Here’s a series of videos from a recent lecture “Vision for a New America” in Austin, Texas…covering a five-point agenda including: 1) reclaiming personal sovereignty and internal authority over your life; 2) demanding accountability in government and limiting local, state and federal government to no more than 10% of GNP; 3) restoring a sound, debt-free monetary system; 4) building a renewable energy infrastructure; and 5) building a global network of community-based resource centers.
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.”
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:
Source: PrisonPlanet.com
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.
By Braden Goyett
Congress has until August 2nd to raise the debt ceiling, the cap on the amount of money the Treasury can borrow to pay the government’s bills. As the clock keeps ticking, you may still have unanswered questions. How dire could the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling be? What are the possible solutions? Here’s a reading list to help you keep up.
Following the debt ceiling debate in real time:
Slate has an updating infographic that lets you see how much money the Treasury has in its bank account right now [2]. For the latest news and analysis, the Wall Street Journal has a frequently updated live blog [3]. The Economist is also doing daily debt ceiling updates [4]. Some good people to follow for updates on Twitter include CNBC’s @JimPethokoukis [5], TIME Magazine’s @MarkHalperin [6], CBS’s @NorahODonnell [7], NBC’s @LukeRussert [8] and @KellyO [9], Slate’s @daveweigel [10], Talking Points Memo’s @brianbeutler [11] and the Bipartisan Policy Center (@BPC_Bipartisan [12]). Today we’re curating tweets with debt ceiling news and analysis [13] on our homepage—check out the module in the top right. For breaking updates, Topsy can be a useful tool for finding the latest articles and tweets on the debt ceiling [14].
The basics on the debt ceiling (including where it comes from):
An earlier guide of ours answers basic questions about the debt ceiling [15], like “What is the debt ceiling, really?” and “Is the debt ceiling necessary?” The New York Times also has a useful FAQ that gets into some of the finer points of the history of the debt ceiling system [16]. Poynter has a guide to common misconceptions about the debt ceiling [17] that can help you cut through misleading coverage. It’s important to note, as Poynter does, that raising the debt ceiling doesn’t mean that we’re increasing spending, but that we’re letting the Treasury borrow money to pay for things we’ve already agreed to spend on. Here’s how NPR Correspondent Robert Smith explained the situation to Poynter:
“The way I put it is that Congress has already ordered the pizza. They approved the pepperoni. They called up and had someone deliver it,” Smith said via email. “Now the pizza guy is knocking at the door, and asking to get paid. If you don’t raise the debt ceiling, it’s like saying we didn’t want that pizza in the first place. Maybe he’ll go away if we don’t answer.”
The New York Times has a helpful chart that breaks down which policies have contributed to the national debt [18] over the Bush and Obama administrations. This chart, tweeted James Fallows at the Atlantic, “should accompany every story about the debt ceiling debate.” The White House released a more detailed chart breaking down the sources of the national debt [19] on Tuesday. Talking Points Memo explains that most of the U.S. national debt is actually owed to the United States [20]—it’s money that some government agencies have borrowed from each other. The Guardian’s data blog has a rundown of which foreign countries the United States owes, and how much we owe them [21]. If you want to go in-depth into the topic, there’s a compilation of academic research on the debt ceiling [22] up at Ezra Klein’s Washington Post blog.
What might happen if the debt limit isn’t raised:
Basically, anyone and anything that relies on federal government funds may not get paid, including members of the U.S. military and military contractors and people receiving Social Security checks. The New York Times has a story detailing what may happen to state governments if the debt ceiling doesn’t get extended [23]. Bloomberg has an interactive that lets you take on the role of the Treasury trying to decide which of its bills to pay [24].
The U.S. credit rating might get downgraded, which could raise the cost of borrowing and cause panic in financial markets and dumping of U.S. bonds. The IMF said today that a downgrade could be “extremely damaging” to the world economy [25]. Forbes has a piece weighing the potential consequences of a credit rating downgrade [26] and whether or not it’s inevitable. Read more…
“If you want something in your life you’ve never had before, be prepared to do something you’ve never done before.”
Whether you agree fully or partially, or not at all,…please consider forwarding this on so that concerned voters can see this and decide for themselves to act, to forward or not. Please read & thanks very much !
The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971…before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc.
Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land…all because of public pressure.
I’m asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.
In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.
CONGRESSIONAL REFORM ACT OF 2011
1. Term Limits. 12 years only, one of the possible options below..
A. Two Six-year Senate terms
B. Six Two-year House terms
C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms
2. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
3. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.
4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%
6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 10-1-11
The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.
If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message. Maybe it is time.
THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!
The first ever GAO(Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out.
Ben Bernanke (pictured to the right), Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage earlier this morning.
What was revealed in the audit was startling: $16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious — the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.
To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is “only” $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is “only” $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.
In late 2008, the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800 billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received 814 billion dollars. As is turns out, the Federal Reserve donated $2.5 trillion to Citigroup, while Morgan Stanley received $2.04 trillion. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, a German bank, split about a trillion and numerous other banks received hefty chunks of the $16 trillion.
When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint(R-SC) and Ron Paul(R-TX) as well as self identified Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders all fighting against the Federal Reserve, you know that it is no longer an issue of Right versus Left. When you have every single member of the Republican Party in Congress and progressive Congressmen like Dennis Kucinich sponsoring a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, you realize that the Federal Reserve is an entity onto itself, which has no oversight and no accountability.
Americans should be swelled with anger and outrage at the abysmal state of affairs when an unelected group of bankers can create money out of thin air and give it out to megabanks and supercorporations like Halloween candy. If the Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it believe that they can continue to devalue the savings of Americans and continue to destroy the US economy, they will have to face the realization that their trillion dollar printing presses will eventually plunder the world economy.
The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 of the GAO Audit and are as follows..
Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)
and many many more including banks in Belgium of all places
View the 266-page GAO audit of the Federal Reserve(July 21st, 2011): http://www.scribd.com/doc/60553686/GAO-Fed-Investigation
Source: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-696
FULL PDF on GAO server: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf
Senator Sander’s Article: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3
By Charlie Reese
Orlando Sentinel
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits? Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The President does.
You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
CONGRESS, PRESIDENT & SUPREME COURT
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress.
In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank. I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.
The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.
Who is the Speaker of the House? John Boehner. He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to. It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts — of incompetence and irresponsibility.
I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red.
If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it’s because they want them in Iraq and Afghanistan. If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,””inflation,” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do. Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
By Larry Edelson
Editor’s Note: The American’s for Tax Reform Foundation’s Cost of Government Day Report is a mindbender. If this isn’t a steady march towards national, corporate socialism then what?
The Cost of Government Day (COGD), the day of the calendar year on which the average American worker has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of the spending and regulatory burdens imposed by government on the federal, state, and local levels, is now August 19, the latest date ever recorded.
In simple language, it means that the average American must work 230 days, or 63% of the year, to pay for the full cost of government.
That’s pretty darn amazing. And frightening. It essentially means that 63% of your labor output belongs not to you and the loved ones you care for, but to Washington.
Here’s how it breaks down:
I don’t know about you, but the cost of government is insane. 63 out of every 100 hours you work is to pay for government?
You get to keep only 37% of your labor?
It’s high time we got rid of big government. That ratio needs to be inverted, at a minimum. We should keep at least 75% of our labor.
Government should cost far less, way less. Less than one-quarter of our labor output, in my opinion.
Source: Uncommon Wisdom
Ever wonder why America stands as a symbol of Freedom amongst all the nations? History can teach us about cycles. The Roman Empire was a Republic too. What happened and how can we be part of the solution? A well-known self-destructive cycle of democratic behavior has been attributed to an eighteenth century Scottish judge and historian by the name of Alexander Tytler.
Tytler lived at the same time as the American Founding Fathers and described a repeating cycle in history. Whether Tytler is the original author or not; focus upon the truth in these words. The concept of democratic self-destruction has been proven accurate, right here in America. I quote the following:
The final stage of the cycle is the fall back into bondage. Thomas Jefferson provided the perfect warning with this statement, “A government big enough to give you anything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.”
America’s founding fathers warned us repeatedly to remain forever vigilant in the protection and preservation of individual liberty and freedom.
“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.” – Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781
What is complacency?
Complacency is the feeling of contentment or self-satisfaction, especially when coupled with an unawareness of danger, trouble, or controversy. Extended periods of peace and prosperity have resulted in American complacency and today, generations who no longer understand the foundations of our abundance, what it took to achieve it and what it takes to conserve or preserve it for future generations, are on the verge of losing it all.
What is apathy?
Apathy is the absence or suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement; – lack of interest in or concern for things that others find moving or exciting. Since the early 1960’s American complacency has led to apathy. American voters stopped taking the time to engage in self-governance at all, not even finding so much as an hour of their time once every four years to go to a voting booth and play a part in deciding the direction of their free nation . www.grandfather-economic-report.com/voting.htm#trend
Today, over 50% of Americans are now dependent upon the federal government and the federal trough for their happiness. Every national election is about what our federal government can do for us personally, not what we are able to do for ourselves as a result of individual freedom and liberty in the land of equal promise. www.grandfather-economic-report.com/piechart.htm
Increasingly ill-suited to navigate the individual choices inherent with freedom, a growing number of Americans have come to rely (depend) upon politicians and their government to solve personal challenges they no longer feel capable of solving themselves.
“Do we really think that a government-dominated education is going to produce citizens capable of dominating their government, as the education of a truly vigilant self-governing people requires?” — Alan Keyes
There’s been plenty of education about rights, but very little education about responsibilities. Even in those cases where responsibilities are being taught, the emphasis isn’t on being vigilant in the manner that would be required of us in order to protect and preserve our republican form of government, the original vision of our founding fathers.
Benjamin Franklin said, “A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.”
What happens next is up to us. We do not have to repeat history and end up back as slaves. What will you do to break this brutal cycle of tyranny to liberty, and the slow descent back into tyranny? Albert Einstein wrote, “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
Only you can stop tyranny. Only you can break the bonds of apathy that infects and destroys our desire to care about whether our children will grow up as slaves. What you are willing to tolerate – you will never change.
We can choose to follow one of two paths in life. One path leads to action; and is filled with reason that leads to the light of knowledge. The other path leads to inaction and is filled with doubt and uncertainty that leads to darkness and despair. You make the choice on which path you want to travel.
In June 1961, Robert F. Kennedy wrote, “Laws can embody standards; governments can enforce laws – but the final task is not a task for government. It is a task for each and every one of us. Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted – when we tolerate what we know to be wrong – when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy, or too frightened – when we fail to speak up and speak out – we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.”
When we join the Republic we are committing ourselves to change. How do we do that? It begins with a decision to change from our complacent and apathetic ways. Standing up and saying, No more will we remain in the same condition. We must do it deliberately and on purpose. Yes, we do have a choice, it is called involvement. It is called contribution. It is called doing.
As our Republic grows we are blessed with so many with talents, abilities and skills. Your participation is invaluable. No effort is too small. We all have a stake in our success. The Republic and your fellow Americans are counting on you. Here are some ways you can participate.
Liberty International News 