the iranian leadership doesnt represent the people, funny though we had the opportunity(since we were over there already) last spring to help the iranian revolution (shit, in both 09 and 11)...

funny didnt hear too much about that though...


hmm maybe they were just too busy in egypt and libya...

http://lubbockonline.com/interact/blog-post/may/2011-02-13/will-president-obama-support-iranian-revolution#.T14Tc5gqNaU

Will President Obama Support an Iranian Revolution?
Submitted by may on February 14, 2011 - 12:54am
The people of Iran will again take to the streets in Tehran and other Iranian cities on Monday morning. The Iranian people hope to gain freedom as the people of Egypt did on Friday.

There are reports that people in the streets of Tehran are already chanting, “Death to the Dictator!” A few days ago, supporters of the current Iranian regime were chanting, “Death to America!”

How will President Obama respond to the protestors in Iran? In the summer of 2009, the Iranian people took to the streets to protest what they considered to be a fraudulent election. The called their movement “The Green Revolution.”

The Iranian people carried signs written in English in 2009. The Egyptian people carried signs written in English in 2011. The intent of both the Iranian people and the Egyptian people was to get the attention of America and the outside world. They wanted help from the news media and from President Obama.

The Egyptian people received the support they were seeking. The Iranian people did not.

The Egyptian military has been with the Egyptian people. The Iranian military appears to be against the Iranian people and in support of the Radical Mullahs and President Ahmadinejad.

Obama said nothing in support of the Iranian people in 2009 or since. The forces of Iranian President Ahmadinejad and the Radical Islamic Mullahs brutalized the Iranian people who protested. Many were imprisoned and executed during and following the protests.

There are reports that more than 100 people who have opposed the current Iranian regime have been executed so far in 2011. Will the people of Iran rise up and demand their brutal leaders step down? If the Iranian people do march in the streets in protest, will President Obama support the freedom the Iranian people are seeking? Will President Obama pressure the Iranian leadership to step down and give power back to the people of Iran?

We will soon see whose side President Obama is on in Iran.

i guess we know whose side he's on....

those chicken hawk warmongers...

 

[whodare]

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29641

While all the incessant warmongering directed toward Iran at the annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington was grabbing the headlines, the momentum for Western intervention into Syria continued to steadily build. All those neo-con "real men," it appears, just might prefer to go to Tehran via Damascus.

Taking to the Senate floor on Monday, Arizona Senator John McCain, one of the first supporters of arming the Free Syrian Army, upped the ante by calling for a U.S.-led air campaign against Syrian military targets. McCain deemed such an escalation necessary to establish “humanitarian corridors.”

“The United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through airstrikes on Assad’s forces,” the intervention-hungry McCain declared.

And as the Washington Post reported in late February, Obama administration officials have made it clear that “additional measures” might still be considered in order to oust Assad. That favored refrain of all options being on the table appears to be in effect in regards to Syria.

Indeed, for according to CNN, the Pentagon has already composed “detailed plans” for military action inside Syria. As the network reported, the Pentagon has especially focused on securing Syrian chemical weapons sites, with one scenario in particular calling “for tens of thousands of troops to potentially be used for guarding the installations.”

Although, according to a December email recently published by Wikileaks from the U.S. global intelligence firm Stratfor (known as a private C.I.A.), special operations forces from the U.S., U.K., France, Jordan, and Turkey are already on the ground in Syria. And as the email states, these forces are actively “training the Free Syrian Army.” Additional measures indeed!

Not wanting to be left behind in any march on Syria, the U.S. corporate media has largely begun to join the ranks of the recently ascendant intervention hawks.

In an editorial on Friday, the New York Times, although ruling out military force, called for providing greater tactical assistance to the Free Syrian Army. As the paper wrote: “The United States and its allies should consider providing the rebels with communications equipment, intelligence and nonlethal training.” Of course, a mission providing such tactical support would ultimately transform into more explicit military involvement.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post also editorialized on Friday for a more credible threat of force against Assad. As the paper wrote:

“The Obama administration’s public arguments against the use of force in Syria are simply encouraging a rogue regime to believe it can act with impunity. Until he is faced with a credible threat of force, from the opposition or outsider powers, Mr. Assad’s slaughter will go on.”

The Christian Science Monitor has likewise called for the U.S. to help “forcefully” end Assad’s rule.

Of course, the driving force behind such intense Western interest in Syria is Iran. Let there be no doubt, the ouster of Assad is not driven by some great humanitarian impulse, or "responsibility to protect." Nor does the bloodletting and slaughter inside the country disturb U.S. elites. After all, the U.S. had no qualms with laying siege to Fallujah. Rather, all the contrived moralizing is being utilized in an attempt to garner support for imposing Syrian “regime change,” which would deal a strategic defeat to Tehran. It’s all nothing more than realpolitik. The Syrian people and their revolution are being cynically recruited as means to imperial ends, and thus would be wise to resist all foreign intervention.

For instance, when the Atlantic’s Jeffery Goldberg stated in a recent interview with President Obama, “But it would seem to me that one way to weaken and further isolate Iran is to remove or help remove Iran’s only Arab ally,” the president responded, “Absolutely.”

Similarly, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy has argued, “The current standoff in Syria presents a rare chance to rid the world of the Iranian menace to international security and well-being.”

It’s target Iran, albeit on a Syrian battlefield. Therefore, that anti-Iran propaganda machine that is the U.S. media revs up.

Writing in the Washington Post, stenographers Joby Warrick and Liz Sly reported over the weekend that:

“U.S. officials say they see Iran’s hand in the increasingly brutal crackdown on opposition strongholds in Syria, including evidence of Iranian military and intelligence support for government troops accused of mass executions and other atrocities in the past week.”

The Post’s report was of course based solely on three anonymous U.S. officials. And as Warrick and Sly even admit in their piece, “such accounts are generally difficult to verify independently." Thus they don't.

On Monday, though, a similar piece of propaganda appeared at CNN. Penned by CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, it also reports of Iranian infiltration into Syria, although Starr only relies on two anonymous U.S. officials. What hay a seasoned propagandist can make with such limited sources!

Yet amidst this mounting drive for Western intervention into Syria, President Obama spoke on Tuesday in an apparent attempt to tamp down all such notions, going so far as to call military intervention a “mistake.” As the president went on to state, “the notion that the way to solve every one of these problems is to deploy our military, that hasn't been true in the past and it won't be true now.”

Such reassurances aside, actions do, as the president himself implored in his AIPAC speech over the weekend, speak louder than words. And so while the president publicly posits that military intervention would be a mistake, his military readies for intervention into Syria, while continuing its larger ongoing build-up in the region.

The march towards Syria with eyes cast towards Iran continues on. For as Albeit Einstein once remarked, "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."

http://mises.org/daily/5940/Unjust-Wars-Then-and-Now

Unjust Wars, Then and Now


According to the Federation of American Scientists, nine countries account for the approximately 20,500 nuclear weapons known to exist, with the United States having 8,500 of these. Iran has none. Between 150–200 B61 nuclear bombs, the primary thermonuclear weapon in the United States, are deployed in Europe at six bases in five countries, one of which is Turkey, a border state of Iran.

By contrast, Iran has no known military bases in Canada or Mexico, nor has it imposed sanctions against the United States, as the United States and other countries have done to Iran. Yet, Iran is considered a threat to peace and stability because the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report last November saying it very definitely might or might not be building a nuclear device.

If the United States ends up at war with Iran, there arises the question of what it will cost and how to pay for it. Using recent history as a guide, the total financial cost of the Iraq invasion, including veterans' support, is expected to reach $4 trillion. Yet in 2002, Bush economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey was fired for saying the Iraq war could cost as much as $200 billion, which was 3–4 times the Department of Defense estimate. Even if someone knew how much an Iran war would cost, no one would believe him. But it's clear we do have an idea of how we would pay for it: more debt.

On Friday, August 5, 2011, S&P downgraded US debt from AAA to AA+, citing a failure of government to stabilize its "medium-term debt dynamics." The previous Tuesday, Congress had voted to raise the debt ceiling by $2 trillion. S&P's downgrade, as Gary North viewed it, was their way of saying, "Yes, the loud noise you heard on Tuesday really was what it sounded like." It was a crack in the ice, a signal for smart skaters to head for shore.

Those pushing for more war and more debt are not smart skaters. How did we go from our core political principle of "live and let live" to the hegemonic "live the way we say, or we'll bomb you back to the stone age!"? How did we reach the point where smart economists tell us the size of the government debt is irrelevant as long as we keep the tax slaves rowing faster and faster? Actually, it began right from the start.

Funding a "Just War" Unjustly

Unlike the various US invasions in the Middle East and Asia of the past several decades, there is strong conviction among many Americans about the legitimacy of the country's founding war. A legitimate war, or what Murray Rothbard called a just war, "exists when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already-existing domination." Like all wars, a just war is laced with dangers beyond the inferno of the battles, especially if war funding relies to a significant degree on the printing press. The American Revolution is a case in point.

On June 22, 1775, the colonial delegates who were assembled in Philadelphia, under the inspiration of Gouverneur Morris,[1] decided to print $2 million in "bills of credit" called Continentals. The plan was to begin redeeming them in 1779, not with hard coin, but by levying taxes in the Continentals themselves, which would then be retired. So appealing was the idea of printing money that by 1779 a total of $227 million had been issued. The bills were everywhere, and everywhere despised. In a letter to John Jay, president of the Continental Congress, George Washington complained that "a wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions." By December 1779 the Continental had fallen to 42:1 against specie, and by spring of 1781 the currency was virtually worthless.

Individual states were also printing money to finance the war, and the British too adopted the printing press as a war strategy, printing Continentals and using Tories known as "shovers" to shove the imitations into circulation and thus accelerate the currency's depreciation.

Inflationists in Congress viewed depreciation as a clever way to impose the necessary taxes to pay for the war, though Gouverneur Morris thought it was too bad Washington's soldiers would suffer the most from this tactic. As the value of the currency rapidly approached zero, the Continental army turned to direct theft ("impressment") to acquire their provisions when merchants balked at trading goods for something worthless.

The Continental was allowed to die without redeeming it, but in 1779 Congress began emitting "loan certificates" that were also used as money. A big chunk of this money hung around after the war as a peacetime public debt. Robert Morris, the leader of the nationalist faction, pushed for its redemption at par in specie as a means of stuffing the pockets of associates who had purchased the certificates at highly depreciated prices.

Redemption was also a way of rallying support for taxing power in Congress. Under the Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union, which was ratified on March 1, 1781, the United States of America was considered a "league of friendship" rather than a central government, with each state retaining "its sovereignty, freedom, and independence." Although the articles recognized the obligation of Congress to pay all debts incurred before ratification, they did not give Congress authority to coerce such payments from the states.

To the nationalists, the lack of taxing power and other alleged deficiencies made the Confederation government "the laughing stock of the Atlantic world," as historian Leonard L. Richards notes in his masterpiece, Shays's Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle.[2] Throughout the 1780s, they tried fruitlessly to get enough of them together to replace the Articles of Confederation. In modern parlance, what they needed was a "new Pearl Harbor," a major crisis that could be propagandized for political ends. In 1786, Shays's Rebellion provided the break they needed.

Shays's Regulators

As the official story is told, indigent farmers in western Massachusetts were unable to pay their taxes, so the courts were sending them to jail and seizing their farms. To avoid the penalties for defaulting on their debts, the story continues, Daniel Shays and a few other "wretched officers" from the Revolution led backcountry rabble to shut down the courts.

Massachusetts Governor James Bowdoin called out the militia to put a stop to the uprising. When most of the militiamen sided with the rebels, he turned to wealthy Bostonians to fund a temporary army. Led by General Benjamin Lincoln, the army prevented the insurgents from seizing the federal arsenal at Springfield in late January 1787, then crushed the rebellion permanently a week later in a surprise attack at Petersham. Although the top rebel leaders fled to other states, most of the others eventually returned to their farms. Bowdoin agreed to pardon the rebels if they signed an oath of allegiance to the state, which the vast majority did.

As Richards argues compellingly, the standard story of Shays's Rebellion as an uprising of debtor farmers doesn't wash. Richards had discovered by accident that the Massachusetts archives had microfilmed the signatures of the 4,000 men who signed the state's oath of allegiance. Since many of the insurgents also included their occupations and hometowns, he was able to gather more information about them with the help of town archivists and historians. For example,

At the time of the rebellion Daniel Shays owed money to at least ten men. Of those ten, three were rebel leaders. For every rebel who went to court as a debtor, another went as a creditor.

Colrain, the most rebellious town, had 12 families involved in debt suits during 1785 and 1786. Yet only four of these families provided men to the town's total of 156 rebels. Their leader, James White, who led the assault against the Springfield arsenal, was convicted of high treason. He was also one of Colrain's creditors.

In 1786 creditors in Connecticut took over 20 percent of the state's taxpayers to court. Yet there was no comparable revolt in Connecticut.

It wasn't debt that triggered the rebellion, Richards concludes; it was the new state government and its attempt to enrich the few at the expense of the backcountry.

Like other states, Massachusetts had issued notes to help fund the Revolutionary War. Immediately upon issue, they depreciated to about 1/4 par, and later declined to about 1/40 of their face value. Many soldiers were paid in these notes, then later unloaded them to speculators at high discounts. Speculators bought roughly 80 percent of the notes, of which half were owned by just 35 men. Every one of these 35 had served in the state house during the 1780s or had a close relative who did.

The legislature voted to consolidate its war notes at face value and praised the speculators as "worthy patriots" who had come to the state's aid in its time of need. But these men did not buy the notes directly from the government; they bought them for a song from farmers and soldiers, who were now being taxed to redeem them at full value. The speculators, most of whom had stayed home during the war, were seeking to benefit at the expense of veterans.

Poll and property taxes were to account for 90 percent of all taxes. The poll tax placed a fine on every male 16 years or older. Thus, a regressive tax ensured a wealth transfer from farm families with grown sons to the pockets of Boston speculators.

Nationalist versions of the insurgency spread throughout the states and upset many elites, including George Washington, who was enjoying a peaceful retirement at Mount Vernon. According to Washington's trusted friend and former artillery commander General Henry Knox, who was planning to build a four-story summer home on one of his Maine properties, the insurgents wanted to seize the property of the rich and redistribute it to the poor and desperate. David Humphreys, one of Washington's former aides living in New Haven, told him the uprising was due to a "licentious spirit among the people," whom he characterized as "levelers" determined "to annihilate all debts public & private."

The "rebels," for their part, saw themselves from the very beginning as Regulators whose purpose was "the suppressing of tyrannical government in the Massachusetts State." The Shays Regulators drew on the success story of Vermont in the 1770s in which Bennington farmers, in a dispute with New York land speculators, had stopped courts from sitting and terrorized surveyors sent on behalf of the speculators.

On March 19, 1787, Knox wrote Washington hinting that he would be given the president's chair at the Philadelphia convention in May. Knox stressed that Washington would not be presiding over some middling conference of tinkerers amending a defective document but instead would be leading a prestigious body of men as they created a more "energetic and judicious system."

Nationalists at the Constitutional Convention that spring wanted a stronger central government — an elective monarchy, in Alexander Hamilton's view. Though they didn't get the results they pushed for, the nationalists and their intellectual heirs of today have shown that their lust for a more "energetic" government will not be thwarted by words on paper.

Hamilton's Funding Proposals

As Rothbard notes, there were two ways to fund the debt: One way that was compatible with the decentralized nature of the union under the Articles of Confederation was to apportion the congressional debt among the states and let them raise taxes to pay their share. The other way was crucial to "the cherished principles of national aggrandizement": give Congress the power to tax so it can do the funding.[3] Article I, section 8, clause 1 secured this power.

In January 1790, the 34-year-old Hamilton, as Treasury secretary, presented his plan to Congress for retiring the Revolutionary War debt. The $54 million federal debt would be funded at par and the federal government would assume responsibility for the states' $25 million war debts. The plan called for converting federal debt into bonds that would mature after an assigned period of time, paying 4 percent interest on long-term bonds and 6 percent interest on those of shorter duration. The new government would pay the principal on the debt from a sinking fund established through the post office. Revenue for the fund would come from an import tariff and an excise tax on what Hamilton labeled "pernicious luxuries" that included whiskey. His plan was not to pay off the debt, but to recycle it. When bonds came due he would have new bonds issued to replace them. As long as interest payments on the debt could be paid, the government's credit was assured.

Among those opposing his plan was Hamilton's former Federalist Papers ally, James Madison, who argued that repaying the debt at par to current bearers was stiffing war veterans and farmers for the benefit of wealthy "stockjobbers." He favored a plan of discrimination, wherein the government would pay the original bearers the face value of the certificates and the current bearers the highest market value plus interest.

Aside from the near impossibility of finding the original bearers, Hamilton opposed discrimination on the grounds that it amounted to a "breach of contract" if the government did not pay to the bearer on demand the full value of their certificates. How else would the government "justify and preserve their confidence"? The buyer of a depreciated security, Hamilton argued,

is not even chargeable with having taken an undue advantage. He paid what the commodity was worth in the market, and took the risks of reimbursement upon himself. He of course gave a fair equivalent, and ought to reap the benefit of his hazard; a hazard which was far from inconsiderable, and which, perhaps, turned on little less than a revolution in government.

In funding wealthy speculators in this manner, Hamilton was well aware this would concentrate investment capital in relatively few hands and would encourage them to make further investments in the federal government. This was a critical part of his agenda: to strengthen the union at the expense of the individual states.

Senator William Maclay, one of Hamilton's most vocal critics, brought the public into the debate with a scathing article he wrote for a Philadelphia newspaper in February 1790. Assumption, he argued, was a means of reducing state governments to insignificance and of establishing a "pompous Court," by which he meant an arrogant and powerful central government. "The people will be meddling with serious matters unless you amuse them with trifles," he said caustically. A pompous Court in partnership with a pliant press would keep the people amused as it goes about its task of having the citizenry subsidize New York's moneyed class. The Treasury will grow in influence, and thus

shall the capital of the United States [New York] in a few years equal London or Paris in population, extent, expense and dissipation, while for the aggrandizement of one spot, and one set of men, the national debt shall tower aloft to hundreds of millions.

As the debate raged throughout the spring and early summer, Hamilton, sensing defeat, turned to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson for help. Jefferson invited Madison and Hamilton over for supper and together they cut a deal. In exchange for the needed votes, Hamilton would agree to relocate the nation's capital from New York to Philadelphia for 10 years, then finally to a place on the Potomac, where it would be next door to Virginia, more accessible to the South generally, and removed from Hamilton's power base. The arrangement was consummated when the Residence Act narrowly passed both houses in early July, and the funding bill became law on August 4 by a slim margin.

Still, the issue did not die. On December 16, a date immortalized by the Boston Tea Party in 1773, Virginia's General Assembly issued a formal protest. Unlike many heavily indebted northern states, Virginia had already imposed taxes to redeem a large part of its debt and had expected the balance to be extinguished in the near future. Hamilton's plan of assumption would benefit the more profligate states while imposing heavy taxes on Virginians for which the Assembly had no way of providing relief. Furthermore, since no clause of the Constitution gave Congress the authority to assume the debts of the states, and given that obedience to the law of the land was held as a "hallowed maxim," Virginia could not "acquiesce in a measure" that was clearly unconstitutional. As the perpetuation of debt in England has threatened everything that relates to English liberty, the Assembly noted, the same can be expected in the United States if assumption is not repealed.

It wasn't.

The eight Massachusetts men in the House had been badly split on many issues regarding the new government, but on assumption they were united, because the debt would be funded by means other than direct taxes. According to Governor John Hancock, the consolidated debt of Massachusetts was $5,276,955, of which $5,055,451 ended up in Hamilton's program. Institutions claimed $347,097 of this amount, while the remaining part belonged to 1,480 individual citizens. Included in this group were speculators living in or near Boston who would be awarded almost 80 percent of the monetary total.[4]

State leaders in Massachusetts had tried to pay off the state's war debts by 1790, and for this they had imposed an onerous tax scheme borne mostly by farmers in the west. Hamilton's plan removed this burden. Since many of them were subsistence farmers, rarely buying anything from the outside world, the new taxes amounted to almost no tax at all. The federal debt thus had little effect on their everyday lives. The taxes that drove them to shut down the courts in 1786 were gone.

Conclusion

Hamilton's funding proposals were step one in a fiscal policy that later included a rudimentary central bank and a proposal to protect favored American industries from foreign competition. By hijacking the legal system, Hamilton did indeed manufacture a "revolution in government," one that overturned the revolution of 1776. Though ostensibly constrained by the new constitution, he reinterpreted key clauses in such a way that the government could do almost anything, as long as it was declared to be in "the public interest."

Somehow, ordinary Americans found themselves to be the public whose interests required subordination to the decrees of the government.

The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, in which Hamilton joined President Washington and 13,000 conscripts and officers from the creditor aristocracy of the eastern seaboard to crush penny-ante tax protestors in western Pennsylvania, dramatized this point.

So did the War to Prevent Southern Independence and every war or crisis since. So did the Sixteenth Amendment, the Seventeenth Amendment, the Federal Reserve Act, the Current Tax Payment Act of 1943 (withholding), the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act — I leave it to the reader to fill in the rest.

Today, with Hamilton's "implied powers" interpretation of the Constitution deeply ingrained in public rhetoric, a major political figure like Nancy Pelosi can respond contemptuously to a question about ObamaCare's constitutionality without fearing congressional censure.

As the US national debt continues its ascent to the heavens with the blessings of leading economists, the massive tower of IOUs sways to and fro at the mercy of political currents. Will Asians continue to buy the debt? Will the Fed be pressured to monetize more of it? Will the Fed say, "Enough!" and let interest rates soar? Will the government, with its dedication to endless war and cheap money, take over the task of obliterating the dollar so it can fulfill the grandiose dreams of the political class?


Or will people finally say, "Enough!" and remove the government from monetary affairs altogether?

Fortunately, the ideas of Austrian masters such as Mises and Rothbard are permeating American politics, and not just in the presidential race. No longer can the Federal Reserve print without detection and foundational analysis, as witnessed by the success of such books as Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, as well as the countless blogosphere commentaries and speeches bringing light to the Fed's perfidy.

In 1971, after severing the dollar's last tie to gold, President Nixon announced, appropriately, "I am now a Keynesian in economics." With the ice cracking under Keynesians and their promise of a free lunch, there could soon be a leader who can rightly proclaim that Austrian economics has saved the day.

 

[bentom187]

no ones gonna shoot up anything just like if heroin where leagle tommorow, are you gonna go shoot up? i dont think so.
the second ammendment is the ammendment that protects all the others.its the idea of not knowing who is armed,people will naturally be less inclined to transgress including politicians.
so that would essentially keep the peace.
now from a global perspective, using our military offensivley in pre-emptive strikes is gonna make for alot of enimies,and its unsustainable economicly.
its just cause and effect.
also i personally beleive i wouldnt make anyone else do anything i wouldnt be willing to do myself first,and that includes sending them off to die in the middle east to protect the intrests of the few.


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