Author: Chief Visionary Officer & Founder

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A Banking Model That Works In The Badlands | The Daily Bail

By Wil Martindale

What’s The Big Deal About State Banks?  North Dakota Has The Answers

The only State in the Union chartered to be the primary depositor and guarantor of the deposits of its own bank is North Dakota.  All state funds are deposited into this bank (by law) and its deposit base becomes the capital reserve from which to create credit.

Our system of hopelessly insolvent mega banks across the nation has leveraged, gambled and lost it all in the insane derivatives casino.  Despite more than six months of massive taxpayer bailouts, credit markets are still frozen, the economy continues to collapse and 2.3 million more Americans have lost their jobs since Obama took office.

But North Dakota’s GNP has grown 56%, personal income has grown 43%, and wages have grown 34%.  The state not only has no funding issues, but this year it actually has a budget surplus of $1.2 billion, the largest it has ever had.

Why? Because of sound fiduciary oversight and proper management.

You see, the Bank of North Dakota does not employ 20,000 people at an average wage of $90,000 per year.  Employees do not receive $60,000 annual bonuses and executives do not take home $40,000,000 in compensation, bonuses and options.  The State Bank of North Dakota does not wager 1000 times it’s deposit base (as Goldman Sachs does with a credit exposure risk of 1056% to capital ratio) on the speculative derivatives casino in order to grossly reward the risk that brought down the world’s economies.

In point of fact:

The Bank of North Dakota (BND) was established by the state legislature in 1919 specifically to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad Barons.  By law, the State deposits all its funds in the bank, which pays a competitive interest rate to the State treasurer.  The State, rather than the FDIC, guarantees the bank’s deposits, which are re-invested back into the State in the form of loans.  The bank’s return on equity is about 25%, and it pays a hefty dividend to the State, which is expected to exceed $60 million this year.  In the last decade, the BND has turned back a third of a billion dollars to the State’s general fund, offsetting taxes.  The former president of the BND is now the State’s governor.

The BND avoids rivalry with private banks by partnering with them.  Most private sector lending is originated by a local bank.  The BND then comes in to participate in the loan, share risk, and buy down the interest rate.  The BND provides a secondary market for real estate loans, which it buys from local banks.  Its residential loan portfolio is now $500 billion to $600 billion.  Guarantees are also provided for entrepreneurial startups, and the BND has ample money to lend to students (over 184,000 outstanding loans).  It purchases municipal bonds from public institutions, and it backs loans at 1% interest.  The BND also has a well-funded disaster loan program, which helps explain how Fargo, when struck by a disastrous flood recently, managed to avoid the devastation suffered by New Orleans in hurricane Katrina.

North Dakota has also managed to avoid the credit freeze, through the simple expedient of creating its own credit.  It has led the nation in establishing state economic sovereignty.

That is the key — establishing economic sovereignty at the level of the States -that is the last vestige of hope for this country.  TAKE ACTION in your state to be part of the solution.

It truly must be obvious to anyone in America able to read and think for themselves that this federal government, bought and paid for by the economic Imperialists, with its ranks completely infiltrated by former Wall Street executives, simply DOES NOT HAVE the best interests of the average taxpayer in mind.

Not when we are being sucked dry by the continuing bailouts, which do nothing but place the middle class backbone of this country into a debtor’s prison of taxation, reduced social services, pay cuts, lost jobs, tighter credit, and with no end in sight to the greed and excess of the profit-obsessed, predatory money changers they serve.

This is why it’s so important to TAKE ACTION now.  Let the rest of the world deal with the White House.  Trust me, they will.  We the People must collectively take action at the level of the States, where politicians are still accessible and many still remember what it’s like to be true public servants.

If the pressure comes from the American taxpayer at the level of the States and the international pressure comes from the developed nation’s foreign governments, together, the real, hard – working people of the world can correct the problems on Capitol Hill, where neither body alone could.

TAKE ACTION in your state to be part of the solution now.

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14,000 Coloradans move $100M into credit unions | The Colorado Independent

By Jon Collins

As the social media-sparked Bank Transfer Day approaches, the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) reports that over 650,000 people have joined credit unions in the last four weeks. In Colorado, the group reports 14,000 new accounts and $100 million in new deposits.

Credit unions nationally have added $4.5 billion in new accounts since the end of September, CUNA says, reporting that four out of every five credit unions affiliated with the group report that the increase is due to attempts by big banks to raise fees on customers or Bank Transfer Day, a movement birthed by social media that will take place tomorrow.

Bank Transfer Day organizer Kristen Christian explained the logic behind the movement on the group’s Facebook page.

“I started this because I felt like many of you do. I was tired—tired of the fee increases, tired of not being able to access my money when I need to, tired of them using what little money I have to oppress my brothers & sisters. So I stood up. I’ve been shocked at how many people have stood up alongside me.” Christian wrote. “Me closing my account all on my lonesome wouldn’t have made a difference to these fat cats. But each of you standing up with me…they can’t drown out the noise we’ll make.”

Big banks like Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank have also taken flak for attempting to impose additions fees on customers who use debt cards, although many of the banks have withdrawn their plans due to public outcry.

Credit unions are member-owned and non-profit; they typically have fewer fees than corporate banks. Credit unions across the country, including some in Minnesota, have been offering special promotions and extending hours in preparation for Bank Transfer Day, CUNA said. Minnesota’s Affinity Plus launched the aggressive “ditch your bank” campaign in early October,

“Our struggling economy is not the disease, it’s the symptom,” according to Affinity Plus’ campaign. ”There is mounting evidence to prove that big banks with their profit-at-all-costs agenda are actually making our collective disease worse by systematically making choices that undermine the efforts of regulators and ordinary people like us to make changes and get back to a state of health.”

Occupy Wall Street has also helped cement the focus on banks. In Minnesota, Occupy Wall Street has targeted big banks for a series of demonstrations focused largely on the banks’ role in the foreclosure crisis.

“We’re focused more on the needs of our clients and less on the bottom line,” said Joy Audet, director of corporate communications for the credit union association in Colorado.

Scot Kersgaard contributed to this article.

Source: The Colorado Independent

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9/11 Commission Charade | Lew Rockwell

911CommissionRpt-288Editor’s Note: I looked through my archives and brought forward this article in remembrance of the tragedy of 9/11 and the feeble investigation that followed. There’s are still  too many unanswered questions and government officials who were not held accountable for their actions, or failure to act, in the face of a national emergency. Shame on America for allowing this happen and destroying our country in the process.

By Ron Paul

August 24, 2004 – The 9-11 Commission report, released late last month (i.e., July 2004), has disrupted the normally quiet Washington August. Various congressional committees are holding hearings on the report this week, even though Congress is not in session, in an attempt to show the government is “doing something” about terrorism in an election year. The Commission recommendations themselves have been accepted reverently and without question, as if handed down from on high.

But what exactly is going on here? These hearings amount to nothing more than current government officials meeting with former government officials, many of whom now lobby government officials, and agreeing that we need more government! The current and past architects of the very bureaucracy that failed Americans so badly on September 11th three years ago are now meeting to recommend more bureaucracy. Why on earth do we assume that former government officials, some of whom are self-interested government lobbyists, suddenly become wise, benevolent, and politically neutral when they retire? Why do we look to former bureaucrats to address a bureaucratic failure?

The 9-11 Commission report is several hundred pages worth of recommendations to make government larger and more intrusive. Does this surprise anyone? It was written by people who cannot imagine any solution not coming from government. One thing you definitely will not see in the Commission report is a single critique of our interventionist foreign policy, which is the real source of most anti-American feelings around the globe.

The Commissioners recommend the government spend billions of dollars spreading pro-US propaganda overseas, as if that will convince the world to love us. What we have forgotten in the years since the end of the Cold War is that actions speak louder than words. The US didn’t need propaganda in the captive nations of Eastern Europe during the Cold War because people knew us by our deeds. They could see the difference between the United States and their Soviet overlords. That is why, given the first chance, they chose freedom. Yet everything we have done in response to the 9-11 attacks, from the Patriot Act to the war in Iraq, has reduced freedom in America. Spending more money abroad or restricting liberties at home will do nothing to deter terrorists, yet this is exactly what the 9-11 Commission recommends.

Our nation will be safer only when government does less, not more. Rather than asking ourselves what Congress or the president should be doing about terrorism, we ought to ask what government should stop doing. It should stop spending trillions of dollars on unconstitutional programs that detract from basic government functions like national defense and border security. It should stop meddling in the internal affairs of foreign nations, but instead demonstrate by example the superiority of freedom, capitalism, and an open society. It should stop engaging in nation-building, and stop trying to create democratic societies through military force. It should stop militarizing future enemies, as we did by supplying money and weapons to characters like Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. It should stop entangling the American people in unholy alliances like the UN and NATO, and pledge that our armed forces will never serve under foreign command. It should stop committing American troops to useless, expensive, and troublesome assignments overseas, and instead commit the Department of Defense to actually defending America. It should stop interfering with the 2nd amendment rights of private citizens and businesses seeking to defend themselves.

More than anything, our federal government should stop deluding us that more government is the answer. We have far more to fear from an unaccountable government at home than from any foreign terrorist.

Source: Lew Rockwell

Resources:
911 Commission Report (pdf) & Response (pdf)
911 Historical Timeline
911 Video Archives (Camera Planet)
America and the World Beyond 911 by Johnny Liberty (pdf)
A Hard Rain (pdf)
Awaken to Consciousness by Dalai Lama (pdf)
Chief Arvol Looking Horse’s Perspective (pdf)
FAA Destroys Terror Tape (pdf)
Inside Job Music (mp3) by Don Henley
Let’s Roll 9/11
Lies a Sixth Grader Would Not Accept by Michael Ruppert
Painful Questions Ad (pdf)
Self-Evident Poem and Music (mp3) by Ani DiFranco
Reflections After 911 by Johnny Liberty (pdf)
USA Patriot Act (pdf)

NewWTC-288“There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials deceived us into war. The key question now is why so many influential people are in denial, unwilling to admit the obvious…

But even people who aren’t partisan Republicans shy away from confronting the administration’s dishonest case for war, because they don’t want to face the implications…

After all, suppose a politician – or a journalist –
admits to himself that Mr. Bush bamboozled the nation into war.
Well, launching a war on false pretenses is, to say the least a breach of trust.

So if you admit to yourself that such a thing happened,
you have a moral obligation to demand accountability –
and to do so in the face not only of a powerful,
ruthless political machine but in the face of a country
not yet ready to believe that its leaders have exploited
9/11 for political gain. It’s a scary prospect.

Yet, if we can’t find people willing to take the risk –
to face the truth and act on it – what will happen to our democracy?”
–Paul Krugman, The New York Times, June 24, 2003

Intelligent News for the Rest of Us

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9/11 Commission Counsel: Government Agreed to Lie | PrisonPlanet.com

9/11 Commission Counsel: Government Agreed to Lie About 9/11 140409top

By Paul Joseph Watson

The senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission – John Farmer – says that the government agreed not to tell the truth about 9/11, echoing the assertions of fellow 9/11 Commission members who concluded that the Pentagon were engaged in deliberate deception about their response to the attack.

Farmer served as Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (officially known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States), and is also a former New Jersey Attorney General.

Farmer’s book about his experiences working for the Commission is entitled The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America’s Defense on 9/11, and is set to be released tomorrow.

The book unveils how “the public had been seriously misled about what occurred during the morning of the attacks,” and Farmer himself states that “at some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened.”

Only the very naive would dispute that an agreement not to tell the truth is an agreement to lie. Farmer’s contention is that the government agreed to create a phony official version of events to cover-up the real story behind 9/11.

The publisher of the book, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, states that, “Farmer builds the inescapably convincing case that the official version not only is almost entirely untrue but serves to create a false impression of order and security.”

farmer

In August 2006, the Washington Post reported, “Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.”

The report revealed how the 10-member commission deeply suspected deception to the point where they considered referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation.

“We to this day don’t know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us,” said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. “It was just so far from the truth. . . . It’s one of those loose ends that never got tied.”

Farmer himself is quoted in the Post article, stating, “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The [Norad air defense] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”

As we also reported in August 2006, released portions of NORAD tapes from 9/11, which were featured in a Vanity Fair article, do little to answer skeptic’s questions about the impotence of U.S. air defenses on 9/11 and if anything only increase focus on the incompatibility of the official version of events with what is actually known to have taken place on that day.

Make no mistake, Farmer is not saying that 9/11 was an inside job, however, Farmer’s testimony, along with that of his fellow 9/11 Commission members, conclusively demonstrates that, whatever really happened on 9/11, the official story as told to the public on the day and that which remains the authorities’ version of events today, is a lie – according to the very people who were tasked by the government to investigate it. This is a fact that no debunker or government apologist can ever legitimately deny.

Research related links:

  1. Mukasey Denies Request for Special Counsel to Investigate CIA Interrogators
  2. In Their Own Words: Admissions from the people who wrote the 9/11 Commission Report that it was compromised
  3. Lehman: Commission Purposely Set Up So that 9/11 Staff Had Conflict of Interest
  4. Walter Mondale and Mark Dayton Support New 9/11 Investigation
  5. Obama: Trilateral Commission Endgame
  6. Pentagon Faxes Charges for September 11 Military Commission
  7. British Commission Hypes Bioterrorism Threat
  8. Commission Recommends U.S. Use ‘Direct Force’–If Needed–to Stop Iran, N. Korea Nuke Programs
  9. McCain’s Economic Snake Oil Commission
  10. What Do NORAD’s 9/11 Computer Chat Logs Reveal?
  11. UN Human Rights Official Wants Investigation Into US Government Role In 9/11

Source: PrisonPlanet.com

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Endgame: When Debt is Fraud, Debt Forgiveness is the Last and Only Remedy | Endgame

By Zeus Yiamouyiannis, Ph.D.

Introduction

Finally serious economists are considering a position I have been maintaining and writing about since the 2008 financial meltdown. Whatever its name— erasure, repudiation, abolishment, cancellation, jubilee—debt forgiveness, will have to eventually emerge forefront in global efforts to solve an ongoing systemic financial crisis.

“On a grand scale the only way to erase counterfeit money and (counterfeit) assets of hundreds of trillions of dollars is to erase the debts associated with those fake assets. (Let me underscore again, these are not “toxic” assets, they are fake assets.)… Forgiveness in general, and forgiveness of debt in particular, stand as virtues if they free us up to acknowledge, address, and learn from our culpability, start anew, and create forward.” ( The Big Squeeze, Part 3: The Quiet Rebellion: Civil Disobedience, Local Markets, and Debt Erasure (January 29, 2011)

Debt forgiveness, therefore, accomplishes two important things. It eliminates the increasing and outsized portion of productive enterprise to pay off unproductive obligations, and it clears the ground for new opportunities, new thinking, invention, and entrepreneurialism. This is why the ability to declare bankruptcy is so essential in the pursuit of both happiness and innovation.

Currently we are mired in a “new normal” and calls for “austerity” which are nothing more than the delusional efforts of a status quo to avoid the consequences of its own error and fraud and to profit evermore. So bedazzled by the false wealth created by debt multiplication and its concomitant fantasy of ever-higher returns, this status quo continues to be stupidly amazed that people are not spending and that the economy is not picking up. But how could it be otherwise?

Productive wealth has been trapped in a web of parasitic theft, counterfeiting, liability evasion, non-regulation, and prosecutorial non-accountability. All the fundamental attributes of a functioning exchange economy have been warped to reward creative criminals. I spoke extensively about this in my posts from 2008. ( Imaginary Worth, Empire of Debt: How Modern Finance Created Its Own Downfall (October 15, 2008)

The unsustainable nature of debt

Two observations: 1) Fabricated/parasitic so-called “wealth” destroys value by diluting the value of productive wealth. 2) Debt/credit that cannot be paid back is never an asset and is always a hot-potato liability (needing to be foisted to a greater fool to garner “profit” and transaction fees):

“The models [modern debt are] based upon had no contact with reality. They assumed unlimited growth and ability to pay. When matched against the reality of people paying ten times their salary for mortgages that actually added more money owed to their principal (i.e. with negative amortization), required no money down, and set up “balloon payments,” large step-ups in payments after a few years) there is no possible way they could NOT default in a predictable span of time.” ( Part II: How the Credit Default Swap Scam Works (October 13, 2008)

Systemically, all debt that charges a percentage (“usury”) originates in delusion. Debt grows exponentially indefinitely, growth (income and otherwise) cannot. This leads to a widening condition where the fruits of productive “growth” devoted to interest payments increase until those fruits are entirely consumed. (The Elephant In The Room: Debt Grows Exponentially, While Economies Only Grow In An S-Curve (Washington’s Blog)

Once this happens, stores of wealth (hard assets) begin to be cannibalized to make up for the difference. You see this in Greece with its sale of public assets to private companies, and in middle-class America where people are liquidating retirement accounts to pay for their cost of living.

This problem is compounded by a private Federal Reserve that lends money into circulation at interest, and then allows the multiplication of this consumer debt-money liability through fractional reserve banking. The money in circulation today could pay only a small fraction of the total private and public debt. That fact alone is evidence of a kind of systemic fraud. “If you just work hard enough, save, and make sensible decisions, you can get out of debt” could only physically work for a bare fraction of the population, given the money-to-debt ratio. The rest would have to simply default to clear the boards.

This is why debt forgiveness makes not only moral but rational, mathematical sense. Finances require balancing to be coherent. There must be some way to redress systemic imbalance. One has to be able to “zero the scales” to get an accurate weight of value and to re-establish healthy value creation. Read more…

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Is Humanity Bent on a Path Towards Total Species Extinction? | Waking Giant News Service

By John David Van Hove, Editor
Waking Giant News Service

“The splitting of the atom changed everything – save man’s mode of thinking, thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe.” – Albert Einstein

FukishimiFalloutGiven the arrogance and hubris of modern civilization after the nuclear core meltdown and release of extremely high amounts of dangerous radiation from the cooling rods of the badly damaged Fukishima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan, a sad realization came loud and clear – humanity is pathologically bent on a path to total species extinction, not only of other living creatures, but of our own human race.

Remember this – extinction is a total waste of time!

This, my friends, is not the first wake-up call, but it may very well be the last.

NUCLEAR AGE

The nuclear age began on August 6th – 9th, 1945 after the Manhattan Project developed the bomb in secret. These dates marked the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000 – 166,000 in Hiroshima and 60,000 – 80,000 in Nagasaki.

Since that fateful day nine nations have engaged in the nuclear arms race with the dominant nations being the United States and Russia (formerly the Soviet Union). There are currently nearly 8,000 active nuclear warheads and more than 22,000 total nuclear warheads in the world. That’s enough nuclear weapons to destroy the Earth hundreds of times.

THREE-MILE ISLAND

Since that fateful day we’ve had a core-meltdown of Three Mile Island on March 28th, 1979 near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in the United States with the release of at least 2.5 million curies of radioactive gases and 15 curies of iodine-131.

“In the nuclear age, six minutes away, from perpetual annihilation.” – Beyond War

CHERNOBYL

According to a report published by the New York Academy of Sciences, more than 1,000,000 people were killed as a direct or indirect result of the Chernobyl disaster on April 26th, 1986 in Russia with 40% of Europe is still contaminated with radiation 25 years later. Over 20,000 people have developed thyroid cancer. Turkish food exports are still extremely radioactive. Don’t buy food from Europe!

FUKISHIMA

The total radiation releases from Fukishima disaster are many times worse than Chernobyl and presently radiation levels near the site are off-the-charts (in other words a Geiger counter cannot read doses that high). According to a recent analysis by Dr. Helen Caldicott, M.D. with Physicians for Social Responsibility in each core there is as much long-lived radiation produced as there is with ONE-THOUSAND Hiroshima sized bombs.

NUCLEAR POWER & RADIATION

As Einstein said, “Nuclear energy is ONE HELL of a way to BOIL WATER.” When you fission Uranium in a nuclear power plant over 200 new elements are formed, all of which are much more poisonous to the body than the original Uranium.

Uranium is poisonous enough and has been used on the ground in both Fallujah and Baghdad during the Iraq war and has resulting in gross deformation of over 80% of the babies born in that region. Doctors are telling women not to have babies anymore. Cancer rates in children have risen 12 times.

Uranium persists in the environment for over 4.5 billion years. Western powers and the United States are contaminating the cradle of civilization. This is nothing short of genocide and solid evidence of a nuclear war being conducted on the ground in Iraq.

HEALTH EFFECTS OF RADIATION POISONING

In nuclear power plants there are numerous contaminants and isotopes being generated some of which last seconds and others persist for billions of years. Radioactive Iodine lasts six weeks and is stored in the thyroid gland. If ingested it causes thyroid cancer thus saturating the thyroid with Potassium Iodide or another iodine supplement prevents the radioactive Iodine from being absorbed. Strontium 90 has been released and will persist for 600 years. It is absorbed in the bones where bone cancer or leukemia develops. Cesium-137 lasts for 600 years and it still persists all over Europe since Chernobyl.

One of the most deadly radioactive contaminants is Plutonium. If you inhale 0.000001 Gram of Plutonium you’ll develop cancer. Hypothetically 454 Grams, or 1 Pound if evenly distributed, could give everyone on Earth cancer. Each nuclear reactor has 250,000 Grams, or 250 Kilograms of Plutonium. You only need 2.5 Kilograms to make a nuclear bomb. As a result of the radiation release from Fukishima, Japan, Plutonium is going to get out and spread all over the Northern Hemisphere. Also released is Radioactive Iodine-129 with a half-life of 17 million years, Strontium 90, Cesium-137, Tritium, Americium-241, etc., etc., etc

NUCLEAR FALLOUT

When it rains over North America the radioactive fallout comes down to Earth and lodges itself in the food supply which concentrates and accumulates until we intake it at the top of the food chain. You cannot see, taste or smell radioactive poisons in your food. Radioactivity is a silent, persistent and patient killer. All radiation is damaging and accumulative. This doesn’t mean you drop dead immediately upon intake, it could take 5 – 60 years before a cancer develops.

Radioactive waste from these nuclear power plants which has been stored underground and in tens of thousands of leaking barrels for the last fifty years will induce epidemics of Cancer, Leukemia and Genetic disease for the rest of time. Imagine 12,000 semi-truckloads of radioactive waste being transported all over North America over the next 12 years and landing at Hanford for permanent storage.

This is by far the largest public health hazard the public has ever witnessed, yet most remain solidly in denial of the consequences of nuclear power left untamed and the waste unaddressed. This is the single-most threat, short of nuclear war, to the continuance of the human species and life on Earth.

Source: Waking Giant News Service

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Ron Paul to Congress: Freeze the Budget and Stop Plundering the American People!

By Ron Paul

One might think that the recent drama over the debt ceiling involves one side wanting to increase or maintain spending with the other side wanting to drastically cut spending, but that is far from the truth. In spite of the rhetoric being thrown around, the real debate is over how much government spending will increase.

No plan under serious consideration cuts spending in the way you and I think about it. Instead, the “cuts” being discussed are illusory, and are not cuts from current amounts being spent, but cuts in projected spending increases. This is akin to a family “saving” $100,000 in expenses by deciding not to buy a Lamborghini, and instead getting a fully loaded Mercedes, when really their budget dictates that they need to stick with their perfectly serviceable Honda. But this is the type of math Washington uses to mask the incriminating truth about their unrepentant plundering of the American people.

The truth is that frightening rhetoric about default and full faith and credit of the United States is being carelessly thrown around to ram through a bigger budget than ever, in spite of stagnant revenues. If your family’s income did not change year over year, would it be wise financial management to accelerate spending so you would feel richer? That is what our government is doing, with one side merely suggesting a different list of purchases than the other.

In reality, bringing our fiscal house into order is not that complicated or excruciatingly painful at all. If we simply kept spending at current levels, by their definition of “cuts” that would save nearly $400 billion in the next few years, versus the $25 billion the Budget Control Act claims to “cut”. It would only take us 5 years to “cut” $1 trillion, in Washington math, just by holding the line on spending. That is hardly austere or catastrophic.

A balanced budget is similarly simple and within reach if Washington had just a tiny amount of fiscal common sense. Our revenues currently stand at approximately $2.2 trillion a year and are likely to remain stagnant as the recession continues. Our outlays are $3.7 trillion and projected to grow every year. Yet we only have to go back to 2004 for federal outlays of $2.2 trillion, and the government was far from small that year. If we simply returned to that year’s spending levels, which would hardly be austere, we would have a balanced budget right now. If we held the line on spending, and the economy actually did grow as estimated, the budget would balance on its own by 2015 with no cuts whatsoever.

We pay 35 percent more for our military today than we did 10 years ago, for the exact same capabilities. The same could be said for the rest of the government. Why has our budget doubled in 10 years? This country doesn’t have double the population, or double the land area, or double anything that would require the federal government to grow by such an obscene amount.

In Washington terms, a simple freeze in spending would be a much bigger “cut” than any plan being discussed. If politicians simply cannot bear to implement actual cuts to actual spending, just freezing the budget would give the economy the best chance to catch its breath, recover and grow.

  1. Ron Paul: Reduce Spending, Reform Government, Restore America’s Prosperity Today, 2012 Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul issued a statement outlining his opposition to the…
  2. Ron Paul: Stop Raising the Debt Ceiling Date: 05/23/2011 by Ron Paul The federal government once again has reached the limit of…
  3. Ron Paul on the Budget Control Act: Mr. Speaker, It’s Time to Tear up the Federal Credit Card! Ron Paul: This evening Congress is asked to vote for a bill that claims to…