MatthewMaynard.net

So we have news this evening that the House has passed the Democrat spending bill by a margin of 244 to 188, with all Republicans and 11 Democrats voting against it. It is nothing but a Democrat bill, from start to finish. Now we get to see how little the Senate cares for our children and their children.

The Democrats have damned our future for their present desires, mortgaging our children’s labors for the sake of their do-nothing dalliances. The Republicans are no better, as they favored a plan that was only half as bad. The key paragraph, emphasis added:

Meanwhile, House Republican leaders were standing firm in their opposition to the stimulus plan. Just ahead of the House vote, they insisted that their own plan, focusing on tax relief, would create twice as many new jobs — 6.2 million — as the plan Obama is pushing, while costing about half as much.

Half as much. As in more than $400 thousand million dollars in new spending, on top of the $850 thousand million that the Republican leadership gave blessing to late last year, all of which was printed on completely combustible currency. Despicable. And in 18 months time they will come begging for our vote, promising “change in Washington!” Yeah, we’ve heard that one before. Ain’t buying it this time, either. They’re as bad as competing mobs extorting protection money – “Give us what we want, or we’ll turn you over to Jimmy ovuh deh, and he’ll get twice as much from ya as we will, so pay up, capice?”

Of course, this bill puts more pressure on the world to buy our debt, which they will have even less incentive to do. After all, they already own trillions of it, and every extra dollar they buy today is a dollar less they’ll have tomorrow, since we’ll pay them back with devalued paper instead of actual valuables. If this bill passes the Senate and gets signed by the president, we’re in an unprecedented world of trouble. How much trouble?

Gary North shows us how much.

I was suspicious of those numbers, thinking they weren’t adjusted for inflation. Using the Westegg inflation calculator, which accepts values above $10m, we get:
ww1 (1917): $2.8b ($44,915,710,692.35 in 2007)
1929 crash: $1.0b ($12,003,436,821.60 in 2007)
WW2 (1945): $1.5b ($17,111,852,993.34 in 2007)
1950s (1955) $1.0b ($ 7,663,310,400.22 in 2007)
nukes (1960s): $1.3b ($ 9,007,604,057.68 in 2007)
vietnam (1968): $3.3b ($19,466,952,393.20 in 2007)
s&l, 86-87: $8.0b ($14,940,471,961.68 in 2007)
bubble era y2k: $3.5b ($ 4,176,127,343.95 in 2007)

dec07: $ 15.4b
jan08: $ 45.7b
feb08: $ 60.2b
mar08: $ 94.5b (more than 10x the 1919 to 2007 record)
apr08: $135.4b (more than the inflation adjusted 1919 to 2007 sum)
may08: $155.8b
jun08: $171.3b
jul08: $165.7b
aug08: $168.1b
sep08: $290.1b
oct08: $648.3b
nov08: $698.7b

The Fed’s printing tripled between December 07 and January 08. It jumped another 33% the next month, then another 33%, then another 30%. In other words, over the course of only 4 months, the borrowings increased by a factor of almost nine. The multiplication over the last year is left as an exercise to the reader.

The video is right. The US banking crisis that began in 2008 is on a different scale than anything before it. It is bigger than the sum of everything that came before it. We are facing a national monetary crisis that could start any day now. All the money that has been printed is simply waiting in the electronic balance sheets of the banks, and as soon as they start loaning it out, we enter hyperinflation hell. The only thing that can avoid it is the return of the money to the Fed’s balance sheet, where they can conveniently (and legally, but not lawfully) erase it as if it never existed.

I’m reminded of the line from Casablanca: “The leading banker in Amsterdam is now the pastry chef in our kitchen.” If Ben Bernanke isn’t careful (and he hasn’t been so far, with his Keynesian spell-casting) we will all be forced into labor against our will, for the Bible’s proverbs about labor, debt, and payment are true, whether you believe them or not. The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower becomes the lender’s slave and if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either.

If you think central bankers know what they are doing, think again.

Courtesy of Alphecca, we have news of Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns introducing a national concealed carry reciprocity bill. That such a bill is necessary in this day and age is a sad commentary on people’s ignorance of the Constitution, but still, it’s a step in the right direction. Here’s Stearns’ take on the bill.

The sad fact, however, is that this bill is going nowhere, quickly. Apparently such bills are routinely introduced and pigeonholed in committee, to the effect that Congress piddles, twiddles, and resolves, but does nothing. But Rep. Stearns is doing the right thing by at least introducing the bill. You never pass the bills you don’t introduce, after all.

Now, some will say that the government should force states to guarantee reciprocity for marriage licenses. True, according to the letter of the law, they should. However, while Virginia may be required to recognize a gay couple’s marriage certificate from Massachusetts, they are under no obligation to issue their own to gay couples within the Commonwealth. Personally, I think no state should issue a marriage license – marriage is (or at least should be) a permanent relationship between a man and a woman, with no input from the state. After all, the state didn’t create the institution, God did. If anyone should be in the business of issuing marriage licenses, it should be the churches.

But that’s an issue for another day.

Thomas DiLorenzo has written a basic introduction to the effects of Alexander Hamilton’s policies on the United States, placing Mr. H in a role unfamiliar to the average graduate of a typical United States high school. It is an interesting read, and certainly different from most political histories you have read.
Read more…

Is it really too much to ask that you get the oath right?

JR: Are you prepared to take the oath, senator?
BO: I am.
JR: I, Barack Hussein Obama …
BO: I, Barack …
JR: … do solemnly swear …
BO: I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear …
JR: that I will execute the office of President to the United States faithfully …
BO: that I will execute …
[DOH look on both their faces]
JR: faith- faithfully the office of president of the United States …
BO: the office of president of the united states faithfully …
JR: and will to the best of my ability …
BO: and will to the best of my ability …
JR: preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
BO: preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
JR: So help you God?
BO: So help me God.
JR: Congratulations, Mr. President.

The actual oath:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Congratulations, Mr. President. For my own part, I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully examine your policies in light of the Constitution and its limiting powers and will, to the best of my ability, call you out on it whenever you stray from it, so help me God.

Jackson council drops its saggy-pants ordinance

And the choice quote from the mayor:

“I certainly respect the Constitution,” Melton said, “but we have some issues that are much bigger than the Constitution.”

Why is this only a temporary freedom? He plans to issue an executive order imposing the dress code.

Melton said his executive order will not call on offenders to be put in jail. Instead, he said he envisions police officers taking young men with sagging pants home to their parents to talk about the problem.

Sounds like a fine use of police resources in a place where there’s no other crime issues to deal with.

Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Army, Company C, 603d Tank Destroyer Battalion. Place and date: Near Arloncourt, Belgium, 15 January 1945. Entered service at: St. Ansgar, Iowa. Born: 20 May 1909, Rock Township, Mitchell County, Iowa. G.O. No.: 73, 30 August 1945. Citation: He displayed conspicuous gallantry in action. His platoon, in which he was a tank-destroyer gunner, was held up by antitank, machinegun, and rifle fire from enemy troops dug in along a ridge about 200 yards to the front. Noting a machinegun position in this defense line, he fired upon it with his 76-mm. gun killing 1 man and silencing the weapon. He dismounted from his vehicle and, under direct enemy observation, crossed open ground to capture the 2 remaining members of the crew. Another machinegun, about 250 yards to the left, continued to fire on him. Through withering fire, he advanced on the position. Throwing a grenade into the emplacement, he killed 1 crewmember and again captured the 2 survivors. He was subjected to concentrated small-arms fire but, with great bravery, he worked his way a quarter mile along the ridge, attacking hostile soldiers in their foxholes with his carbine and grenades. When he had completed his self-imposed mission against powerful German forces, he had destroyed 2 machinegun positions, killed 8 of the enemy and captured 18 prisoners, including 2 bazooka teams. Cpl. Beyer’s intrepid action and unflinching determination to close with and destroy the enemy eliminated the German defense line and enabled his task force to gain its objective.

… nor be deprived of … property, without due process of law…”

We live in a day and age where the fundamental charter of our country (the Declaration of Independence) is an unknown parchment and the binding framework (the Constitution) is a misnamed historical footnote.

We are no longer independent men and women of a country whose government serves its citizens; we are instead bound to the blind obedience of a master who brooks no opposition to its authoritarian rule. The republic of independent states envisioned during the Revolutionary War has given way to a servile amalgamation of mostly dependent fiefdoms, ruled from afar in all areas – civil, commercial, legal, and other.

Do not think that I write this as a partisan, reacting in infantile anger at losing the last election on the day the opposition party takes power in Congress. This state of affairs has been building for a very long time, much longer than the past two months, or the past eight years, or even the past century. We have systematically thrown away bits and pieces of the Republic passed down to us. I do not excuse my own behavior in this – policies of the party I have adhered to have done quite enough damage – nor do I excuse the behavior of others in complicity with the other party. I am done with inter- and intra-party partisanship.

The “long Train of Abuses and Usurpations” Jefferson wrote about seems to get a new car attached at the railyard on the Potomac every day. A news cycle rarely restarts without a story about Congress or the bureaucracy reaching beyond their Commerce Clause boundaries, or ignoring the right of states to pick their senators. Each of these small actions, taken independently, is but an inconvenience, or ignored by those who think “it doesn’t bother my life.” But when taken together (as they must be) they constitute a flagrant destruction of our way of life. They transform our government from one “of the people, by the people, for the people” into a government simply “of the people.”

It was not enough for the second Continental Congress to merely claim that George III was a tyrant, they had to prove it by a submission of facts to the world. Each of these facts was undeniable, and each was a reason for establishing a government based on the fundamental principles of human government – natural law. By itemizing the list of grievances, they not only showed why the current government was unacceptable, but also showed (at least in part) what an ideal government would look like. Viewed in this light, the Constitution is a rebuttal to the Declaration; where one tears down, the other builds up, as one rejects A the other embraces B.

But we have built far beyond the framework raised by the original seven articles and ten amendments. As citizens we have, by apathetic tolerance, allowed certain passages of the Constitution to be struck from the document and others to be added that contradict the original meaning and function. I do not mean to demean certain good things (i.e. amendments like #13, #15, or #19) but I do demean undeniably bad things.

Let me be blunt – the 16th and 17th Amendments have got to go. But were you to find a majority in Congress who agreed with me on this, they would not get rid of those two by introducing Amendments 28 and 29. No, they would do something insidious, something they practice very well every day. They would either get a judge to rule those amendments invalid, inapplicable, or irrelevant; or they would simply pass a law ignoring the text of those parts of the Constitution. But those amendments are bad examples, as they both expand the power of the government. No congressman in his normal state of mind would tolerate an abridgment of those parts, but they would tolerate an abridgment of other parts – like the 11th Amendment, or the 6th Amendments Assistance of Counsel clause.

As a result, more than two centuries after the Constitution was adopted, we have in effect a remodeled framework that restricts us more than it restricts the government it (or rather, we) erected. Just how remodeled is it?

Take a look.

I’ve used the wonder of hypertext markup to strike out the parts of the Constitution no longer in effect and linked that text to the page describing the abridgment. You will note that some parts have a strike followed by an asterisk linked to another part of the Constitution. These are the parts that either are no longer in effect or were amended or abridged according to Article 5. Note that they are few and far between.

I’ll keep this updated with more posts as I come across stories of abridgments. After all, if we’re ever going to get change in this country, we have to know what we’ve changed from. If you have a link about an abridgment, send it in, I’ll take a look and add it if appropriate.

(Sent to the speaker of the house via her web form)

Madame Speaker:

Human Events is reporting on a letter sent to your office by Republican representatives, expressing their concern over reports you plan to halt their ability to introduce, modify, and debate bills before the House. I ask that you heed their requests to not change the rules.

If you do not, you will be denying me my fair representation in the House and violating your oath to defend the Constitution, which requires the Federal Government to guarantee a republican form of government – that is, in part, one in which all citizens are granted representation before the House. If my representative (Mr. Cantor, VA-7) is not allowed to introduce, modify, and debate bills for consideration, I am denied the republican form of government to which I am entitled.

Respectfully,
Matt Maynard
Troy, VA

We’ll see if she cares enough to take notice of the little people. I doubt she will.