The Felonious Monk Tells The President & Federal Government to PAY THEIR BILLS!

FYI - Some REAL education & #TRUTH for the Federal Government from The Felonious Monk!

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Sheldon Richman: Lysander Spooner on the National Debt

FYI - Some good food for thought from Sheldon Richman and C4SS/FFF

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Center for a Stateless Society

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Lysander Spooner On The National Debt

Sheldon Richman | September 27th, 2013

 

The following article was written by Sheldon Richman and published at The Future of Freedom Foundation, September 27, 2013.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew says if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling — or, as I call it, the debt sky, because apparently the sky is the limit — the government won’t be able to pay all its bills starting October 17. The Congressional Budget Office says that dire condition won’t set in until sometime between October 22 and 31.
As he has each time this issue has come up, President Obama emphasizes that increasing the debt would only permit the government to pay expenses already incurred and would not finance new spending. To which I again reply, rhetorically: Why is Congress allowed to spend money that it knows it won’t possess unless the debt limit is raised? Not only does that violate good sense, it also rigs the debate over the debt limit by threatening default as the price of voting no.
Such a query about the debt sky assumes that Congress operates in a context of legitimacy. So what we really need to do is step back and question that context itself. To do that, there is no better person to turn to than Lysander Spooner (1808–1887), lawyer, abolitionist, entrepreneur, and libertarian subversive. It so happens that in section XVII of his 1870 essay “The Constitution of No Authority” (number 6 in his No Treason series), Spooner took up the question of government debt with his signature fresh look. As you might imagine, he left nothing standing.
“On general principles of law and reason,” Spooner wrote, “debts contracted in the name of ‘the United States,’ or of ‘the people of the United States,’ are of no validity.”
How could that be?

It is utterly absurd to pretend that debts to the amount of twenty-five hundred millions of dollars are binding upon thirty-five or forty millions of people, when there is not a particle of legitimate evidence — such as would be required to prove a private debt — that can be produced against any one of them, that either he, or his properly authorized attorney, ever contracted to pay one cent.
Certainly, neither the whole people of the United States, nor any number of them, ever separately or individually contracted to pay a cent of these debts.

He has a point. I can’t recall ever registering such consent — or being asked to, for that matter. Can you? Aren’t we taught that the “consent of the governed” is a sacred American principle?
Earlier in the essay, Spooner handily disposes of the claim that voting or paying taxes implies consent. Since we are subjected to the government’s impositions whether or not we vote — opting out is forbidden — any given individual may have cast a vote purely in self-defense, for the perceived lesser of two evils. And paying taxes certainly cannot signify consent, because the penalty for nonpayment is theft of one’s property, imprisonment, or (should one resist) death. In fact, there is no way not to consent, which makes the whole question rather suspicious. How can one actually consent if there is no possible way to withhold consent? (Charles W. Johnson has something to say about that.)
So by what authority do the people who claim to constitute the U.S. government borrow money in our names and compel us to repay the debt? By no authority at all, as far as I can see, unless “might makes right” counts as authority.
Spooner continues,

How, then, is it possible, on any general principle of law or reason, that debts that are binding upon nobody individually, can be binding upon forty millions of people collectively, when, on general and legitimate principles of law and reason, these forty millions of people neither have, nor ever had, any corporate property? never made any corporate or individual contract? and neither have, nor ever had, any corporate existence?

It seems that this is not possible. “Who, then, created these debts, in the name of ‘the United States’?” he asks.

Why, at most, only a few persons, calling themselves “members of Congress,” etc., who pretended to represent “the people of the United States,” but who really represented only a secret band of robbers and murderers, who wanted money to carry on the robberies and murders in which they were then engaged; and who intended to extort from the future people of the United States, by robbery and threats of murder (and real murder, if that should prove necessary), the means to pay these debts.

Here, when Spooner says the members of Congress only “pretended to represent” Americans at large, he is referring to his earlier point that because the ballot is secret, we really don’t know whom these alleged representatives actually represent, that is, whose agents they really are.

The money, therefore, was all borrowed and lent in the dark; that is, by men who did not see each other’s faces, or know each other’s names; who could not then, and cannot now, identify each other as principals in the transactions; and who consequently can prove no contract with each other.

But this is just the beginning of the problems with the so-called public debt.

Furthermore, the money was all lent and borrowed for criminal purposes; that is, for purposes of robbery and murder; and for this reason the contracts were all intrinsically void; and would have been so, even though the real parties, borrowers and lenders, had come face to face, and made their contracts openly, in their own proper names.

And how is this borrowed money to be repaid?

Having no corporate property with which to pay what purports to be their corporate debts, this secret band of robbers and murderers are really bankrupt. They have nothing to pay with. In fact, they do not propose to pay their debts otherwise than from the proceeds of their future robberies and murders. These are confessedly their sole reliance; and were known to be such by the lenders of the money, at the time the money was lent. And it was, therefore, virtually a part of the contract, that the money should be repaid only from the proceeds of these future robberies and murders. For this reason, if for no other, the contracts were void from the beginning.

In fact, Spooner continues,

these apparently two classes, borrowers and lenders, were really one and the same class. They borrowed and lent money from and to themselves. They themselves were not only part and parcel, but the very life and soul, of this secret band of robbers and murderers, who borrowed and spent the money. Individually they furnished money for a common enterprise; taking, in return, what purported to be corporate promises for individual loans. The only excuse they had for taking these so-called corporate promises of, for individual loans by, the same parties, was that they might have some apparent excuse for the future robberies of the band (that is, to pay the debts of the corporation), and that they might also know what shares they were to be respectively entitled to out of the proceeds of their future robberies.

When Spooner rips away the veil, we are left with the fact that a group of unknown profit-seeking principals authorize their agents to use the former’s money in order to, among other things, extort a larger sum of money from a larger group of people who never consented to an arrangement in the first place. And it is all done, dishonestly, in the name of that larger group with the fraudulent words “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” It’s the greatest swindle ever perpetrated.
Finally, Spooner writes,

if these debts had been created for the most innocent and honest purposes, and in the most open and honest manner, by the real parties to the contracts, these parties could thereby have bound nobody but themselves, and no property but their own. They could have bound nobody that should have come after them, and no property subsequently created by, or belonging to, other persons.

The debt, then, was and is illegitimately incurred. The lenders, who voluntarily entered into this relationship with government officials, should have known that. Perhaps the lenders should sue those officials and collect damages from the officials’ personal property, but it seems more accurate to think of them as Spooner did: as accomplices in crime. (See section XVIII of his essay.)
At any rate, they can have no proper claim against the rest of us.

Ron Paul on the Budget Showdown: A Grand Bargain for Liberty?

FYI - From Rep. Ron Paul/The Ron Paul Institute.

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A Grand Bargain for Liberty?

Sunday September 29, 2013

As I write this, it appears that the federal government is about to shut down because the House and Senate cannot agree on whether to add language defunding or delaying Obamacare to the “Continuing Resolution”. Despite all the hand-wringing heard in DC, a short-term government shut down (which doesn’t actually shut down the government) will not cause the country to collapse.
And the American people would benefit if Obamacare was defeated or even delayed.

Obamacare saddles the American health care system with new spending and mandates which will raise the price and lower the quality of health care. Denying funds to this program may give Congress time to replace this bill with free-market reforms that put patients and physicians back in charge of health care. Defunding the bill before it becomes implemented can spare the American people from falling under the worst effects of this law.

As heartened as we should be by the fight against Obamacare, we should be equally disheartened by the fact that so few in DC are talking about making real cuts in federal spending. Even fewer are talking about reductions in the most logical place to reduce spending: the military-industrial complex.

 The US military budget constitutes almost 50 percent of the total worldwide military spending.  Yet to listen to some in Congress, one would think that America was one canceled multi-million dollar helicopter contract away from being left totally defenseless.

What makes this military spending impossible to justify is that is does not benefit the American people. Instead, by fomenting resentment and hatred among the world population, our costly interventionist foreign policy makes our people less safe. Thus, reducing spending on militarism would not only help balance the budget, but would enhance our security.

Yet both the House and the Senate continuing resolutions not only fail to reduce military spending, they actually authorize $20 billion more in military spending than authorized by the “sequestration” created by the 2011 Budget Control Act.  Most of the supposedly “draconian” sequestration cuts are not even cuts; instead, they are "reductions in the planed rate of spending.” This is where Congress increases spending but by less than originally planned—and yet they claim to cut spending.

Under sequestration, military spending increases by 18 percent instead of by 20 percent over the next ten years. Yet some so-called conservatives are so opposed to these phony cuts in military spending that they would support increased taxes and increased welfare “military” spending. This “grand bargain” would benefit the DC political class and the special interests, but it would be a disaster for the American people.

Instead of grand bargains of increased spending and taxes, those of us who support limited government and free markets should form a coalition with antiwar liberals to reduce spending on both the military industrial complex and domestic welfare programs. Instead of raising taxes on “the rich” we should also work to reduce all corporate subsidies. This “grand bargain” would truly be a win-win for the American people.

Sadly, even if a congressional coalition to cut both warfare and welfare spending was formed, it would be unlikely to carry the day as long as the Federal Reserve is willing to enable Congress’s debt addiction by monetizing the debt. But this cannot last forever. At some point the Fed’s policies will result in hyper-inflation and an economic crisis that will force Congress to reduce spending.

Hopefully, the growing number of Americans who are awaking to the dangers of our current path can convince Congress to reduce overseas militarism and begin an orderly drawdown of the welfare state before this crisis occurs

Ralph Nader on Democracy Now Discussing Fascism and Crony Capitalism in the U.S.

FYI - From Democracy Now and YouTube.com.

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Part 2

 



Adam Kokesh on Sequestration vs. Marine & Navy "readiness."

FYI - From Adam Kokesh/AdamvstheMan.com and YouTube.com.

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The REAL problem...Government SPENDING!

FYI - From the LNC/Libertarian Party Staff.

-ADY "A Regular Guy On The Issues"

Tax message to politicians and pundits: “It’s the high government spending, stupid!”  

High government spending is the cause. High taxes are the effects.

Cutting government spending is the only way to make taxes lower.

We must dramatically reduce government spending to dramatically reduce taxes.
James Carville, Clinton for President Campaign guru, coined this campaign mantra: "It's the economy, stupid." In the same vein, Libertarians say, "It's high government spending, stupid!"
Politicians and pundits: If you’re not talking huge government spending cuts, you’re not sincerely or seriously talking tax cuts.

High taxes are the painful symptoms. High government spending — Big Government — is the underlying disease.

Stop offering us temporary tax pain relief that merely dulls the pain … while the disease spreads.
The only way to get rid of the symptoms AND the disease is to reduce, then remove, the disease: Big Government, with its high spending. Do this, and we quickly get permanent, real relief from high taxes and their pain.

This tax season, let’s talk about the REAL tax problem: high government spending.
How much government spending?

Last year, we saw $6.2 trillion (that’s a “t” for trillion) in total government spending — that's federal plus local plus state government spending combined for 2012.

“I have a simple proposal for politicians and political pundits,” said Geoffrey J. Neale, chair of the Libertarian National Committee. “Make huge, dramatic cuts in total government spending now. Immediately. This year. Right away. And keep doing it until we get government spending down to a level taxpayers can thrive in, not merely survive."

A Great Financial Armageddon...It's a government spending problem stupid!

FYI - From the Libertarian National Campaign Committee (LNCC).

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-ADY "A Regular Guy On The Issues"

A Great Financial Armageddon

Massive waste, fraud and abuse in Washington have brought our great nation to the brink of the abyss. A great national “day of reckoning” is now dawning.
The national debt now stands at more than $14 trillion; a debt load of nearly $187,000 for every family of four in the country. Every year, U.S. taxpayers fork over $400 billion just to pay the interest on that debt… even with artificially low interest rates.
Our national debt is now equal to nearly 100% of the value of all the goods and services produced in this country… and that doesn’t begin to include the estimated $110 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and government pensions.
The Obama administration and Congress are running up annual budget deficits in excess of $1.5 trillion. The deficit during February 2011 alone exceeded the deficit for all of 2007.
The U.S. Federal Reserve is creating hundreds of billions of dollars out of thin air — and by doing so, gutting the greenback of its value and driving the cost of energy, food and other necessities sky-high.

The U.S. Treasury is borrowing so much money that the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and leading nations including France, China and Russia are now demanding that the dollar be abandoned as the world’s reserve currency.

If they succeed, your cost of living could double or even triple overnight.

The consequences of this gross negligence could be disastrous. If these trends are not reversed, millions of Americans will lose their incomes, their savings, their investments, their homes and will become utterly dependent on the government for survival.
While President Obama fiddles and Congress brags about miniscule cuts, there is no shortage of talk about how serious this crisis is.

• Recently, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) told his constituents, “We’re approaching FINANCIAL ARMAGEDDON”
• Representative Allen West (R-FL) agreed, saying, “…the economic situation here in the United States of America is a FISCAL ARMAGEDDON.”
• And Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) said, “we cannot ignore THE FISCAL TITANIC of our national debt and deficit.”

Plus, in March of 2011, no fewer than TEN former chairs of the White House Council of Economic Advisers — including President Obama’s former top economic adviser Christina Romer — added their voices to those warning of a looming economic catastrophe.
In an editorial published by Politico, the bipartisan group warned that unless the White House and Congress slash the federal deficit, bond investors are likely to turn on the U.S. and trigger an economic crisis that could “DWARF 2008.”
Think about what that means: In 2008, our entire financial system came within a few hours of collapsing. Huge financial institutions like Citigroup and Bank of America nearly went bust. And Lehman — one of the giants of Wall Street — simply ceased to exist.
Now, these top economists and Congressmen are saying that the fallout from this great debt disaster is going to be much, MUCH WORSE!”
And yet despite all their posturing, not a single member of either major political party is proposing — let alone passing — spending cuts that even begin to balance the budget.
Even the $100 billion in cuts the Republicans promised — but utterly failed to deliver — represents less than ONE-FIFTEENTH of the deficit for 2011 alone!
Meanwhile, thousands of U.S. towns, cities, counties and states are drowning in debt:

• States and cities are laying off police officers en masse. They’re putting prisoners back on the street because there’s not enough money to house them.
• Philadelphia, Baltimore, Sacramento and many other cities are laying off firefighters and emergency medical personnel, shutting down firehouses.
• Many states, including New York and New Jersey have refused to pay their pension funds!
• Illinois recently raised income taxes 67% and it’s still not enough to solve its deficit nightmare.
• Also in Illinois, pharmacies have closed because the state failed to make its required Medicaid payments, state employees are being evicted from their offices for nonpayment of rent.
• Arizona is so desperate it SOLD its state capitol, Supreme Court building and legislative chambers and now leases the buildings from their new owner!

What will you tell your grandchildren when they ask you about this time? Will you be able to tell them that you took a stand to fight for Freedom and the American Dream?
Take a stand with us as we fight to bring America back from the brink of what may well be the most severe economic catastrophe in our history:
To support the Libertarian National Campaign Committee and to begin receiving our online newsletter, Campaign for Freedom with regular updates on this crisis and our response to these threats, simply enter your name and zip code here.

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome becomes bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”

Cicero — 55 BC

Laissez Faire Today - The Sequestration Boondoggle.

FYI - From Jeffrey Tucker/Laissez Faire Today.

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March 2, 2013 The Sequestration Boondoggle Dear Friends, Jeffrey Tucker Illegal immigrants will flood in! You will be stuck in security lines for hours! Children will go hungry! Planes will fall from the sky! No, this isn't a recap of the nightmare scenarios concocted by Y2K maniacs some 13 years ago. Instead, this is what the White House itself has said about puny and largely mythical cuts that will occur with the deadly plague known as "sequestration." It's nothing short of a "devastating list of horribles" -- something even worse than being subjected to another 40,000 "Harlem Shake" videos going viral on YouTube. What's funny (to me) is that most people could not care less. This is what The Associated Press reports, based on an analysis of Google search trends and polls: "You can only cry wolf so many times before people just stop paying attention. The White House is determined to change that, using the automatic cuts to show us all how much we truly need the government to be as big as possible and how even the smallest cuts will wreak havoc on our lives. Just how much of a myth is alive here? The Heritage Foundation sums it up. In the last 10 years, federal spending has gone from $2 trillion to $3.5 trillion. In the next 10, the budget will grow to $6 trillion. That's a devastating cut as far as D.C. is concerned. When a private business needs to cut expenses, managers try to make sure that the customer feels it as little as possible. Government does the opposite. It uses the occasion to make you and me as miserable as possible. Within the Beltway, this is known as the Washington Monument Ploy. It's the most popular attraction in the nation's capital. The White House loves to close it up at the smallest excuse, leaving people who have traveled for days stuck in long lines. The goal is to impart this lesson: Pay your taxes and shut up, else we will take from you lots of things you love. The thing ought to be sold to a restaurant franchise or maybe Walgreens or CVS so that we could get 24/7 service, as we do in the private sector. Instead, they will keep it as a way to continue the public blackmail of taxpayers. Everything government does is useful for that purpose. To be fair, however, there's more than malice at work here. Government does have a serious problem in dealing with any cutbacks, something the private sector doesn't face. In a private business, you have metrics to know the most and least profitable lines of production. These data inform managers what is most important and what is least important. In this way, you can know how to cut in a manner that is least socially harmful. This is the rational approach made possible by the balance sheet, the glorious invention of double-entry accounting, and the profit-and-loss system. These tools provide to business a kind of GPS for dealing with austerity. The people who pay are the managers, not the consumers. For this reason, bankruptcies in the private sector can come as a surprise to people. One day you are happily shopping at Kmart, and the next day the thing is belly up, seemingly without warning. A closer look reveals years of austerity, but consumers didn't really feel it. That's the brilliance of the private sector at work. It makes the customer king as long as possible. Government has a completely different approach. It's no one's fault. It's just built into the system. Government gets its money by taking it from you and me. Then it spends it on what it wants. Its accounting system merely tries to keep up with the comings and goings, with no relationship between the two. The "consumers" of government's goods and services are not really the payers of those goods and services. The payers may or may not get anything in return. Why not just cut "waste and abuse"? Sounds reasonable. The trouble is that no one knows for sure what is waste from an economic point of view. As for abuse, that's the whole system. In other words, the whole system is set up on an arbitrary method of accounting. It doesn't reveal what is socially desirable. It doesn't reveal what, if anything, is actually profitable. In this system, in fact, there is nothing we can call profit or loss. It is just a system of take and give, nothing more. What makes it even more egregious is that the people who are taken from have no choice in the matter, so government has absolutely no incentive to cut anything, ever. The system of sequestration -- blunt cuts to anything and everything -- is the most horrible and economically irrational system, except for every other system. In government, there is no rational way to cut the budget in a manner that makes any economic sense. This is because no one really knows what is or isn't valuable. It is the complete opposite of the private sector in this respect. Here's the secret to understanding this problem. You know how systemwide socialism is a total mess, doesn't work, creates economic chaos and poverty, disincentivizes production, and generally leads to massive stagnation, to heck with the population? Well, government bureaucracy is a smaller version of the same. And it fails for the same reason. Mises, writing in his 1922 book Socialism, sums it up: "For all its officiousness, such a bureaucracy offers a classic example of human indolence. Nothing stirs when no external stimulus is present." [Ed. Note: Ludwig von Mises' critique of socialism does much more than refute the economics of socialism. It's a timely reminder that demonstrates government intervention not only makes innovation impossible, it also creates economic chaos that destroys progress. One of the perks of the Laissez Faire Club is access to classic works that you won't find in your average bookstore. And membership to the Club gives you access to over 40 titles at your fingertips on the very first day, in multiple e-book formats, allowing you to access them from a number of popular e-readers and tablet computers. We know that having a collection like this can be daunting. That's why we've done the legwork to help guide you in your reading. Along with a new e-book every other week, we'll also provide you with a helpful 12-Minute Executive Summary. In each summary, Jeffrey Tucker highlights the most important aspects of each Club selection. These alone could save you hours, freeing you to spend time with friends and family. Or maybe you can convince your liberal neighbor that government isn't the solution to all our problems. Finally, membership includes access to the exclusive Laissez Faire Club member forums. There you'll find other like-minded individuals looking for (and sharing) legal ways around government regulations. These forums embody the spirit and ideas of the Laissez Faire Club. All activity is strictly private, and we'll never share any information about Club members or what they post. Click here to see if the Laissez Faire Club is right for you.] Whatever else is wrong with sequestration, at least it is some external stimulus, some outside influence on the hallowed walls of control and stagnation. My prediction is that no one will notice these cuts for a while. But after a week or two, government is going to get annoyed that no one cares that it suffered a tiny wound. Then things are going to get rough. The passport offices will cut back their hours. The customs lines are going to get long. School districts will not be getting their checks. TSA lines are going to lengthen. Payment processing will slow to a crawl. These functions are tiny compared with the overall budget. What's important is that they are things people rely on, and therefore, they will take the hit. It's intimidation with the attempt to manipulate public opinion. They have all the power and you have none. That's how they will get away with this. Then the finger-pointing will begin. And guess who will bear the brunt? It will be the Republicans, not the Democrats. It will be Congress, not the White House. Public opinion will shift and people will start screaming. The budget cutters will get scared. They will back down. Taxes could be raised yet again, another blow right in the middle of the great economic stagnation. Look for it. I hope I'm wrong, of course. We shall see. It all comes down to this: There is no economically rational way to cut the budget of a bureaucracy. Lacking that, government will do what it does best, which is to make you suffer as much as possible. Jeffrey Tucker   Thank you for reading Laissez Faire Today. We greatly value your questions and comments. Click here to send us feedback.

FYI - From The Washington Times and Gov. Gary Johnson.

-ADY "A Regular Guy On The Issues"

JOHNSON: Sequestration ignores the real spending problem

Entitlement reform is the only way out of the hole.

By Gary E. Johnson

Friday, March 1, 2013    

 

 

To listen to the parade of Obama administration officials warning of civilization-ending consequences from the measly $85 billion in spending “cuts” sequestration will bring, one can only reach one of two conclusions: Either they are just making stuff up to make the cuts as painful as possible, or the federal budget is so out of control that a mere 2.4 percent reduction in projected spending is more than the system can handle.

Frankly, it is both. Absolutely, in their zeal to make Republicans pay the maximum political price for what is actually both parties’ fault, it is almost comical to watch one Cabinet official after another step up to the microphone and tell us that a 2.4 percent reduction (that isn’t really a reduction) will cause airplanes to fall out of the sky, our national defense to be disabled and our children to starve. That game is among the oldest in Washington. Cut the Park Service budget, and suddenly they can’t find the money to keep the Lincoln Memorial or Yellowstone open.

This sideshow is entertaining, but it misses what may be the most important lesson to be learned from this sequester debacle. While there is certainly a heavy dose of Chicken Little falling-sky rhetoric coming out of the bureaucracy, it is probably true that the rather indiscriminate sequester formula is presenting some challenges for some agencies.

How can that be? How many governors, state legislatures, city councils, small businesses and families have had to absorb 2 percent cuts in their budgets over the past five years or so, and have done so because they didn’t have the luxury of simply borrowing or printing more cash? What’s the problem?

The real problem is that so much of the federal budget is not optional. While the $85 billion sequester for this year is only 2.4 percent of the $3.6 trillion the government is projected to spend, let us not overlook the fact that roughly 60 cents of every dollar the government spends is “mandatory,” as in entitlements. An additional 7 cents is interest on the debt. That leaves less than a third of federal spending that can actually be cut, and makes that $85 billion a little more significant.

If “cutting” discretionary spending by a lousy 2 or 3 cents on the dollar is enough to create dire consequences (for the sake of argument), imagine what would happen if we tried to reduce that spending by the 30 cents it will take to balance the budget and stop digging ourselves even deeper into unsustainable debt.

The moral of this ongoing story is clear: We can’t get to a balanced budget without doing some serious work on that 60 percent of spending that is “mandatory,” beginning with the 800-pound gorilla of Medicare. Any politician who claims to want to eliminate deficits but opposes meaningful entitlement reform is simply lying. It can’t be done, and if we needed proof, this sequester mess provides all we need.

In fact, do the rough math, and the only way to balance the budget without addressing mandatory entitlements is to almost shut down the rest of the government. While those of us on the small-government side of things might not be entirely heartbroken by that prospect, we probably need to have the government do some things, like national defense.

If you believe, as most Americans do, that we cannot continue to spend money we don’t have, and if you believe that there are some legitimate roles for government beyond paying Medicare bills and issuing Social Security checks, there is no getting around the simple fact that we have to bring all of that “mandatory” spending into the conversation.
Otherwise, it is just a big lie.

Gov. Gary E. Johnson, governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003 and the Libertarian candidate for president in 2012, is honorary chairman of the Our America Initiative.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/1/sequestration-ignores-the-real-spending-problem/#ixzz2MQzJ41P4
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Ralph Nader and Ron Paul Call for Libertarian - Progressive Alliance.

FYI - Poli-Tea:

Ralph Nader and Ron Paul Call for Libertarian - Progressive Alliance.

-ADY "A Regular Guy On The Issues"

Lessons for the U.S., from Russia | Goldwater Institute

Some REALLY good food for thought!

-ADY

Lessons for the U.S., from Russia | Goldwater Institute

Obama's Stimulus Jobs Report—Separating Facts from White House Fiction.

It needs to be said, though, that Republicans always preach low taxes and tax cuts, but seem to forget about cutting spending. In order for tax cuts to be effective and successful long term, spending has to also be cut. These principals go hand-in-hand because if you cut taxes but continue to spend like crazy ( and yes, that's the way our government does spend), you eventually end up jacking up taxes again even worse than before in order to cover your debts. For more information on an economic plan that works, please visit HTTP://WWW.LP.ORG/ISSUES

FYI - This Op-Ed can also be viewed online @ GOP.gov by visiting the following web address:

http://www.gop.gov/policy-news/10/07/19/obamas-stimulus-jobs-report-separating#share

-Aaron

______________________________________________________________________________________

Obama's Stimulus Jobs Report—Separating Facts from White House Fiction

JULY 19, 2010

On July 14, 2010, the president’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) released its fourth quarterly report on spending from the Democrats’ $862 billion “stimulus” (including the $347 billion CBO estimated for interest payments on the borrowed money, the cost of the stimulus is actually $1.2 trillion). Vice President Biden echoed the chorus of the administration, touting the success of the bill and stating that “The economic initiatives that we took, they are working ... they are working.” White House spin aside, the facts show that the stimulus has failed to create jobs in the economy and that CEA’s deceptive report is preposterous.

CLAIM: “As of the second quarter of 2010, we estimate that the Recovery Act has raised employment by 2.5 to 3.6 million relative to what it otherwise would have been.”

FACT: The stimulus has not created net jobs in the economy. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)—the official government agency responsible for tallying employment stats—there have been 3.42 million gross jobs lost since the stimulus was passed and 2.53 million net jobs lost.

CLAIM: “A key way that the CEA estimates the effects of the Recovery Act on GDP and employment is to use existing estimates of the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy. That is, one can use mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus.”

FACT: The White House determines the impact of government stimulus spending by plugging numbers into a Keynesian “Multiplier Model.” This system simply multiplies the amount of dollars spent by the number of jobs the administration thinks the money should produce. This voodoo math doesn’t consider actual employment statistics, and thus allows the White House to claim that the stimulus is creating jobs as the economy sheds them.

CLAIM: “For example, the Act, by stabilizing the economy and restoring confidence, may have played a role in healing the financial sector and jump-starting private demand.”

FACT: The private sector has not been “jump started.” To the contrary, 3.2 million private sector jobs have been lost and total private sector employment has decreased by 2.5 million jobs since the passage of the stimulus. In fact, researchers at Harvard Business School released a study in May, 2010, which “suggests that federal spending in states appears to cause local businesses to cut back rather than grow.”

CLAIM: “Following implementation of the [stimulus], the trajectory of the economy changed dramatically.”

FACT: Since the stimulus was passed the economy has remained sluggish and employment has declined dramatically. According to the Bureau of Economic Statistics (BEA), GDP growth has averaged a lethargic 1.4 percent since the stimulus. Following a recession, growth rates are typically much higher. In the ten quarters following the 1982 recession, for instance, growth averaged 9.3 percent each quarter. Unfortunately, after the stimulus passed, unemployment rose to 10 percent and has hovered there for months. And, according to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, confidence amongst small businesses fell in June 2010 at the sharpest level since October 2008.

No matter how they spin their numbers, the administration can’t hide the fact that the stimulus has failed. The truest fact included in the CEA’s report is this: “The CEA model will obviously not yield exact figures for the effects of the Recovery Act.” Obviously.

Rep. Ron Paul: "Cut Spending, End The Income Tax, and Bring The Troops Home!"

Ron Paul and Harry Mitchell have again stopped the increase in pay that Members of Congress automatically get every year unless it is voted down.

Their efforts to block the pay raise for 2010 was successful last year, and today their bill to block the pay raise for 2011 passed overwhelmingly (402-15) in the House after passing the Senate last week.

“We should not be padding our pocketbooks when our constituents are still tightening their belts and losing their jobs,” stated Congressman Paul. “As well, we could continue with this symbolic first step and stop increasing taxes, expanding the federal budget, and spreading our military so thin. These additional measures would do much to begin our economic recovery.” Below, Ron Paul speaks on the House floor in support of the bill: