Remember back in April, 2007, when then-CIA director George Tenet appeared on 60 Minutes, angrily telling the program host, “we don’t torture people”? Remember a few months later, in October, President George W. Bush saying, “this government does not torture people”? We knew then it was not true because we had already seen the photos of Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib prison four years earlier.
Still the US administration denied that torture was torture, preferring to call it “enhanced interrogation” and claiming that it had disrupted so many terrorist plots. Of course, we later found out that the CIA had not only lied about the torture of large numbers of people after 9/11, but it had vastly exaggerated any valuable information that came from such practices.
However secret rendition of prisoners to other places was ongoing.
The US not only tortured people in its own custody, however. Last week the European Court of Human Rights found that the US government transferred individuals to secret detention centers in Poland (and likely elsewhere) where they were tortured away from public scrutiny. The government of Poland was ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to two victims for doing nothing to stop their torture on Polish soil.
How tragic that Poland, where the Nazis constructed the Auschwitz concentration camp in which so many innocents were tortured and murdered, would acquiesce to hosting secret torture facilities. The idea that such brutality would be permitted on Polish soil just 70 years after the Nazi occupation should remind us of how dangerous and disingenuous governments continue to be.
This is the first time the European court has connected any EU country to US torture practices. The Obama administration refuses to admit that such facilities existed and instead claims that any such “enhanced interrogation” programs were shut down by 2009. We can only hope this is true, but we should be wary of government promises. After all, they promised us all along that they were not using torture, and we might have never known had photographs and other information not been leaked to the press.
There are more reasons to be wary of this administration’s claims about rejecting torture and upholding human rights. The president has openly justified killing American citizens without charge or trial and he has done so on at least three occasions. There is not much of a gap between torture and extrajudicial murder when it comes to human rights abuses.
Meanwhile, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior current and former CIA officials are said to be frantically attempting to prepare a response to a planned release of an unclassified version of a 6,500 page Senate Intelligence Committee study on the torture practices of that agency. The CIA was already caught tapping into the computers of Senate investigators last year, looking to see what information might be contained in the report. Those who have seen the report have commented that it details far more brutal CIA practices that have been revealed to this point.
Revelations of US secret torture sites overseas and a new Senate investigation revealing widespread horrific CIA torture practices should finally lead to the abolishment of this agency. Far from keeping us safer, CIA covert actions across the globe have led to destruction of countries and societies and unprecedented resentment toward the United States. For our own safety, end the CIA!
Saturday
WHAT I THINK.........DANIEL McADAMS
Facing a tough but respectful grilling on Fox Business’s The Independents over his recent comments on Ukraine and the apparent downing of a Malaysia Air plane, Ron Paul argues that the US government wants to blame Russia for the shoot-down while providing no evidence for its conclusion. Paul points out that the US claim that Russia was to blame for the disaster because they supply weapons to the rebels in east Ukraine is hypocritical because the US has armed oppositionists in Syria who went on to attack the US-backed government in Iraq.
But the best moment was when one of the hosts trotted out the old “aren’t you’re blaming America?” question, which was previously used by the likes of Giuliani and the other neocons over the 9/11 attacks.
Responded Paul to the claim:
Watch the video at:That is a misrepresentation of what I say. I don’t blame America. I am America, you are America. I don’t blame you. I blame bad policy. I blame the interventionists. I blame the neoconservatives who preach this stuff, who believe in it like a religion — that they have to promote American goodness even if you have to bomb and kill people.They say ‘oh Ron Paul blames America therefore he’s a bad guy and we can’t listen to him.’ Well I’ll tell you what: the American people are listening more carefully now than ever before. …Non-intervention is the wave of the future.
Thursday
FROM RON PAUL
To Our Friends, and Friends of the Freedom Movement:
We are excited to announce Ron Paul Channel’s expansion into Voices of Liberty, Powered by Ron Paul. As Voices of Liberty, we further amplify the messages of the freedom movement through engaging videos and insightful news coverage. There are some major changes coming that will allow you to become an integral part of the movement by making your voice truly matter.
In addition to Ron Paul Channel programming you’re used to, Voices of Liberty will offer more video, audio and editorial from well-known champions of liberty as well as everyday citizens in the freedom movement. We are also producing new shows that offer valuable information you can use in your daily life — from learning and practicing your constitutional rights to the future of monetary policy, business and technology.
With your participation, Voices of Liberty will be the go-to social platform for liberty-minded people. As a project spearheaded by me and the Voices of Liberty team, we have the power to accomplish our goals. Together, we will challenge the status quo through staying informed on today’s most pressing issues and engaging in constructive discourse to develop actionable solutions to achieve the change the liberty movement demands.
The Internet has allowed the message of liberty to spread like wildfire and that’s why we believe the restoration of liberty has a real fighting chance. As a project spearheaded by me and the Voices of Liberty team, we have the power to accomplish our goals. And with your help, we will be a formidable voice that influences elections, strikes down useless legislation and promotes social awareness on the issues that matter most to us all.
We’ve had enough of the unjustified wars, unconstitutional surveillance, extrajudicial drone assassinations, the continual weakening of the dollar, draconian drug laws, and the outright lies and deceptive doublespeak spouted by politicians with clandestine agendas.
We want to provide a brighter future for generations to come by ending these trillion-dollar wars, restoring economic prosperity, instituting real government transparency and ridding our country of warrantless spying on our private communications, among many other things.
By continuing your support and actively participating in Voices of Liberty, you can help determine the fate of our great nation.
We eagerly look forward to working with you,
Ron Paul and the Voices of Liberty Team
WHAT I THINK.........DANIEL McADAMS
What a bizarre article about Dr. Paul from the National Journal! Beginning from the title, the piece read like something from a high school newspaper.
Does a publication playing the role of the grown-up voice on Capitol Hill really publish a piece titled “Ron Paul Is Putin’s New Best Friend“?
And it goes downhill from there.
In the article, author Lucia Graves starts by accusing Dr. Paul of “blaming America first” because in his weekly column on Sunday he pointed out that we have seen this movie before: the US government has brought us to war (Iraq, Libya, etc) and nearly brought us to war (Syria) on information it swore was the absolute, indisputable truth at the time but which turned out to be lies and propaganda.
She had not heard of this before?
Maybe this will refresh her memory.
Paul cautioned skepticism about Obama and Kerry’s claims that they know exactly what happened with the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 before the investigation had even begun, much less concluded.
After all, he pointed out, they assured us they were certain that Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack on Ghouta in Syria last summer. They had all the evidence, they swore, but they couldn’t show the rest of us. And it turns out they lied.
Paul’s crime, it seems, is that the Russian media re-published his article which suggested that we wait to blame Russia (or Ukraine, or the rebels) until an investigation can be concluded. Here is what Dr. Paul wrote that was so outrageous to her:
[i]t is entirely possible that the Obama administration and the US media has it right this time, and Russia or the separatists in eastern Ukraine either purposely or inadvertently shot down this aircraft. The real point is, it’s very difficult to get accurate information so everybody engages in propaganda. At this point it would be unwise to say the Russians did it, the Ukrainian government did it, or the rebels did it. Is it so hard to simply demand a real investigation?
Because the Russian media re-published the article, Paul was “Putin’s best friend.”
His other great crime, this writer asserts, is that his piece was devoid of conspiracy theory! That made it so cleverly seductive!
She wrote:
Politically, it’s a much sounder line of argument for protecting Russia from blame than what’s being reported on Russian TV (much of which is funded by the Kremlin), where conspiracies theories abound.
Yes how dare he stick to facts!
Sticking to facts, avoiding outlandish conspiracy theories, and cautioning against taking the word of the US government on matters of foreign policy make Dr. Paul “Putin’s best friend,” she avers:
With his cool, dispassionate rhetoric, Paul seems to be just about the best voice for Putin’s interests anywhere—and better, surely, than Kremlin TV.
Is this how serious journalists write? Ironically, it reads more like a denunciation piece in some 1950s publication of the Bulgarian Communist Central Committee: “Comrade Borissov’s lack of deception made him all the more suspicious!”
Does anyone need more explanation as to why people are abandoning the mainstream media in droves?
Does a publication playing the role of the grown-up voice on Capitol Hill really publish a piece titled “Ron Paul Is Putin’s New Best Friend“?
And it goes downhill from there.
In the article, author Lucia Graves starts by accusing Dr. Paul of “blaming America first” because in his weekly column on Sunday he pointed out that we have seen this movie before: the US government has brought us to war (Iraq, Libya, etc) and nearly brought us to war (Syria) on information it swore was the absolute, indisputable truth at the time but which turned out to be lies and propaganda.
She had not heard of this before?
Maybe this will refresh her memory.
Paul cautioned skepticism about Obama and Kerry’s claims that they know exactly what happened with the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 before the investigation had even begun, much less concluded.
After all, he pointed out, they assured us they were certain that Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack on Ghouta in Syria last summer. They had all the evidence, they swore, but they couldn’t show the rest of us. And it turns out they lied.
Paul’s crime, it seems, is that the Russian media re-published his article which suggested that we wait to blame Russia (or Ukraine, or the rebels) until an investigation can be concluded. Here is what Dr. Paul wrote that was so outrageous to her:
[i]t is entirely possible that the Obama administration and the US media has it right this time, and Russia or the separatists in eastern Ukraine either purposely or inadvertently shot down this aircraft. The real point is, it’s very difficult to get accurate information so everybody engages in propaganda. At this point it would be unwise to say the Russians did it, the Ukrainian government did it, or the rebels did it. Is it so hard to simply demand a real investigation?
Because the Russian media re-published the article, Paul was “Putin’s best friend.”
His other great crime, this writer asserts, is that his piece was devoid of conspiracy theory! That made it so cleverly seductive!
She wrote:
Politically, it’s a much sounder line of argument for protecting Russia from blame than what’s being reported on Russian TV (much of which is funded by the Kremlin), where conspiracies theories abound.
Yes how dare he stick to facts!
Sticking to facts, avoiding outlandish conspiracy theories, and cautioning against taking the word of the US government on matters of foreign policy make Dr. Paul “Putin’s best friend,” she avers:
With his cool, dispassionate rhetoric, Paul seems to be just about the best voice for Putin’s interests anywhere—and better, surely, than Kremlin TV.
Is this how serious journalists write? Ironically, it reads more like a denunciation piece in some 1950s publication of the Bulgarian Communist Central Committee: “Comrade Borissov’s lack of deception made him all the more suspicious!”
Does anyone need more explanation as to why people are abandoning the mainstream media in droves?
Monday
WHAT THE MEDIA WON'T REPORT ABOUT MALAYSIAN AIRLINES FLIGHT MH17 by RON PAUL
Just days after the tragic crash of a Malaysian Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine, Western politicians and media joined together to gain the maximum propaganda value from the disaster. It had to be Russia; it had to be Putin, they said. President Obama held a press conference to claim – even before an investigation – that it was pro-Russian rebels in the region who were responsible. His ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, did the same at the UN Security Council – just one day after the crash!
While western media outlets rush to repeat government propaganda on the event, there are a few things they will not report.
They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when EU and US-supported protesters plotted the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Without US-sponsored “regime change,” it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed in the unrest that followed. Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash have happened.
The media has reported that the plane must have been shot down by Russian forces or Russian-backed separatists, because the missile that reportedly brought down the plane was Russian made. But they will not report that the Ukrainian government also uses the exact same Russian-made weapons.
They will not report that the post-coup government in Kiev has, according to OSCE monitors, killed 250 people in the breakaway Lugansk region since June, including 20 killed as government forces bombed the city center the day after the plane crash! Most of these are civilians and together they roughly equal the number killed in the plane crash. By contrast, Russia has killed no one in Ukraine, and the separatists have struck largely military, not civilian, targets.
They will not report that the US has strongly backed the Ukrainian government in these attacks on civilians, which a State Department spokeswoman called “measured and moderate.”
They will not report that neither Russia nor the separatists in eastern Ukraine have anything to gain but everything to lose by shooting down a passenger liner full of civilians.
They will not report that the Ukrainian government has much to gain by pinning the attack on Russia, and that the Ukrainian prime minister has already expressed his pleasure that Russia is being blamed for the attack.
They will not report that the missile that apparently shot down the plane was from a sophisticated surface-to-air missile system that requires a good deal of training that the separatists do not have.
They will not report that the separatists in eastern Ukraine have inflicted considerable losses on the Ukrainian government in the week before the plane was downed.
They will not report how similar this is to last summer’s US claim that the Assad government in Syria had used poison gas against civilians in Ghouta. Assad was also gaining the upper hand in his struggle with US-backed rebels and the US claimed that the attack came from Syrian government positions. Then, US claims led us to the brink of another war in the Middle East. At the last minute public opposition forced Obama to back down – and we have learned since then that US claims about the gas attack were false.
Of course it is entirely possible that the Obama administration and the US media has it right this time, and Russia or the separatists in eastern Ukraine either purposely or inadvertently shot down this aircraft. The real point is, it's very difficult to get accurate information so everybody engages in propaganda. At this point it would be unwise to say the Russians did it, the Ukrainian government did it, or the rebels did it. Is it so hard to simply demand a real investigation?
While western media outlets rush to repeat government propaganda on the event, there are a few things they will not report.
They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when EU and US-supported protesters plotted the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Without US-sponsored “regime change,” it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed in the unrest that followed. Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash have happened.
The media has reported that the plane must have been shot down by Russian forces or Russian-backed separatists, because the missile that reportedly brought down the plane was Russian made. But they will not report that the Ukrainian government also uses the exact same Russian-made weapons.
They will not report that the post-coup government in Kiev has, according to OSCE monitors, killed 250 people in the breakaway Lugansk region since June, including 20 killed as government forces bombed the city center the day after the plane crash! Most of these are civilians and together they roughly equal the number killed in the plane crash. By contrast, Russia has killed no one in Ukraine, and the separatists have struck largely military, not civilian, targets.
They will not report that the US has strongly backed the Ukrainian government in these attacks on civilians, which a State Department spokeswoman called “measured and moderate.”
They will not report that neither Russia nor the separatists in eastern Ukraine have anything to gain but everything to lose by shooting down a passenger liner full of civilians.
They will not report that the Ukrainian government has much to gain by pinning the attack on Russia, and that the Ukrainian prime minister has already expressed his pleasure that Russia is being blamed for the attack.
They will not report that the missile that apparently shot down the plane was from a sophisticated surface-to-air missile system that requires a good deal of training that the separatists do not have.
They will not report that the separatists in eastern Ukraine have inflicted considerable losses on the Ukrainian government in the week before the plane was downed.
They will not report how similar this is to last summer’s US claim that the Assad government in Syria had used poison gas against civilians in Ghouta. Assad was also gaining the upper hand in his struggle with US-backed rebels and the US claimed that the attack came from Syrian government positions. Then, US claims led us to the brink of another war in the Middle East. At the last minute public opposition forced Obama to back down – and we have learned since then that US claims about the gas attack were false.
Of course it is entirely possible that the Obama administration and the US media has it right this time, and Russia or the separatists in eastern Ukraine either purposely or inadvertently shot down this aircraft. The real point is, it's very difficult to get accurate information so everybody engages in propaganda. At this point it would be unwise to say the Russians did it, the Ukrainian government did it, or the rebels did it. Is it so hard to simply demand a real investigation?
WHAT'S MISSING IN THE CURRENT IMMIGRATION 'CRISIS' DEBATE by RON PAUL
Over the past several weeks we have seen a significant increase in illegal immigration, as thousands of unaccompanied minors pour across what seems an invisible southern border into the United States. The mass immigration has, as to be expected, put an enormous strain on local resources, and it has heated up the immigration debate in the US.
Most liberals and conservatives miss the point, however, making the same old arguments we have all heard before. Liberals argue that we need to provide more welfare and assistance to these young immigrants, while conservatives would bus them to the other side of the border, drop them off, and deploy drones to keep them out.
Neither side seems interested in considering why is this happening in the first place. The truth is, this latest crisis is a consequence of mistaken government policies on both sides of the border.
In fact much of the problem can be directly traced to the US drug war, which creates unlivable conditions in countries that produce narcotics for export to the US. Many of those interviewed over the past several weeks have cited violent drug gangs back home as a main motivation for their departure. Because some Americans want to use drugs here in the US, governments to the south are bribed and bullied to crack down on local producers. The resulting violence has destroyed economies and lives from Mexico to Nicaragua and beyond. Addressing the failed war on drugs would go a long way to solving the immigration crisis.
I understand the argument of some libertarians that there should be no limits at all on who comes into the United States, but the reality is we do not live in a libertarian society. We live in a society where healthcare is provided -- often by over-burdened emergency rooms that cannot legally turn away the sick -- “free” education is provided, and other support via food stamp programs is also made available for “free” to illegal immigrants. Many even argue that they should be allowed to vote!
In a free society where the warfare-welfare state ceased to exist, immigration laws would be far less important. A free market would seek workers rather than immigrants to add to its welfare rolls. Voting itself would decline in significance. If 20 people lived on a privately-owned island, for example, one owner could decide to have a guest on his property without bothering the other 19. Were we to move in this direction in the US, the current immigration crisis would be a thing of the past.
Over many years while I was in Congress, I met with scores of employers in my district who faced terrible red tape just to be allowed to bring in temporary agricultural workers who would willingly return home once the work was finished. How ironic that Americans willing to provide jobs for immigrants seeking honest work were thwarted by the same government that has now opened the door to a flood of immigrants seeking welfare and other assistance.
One thing we can be sure about: as Republicans and Democrats tussle over “reform” bills, more money will be thrown at the symptoms produced by past bad policies instead of addressing the real causes of the current crisis. The president’s $4 billion supplemental request to address the issue is a costly mix of welfare and enforcement that will do very little to solve the problem because it treats the symptoms instead of the cause. Real reform means changing a failed approach, and until that happens we can count on more expensive mistakes.
Most liberals and conservatives miss the point, however, making the same old arguments we have all heard before. Liberals argue that we need to provide more welfare and assistance to these young immigrants, while conservatives would bus them to the other side of the border, drop them off, and deploy drones to keep them out.
Neither side seems interested in considering why is this happening in the first place. The truth is, this latest crisis is a consequence of mistaken government policies on both sides of the border.
In fact much of the problem can be directly traced to the US drug war, which creates unlivable conditions in countries that produce narcotics for export to the US. Many of those interviewed over the past several weeks have cited violent drug gangs back home as a main motivation for their departure. Because some Americans want to use drugs here in the US, governments to the south are bribed and bullied to crack down on local producers. The resulting violence has destroyed economies and lives from Mexico to Nicaragua and beyond. Addressing the failed war on drugs would go a long way to solving the immigration crisis.
I understand the argument of some libertarians that there should be no limits at all on who comes into the United States, but the reality is we do not live in a libertarian society. We live in a society where healthcare is provided -- often by over-burdened emergency rooms that cannot legally turn away the sick -- “free” education is provided, and other support via food stamp programs is also made available for “free” to illegal immigrants. Many even argue that they should be allowed to vote!
In a free society where the warfare-welfare state ceased to exist, immigration laws would be far less important. A free market would seek workers rather than immigrants to add to its welfare rolls. Voting itself would decline in significance. If 20 people lived on a privately-owned island, for example, one owner could decide to have a guest on his property without bothering the other 19. Were we to move in this direction in the US, the current immigration crisis would be a thing of the past.
Over many years while I was in Congress, I met with scores of employers in my district who faced terrible red tape just to be allowed to bring in temporary agricultural workers who would willingly return home once the work was finished. How ironic that Americans willing to provide jobs for immigrants seeking honest work were thwarted by the same government that has now opened the door to a flood of immigrants seeking welfare and other assistance.
One thing we can be sure about: as Republicans and Democrats tussle over “reform” bills, more money will be thrown at the symptoms produced by past bad policies instead of addressing the real causes of the current crisis. The president’s $4 billion supplemental request to address the issue is a costly mix of welfare and enforcement that will do very little to solve the problem because it treats the symptoms instead of the cause. Real reform means changing a failed approach, and until that happens we can count on more expensive mistakes.
HOBBY LOBBY DECISION CREATES SMALL ISLAND OF FREEDOM IN OCEAN OF STATISM by RON PAUL
This week, supporters of religious freedom cheered the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Hobby Lobby case. The Court was correct to protect business owners from being forced to violate their religious beliefs by paying for contraceptives. However, the decision was very limited in scope and application.
The Court’s decision only applies to certain types of businesses, for example, “closely-held corporations” that have a “sincere” religious objection to paying for contraceptive coverage. Presumably, federal courts or bureaucrats will determine if a business’s religious objection to the mandate is “sincere” or not and therefore eligible for an opt-out from one Obamacare mandate.
Opponents of the Court’s decision are correct that a religious objection does not justify a special exemption from the Obamacare contraception mandate, but that is because all businesses should be exempt from all federal mandates. Federal laws imposing mandates on private businesses violate the business owners' rights of property and contract.
Mandated benefits such as those in Obamacare also harm those employees who do not need or want them. Benefit packages resulting from negotiations between employers and employees are much more likely to satisfy both the employer and employee than benefit packages imposed by politicians and bureaucrats.
Opponents of the Court’s decision argue that Obamacare gives employees a “right” to free birth control that trumps the employers' property rights. This argument confuses rights with desires. Successfully lobbying the government to force someone else to grant your wishes does not magically transform a desire into a “right.”
Redefining rights as desires to be fulfilled by the government also means that the government can modify, limit, or even take away those rights. After all, since your rights are gifts from government, there is no reason why you should object when the government takes away those rights for the common good.
Those who believe Congress can create a right to free contraception that overrides property rights should consider that the government may use that power to create and take away rights in ways they find objectionable. For example, if our rights are gifts from the government, then there is no reason why Congress should not limit our right to privacy by allowing the NSA to monitor our phone calls and Internet use.
The politicization of healthcare benefits is a direct result of government policies that not only encourage people to think of healthcare as a right, but to expect their employers to provide health insurance. Government policies encouraging over-reliance on third-party payers is the root of many of our healthcare problems.
Opponents of the Hobby Lobby decision are correct when they say that their bosses should not decide whether their healthcare plans cover contraceptives. However, like all supporters of Obamacare, they are incorrect in seeking to fix the problems with healthcare through more government intervention. Instead, they should join those of us working to create a free-market healthcare system that gives individuals control of their healthcare dollars. In a true free market, individuals would have the ability to obtain affordable healthcare without having to rely on government mandates or subsidies.
The debate over which, if any, businesses deserve an exemption from Obamacare’s contraception mandate is rooted in a misunderstanding of property and contract rights. All businesses and all Americans deserve an exemption not just from Obamacare, but from all mandates. Individuals should be given the freedom and responsibility to obtain the healthcare coverage that meets their needs without relying on the government to force others to provide it.
The Court’s decision only applies to certain types of businesses, for example, “closely-held corporations” that have a “sincere” religious objection to paying for contraceptive coverage. Presumably, federal courts or bureaucrats will determine if a business’s religious objection to the mandate is “sincere” or not and therefore eligible for an opt-out from one Obamacare mandate.
Opponents of the Court’s decision are correct that a religious objection does not justify a special exemption from the Obamacare contraception mandate, but that is because all businesses should be exempt from all federal mandates. Federal laws imposing mandates on private businesses violate the business owners' rights of property and contract.
Mandated benefits such as those in Obamacare also harm those employees who do not need or want them. Benefit packages resulting from negotiations between employers and employees are much more likely to satisfy both the employer and employee than benefit packages imposed by politicians and bureaucrats.
Opponents of the Court’s decision argue that Obamacare gives employees a “right” to free birth control that trumps the employers' property rights. This argument confuses rights with desires. Successfully lobbying the government to force someone else to grant your wishes does not magically transform a desire into a “right.”
Redefining rights as desires to be fulfilled by the government also means that the government can modify, limit, or even take away those rights. After all, since your rights are gifts from government, there is no reason why you should object when the government takes away those rights for the common good.
Those who believe Congress can create a right to free contraception that overrides property rights should consider that the government may use that power to create and take away rights in ways they find objectionable. For example, if our rights are gifts from the government, then there is no reason why Congress should not limit our right to privacy by allowing the NSA to monitor our phone calls and Internet use.
The politicization of healthcare benefits is a direct result of government policies that not only encourage people to think of healthcare as a right, but to expect their employers to provide health insurance. Government policies encouraging over-reliance on third-party payers is the root of many of our healthcare problems.
Opponents of the Hobby Lobby decision are correct when they say that their bosses should not decide whether their healthcare plans cover contraceptives. However, like all supporters of Obamacare, they are incorrect in seeking to fix the problems with healthcare through more government intervention. Instead, they should join those of us working to create a free-market healthcare system that gives individuals control of their healthcare dollars. In a true free market, individuals would have the ability to obtain affordable healthcare without having to rely on government mandates or subsidies.
The debate over which, if any, businesses deserve an exemption from Obamacare’s contraception mandate is rooted in a misunderstanding of property and contract rights. All businesses and all Americans deserve an exemption not just from Obamacare, but from all mandates. Individuals should be given the freedom and responsibility to obtain the healthcare coverage that meets their needs without relying on the government to force others to provide it.
Tuesday
WHAT I THINK.........NOUREDDINE KRICHENE
Ron Paul, a former Congressman, was a medical doctor; yet, his writings treated true economics in an ocean of falsehood. It is a miracle to have a non-economist write about the true economic science when this science has become totally corrupted by demagogues. It has become a science of government intervention and disorder.
Most disquieting, some Nobel Prize winners are staunch advocates of anti-market forces and preach total money destruction by the government. Practically, there is no university that teaches the true nature of money, banking, and markets as displayed in Ron Paul's writings. You feel sorry for students who spend US$60,000 a year at elite universities and learn anti-market Stalinism.
For Ron Paul, money is a market commodity, like a car, produced at a real cost in labor and capital, and is exchanged against other real commodities. A bit of paper has zero-cost in labor and capital, it can never be money. It is so by state coercion. The state outlaws gold, which it cannot print, in favor of paper, which it can print with no limit. It has therefore no check on its spending and despotism.
For Ron Paul, paper is the money of war, noting that the United States, with unlimited paper money, has become the first warrior of the world, unhesitantly waging wars in every corner of the world.
Among Paul's writings is his excellent book End the Fed (2009) where he held it as of utmost vital interest of the United States to end the Federal Reserve (Fed). He contended that the Fed has been destabilizing the US economy, inflicting recurrent catastrophes ever since it was created.
Did the United States need a central bank? For Ron Paul, the answer was positively no. The US economy was growing by leaps and bounds before 1914, making discoveries in communications, cars, radios, photography, airplanes, heavy machinery, with no central bank.
A central bank would be a fifth wheel in a coach. The US Treasury emitted notes against gold prior to 1913, and therefore had no need for a central bank for circulating money. It was vested-interest financial groups that forced the Fed on government for bailout purposes; under the guise that it was necessary for the US economy, this was a poisoned gift.
For Ron Paul, financial crises, an inherent feature of fractional banking, were brief and self-liquidating prior to 1913. A crisis on the scale of the Great Depression had never occurred and would never have occurred had it not been for the Fed. The stock index could not have gone up threefold from 1926 to 1929 without very low interest rates and unending liquidity from the Fed. It was the very design of the authors of the Fed to provide an infinitely elastic money supply, as much money as speculators and debtors wished to have.
Likewise, stock prices could never increase by 25% per year, as they did during 2009-2014, without the Fed's money floods.
Speculative prices became interminably inflated by the Fed, allowing an amazing free real wealth to speculators. The Fed has turned the stock market into a true casino; it is no longer an investment vehicle.
For Ron Paul, the Fed should have ended promptly in 1929 with the stock crash. Confronted with a grandiose disaster, politicians of the time should have realized that nothing good would come out of the Fed, or more generally, from a central bank, a truth discovered long ago by France, which promptly abolished John Law's bank in 1720 when stocks crashed dramatically, then by Thomas Jefferson (1811), Andrew Jackson (1832), Charles Holt Carroll (1850s), and Amasa Walker (1873).
In 1933, a group of economic professors at the University of Chicago elaborated the "Chicago Plan", urging two-tier banking: (i) 100% reserve banking that strictly emits no money; and (ii) investment banking that strictly receives no deposits; it only buys and sells bonds and equities.
This Plan wanted to end central banking, establish a banking system fully immune to crises with no unemployment (except frictional), and end government inflation of the stock markets. The conviction of ending central banking was shared by Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Maurice Allais.
Yet, instead of abolishing the Fed, politicians confiscated all the gold of the citizens in 1934 and further empowered the Fed, adding to government despotism.
Ron Paul considered "the creation of the Fed the most tragic blunder ever committed by Congress. The day [the existence of the Federal Reserve] it was passed [into law], old America died and a new era began. A new institution was born that was to cause the unprecedented economic instability in the decades to come. The longer we delay a conversion to sound money and away from central banking, the worse our crises will grow and the more the government will expand at the expense of our liberties. Our wealth is drained, our productivity is sharply diminished. Our freedoms are eroded.
"We have been through nearly a hundred years of this same repeating pattern, so it is time to wise up and learn something. When the printing presses are available to the government and the banking cartel, they will use them rather than do the right thing. Manipulating interest rates is an immoral act. It is economically destructive. A central bank setting interest rates is price-fixing and is a form of central economic planning. Price-fixing is a tool of socialism and destroys production. Artificially low rates of interest orchestrated by the Fed induced investors, savers, borrowers, and consumers to misjudge what was going on. Multiple mistakes are made. Prosperity can never be achieved by cheap credit. If that were so, no one would have to work for a living."
Ron Paul stated that the Fed should be abolished because it is an immoral, unconstitutional, and unpractical interest-group institution; it promotes bad economics and undermines liberty. Its destructive nature makes it a tool of tyrannical government. Nothing good can come from the Fed. Diluting the value of the dollar by increasing its supply is a vicious, sinister tax on the poor and the middle class. The Fed's monetary policy has brought us to where we are today. The evidence is abundant that the Fed is at fault and should be abolished.
Ron Paul considered that the entire operation of the Fed was based on an immoral principle. Transferring wealth is limited when taxes and borrowing are the only tools the politicians can use. The cooperation of the politicians and the counterfeiters at the Fed is based on the immorality of fraud and deceit. Morality of money is related to morality in politics. The system is morally corrupt. Few understand or decry the immorality of the redistribution of wealth through government force.
Prodded by the politicians, vested-financial interest, and academics, the Fed went on its worst money rampage during 2009-2014, creating seven times the amount of money it created during 1913-2008.
Poverty is spreading and money chaos has never been as pervasive as now. A sheer plundering is under way: debt is pushed on the top of already intoxicated debt at near-zero interest rates. The Fed's elite believe that their mandate is full-employment and economic prosperity. This mandate was never thought of in the 1913 Fed Act; not by omission, but simply because mass-unemployment never existed in the United States before 1929.
The irony is that the Fed causes structural mass-unemployment, and at the same it believes that it can restore full-employment. There can be no delusion greater than this one. The Fed is a roadblock to employment; if removed, employment will be restored naturally.
Generations had to suffer from the anti-constitutional scheme in 1913 that repealed the Constitution's fundamental money law.
No government in any country should bail out any bank or any company. A just government protects no vested-interest group, be it unions, farmers, or bankers. More specifically, a bank should never be bailed out, simply because it emits fictitious debt which it requires to be paid in real capital.
Assume a bank has a reserve of $100 in gold; eager to earn interest and commissions, it issues fictitious loans for $1,000 in gold. Evidently, $100 in gold cannot pay a fictitious amount of $1,000 in gold. The government would never bail out the bank with $900 in gold. The bank sinks. With paper money, the government prints $900 and bails out the bank. This is the essence of a central bank as a bailout institution with paper money. Workers and poor people should suffer a $900 loss in real capital (food, clothing, energy) to pay the bank or its debtors for a fictitious capital the bank had emitted at the stroke of the pen.
Ron Paul's message was never understood. Politicians and "experts" on money do not understand even the basic principles of money. Former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke did know what the dollar was; however, he maintained that the relation of zero-interest, printing money, and full-employment was as accurate as the law of gravity.
The ideology of abolishing unemployment and restoring prosperity by printing trillions of dollars and forcing zero interest rates is stronger now than ever. Debt is being forced at near zero-interest rates regardless of creditworthiness. Huge capital is being destroyed and people's agony deepens.
The Fed has charted a course between a Scylla of hyperinflation and a Charybdis of debt collapse as in 1933 and 2008. The Fed is second to none in money anarchy and economic destruction: more debt, more speculation, more inflation, more poverty, and more injustice. Some are made overly rich for free; others are totally denuded.
Most disquieting, some Nobel Prize winners are staunch advocates of anti-market forces and preach total money destruction by the government. Practically, there is no university that teaches the true nature of money, banking, and markets as displayed in Ron Paul's writings. You feel sorry for students who spend US$60,000 a year at elite universities and learn anti-market Stalinism.
For Ron Paul, money is a market commodity, like a car, produced at a real cost in labor and capital, and is exchanged against other real commodities. A bit of paper has zero-cost in labor and capital, it can never be money. It is so by state coercion. The state outlaws gold, which it cannot print, in favor of paper, which it can print with no limit. It has therefore no check on its spending and despotism.
For Ron Paul, paper is the money of war, noting that the United States, with unlimited paper money, has become the first warrior of the world, unhesitantly waging wars in every corner of the world.
Among Paul's writings is his excellent book End the Fed (2009) where he held it as of utmost vital interest of the United States to end the Federal Reserve (Fed). He contended that the Fed has been destabilizing the US economy, inflicting recurrent catastrophes ever since it was created.
Did the United States need a central bank? For Ron Paul, the answer was positively no. The US economy was growing by leaps and bounds before 1914, making discoveries in communications, cars, radios, photography, airplanes, heavy machinery, with no central bank.
A central bank would be a fifth wheel in a coach. The US Treasury emitted notes against gold prior to 1913, and therefore had no need for a central bank for circulating money. It was vested-interest financial groups that forced the Fed on government for bailout purposes; under the guise that it was necessary for the US economy, this was a poisoned gift.
For Ron Paul, financial crises, an inherent feature of fractional banking, were brief and self-liquidating prior to 1913. A crisis on the scale of the Great Depression had never occurred and would never have occurred had it not been for the Fed. The stock index could not have gone up threefold from 1926 to 1929 without very low interest rates and unending liquidity from the Fed. It was the very design of the authors of the Fed to provide an infinitely elastic money supply, as much money as speculators and debtors wished to have.
Likewise, stock prices could never increase by 25% per year, as they did during 2009-2014, without the Fed's money floods.
Speculative prices became interminably inflated by the Fed, allowing an amazing free real wealth to speculators. The Fed has turned the stock market into a true casino; it is no longer an investment vehicle.
For Ron Paul, the Fed should have ended promptly in 1929 with the stock crash. Confronted with a grandiose disaster, politicians of the time should have realized that nothing good would come out of the Fed, or more generally, from a central bank, a truth discovered long ago by France, which promptly abolished John Law's bank in 1720 when stocks crashed dramatically, then by Thomas Jefferson (1811), Andrew Jackson (1832), Charles Holt Carroll (1850s), and Amasa Walker (1873).
In 1933, a group of economic professors at the University of Chicago elaborated the "Chicago Plan", urging two-tier banking: (i) 100% reserve banking that strictly emits no money; and (ii) investment banking that strictly receives no deposits; it only buys and sells bonds and equities.
This Plan wanted to end central banking, establish a banking system fully immune to crises with no unemployment (except frictional), and end government inflation of the stock markets. The conviction of ending central banking was shared by Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Maurice Allais.
Yet, instead of abolishing the Fed, politicians confiscated all the gold of the citizens in 1934 and further empowered the Fed, adding to government despotism.
Ron Paul considered "the creation of the Fed the most tragic blunder ever committed by Congress. The day [the existence of the Federal Reserve] it was passed [into law], old America died and a new era began. A new institution was born that was to cause the unprecedented economic instability in the decades to come. The longer we delay a conversion to sound money and away from central banking, the worse our crises will grow and the more the government will expand at the expense of our liberties. Our wealth is drained, our productivity is sharply diminished. Our freedoms are eroded.
"We have been through nearly a hundred years of this same repeating pattern, so it is time to wise up and learn something. When the printing presses are available to the government and the banking cartel, they will use them rather than do the right thing. Manipulating interest rates is an immoral act. It is economically destructive. A central bank setting interest rates is price-fixing and is a form of central economic planning. Price-fixing is a tool of socialism and destroys production. Artificially low rates of interest orchestrated by the Fed induced investors, savers, borrowers, and consumers to misjudge what was going on. Multiple mistakes are made. Prosperity can never be achieved by cheap credit. If that were so, no one would have to work for a living."
Ron Paul stated that the Fed should be abolished because it is an immoral, unconstitutional, and unpractical interest-group institution; it promotes bad economics and undermines liberty. Its destructive nature makes it a tool of tyrannical government. Nothing good can come from the Fed. Diluting the value of the dollar by increasing its supply is a vicious, sinister tax on the poor and the middle class. The Fed's monetary policy has brought us to where we are today. The evidence is abundant that the Fed is at fault and should be abolished.
Ron Paul considered that the entire operation of the Fed was based on an immoral principle. Transferring wealth is limited when taxes and borrowing are the only tools the politicians can use. The cooperation of the politicians and the counterfeiters at the Fed is based on the immorality of fraud and deceit. Morality of money is related to morality in politics. The system is morally corrupt. Few understand or decry the immorality of the redistribution of wealth through government force.
Prodded by the politicians, vested-financial interest, and academics, the Fed went on its worst money rampage during 2009-2014, creating seven times the amount of money it created during 1913-2008.
Poverty is spreading and money chaos has never been as pervasive as now. A sheer plundering is under way: debt is pushed on the top of already intoxicated debt at near-zero interest rates. The Fed's elite believe that their mandate is full-employment and economic prosperity. This mandate was never thought of in the 1913 Fed Act; not by omission, but simply because mass-unemployment never existed in the United States before 1929.
The irony is that the Fed causes structural mass-unemployment, and at the same it believes that it can restore full-employment. There can be no delusion greater than this one. The Fed is a roadblock to employment; if removed, employment will be restored naturally.
Generations had to suffer from the anti-constitutional scheme in 1913 that repealed the Constitution's fundamental money law.
No government in any country should bail out any bank or any company. A just government protects no vested-interest group, be it unions, farmers, or bankers. More specifically, a bank should never be bailed out, simply because it emits fictitious debt which it requires to be paid in real capital.
Assume a bank has a reserve of $100 in gold; eager to earn interest and commissions, it issues fictitious loans for $1,000 in gold. Evidently, $100 in gold cannot pay a fictitious amount of $1,000 in gold. The government would never bail out the bank with $900 in gold. The bank sinks. With paper money, the government prints $900 and bails out the bank. This is the essence of a central bank as a bailout institution with paper money. Workers and poor people should suffer a $900 loss in real capital (food, clothing, energy) to pay the bank or its debtors for a fictitious capital the bank had emitted at the stroke of the pen.
Ron Paul's message was never understood. Politicians and "experts" on money do not understand even the basic principles of money. Former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke did know what the dollar was; however, he maintained that the relation of zero-interest, printing money, and full-employment was as accurate as the law of gravity.
The ideology of abolishing unemployment and restoring prosperity by printing trillions of dollars and forcing zero interest rates is stronger now than ever. Debt is being forced at near zero-interest rates regardless of creditworthiness. Huge capital is being destroyed and people's agony deepens.
The Fed has charted a course between a Scylla of hyperinflation and a Charybdis of debt collapse as in 1933 and 2008. The Fed is second to none in money anarchy and economic destruction: more debt, more speculation, more inflation, more poverty, and more injustice. Some are made overly rich for free; others are totally denuded.
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