RedStateEclectic

Saving the Titanic - An Alternative Currency

Image credit.

As the two pieces below show, imagery drawn from the Titanic's disaster enjoys much currency these days, even though the anniversary of the super-vessel's sinking is still five days away.

I consider the Vieira interview (bottom of post) especially noteworthy - a very serious attempt at finding a practical way to fundamentally change the monetary framework of the USA. Vieira makes one wonder: will perhaps Nebraska spearhead a new American currency?

But first this:

We are like passengers on the Titanic ten minutes after its fatal encounter with the iceberg: the idea that the ship will sink is beyond belief.
 

As we all know, the "unsinkable" Titanic suffered a glancing collision with an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912. Ten minutes after the iceberg had opened six of the ship's 16 watertight compartments, it was not at all apparent that the mighty vessel had been fatally wounded, as there was no evidence of damage topside. Indeed, some eyewitnesses reported that passengers playfully scattered the ice left on the foredeck by the encounter.

But some rudimentary calculations soon revealed the truth to the officers: the ship was designed to survive four watertight compartments being compromised, and could likely stay afloat if five were opened to the sea, but not if six compartments were flooded. Water would inevitably spill over into adjacent compartments in a domino-like fashion until the ship sank.

We can sympathize with the disbelief of the officers, and with their confused reaction, simultaneously reassuring passengers and attempting to goad them into the lifeboats. With the interior still warm and bright with lights, it seemed far more dangerous to clamber into an open lifeboat and drift off into the cold Atlantic than it did to stay onboard.

As a result, the first lifeboats left the ship only partially full. Only when it became undeniable that the ship was doomed did people attempt to "make other arangements," but by then it was too late.

The tragedy was a cruel mix of human error (entering an ice field at nearly top speed, 23-25 knots), hubris-soaked planning (only enough lifeboats for half the passengers and crew) and design flaws: the high-sulfur iron hull plating did not bend when struck by the ice, it shattered like china.

As noted above, the watertight compartment design was also flawed; indeed, some studies have found that the ship would have stayed afloat an additional six hours had there been no watertight compartments, as water would have sloshed evenly along the entire length of the vessel.

I think this perfectly describes the present. Our financial system seems "unsinkable," yet the reliance on debt and financialization has already doomed it, whether we are willing to believe it or not.

Read the entire post.

 

And now, Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Constitutional Attorney and Author, and his plan for a Constitutional alternative gold and silver currency, run at the state level, to bring sound money to America.

 

The last exit ramp on the road to unlimited government.

George Will writes about the Institute for Justice’s amicus brief to the SCOTUS concerning Obamacare:

Now the Institute for Justice (IJ), a libertarian public interest law firm, has focused on this fact: The individual mandate is incompatible with centuries of contract law. This is so because a compulsory contract is an oxymoron.

Full Article.

Many oxymorons can be found within government (like army intelligence) so why should this hiccup stop them? Even if SCOTUS buys into the argument, it only means that some detail or another need be ironed out before the mantle of legality is bestowed upon American socialized medicine.

It’s fair to say that both sides want it in some form, depending on where partisan special interests align. Medicare is heading toward unaffordability and both big-government parties wish to ration medical care for the power it can bring. We can place bets, but it seems a lock that SCOTUS will endeavor to keep the door open – even if they nit-pick some legal minutia along the way.

Beyond Politics

I have come across a book entitled Beyond Politics in a reading list provided by Don Boudreaux.

He described the book as the best introduction to Public Choice he knows of.

Yesterday, I started reading Beyond Politics. I am at page 110 of 220.

It is a truly excellent book. Easy to read, thorough, comprehensive, graphic.

It is a bit of a puzzle to me how it can be that we know so much about government failure (the subject of public choice), and still predominantly behave as if government is the all-purpose producer of benign solutions to almost any problem or challenge under the sun.

It so happens, The Independent Institute has this interview with one of the two authors of the earlier 1990s editions (see cover image).

I find Simmons' chuckle somewhat irritating, it sounds like a dog sniffing or panting. However, what counts is that he has coauthored a book that every grown-up should read. 

Note what Simmons (to the right) has to say about his own experience in an active political career.

 

USA Founded to Avoid Obama (2/2)

...increasingly even fervent adulators of the walking teleprompter, the eager facilitator of totalitarian rule, are beginning to get it. In July 2008 I wrote:

... the Colonists severed their ties with Britain, and the United States of America were founded to make sure that people like Obama and their confused and dangerous thinking - basically copying European social democracy / socialism - could never hold sway over the nation.

See USA Founded to Avoid Obama (1/2)

 

The Future of the EUSSR

The below video explains the legal status of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), and sums up incredulously, the EMS

"is an organization that can sue us, but is immune from any forms of prosecution and whose managers enjoy the same immunity; there are no independent reviewers and no existing laws apply; governments can not take action against it? Europe's national budgets in the hands of one single unelected intergovernmental organization? Is that the future of Europe? Is that the new EU? A Europe devoid of sovereign democracies?"

Hardly anyone will notice or care, over here in Germany. Ever since the introduction of the Euro, people have betrayed a complete lack of interest in the state of representative democracy, and trust that government, whoever that is, will guide and protect them well.

For links to more posts on the EUSSR, start with my EUSSR against the People.

Indefinite Detention

This past week, the US Senate and House passed the National Defense Authorization Act which, in its 1800 pages, confirms the executive branch's assertion that American citizens who are associated or provided material support to terrorists may be held indefinitely without trial or rights. We now afford more rights to serial killers and child molesters in this country than the person who supports some humanitarian group that may surreptitiously provide support for terrorist states.  Congressman Justin Amash (MI-3) has led the charge in the House to amend the grievous sections that codify these new powers. Unfortunately his efforts failed and the bill passed with just 43 GOP and 93 Democrat nays. I sort of feel like if more understood what the implications were and the media covered it at all the outcome might have been more close.

Amash published his rebuttal explaining why the provisions are so dangerous at redstate.

Section 1021 thus claims that it merely “affirms” the President’s authority under the 9/11 AUMF, including the alleged authority to detain persons the President determines are “associated forces.”  While the section is framed as an affirmation, it can be viewed as that only if Congress adopted the President’s expansive interpretation of the 9/11 AUMF—an action Congress never had taken before Thursday.  To be clear: When the Senate passed the NDAA conference report on Thursday, for the first time in history, Congress approved the indefinite detention of persons who “substantially supported . . . associated forces.”

Who could this cover?  An American citizen living in Michigan makes a one-time donation to a non-violent humanitarian group.  Years later, the group commits hostile acts against an ally of the U.S.  Under the NDAA that just passed Congress, if the President determines the group was “associated” with terrorists, the President is authorized to detain the donor indefinitely, and without charge or trial.

Comments vary from the typical, well if it passed with a majority of Republicans then it must have been conservative to my favorite reply from someone responding to that argument:

They hate it so much they're going to pass it

znjs Saturday, December 17th at 11:45AM EST (link)

And if “Conservative” now means hating the bill of rights, then I guess I’m not conservative anymore.

Be sure to read all of Amash's very detailed explanation here.

GAO Audit of Federal Reserve System

Sometimes privilege breeds greed that breeds unconcern that breeds vengeance (or a passion for justice).

For quite some time now, I have felt rather amazed by the overt flagrancy with which American financial institutions, especially Goldman Sachs, practice their self-serving participation in government and other powerful state (and quasi-state) institutions.

A German proverb suggests: Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall. Arrogance comes before the fall. Is that so?

From the Testosterone Pit we learn:

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) finished its second audit of the Federal Reserve System and came out with a 127-page report that outlines, among other issues, the huge and complex conflicts of interests that arose when the Fed decided who got what during the multi-trillion dollar bailout mania between 2007 and 2009 (for a 1-page timeline of bailout mania, click here; for Senator Bernie Sanders' 4-page Report on the GAO Audit, click here).

...

September 20, Goldman Sachs [GS, G.T.], now tottering too, submitted an application to become a bank holding company. With Friedman [board member and shareholder of GS; G.T.] being chairman of the New York Fed, the application was approved overnight. That did a number of things, among them: It gave the firm access to the Fed's unlimited resources; and Friedman became ineligible to remain a Class C director and should have resigned, but didn't.

Then on September 23, there was a public demonstration of just how intertwined the financial elite around the Fed is. Friedman's long-time friend and client Warren Buffet announced Berkshire Hathaway's investment in Goldman Sachs. During an interview with CNBC, Buffet said that he wouldn't have made the move, had he not been certain that Goldman Sachs would get bailed out. And he got a special deal: $5 billion in preferred stock with a 10% annual dividend plus warrants to buy $5 billion in common stock at a strike price of $115. When the announcement was made after hours, GS jumped to $134.75. The warrants were already in the money (today, GS closed at $100.86).

In October that year, the New York Fed asked for a waiver that would allow Friedman to remain a Class C director while being a board member and stockholder of Goldman Sachs, the very firm he was now regulating and bailing out. On January 21, 2009, the waiver was approved though not publicly disclosed. But throughout that time, Friedman, as chairman of the New York Fed, purchased more Goldman Sachs stock, knowing what bailout instruments were being planned and implemented, and which firm got how much and under what conditions.

Killer on the Road ...

There's a killer on the road,

His brain is squirmin' like a toad ...

 

I simply cannot believe that the President of the US just ordered an American citizen killed, without trial or due process, and the country just yawns. And in some cases, cheered.  Are we really going to make the Fifth Amendment, along with the Fourth, the Ninth, and the Tenth, another “just kidding” passage?  Its amazing that the same kids that marched  against Nixon’s abuse of power have decided this is perfectly OK.

The source.

Ron Paul said Monday that President Barack Obama’s targeted killing of the American, Anwar al-Awlaki, might be an impeachable offense, Politico reports.

Asked at a Manchester, N.H. town hall meeting about last week’s killing, Dr. Paul said impeachment would be “possible,” but that he wants to know more about how the administration “flouted the law.”

Paul called the killing a movement toward “tyranny.”

“I put responsibility on the president because this is obviously a step in the wrong direction,” Paul said. “We have just totally disrespected the Constitution.”

The source.

Glik v. Boston: Court Affirms Right to Record Police Actions

In a huge victory for free speech, transparency, and the public at large, the First Circuit Panel affirms the right of vigilant citizens to videotape police actions carrying out their duties in public:

The First Amendment issue here is, as the parties frame it, fairly narrow: is there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.

[…]

As the Supreme Court has observed, “the First Amendment goes beyond protection of the press and the self-expression of individuals to prohibit government from limiting the stock of information from which members of the public may draw.”

[…]

The First Amendment right to gather news is, as the Court has often noted, not one that inures solely to the benefit of the news media; rather, the public’s right of access to information is coextensive with that of the press.

Not only does Simon Glik v. City of Boston (PDF) establish that police officers are violating Americans’ First Amendment rights when they prevent, prohibit, or confiscate cameras of vigilant citizens recording the police actions, but as Cato’s David Rittgers have noted, might also strike at the heart of Massachusetts’ police use of felony wiretapping laws to punish citizens. The only issue that Rittgers neglected to point out is that Glik v. Boston seems to only apply to police actions in public.

Regardless, this sets a powerful precedent that will stymie the police state and hinder its attempts to cover up their public crimes against the unarmed citizenry they purport to serve and defend. The next step then is to extend First Amendment protections to all recording of police crimes: whether it be committed in the full sight of the public or away from its prying eyes.

Abdication of Responsibility is Not Part of the Constitutional Design

I am wondering if this "Super Congress" that created by this recent debt ceiling deal would face or even pass a constitutional muster.

The last time Congress attempted to (legally) abdicate their responsibility to another body was the Line-Item Veto Act of 1996, which was challenged and then declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Clinton v. New York City. Justice Kennedy, in his concurrent opinion, wrote that "Failure of political will does not justify unconstitutional remedies. Abdication of responsibility is not part of the constitutional design."

What is this "Super Congress" if not a complete abdication of responsibility by the Senate and the House of Representatives?