100 billion here, a hundred billion there. It’s hard to notice apparently. I love the part near the end when the CEO admits that they get all the profits from the bets, and the taxpayer is their safety net.
Pure corporatism.
End corporatism. Starts with ending the fed and ending the income tax. Need to starve the beast.
I think we just need to remove multi billion doller coorparations like this. They screw as many people as they can for a little extra profit.
I’m not buying the “Somalia solution”
Without Corporations ? Very Somali. No income tax ? You get this war lord’s vote . The highest earners should pay no income tax. Tax consumption, and set up road blocks to shake down merchants. No Fed ?, great !,no secure servers to stash cash safely, just torture people until they tell you where they hid their coins ! = profit ! Then invest in guns and cultivating murderous thugs. Libertarianism, as actually practiced in Somalia, is a quite viable economic system, as long as you don’t run out of thugs with loaded guns. Be sure to stock up, that tax free justice can get a little expensive if you run out of bullets first.
I fail to see the logic of not raising the income tax on the wealthiest, when insolvency is the country’s biggest threat. Abolishing the income tax completely won’t “starve the beast”. You ain’t seen a beast until you go to Somalia, where the beast of “government by law” has been replaced. Be sure to bring a bunch of idiots with rusty AK 47’s with you. Nothing to flashy. No Stainless S&W’s, or any expensive guns. You will see the beast when he starts shooting at you, trying to steal your guns. That’s why you want OK guns, not really good ones. You don’t want the beast to try to hard.
No tax = no law = buy guns and be a ruthless asshole = profit ! Libertarian utopias can be awesome, just don’t be an idiot and run out of bullets, or get a too cool gun. A 10,000 $ chain gun on the back of a reliable pick up might seem like a great idea. It would be if it didn’t attract more idiots with rusty AK 47’s like flies at a picnic. The law of the gun says they are one shot from owning that truck with the fancy gun. So if you find the pull of a no tax (except for shake downs) paradise appealing enough to go there, bring a nice working but crappy looking AK 47. Don’t worry about getting it through air port security, everyone traveling to law free paradise will be carrying one. If you didn’t, it could arouse suspicion (what ? no gun? he must be insane !)
If Somalia didn’t have states (UN, US, etc.) trying to install a state there, then it may evolve into the perfect stateless society. But since that’s not the case, you bringing it up has no relevance.
Corporatism is not the same as without corporations. Corporatism is a form of government where government and businesses work together to set policy. A form of fascism. That’s what the United States is. Your video showing one example.
It is still theft even if the person you want to steal it from is far more richer than you. Taxing the product of one’s labor is slavery. Property should only be transferred by voluntary means, not through the violence and coercion of the state.
How are tax and law the same? An income tax is the “rule of men” whereas a free society is the “rule of law”. You can have law without imposing a coercive tax.
Might be the biggest threat to the state, but not the biggest threat to liberty. The state is the biggest threat to liberty. The current United States is an authoritarian government and can make up any “laws” it wants to. The limits of natural law and the limits imposed by the constitution are gone. Voting isn’t going to do much good since the Fed exists and controls the system of money, which is what funds many political campaigns.
The Fed isn’t the only organization capable of having secure servers. The Fed doesn’t even keep the details of each individuals bank account, so even today you are relying on the security of your bank’s servers.
Basically my understanding of government and corporations is this. Government is not bad nor are corporations, it is the people within. People make up these groups; jealous power hungry people. Change the people, change the government. Change the people, change the corporations.
Changing people means showing what love is; what care is. The reason the world is the way it is is because of the people within it. We as people need to say not I, but you. Not what I want, but what you need. Now to put “religion” in the argument.
We need to bring people to the love of Jesus. Jesus did not seek his own, but that of others and of God. By seeking God he sought to love people and change people hearts to be like his. If everyone were like Jesus, not rejecting the will of God, then we would have a pretty nice place to live in right now.
I’m what you might call a Christian Anarchist BTW. Here is a short summation of what that means. Just picked it up about five seconds ago. http://www.angelfire.com/music/djintellect/anarchism.html
Also some of what Jesus said about leadership:
Mark 10:35-45 John 13:1-12
The insert link tool is not working for this version of Safari Gilby. When you press on the Insert Link tool to insert your link what you highlight gets unhighlighted for some reason. I do believe it is version 5.2 for Windows Computers. Whatever the newest one is. If I do not get a response on this I will post my complaint in the “Fix It” section.
Actually, the Fed does have all the electronic money accounts. For instance, I can use my debit card in ATM’s across the country, to take money from my small local bank, even at night or holidays, when my little bank is closed. That is because the ATM gets the info from the Fed’s severs, not from my local bank’s. To abolish the Fed would almost end online marketing. You would have to send a check and wait a long time. Did you know all the checks are cleared by a central Fed facility ? If I cash a BOA check at my bank, my bank doesn’t send the check to BOA for payment, they send all the days checks, from hundreds of different banks, to a Fed check clearing facility in one envelope. That’s how the bank can close at 5, the Fed does the check work, while all the tellers are home sleeping.
I am all for letting Ron Paul do as thorough an audit of the Fed as he wants.
But the organization does do a lot of essential work. If it was abolished we would have to create another Fed to do those important jobs. No Fed, no electronic money. No fast check clearing for checks from far away banks.
The Fed not only knows how much $ is in every account in the USA, they know how much capital, liabilities, and assets each bank has. If the capital to “risk weighed assets” ratio goes bad, that is how the Fed knows it’s time to shut that bank down. Perhaps the Fed has some flaws, but it does many vital jobs rather well.
I was partly incorrect
As usual, I prefer to lecture people about my knowledge, then check later to see if I was right.
The part about central Fed run check clearing facilities was correct. However, unlike in the 90’s, when a bank would put all the checks in an envelope and send them to the Fed to clear, more is done electronically now. Digital images of paper checks are sometimes sent to the Fed for clearing.
Really short and sweet
Why don’t checks clear on Sunday ?
Get rid of the Fed, and they won’t clear Monday to Saturday neither.
This is from Wiki
"By creating the Federal Reserve System, Congress intended to eliminate the severe financial crises that had periodically swept the nation, especially the sort of financial panic that occurred in 1907. During that episode, payments were disrupted throughout the country because many banks and clearinghouses refused to clear checks drawn on certain other banks, a practice that contributed to the failure of otherwise solvent banks. To address these problems, Congress gave the Federal Reserve System the authority to establish a nationwide check-clearing system. The System, then, was to provide not only an elastic currency—that is, a currency that would expand or shrink in amount as economic conditions warranted—but also an efficient and equitable check-collection system. " -Wiki
When you do an ATM transaction, the ATM connects with an ATM network such as Cirrus, Plus, Moneypass, etc which then connects with your bank to transfer the funds. It doen’t go through the Fed.
God, I hope not. Whatever happened to having some privacy? They only keep track of the bank’s bank accounts with the Fed.
Do everyone a favor and do your fact checking before you post.
Wrong.
Almost half of all check clearing or ACH transactions go through the Electronic Payments Network, a private clearing house.
Almost all interbank transactions go through the Clearing House Interbank Payments System, a private clearing house.
Get rid of the Fed and more will go through these networks, or other private networks.
Yes, the Fed isn’t the only one that is capable of setting up electronic financial transactions. It’s not an impossible task for others to do it.
The Electronic Payments Network doesn’t clear checks, only the Fed does that. The Electronic Payments network handles large scale electronic payments for dividends, payroll, etc.
The Clearing House Interbank Payments System is just an agreement among some large banks on how to wire money to each other. Most banks don’t belong to it. They don’t clear checks either.
You are correct in reasoning check clearing could be done by a separate private entity rather than the Fed, however, that’s not how it is done now. Why would turning this function over to a private sector (and thus secret) entity be an advancement ? Do you just hate the Fed ? Are you just Fed up? (sorry, bad pun).
Given recent events of the last few years, your faith in the integrity of private banks surprises me. Turning the whole kit and caboodle over to them seems ill advised to me. Admittedly, private banks run the Fed now, but there is at least some federal over sight role. Grayson wouldn’t have the authority to even ask questions once the Fed was gone and it was all private business.
It does seem I was wrong about how debit cards work
The Fed does keep track of each banks capital, liabilities, and risk weighed asset ratio on it’s servers. They have a swat team of shut down FDIC specialists who have had a very busy couple years. But it does seem to me, after a bit more research, that small value card transactions are handled by private servers, not the Fed’s.
Check clearing is not a critical function that is the problem with the Fed. Interesting you try to throw the secrecy word out there, considering that the Fed is an extremely secretive quasi-government entity.
The problem with the Fed is it has a monopoly on the creation of money and credit. It is the cause of the business cycle – the booms and busts. If the money supply and credit were left to the free market, interest rates and purchasing power would naturally be at an equilibrium with the economy. instead, with the Fed, we get artificial rates with cause malinvestments. These malinvestments weren’t because of greedy bankers, but were because the artificial interest rates caused the bankers and the rest of us to see signals in the market that were wrong. Low rates cause us to think there is an abundance of resources available, so we spend money on less than worthy projects. Reality hits and the economy goes bust.
The Federal Reserve is also unconstitutional and major threat to liberty.
The Fed seems to have reduced boom-bust cycles
You write as if depressions are a result of going off of solid coins, and shenanigans of the Fed. Read about the economic collapse of 1893. Not a paper bill in sight.
Barely had things improved at the turn of the century (airplanes !, model T’s !), when there was a serious recession in 1907. This lead directly to the creation of the Fed in 1913.
Was it constitutional ? If you actually read the USA constitution, you would know that only the SCOTUS opinion counts. You are not a Supreme Court member, so you should read what they decided (the Fed is constitutional), then sit down and shut up about the legality of the Fed. That is, if you give a crap about the constitution. It says the supreme court decides how to read the constitution, then patriots agree with them. That is the law of the land. Attacking the legitimacy of the Fed requires you to piss on SCOTUS, which means ripping out one of the 3 legs of the pillars of our country.
If every dumb ass got to read the constitution and enforce it their own way, we wouldn’t have got as far as we have. You may dislike the IRS, or the Fed, but declaring them unconstitutional means that you do not respect the opinion of the Supreme Court. Very close to treason sir. Almost Lincoln like.
Lincoln, eh? That guy was badass.
But you couldn’t call him a rebel…
FTFY. Only sheep accept a ruling as truth, simply because it’s a ruling. Are you saying that if I disagree with a particular ruling, I can’t be a “patriot”? Nonsense. Blindly following every ruling made by the courts is not a condition of patriotism.
What is this law you speak of? A law stating that I must agree with every supreme court decision in order to remain a patriot? The Federal government has no authority to make such an absurd law, as it’s responsibilities are clearly spelled out in the constitution.
Fortunately, the court has upheld my 1st amendment right to dissent.
Right, since disagreeing with a SC decision is tantamount to treason. Once the court speaks, it is TRUTH. God forbid anyone dissent or question the government.
What about when the court reverses a previous decision? Which one was TRUTH? Or were they both TRUTH, but at different times? Do I have to change my opinion each time there’s a reversal in order to remain “a patriot?” Sounds Orwellian.
What does truth have to do with it ?
I thought we were discussing law.
Let’s say I knew I was a super Catholic. Were I to go into the church and exclaim to everyone that the Pope is a jack ass, and I know this because I am more Catholic than the Pope, I would have a problem. I would have a problem even if the Pope was a jack ass, and I was super Catholic. You can be Catholic, and believe the Pope is wrong on something, but you cannot say he is wrong because you are more Catholic than the Pope. The Catholic system isn’t set up that way. You can’t say you oppose a Pope’s decision because it is uncatholic.
Likewise, I wonder how someone can say it is a valid argument against the IRS or Fed, to say that they are unconstitutional, despite what the Supreme Court has ruled. So if your opinion about the interpretation of the constitutionality of a law renders Supreme Court decisions invalid, despite the constitution’s exclusive delegation of that decision to the Supreme Court, sit down and shut up about the constitution. That’s all I’m asking. If you want to base an argument on the constitution, respect the Supreme Court’s role in deciding what is constitutional.
I don’t think this is a hard question to answer. Does a bare Pope shit in the woods ? Now that’s a hard question, he likely doesn’t want to be seen.
Is the Fed and the IRS constitutional ? 1916 and it will be over 100 years.
How long did we have slavery for? When did it start/stop being legal to murder the natives? Just because it’s a law doesn’t mean it’s right. It’s not un-American to disagree with the Supreme Court, that’s part of what makes America great. Of course in those situations where he does disagree, Gilby knows to expect an uphill battle. 
Well, as a country, we had slavery for about 90 years, or as a cotton picker, about 370 years. It was declared legal with the Dred Scott decision, in a way that left no judicial remedy. It may not have been right morally, and John Brown was not famous for objecting to it on constitutional grounds. However, legally, slavery was constitutional.
Later, the Supreme Court declined to review the constitutionality of the 14th amendment. So it stands as constitutional. Just as it would be constitutional for Congress to pass laws changing or abolishing the IRS or Fed. Laws are constitutional if passed by Congress, and not shot down yet in court. So with the Fed and income tax, it’s been almost 200 years between them. Go run for Congress if you want. Just don’t hold your breath waiting for SCOTUS to declare the 16th amendment unconstitutional. Not going to happen. I don’t believe SCOTUS has ever even reviewed a constitutional amendment. It’s a separation of powers thing. A legally passed amendment to the constitution is almost by definition constitutional. I don’t care if it says the sky is green, SCOTUS won’t go near it.
I wasn’t sure either. You mentioned a non-existent law, and then proceeded to assert that we should all agree with all SC rulings, or, in other words, accept them as truth (or have our patriotism nullified).
Your assumption, in both the constitutional and Catholic instances, is that the ruling(s) of the SC or Pope are, by definition, what constitute constitutionality or Catholicity (is that a word?). And this is where the disjunct occurs. I see more force in your assertion regarding Catholicism, but fortunately the constitution is not a religious document, and our gov’t not a top-down authoritarian theocracy.
It’s funny you use the Catholic church as an example, as it was the Catholic church that opposed the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation ideals of individuals using their own mind to reason for themselves, rather than have “TRUTH” handed to them from above.
The SC can declare that something is (un)constitutional. After such a ruling, we are all expected to abide by that ruling, though we can dissent and try to get things changed. However, when the SC overturns a decision it has made in the past, it states that the previous decision was in err; thus, that the original ruling was not constitutional. It does not say, as you seem to assume, that the first ruling was constitutional, and the latter ruling constitutional also. Two contradictory positions can’t both be right. One of them has to be incorrect.
I suppose one could take a relativistic approach and say they were both constitutional at different times and social climates, but a document that can mean anything, really means nothing. For the constitution to be meaningful, we need to assume there is a best answer for each question of constitutionality, and it is unlikely that the SC always arrives at the best answer in every ruling. Thus, we must assume that the “truth” of constitutionality in a particular case is “out there,” and we have to find it or figure it out, and we do so to varying degrees of success. I do not believe that SC rulings and constitutionality are synonymous. A SC ruling is an attempt to grasp a truth - and sometimes that grasp slips.
Thus, Gilby, or anyone, is perfectly justified in claiming that something is, or isn’t constitutional. He feels his position is a better fit to the wording and ideals of the constitution than the current gov’t position. He might be wrong, but he is at least justified in making a claim that something is (un)constitutional; he is claiming that the amendment does not fit the ideals and wording of the constitution as it existed before the amendment.
Just because a law or amendment hasn’t been judged, doesn’t mean the court has affirmed it’s constitutionality. All that means is that no case has made it to the supreme court to challenge it, often because the case doesn’t have legal standing to go before the SC. Of course, it is assumed to be constitutional until it is judged, but so are all laws and amendments, including those which the court later rules unconstitutional.
No. If I think a SC decision, law, or amendment violates the wording and/or principles of the constitution, I’m going to say it’s unconstitutional. I’m merely making a claim at what the truth is, just as the SC is making a claim at what the truth is. Granted, the SC’s opinion has much more weight than mine, but it is a difference of degree, not of kind.