Funny Money

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. – As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." - John Maynard Keynes

This is why everyone thinks gas prices are rising. They are not. Has anyone bought Reses' Peanut Butter cups lately? Notice they are smaller, but the price hasn't changed much? Or noticed that Breyers ice cream now comes in 1.5 quart cartons instead of one gallon? These are the effects of the FED printing and spending money arbitrarily (quantitative easing...stimulus spending). The inflation (printing money) has already happened, the government has been spending VAST resources trying to prevent the effects (rising prices), and the ability of the people to protect themselves from it (mass flight to gold/silver). And all we get is Obama and Carney and Pelosi LYING to us that it's not their fault.

Also, to those who continue to believe, in the face of insurmountable evidence, that the Capitalist system has failed, doesn't this alone prove you wrong? The economic history of the last 100 years has been the CONSTANT debasement, corruption, perversion, and subversion... FROM WITHIN, of a capitalist system that was nascent and imperfect from the start. The fact that they (bankers, congressmen, big business) have been able to lay the blame for recessions, poverty, inflation, shrinking middle class, etc. at the feet of Capitalism is proof that their plan to simultaneously subvert the Education system and the Entertainment industry has been VERY SUCCESSFUL. Not many of you even understand what is going on... and so you blame Capitalism... You, me, us... we all have been had. And at some point, we all will have to just choose between one of two things:

1. Dropping the current farce that is Liberty, home-ownership, choice of job/career, control over health decisions, freedom to travel, freedom to defend your life/liberty/property, the VERY IDEA of property and Rights, ETC. and just accepting that we are all WARDS OF THE STATE... This has been the plan of Communists, Fabian Socialists, Zionists, Illuminati, International Bankers (Jews) all along.

2. Disobedience... which must lead to WAR. This is fine with them too, as they have used the benefits of fiat money, fractional-reserve banking, and crony capitalism to greatly enrich themselves in the meantime so as to ensure the outcome of any such hostilities. They might even PREFER this because it will thin the herd... something else they have been wanting to do for a long time.

Doing nothing, or hoping things will just figure themselves out is the same as choosing number one.

I'm not even sure that voting this November can even change anything... Ron Paul could have begun the process, but everyone just wants to say he is "un-electable." And so... here we are; after all the warnings we had... Orwell, Huxley, Henry Ford, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Marx, Lenin, Rothschild, Tolstoy, Galbraith, , Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Catholic Church, not to mention our ancestors, who have admonished us against borrowing money in general, we STILL find ourselves looking at a big fight where we might all end up either dead, or slaves.

And I hope the significance of my quoting Keynes was not lost on you. He's the bastard that sold us the rope with which to hang ourselves.

Capitalism 101

There has been a lot of talk about just what is it that has failed and caused this terrible economic crisis. And a lot of mis-understanding, and ignorance and denial of history. This is an open invitation to everyone who is willing, and open, to a conversation about this. There IS such a thing as Truth. It CAN be known. And we CAN know it. Let's all find it together, ok? I'll begin with this:
Free-Market Capitalism is the mature realization and recognition of the preciousness of the freedom and individuality of each and every person, and the absolute knowledge that in order to safeguard and secure your own happiness and contentment, you must safeguard and work to secure the ability of others to pursue their own. It is the distilled knowledge that the best way to act in the public interest is to act in enlightened SELF-INTEREST! More than a BILLION people worldwide have enjoyed increasing freedom, liberty, and prosperity in the last century due to even small-scale application of these principles.
Socialism is the admission of, and resignation to, failure. It is the un-natural imposition of the idea that you are selfish unless you subordinate your every act to the pre-supposed wisdom of those that guide and shepherd the people as a whole. You are a cog on the wheel... a brick in the wall... you are expendable and if you are deemed to be acting in self-interest, you will be accused of acting against the public interest, and force will be applied against you. More than 100 MILLION people were deliberately starved and murdered in the last century by socialist governments due to application of these flawed principles. This is undisputed fact.
Free-Market Capitalism is the only system of human interaction that is grounded in an understanding of human nature and respect for individual rights. It is the fruition of thousands of years of experimentation in human interaction. It is the only system that states absolutely that every man is the sole owner of himself. You are not property, to be owned, sold, or used by anyone but yourself. And it follows that the fruits of your justly earned labor, and capital implemented, are your property, to be used, spent, hoarded... whatever you choose. They are yours... absolutely. YOU are the capital. And YOU own it and control it. And whether you put it in play or not is your business.
Every other system that has been tried so far has held that, to some degree, you do NOT own yourself, and you owe some or all of your time, services, even your very person and life, to your king, emperor, lord, society, general, president, etc. Nothing you ever do or create is ever truly yours, because you, yourself, are not truly yours. This is un-natural... it goes against human nature, and is abhorrent to any rational being, which is why, though they may. in their ignorance, desire it, and fight for its' implementation, eventually the horrors of its' obvious conclusions drive people to reject it. Unfortunately, usually by that time it's too late.
It is a testament to the viability and durability of Free-Market Capitalism that it has been able to flourish and create such vast wealth even after 100 years of being crippled and maimed by socialism, dragging the chains and anchors and harpoons of government restriction and tithing along in the process.

This just about sums it up... Great quote from Edmund Burke.

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. ... Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." - Edmund Burke

For a few thousand years that "controlling power upon will and appetite" was provided by Religion. Here in the 21st century we are way too smart, civilized, modern, and evolved for that crap and THAT IS WHAT MAKES US UNQUALIFIED for Civil Liberty! Those Liberals, Marxists, Communists, Progressives, Anarchists, etc. all say they want freedom, but it is their revulsion to putting "moral chains upon their own appetites" that makes them unfit. See, they don't believe in Morality because they can find no basis for it without invoking God. And god forbid anyone should do that! (pun intended)

Before (and contemporaneously with) Religion, the controlling power (moral authority) was provided by Kings, Pharaohs, Emperors, etc. The king demanded civility under pain of death. But Judeo-Christian Morality, which is built up, nurtured, and thrives in the Soul, is what sounded the death-knell for Monarchy and other forms of despotic rule. The more Judeo-Christian influence in a society, the less meddling was needed (or tolerated) by the government. This has been true throughout Europe and the Americas, Australia, the Philippines, parts of Africa, etc., excepting occasional bloody revolts by the intemperate, jealous, and immoral. It is true in Japan, Korea, China, and India also, but not because of Judeo-Christian ethics. I believe Taoism is to credit for that.

Another pertinent quote:

“He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still” - Lao Tzu circa 550 BC

The converse of what Burke said is, "The MORE of it there is within, the LESS there need be without." Think about that... the more moral self-control you have over yourself, the less you will need to be controlled by others.

The moral of the story is: The only form of government fit for those who refuse to control themselves is Communist Dictatorship. The only form of government fit for those who will control themselves, exercise moral restraint, and respect the rights of others, is a Libertarian Constitutional Republic. So far anyway...

Another Quote:

“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill

And so, I say that it is moral ambivalence, nurtured by the left via the abortion culture, criminal acceptance, denial of natural human physiological roles (homosexuality, gay marriage), denial of personal responsibility, religious hostility (ACLU), intellectual vanity (university professor insanity), abhorrence of logic (animal rights?), and multi-culturalism that will prevent ANY OF US from ever being free. As long as we refuse to control ourselves and act within our nature, we will be controlled. And a socialist society is no society at all... it is farm animals in a pen.

Steve Casas

Questions every American should be asking themselves:

Questions every American should be asking themselves:

What would you do if, say, over a period of years, your personal tax rate went up to 50% or higher? And you really get nothing much more in return? And your yearly tax refund disappeared? And jobs were still scarce, and food prices were on the rise? At what point would you scream "ENOUGH!" and grab a torch and a rake and march on the capital?

At some point in the future, taxes *MUST* be raised. Debts must be repaid. If not, something will be taken from you. You might even have to fight for your life.

Now, what if you could put this reckoning off until after you're gone from this world? Just let your kids deal with it? Would you just keep on borrowing and spending?

There can be only two outcomes of this: War or slavery. Which one of those would you choose for your children? They will either refuse to pay increased taxes and go to war with their government, or they will give up their freedom in exchange. Also, if they lose the war, they will be slaves anyway. They will have one chance in three of being free like our forefathers, and God, intended... except for the ones who died in the war, of course. It comes to this: Slavery, war and slavery, or war and victory, but at great cost.

Is this what we want for our children? And it has certainly come to this. There is no doubt about it. We are probably at the point already, where our future holds only war or slavery. All we are doing is putting it off. Maybe a year, maybe 10 years. Hell, if we are smart, maybe we can put it off until after we die, living fat and happy while borrowing our children into being the ones that have to make the choice! That was sarcasm. But that is exactly what we are doing.

Here's what's happening now: The government, since 1913, has been borrowing money. Sometimes, they just print it. But they have learned that just printing money has long-term negative consequences that we, here and now, must bear. So, the preferred method has been selling bonds and such, and straight up borrowing from other nations. The way they play the game, they can continue to do this as long as the people will pay the interest, or they can hide it. Everything that has happened since then has been attempts to put off the consequences and keep the ball rolling, like taking the dollar off the gold standard, wage/price controls, raising the debt ceiling, outlawing private possession of gold, capital gains taxes, estate taxes, tacitly encouraging illegal immigration, not to mention the countless accounting tricks employed to make things look better than they are. At some point, the interest payment per year will exceed the total taxes the people are willing to pay. Make no mistake, THERE WILL BE A RECKONING! And then what?

The people that are doing this, our Congressmen and Senators, fall into two camps: The weak, and the insidious. The weak just want everything to be groovy, and can be talked into falling for even more schemes to put off the reckoning. The insidious KNOW what is coming. They welcome it. They have been planning it. They think the people are sheep and it is their destiny to rule us. They might be right.

I propose we, you and I, have this out. Here and now. It is our only chance to give our children something better than what was given to us. And, when we demand this of our government, it must accompany a threat of war. We'd better mean it, or we will be slaves sooner than we thought.

Our only hope of salvation for our nation, and the world, is to rein in government spending. Reduce the size and scope of it. Stop expecting it to help you at every turn. Stop treating it like the candyman. The only money it has to spend is money it has taken from you, or that it WILL take from you.

Plans of action:

• Read your History books. And read Economics. And especially Economic History. Only by knowing how this happened will you be able to undo it and prevent it from happening to your kids. "The Creature From Jekyll Island" is a good start.
• Educate yourselves. We can no longer trust that our hallowed institutions of higher learning are teaching anything worthwhile. In fact, most often, students come out of universities befuddled and confused and blaming everything on capitalism and with a VERY DIFFERENT definition of freedom. Their Diplomas aren't worth the paper they're written on and the odds are we taxpayers paid for the whole fiasco, too.
  
• Vote EVERYONE out of office! Every chance you get. The culture of corruption is pervasive and entrenched. There are only two on my list of for-sure good-guys in congress, Ron Paul and his son Rand. There may be others, but take no chances... send them all home.
• Only vote for strong candidates, tea-party types. Ones that can make the tough choices.Make sure they answer plenty of questions about economics and history and don't worry too much about if they cheated on their spouse or hired illegal immigrants. And then vote them back home after one term. No more career politicians!
  
• Kill the Federal Reserve and the 16th amendment. It is the mechanism by which they will own us.
• Kill Social Security. It is a Ponzi scheme whereby one generation obliges subsequent ones to take care of them, while also getting everyone used to suckling at the teat of the government.
  
• End collective bargaining. Unions enable some to escape the consequences everyone else must bear. They are corrupt, Socialist in nature, and a tool by which people are conditioned to obey.
  
• Learn a trade. Most government workers will necessarily be out of a job, and if all you know how to do is fill out forms you will be at a serious disadvantage and someone else will have to take care of you.
• Get involved locally. School boards, planning commissions, city councils, etc.
• And everywhere demand accountability, fiscal and fiducial responsibility, and ACTION!
• Learn how to grow your own food. The coming hard times will disrupt normal modes of transportation. There will be no grocery stores.
• You will need a source of water. So will millions of others if you live in a city. Think about that now... not later.
• Get to know your neighbors. There is strength in numbers. And we will need strength. The cities, which, not co-incidentally, have been guilty of voting in higher numbers for more largess from the government (blue spots on the map), will be VERY BAD places to be if there is a disruption in transportation. Food will become scarce and you and your family will start to look real tasty in only a few weeks time. Really. Think about that: We city-dwelling Americans will resort to cannibalism in a mere one-months time if the trucks stop coming. But people in Eastern Oregon, among other places, will hardly notice. Think long and hard about it.
• If it becomes time to water the Tree of Liberty, make sure it is your blood and mine intermingled with theirs. I will not go quietly in the night, and neither should you.

Dirty Rotten Bastards

In an effort to engage people in more substantive debate about our current American economic situation, its causes and its repercussions, I have over the years tried to come up with analogies to better explain the issues. This one is for those who have owned homes; more specifically, those who have signed loan documents chaining them to a monthly payment for the next 30 years, or so. Those who have not may think they get it, but they really don't. They have not stayed awake at night thinking about all of the wonderful, and dreadful, things that could come of this gamble, the implications for the future of their children, the fact that it could all be taken away in an instant due to bad decisions; The attention one suddenly pays to goings-on in the neighborhood; The fact that, over the term of the loan, you will actually pay about THREE TIMES the amount of the loan in interest! You really just don’t get it unless you have signed those loan docs. Buying a car is similar but infinitely simpler.

So, what if you needed to paint your house, but didn't have the money? Well, you could borrow money, using the current equity of your property or expected future increase in the value of your property as collateral. This is called a second mortgage and it is a GAMBLE, every time. Don't think otherwise. Now, if you are gambling with your own money or your own expectation of increases in future earnings, then that's ok with me. I'm a Libertarian after all, and while I will tell you that it's unhealthy and unwise, I will make no law against it. BUT, the minute you are doing it with someone else's money you will have a big problem with people like me. And even worse, what if you were doing it with your own children’s money? What if you did it with the knowledge that if things went wrong, your kids will have to work harder in the future to pick up the tab? And what if you were so stupid that you made a bet that meant that even your GRANDCHILDREN would have to pay with their blood, sweat and tears? Ok, here's the clincher: What if it wasn't even a bet? What if you KNEW, in advance, that you were borrowing money, to spend now, that generations of your children will have to repay? And maybe it all started with necessary things, like a new roof or windows, but it degenerated to an orgy of spending on crap like new drapes and some Jet Ski's. And you told yourselves at the time, “Well, we'll make more money next year to pay it off" and "we'll all be better off in the long run." And, “we need this now so the kids will be better off later."

This is what's happening here in America. It's called Keynesian Economics and it's based on the notion that a man with money in his pocket is unpredictable and selfish, but a man with a payment to make is stable and can be used as a base for a monetary system that is more useful to social manipulators than a gold standard. The basic flaw in this is that Keynesians believe people are pawns to be used to further the lofty goals of enlightened intellectuals like him. A man working hard to keep a roof over his wife and kids' head is something durable to them and they will ride him like a bunch of ticks on a dog.

Are you, everything you are, your wants and desires, dreams, ambitions, talents, and abilities just some "asset" for someone else to use as they see fit? And are your children and grandchildren to be used as such and are their lives something to be collateralized by people who want to spend their future prosperity on the equivalent of drapes and Jet Skis? No, they are not! And yet they try to make us feel guilty because if we don't want to keep paying it, our grandparents will lose their Social Security and Medicare. But those programs were faulty from the start and it was known (but only Conservatives were alarmed by it) that the programs would have to rely on future generations to pay for it. This is inter-generational SLAVERY!

Social Security was invented in 1935 as a basic insurance scheme where people would pay “premiums,” deducted out of each paycheck, into a fund where it would collect interest and by the time you were ready to retire, there would be a sizable chunk of money waiting for you. Sounds great, right? Kinda like a forced savings account. The rationale at the time was that if people were forced to save, they wouldn’t have to be taken care of by their kids or the government when they got too old to care for themselves. But this divorces the charitable from the recipient of charity (the topic of my next manifesto. Coming Soon to a mobile Internet device near you!). My problem is that the voting public at the time didn’t read the fine print, or read between the lines, because they should have known that the government is not to be trusted with that much money… EVER! They almost immediately began “borrowing” it to pay for pet projects, stimulus projects (another topic to be discussed, soon) during the depression, welfare and other forms of wealth re-distribution, etc. Pretty soon, the fund was full of IOU’s and the whole system was dependent on the contributions of current workers to pay for the retired ones. And once the retired people outnumber the workers, what then? See, what they did was DOOM their children and grandchildren to a world where they must either pay much more in taxes or their grandparents will starve. Nice, eh? And by “much more” I mean, like TWO OR THREE TIMES as much! Right now, I pay $600 a month in taxes. When Social Security crashes, and it will happen soon, I will have to pay $1200 or more in taxes per month. I can’t do that… I just can’t. Neither can you. So what will we do? They have us by the short-and-curlies. And they will be laughing about it, too! “Better get a second job or grandma will starve! HAHAHAHAH!” All the while collecting fat bonuses and getting bailed out when they mismanage. So the only thing to do will be to REVOLT! First at the ballot box, and when (not if) that doesn’t work, with guns and Molotov cocktails. It will truly be time to water the tree of Liberty with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants!

This is the message of the Tea Party: Watch out! We are coming! And Hell is coming with us!

Steve Casas

Sept 9, 2010

Points to ponder and remember:

• Any time someone else is able to do something to you “for your own good,” they own you. Now think about seat-belt and helmet laws and laws forcing you to buy insurance and tell me if anyone owns you.
• Whenever Congress passes laws that they, themselves, are exempt from, you should KNOW it’s a rotten deal. They exempted themselves from Social Security from day one, until Reagan changed it in 1984. They tried to exempt themselves from ObamaCare. What does that tell you?
• Insurance is ALWAYS a bad bet. It is a scheme where some bunch of bastards created a need for it, then were able to bribe the government to force everyone to buy into it so now we can’t live without it. Then, when its inherent flaws are unable to be contained any longer, the government must bail them out with our kids’ money. If it wasn’t for insurance, we wouldn’t need insurance and that is EXACTLY how they intended it to be.
• If you can’t pay for it in your lifetime, you don’t need it. Even better: if you can’t pay for it in 10 years, you don’t need it!
• Why does government only grow? How many of us have had to cut back in this recession? Not just the small things, like taking the family to Jamba Juice whenever you drive by it, but on things like cable TV and Christmas gifts and vacations? What about those of us that have had to cut EVERYTHING and shop at the MaxiFoods instead of Albertsons and stay home for 4 days waiting for a check because you only have enough gas to get to the bank? Well, the Government NEVER has to do that. In fact, during times like these, they get to spend even more money than usual. Look it up. Obama is on track to spend more money in his first term than EVERY PRESIDENT from Washington to Reagan combined! Why do they never have to cut back? Because we have never forced them to.
• Interesting Amish Social Security history lesson: http://www.amishnews.com/amisharticles/amishss.htm

"All-in" politics...

The psycological aspects of the game of Poker are what really makes the difference between pro's and amateurs. It stems from the fact that, when you place or call a bet, you are putting a piece of your life on the line. You will never understand Poker until you play with chips that represent a significant ability to impact your future. This is why Tournament Poker has become so popular: the chips represent everyone's tournament life equally. If I played against a millionaire in a cash game, my $500 bet would mean something different to me than his equal bet: a trifle to him but LIFE AND DEATH to me. I would have to be able to bet $100,000 to get his hands shaking. A tournament where every all-in bet means someone could be eliminated is the only way we could play and have our bets be considered equal.

In the same way, Income Taxes is the only way we now have to ensure that when people vote on economic issues, they have a stake in the outcome... life and death. If everyone is paying taxes, and a tax increase appears on the ballot, every vote will reflect the concern each individual feels for his own economic well-being. If only half of the people are paying taxes, and the monies generated by the increased taxes have been promised to be spent on making the lives of those not paing taxes better, but everyone gets an equal vote, what do you think will happen?

Last month, a study was published that showed that nearly half of U.S. households will pay no federal income taxes for 2009. According to Walter Williams, "(t)hese Americans pay no federal income tax either because their incomes are too low or they have higher income but credits, deductions and exemptions that relieve them of tax liability." How do you think these people generally vote? The answer is, for more property and income taxes because they pay little or none of it. For whom do you think these people vote? The answer is, for those that promise them more from the public purse to which they contribute very little. And politicians wishing to remain in office need only cater to this population, feed it, promote it, increase it, and they need not fear elections. And now we have nearly HALF of the people voting this way. What will happen when it becomes more than half?

Put another way, could the Income Tax system be a weapon by which America is being divided into have's and have-nots? And could increasing the number of have-nots (by means of engineered recession, subjugation by bureaucracy, and psycological enslavement by nurturing the victimhood mentality) to more than half be a way of ensuring the demise of Capitalism (and the philosophy that each individual owns him/herself and the products of his/her labor) by the self-imploding nature of Democracy?

Is Democracy itself to blame for the current state of the democratic Republic of the United States of America?

Democracy is like walking up to a $500 buy-in table and demanding that your $20 buy the same chips that everyone else has.

Voting for more taxes when you pay none is like playing poker with someone elses money; your bets are meaningless to you and make it less of a game and more of an excercise in futility. Only when everyone involved has his or her life at stake will voting become meaningful again.