Downsizer-Dispatch: What Republican Would Say Such Things?

Quote of the Day: "Opposing the status quo generates a cloak of media invisibility regardless of party or ideology." - Steve Dasbach, co-founder, DownsizeDC.org 

Lately, we've gotten a lot of messages accusing us of being mean-spirited Republicans. Let me be blunt in response . . .  

We don't like political parties. We believe that partisanship...  

suspends deep thought  

retards imagination  <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/30/AR2006073000579.html> 

closes minds  <http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/> 

creates cognitive dissonance  <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/opinion/29douthat.html> 

warps character:  Where else would lying better be considered productive team behavior  <http://sightline.org/research/sust_toolkit/communications-strategy/drewwestenresearch> 

produces a system that rewards narcissism  

stokes culture wars  

leads to regulatory capture  

And we believe our job is to afflict the comfortable leadership of both parties -- to speak truth to whichever POWER needs to hear it.  Of course, those criticizing us might be suggesting we have some sympathies with the GOP. 

Well, I ask you...  What leading Republicans do you know who would post ALL of the following new ACTION ITEMS on their blog? Frankly, the GOP is part of the problem in every one of these instances...  

1. Now Playing At Security Theater: The Sting
Did you know that most terrorist plots are concocted by the FBI? Want to see the proof, and then do something about it?
<http://www.downsizedc.org/blog/now-playing-at-security-theater-the-sting>
Retweet: http://twitter.com/#!/DDCDispatch/status/108629637835403265

2. I rage against cuts that don't cut
The Republican-controlled House and Democrat-run Senate haven't really "cut" anything. One party is lying about false accomplishments, while the other is hysterical about something that doesn't even exist. Do you want real cuts?
<http://www.downsizedc.org/blog/i-rage-against-cuts-that-dont-cut>
Retweet: http://twitter.com/#!/DDCDispatch/status/108630458501312512

3. Statism means always having to pay other people's bills
Did the politicians steal $103 million from you so that other people could get broadband cable? Tell them to stop robbing Peter to pay Paul, and robbing you to pay both of them!
<http://www.downsizedc.org/blog/statism-means-always-having-to-pay-other-peoples-bills>
Retweet: http://twitter.com/#!/DDCDispatch/status/108631061394755584

4. Patriot Act Deployed Against Wikileaks
Even we know this is a HERESY! You might disagree. The State hates those who expose wrongdoing, and seeks to silence, even punish them.  But what Republican leader would say this? Heck, what Democrat leader is defending the free press in this instance? We think the politicians need to hear from you about this. We hope you agree.
<http://www.downsizedc.org/blog/patriot-act-deployed-against-wikileaks>
Retweet: http://twitter.com/#!/DDCDispatch/status/108631725927702528

Cops Confiscate Cameras at Ohio Congressman’s Town Hall

A congressman from Ohio had cops grab the cameras of constituents during a town hall meeting. Steve Chabot, a Republican, had cell phones and cameras confiscated in order to “prevent an embarrassing Youtube video from making the rounds,” according to Carlos Miller, who runs a blog documenting efforts by the state to stifle the First Amendment rights of photographers.

Ron Paul and FEMA

It is interesting how government agencies quickly become institutionalized into our social fabric to the point where people actually believe we cannot do without them. As I read the CNN article on Ron Paul and FEMA (he opposes this idiocracy), I also read the comments and some people actually tried to claim that Ron was insane for his views. That's right, insane.

Ron Paul's criticisms of FEMA were VERY accurate, the MSM to the contrary notwithstanding.  Check out:

More on FEMA

Libya Proves Ron Paul Right

One of the key arguments for America not being the world’s policeman is that constant intervention leads to too many unintended consequences.
Libya is a perfect example.

Media Ignoring Ron Paul? Interview on Faux News

NIA's "College Conspiracy"

The Weather Channel says the east coast earthquake was caused by an unknown fault line running under D.C. and through Virginia. It is now being called Obama's Fault, though Obama will say it's really Bush's Fault. Another theory is that it was the founding fathers rolling over in their graves, but I believe what we all thought was an earthquake was actually the effects of a 14.6 trillion dollar check bouncing in Washington.

US debt deal means paying for college - especially graduate school - will get tougher - Boston.com

College is expensive. Now the 11th-hour agreement to raise the US debt ceiling is set to push costs higher. That’s particularly true for those pursuing advanced degrees, with subsidies to graduate and professional students ending. The upside: The savings will be used to help preserve Pell grants, which help low-income students.

Everything subsidized by the Federal Government is expensive.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place Excerpts From Sovereign Man: Notes From the Field

Ancient Greek mythology tells the tale of Odysseus, the heroic king of Ithaca whose 10-year journey home after the Trojan War became one of the world's most famous epics. At one point in the journey, his ship was heading straight for two deadly hazards-- on one side was Scylla, a six-headed monster disguised as a giant rock, and on the other side was Charybdis, a sinister whirlpool born from the sea god Poseidon. The perils were close enough to pose an inescapable threat to ships passing through, forcing the captain to choose between the two evils. A Latin proverb from this story, "incidit in scyllam cupiens vitare charybdim" (he runs on Scylla, wishing to avoid Charybdis), is now "between a rock and a hard place" in modern English. This is exactly where the entire world finds itself right now. With confidence vanishing, markets panicking, and entire nations going bankrupt, ultimately there are no good solutions... and thinking people need to understand some simple truths about the situation: 1) America's credit rating was punished by S&P because US politicians failed to reach an adequate solution to the country's massive debt woes which are nearing 100% of GDP. Investors reacted by buying the Japanese yen-- a country whose sovereign debt rating is two steps below the US, and at 220% of GDP, over twice as indebted! Not to mention, Japan has burned through 4 prime ministers and 8 finance ministers just in the last four years. This is not exactly a country whose government has a successful track record of dealing with its problems. How does this make any sense? That's like firing an employee who gets drunk on the job and replacing him with a gun-toting heroin addict. Yet faced with a universe of bad choices, investors will pick the one which appears to be the 'least worse'. This approach is sure to create even more gross misallocations of capital down the road. 2) World governments have gone on the offensive against S&P, slamming the rating agency and trying to discredit the firm's financial calculations without acknowledging the underlying premise-- that America lacks a credible plan to deal with its crisis. Leaders from countries as diverse as France, South Korea, and even Russia have all shrugged off the downgrade and publicly reiterated their confidence in the United States. (They even rolled out Warren Buffet who said that the US deserves "a quadruple-A" credit rating.) You know that old adage-- how do you know that a politician is lying? Because his lips are moving. When so many world leaders are expressing nearly unanimous support for the dollar and the US government, it's time to be very concerned about what's going on behind the scenes. 3) G7 finance ministers have pledged to take any steps necessary to calm markets and "avert collapse in world confidence." Here's the thing: All governments can do is print, borrow, or steal from taxpayers. These are exactly the policies that created a loss of confidence to begin with, and now they are pledging to restore confidence by doing the exact same things. If they take action, the situation will only get worse. If they don't take action, the markets will panic and the situation will only get worse. Rock. Hard place. 4) Trillions of dollars are sloshing around in the financial system right now desperately seeking some modicum of safety. With the wave of downgrades and money creation that's coming, few asset classes look stable... so that little hunk of yellow metal is starting to look awfully attractive to a lot of investors. 5) Governments will do whatever it takes to keep the party going and maintain the status quo, whether it's printing money into oblivion and sticking consumers with massive inflation, or sending police out into the streets to beat everyone into submission.

Maybe Napoleon Was Right… by Eric Peters

Most people, no matter where they fall on the political continuum, are quite happily habituated to the omnipresence of government – to omnipresent control in exchange (supposedly) for “safety." 

I doubt the answer is one out of 100. Maybe not even that. 

How many people out there would be willing to forgo any claim to a government check for anything – “retirement,” “health care,” “unemployment compensation” – in return for the liberty to provide for themselves, successfully or not? 

No, wait, let’s go deeper. To agree with the statement that no one is entitled to take money from anyone else for any purpose, without their consent? 

Clear majorities support the emerging police state – the universal monitoring, the mass frisks. 

Democrats – that is, left-leaning statists – are of course a lost cause. 

But it is conservatives – Republicans – who are the most depressing. Because they claim to love liberty – the abstract conception of it, at least. But down in the mud, they’re as or even more statist than the left-liberal Democrats they claim to oppose.

Greenspan Comes Clean and Endorses the 'Zimbabwe-Weimar Solution' « LewRockwell.com Blog

Hey, those idiots at S&P don't know anything about money and U.S. debt! Says who? The Great Alan Greenspan, that's who! Default? Here is the latest:

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Sunday ruled out the chance of a US default following S&P's decision to downgrade America's credit rating."The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default" said Greenspan on NBC's Meet the Press. (Emphasis mine)"What I think the S&P thing did was to hit a nerve that there's something basically bad going on, and it's hit the self-esteem of the United States, the psyche" said Greenspan.

Is not the very act of paying a debt using newly-printed money in itself an act of default?

Ultra bearish Marc Faber says current gold price 'low', investors must prepare for the worst as 'it will come to war' - Business Intelligence Middle East - bi-me.com - News, analysis, reports

S&P Downgrades U.S. Debt Rating

 

S&P just announced late this evening that they have downgraded the U.S. debt rating from AAA to AA+ with a negative outlook. NIA is absolutely shocked by this. What shocks us is just how long it took them to make this downgrade. Just like how S&P and Moody's didn't downgrade subprime CDOs until the mortgage-backed bonds they held were practically worthless, S&P waited for U.S. debt obligations to reach five times GDP and for the U.S. dollar to lose 84% of its purchasing power over the course of a single decade. The U.S. was a hair away from defaulting on its debt this week if the debt ceiling wasn't raised, yet it still had a AAA rating. NIA believes that a AAA rating should be reserved for countries that have budget surpluses, low levels of debt that could easily be paid off without printing money, and low levels of inflation. The U.S. had a cash budget deficit last year of $1.3 trillion, but once you include increases to unfunded liabilities, our real budget deficit was approximately $5 trillion. Even if Americans were taxed 100% of their income it wouldn't be enough to balance the budget. It is hard to imagine a fiscal situation worse than this, but the credit ratings agencies have justified giving the U.S. a AAA rating based on the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency and the Federal Reserve's ability to monetize our deficits and debts by printing money. If it wasn't for our printing press and the world's willingness to accept and hoard the dollars we print in return for the real products and commodities they produce, the U.S. credit rating would be junk. S&P claims that their reason for downgrading the U.S. debt rating at this time is because, "the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge". According to S&P, it is because our two political parties are so far apart that we weren't able to pass a bill with anything but modest spending cuts. The reality is, the Republicans and Democrats aren't far apart at all. Neither parties are serious about cutting spending and the underlying fundamentals of both their proposed bills were exactly the same. The Republicans that American tea party supporters elected to office have broken their promises to make major spending cuts and have accomplished absolutely nothing positive since entering office. Our country just had an unbelievable opportunity to dramatically cut government spending in a last ditch effort to prevent hyperinflation. Instead, our government passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling that had no real spending cuts at all. The mainstream media tried to spin the bill into being a victory for U.S. tea party supporters due to the purported "spending cuts" that it contained. The truth is, government spending is set to rise every single year until the dollar is worthless. The $2.1 trillion in phony spending cuts are only tiny reductions to large spending increases and none of them will begin until early 2013 when we will need to once again raise the debt ceiling. Even if the government in early 2013 decides to follow through with them, rising interest payments on our national debt will mean substantially larger budget deficits than what are projected today. Credit ratings agencies have absolutely zero credibility left and we believe that with hyperinflation coming soon, credit ratings will become a thing of the past. To capitalize on this, on May 23rd NIA suggested to you put options in the only publicly traded pure credit ratings play, Moody's (MCO). On May 23rd with MCO trading for $37.90, NIA suggested to you MCO November 2011 $35 put options at $1.98. MCO today closed at $32.88 and our MCO put option suggestion finished the day with a last trade of $5.20 for a huge gain of 163% in a little over two months. NIA is very pleased that we figured out the #1 most profitable way to capitalize on the major fundamental shift that is taking place in this industry and as far as we are aware, NIA is the only organization in the world that suggested MCO puts in recent months.
With the stock market down big in recent weeks, NIA believes that this evening's news is already mostly factored into stock prices. With the Fed Funds Rate having been left near zero for over two years, the world is flooded with excess liquidity of U.S. dollars and there is no chance of the stock market crashing like in late-2008/early-2009. In fact, the recent downward move in the stock market means the Federal Reserve is likely to soon implement additional monetary inflation measures and will leave the Fed Funds Rate near zero permanently. The GDP was already on its way to becoming negative in the second half of 2011 and if the U.S. wants to avoid a debt default later this decade, it needs the Federal Reserve to print enough money to see at least 5% annual nominal GDP growth. It's not just the Federal Government that needs GDP to grow, but most cities and states will default on their debts if GDP doesn't grow rapidly. Cities and states don't have printing presses so unless the U.S. government wants to bail them all out like the European Union is bailing out Greece, Portugal, and Ireland, it needs to create GDP growth even if that means the Federal Reserve eliminating interest payments on the $1.6 trillion in excess reserves held by banks and taxing banks who don't lend the money. NIA prays that Americans don't make the mistake of buying U.S. Treasuries as a safe haven, as they are now the riskiest asset of all. If U.S. Treasuries rally next week, it will only be temporary and will be followed by the largest and sharpest reversal in history with a crash in Treasury prices and an explosion in yields like never seen before. Most Keynesian economists will likely forecast rising Treasury prices despite the U.S. debt crisis, because they claim the bond markets in other countries are tiny compared to ours and there simply is no other place to park safe haven money. In our opinion, there is no reason to own the fiat currency denominated bonds of any country or company. Gold and silver are the only true safe havens and it is our belief that by the end of this year, the U.S. public will begin investing into gold and silver in droves as they realize that although we avoided a debt default for now, a debt default by inflation is still on its way. The largest ever short-term rally in precious metals and mining stocks is ahead.
It is important to spread the word about NIA to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, if you want America to survive hyperinflation. Please tell everybody you know to become members of NIA for free immediately at: http://inflation.us

 

The Truth About Jobs & The Debt Limit

The awful truth about deficits and this week's "solution" to the debt limit crisis in the United States is that government debt isn't actually the core problem, but rather represents the costly cover-up of the bigger problem, that of a depression-level unemployment crisis. 

The private sector in the United States fell into a depression in 2008 and has not emerged since then. Absent an extraordinary level of government intervention in the economy – which cannot possibly be paid for by taxes or ordinary revenues – the depression in the private economy and a level of unemployment that rivals that of the Great Depression become impossible to hide. 

When we talk about the "debt limit crisis", what we're really talking about is the price of the cover-up. The debt limit crisis and the associated Federal Reserve monetary creation fiasco represent the costs of essentially blasting the economy with massive fire hoses full of both created and borrowed money on a non-stop basis, in the (unsuccessful) attempt to make the economy look and feel normal. We can stop the debt crisis at any time by turning off the fire hoses of money that have been flowing since late 2008, but then the depression in the private sector - and the full depression-level rate of unemployment - become plainly visible for everyone to see coming into a presidential election year.

The Black Swans of Politics by Justin T. P. Quinn

Let's focus on the substance of Rasmussen's opinion: The Ames Straw Poll is very important, but only if Ron Paul doesn't win. It doesn't matter whether or not Ron wins, or even how many percentage points he wins by. The Iowa Straw Poll can help every other candidate, but it can only hurt Ron Paul. The voters at Ames can have no bearing whatsoever on Ron Paul's viability as a candidate. A vote for Ron Paul ipso facto makes it irrelevant.

Ron Paul Slams Obama's "Monstrous Creature", the Super Congress

The Associated Press: US Rep. Ron Paul of Texas to retire from Congress