Essays

The Tax-Evaders Who Never Make The News

"You'll never hear peep about another group of tax evaders. This group flies under the radar every time. You see, when The Federal Reserve cranks out fresh copies of Bernanke Bucks, someone always gets their hands on the money first. These are the evaders of the insidious 'Inflation Tax'. Think Wall Street, The Defense War-Making Industry, and the multitude of crony companies that receive government subsidies. They take their hot-off-the-press Bernanke Bucks and start spending them (bidding up prices). These are the lucky 'winners.' For they have found a way to evade the Inflation Tax. The rest of us suckers get stuck with the bill." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingThe Tax-Evaders Who Never Make The News

Treating Surveillance as Damage and Routing Around It

"Even as the U.S. security state becomes more closed, centralized and brittle in the face of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks, civil society and the public are responding to the post-Snowden repression by becoming more dispersed and resilient. That’s how networks always respond to censorship and surveillance. Each new attempt at a file-sharing service, after Napster was shut down — Kazaa, Kazaa lite, eDonkey, eMule, The Pirate Bay — was less dependent on central servers and other vulnerable nodes than the one before it. Wikileaks responded the same way to U.S. government attempts to shut it down." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingTreating Surveillance as Damage and Routing Around It

Does “Homeland Security” really protect you?

"Secretary Janet Napolitano’s resignation is the perfect time get rid of the Department. Its alleged purpose is to prevent terrorism. But it’s trying to solve a problem that doesn’t really exist. You’re far more likely to die from bathtub drowning, home appliances, or deer accidents than from terrorism. This tells me the DHS is a waste of time. Spending shot up from $20 billion in 2002 to $60 billion this year. Also, the DHS isn’t really about security or terrorism prevention at all: The primary counter-terrorism agencies - FBI, CIA, and NSA - aren’t even part of the DHS. Less than 25% of DHS grants actually go to terrorism prevention." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDoes “Homeland Security” really protect you?

The FED’s Money Trap

"The Federal Reserve, and therefore the economy, is caught on the horns of a dilemma of our own making. ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) and the aggressive pumping of money (upwards of $85 billion a month) into the financial system have tripled our money supply. Housing is perhaps the canary in the coal mine telling us that things are not going well and danger is close by. Even with 3% 30-year mortgages and no money down, we have to go back to 1997 to see such such low levels of home ownership in America." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingThe FED’s Money Trap

Is the Gold Market Manipulated?

"By arguing whether or not gold manipulation exists, we may find that we are wasting our brain cells on the question. A better question, and one that we might choose to monitor on a regular basis, might be, 'To what degree is successful manipulation taking place?' We might then use the on-going answer as a guide, to inform our reasoning going forward, as to what impact any perceived manipulation is likely to have with regard to our precious metals investment." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingIs the Gold Market Manipulated?

James Bovard: Obama, NSA, Gulf of Tonkin, & Governing as Lying

"This is the 49th anniversary of Congress’s passage of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, by which the Lyndon Johnson administration lied the nation into the Vietnam War. Last night, President Obama appeared on the Jay Leno show and declared: 'We don’t have a domestic spying program.' He explained: 'What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an email address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat.' Why would Obama continue to shovel such bilge? Does he assume that no one has read a newspaper for the past 2 months, or what?" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingJames Bovard: Obama, NSA, Gulf of Tonkin, & Governing as Lying

Welcome to Post-Constitution America

"On July 30, 1778, the Continental Congress created the first whistleblower protection law, stating 'that it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States to give the earliest information to Congress or other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds, or misdemeanors committed by any officers or persons in the service of these states'. Two hundred and thirty-five years later, on July 30, 2013, Bradley Manning was found guilty on 20 of the 22 charges for which he was prosecuted, specifically for 'espionage' and for videos of war atrocities he released, but not for 'aiding the enemy.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWelcome to Post-Constitution America

Obama Thinks Americans Don’t Need to Know

"The day after his first inauguration, Obama proclaimed 'a new era of openness in our country.' Yet, in office, he’s driven state secrecy to new levels of absurdity. You may think that Americans have a right to know who we’re at war with, when the government thinks it can kill them, and whether the executive branch considers the personal data of all Americans “relevant” to terrorism investigations — but this administration begs to differ. As far as it’s concerned, you can’t handle the truth." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingObama Thinks Americans Don’t Need to Know

Jeffrey Tucker: Is Bitcoin Real or Not?

"Certainly government can regulate exchange between government currencies and Bitcoin. It can also regulate income in Bitcoin the same as with other currency. This is not some tax-free nirvana in the making. The government can also oversee contractual regulations and securities activities in Bitcoin. However, Bitcoin itself is a peer-to-peer system of cryptographically guarded exchange, and it lives on a distributed server model. It is not a company. It is not a stock. It is not a product. It is a ledger that no one in particular runs or owns. It is not possible for Bitcoin as such to be destroyed any more than government can destroy algebra." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingJeffrey Tucker: Is Bitcoin Real or Not?

A territorial tax system would help U.S. exports, jobs and prosperity

"Germany, a territorial tax country where wage levels are higher than in the U.S. and which has the highest job-creating 12-month trade surplus in the world of $248.5 billion, has its record lowest unemployment rate in 21 years. Germany doesn’t subject its citizens living abroad on top of the tax they pay their host countries, so Germans relocate abroad and capture foreign markets. Americans, unable to survive this double taxation, stay home, and the U.S. continues to lose export market share. The 'fruits' of the U.S. world-wide tax systems are a $721.8 billion 12-month world-trade deficit and $315 billion trade deficit with China." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingA territorial tax system would help U.S. exports, jobs and prosperity