Back to Basics

Is there still any gold in Ft. Knox? Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) wants to know, and he told Kitco News he plans to introduce a bill next year calling for an audit of United States gold reserves.

According to Paul, the last “decent audit” was done 50 years ago. In the early 1980s Paul tried to get an audit done when he was on the gold commission. Fifteen of the 17 members of the commission voted not to conduct an audit.

In recent months there have been a number of rumors about Ft. Knox, among them: that it no longer contains any real gold; That it contains only a small portion of what is claimed; and that many of the bars that are there are made of lead or some other material and only coated in gold.

“If there was no question about the gold being there, you think (the Federal Reserve) would be anxious to prove gold is there,” Paul said.

Paul has long been an advocate of sound money and has fought against the Federal Reserve. His efforts last year to get legislation passed to audit the Federal Reserve was ultimately watered down by Congress to the point of uselessness.

“I don’t think the Federal Reserve should exist — it would be best for Congress to exert their responsibilities and that is find out what they are doing,” Paul told Kitco News. “It is an ominous amount of power they have to create money out of thin air and being the reserve currency of the world and be able to finance runaway spending whether it is for welfare or warfare; it seems strange that we have been so complacent not to even look at the books. If we knew exactly what they were doing, who they were taking care of, there would be a growing momentum to reassess the whole system.”

Sensing the political failure of the Left’s environmental whacko agenda of raising energy costs to cap emissions of a gas we all exhale and that plants need to thrive — carbon dioxide — President Barack Obama has instructed his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to rewrite its Clean Air Act and give itself authority it doesn’t have.

Thankfully, one state is resisting: Texas.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Chairman Bryan W. Shaw call the EPA’s actions an illegal power grab and in a letter to the EPA they wrote:

“In order to deter challenges to your plan for centralized control of industrial development through the issuance of permits for greenhouse gases, you have called upon each state to declare its allegiance to the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently enacted greenhouse gas regulations — regulations that are plainly contrary to U.S. laws… To encourage acquiescence with your unsupported findings you threaten to usurp state enforcement authority and to federalize the permitting program of any state that fails to pledge their fealty to the Environmental Protection Agency. On behalf of the State of Texas, we write to inform you that Texas has neither the authority nor the intention of interpreting, ignoring or amending its laws in order to compel the permitting of greenhouse gas emissions.”

In an Op-Ed piece in today’s The Washington Times, Texas state director of Americans for Prosperity Peggy Venable writes that:

Federalist principles have allowed Texas to become the strongest state in the union. The Lone Star State leads the nation in job creation, is the top state for business relocation and has more Fortune 500 companies than any other state and is the top state for wind generation. President Obama said he wants to double U.S. exports in five years; he could look to Texas, as we are the top exporting state in the country. The Obama administration could learn a lot from Texas.

Instead, it is attempting to ride roughshod over Texas, and it goes beyond the greenhouse-gas issue.

After 16 years of allowing Texas to run its own permitting program to meet Federal air-quality standards, in May the EPA announced the state was not in compliance with Federal regulations. This despite the fact that Texas had met or exceeded its clean air obligations the entire time.

The Obama administration’s agenda is simple: Grab more and more power from the States and consolidate it under the Federal government. Thankfully, Texas will have no part of it.

If only the other 49 States will follow Texas’ lead.

Have you noticed how often the elitist “economists” in government, academia and the media are surprised by bad economic news?

They are constantly “surprised” by high unemployment numbers. They say the low manufacturing numbers were “unexpected.” They claim they didn’t “foresee” such a great trade imbalance.

When the Fed Open Market Committee met in June it said the economic recovery was “proceeding” and was likely to advance at a moderate pace. At the time they were talking of “tightening” monetary policy to fend off inflation.

Vice President Joe Biden has said we are in the “Summer of Recovery.” President Barack Obama has been saying his policies have “pulled us back from the brink of another Great Depression.” As recently as Aug. 2, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in an op-ed piece for The New York Times, wrote an uplifting column entitled “Welcome to the Recovery.” And he wasn’t being facetious.

He wrote that exports are booming, private job growth has returned, businesses now have strong balance sheets. But then he mentions his surprise.

“The new data show that this recession was even deeper than previously estimated,” Geithner wrote.

Back in January, as we were covering the increasingly Orwellian security apparatus springing up in the wake of the Christmas Day false flag bombing attack on an airliner headed for Detroit, we documented how the Department of Homeland Security insisted their new naked body scanners weren’t capable of storing images of passengers. This despite the fact that the specifications for the machines clearly mentioned the need to store and transmit images.

At the time we were… skeptical. Actually, we said it stretched credulity.

Now we learn that the U.S. Marshals Service has admitted to surreptitiously saving tens of thousands of images recorded at a courthouse in Florida. In other words, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano lied when she said the machines couldn’t store images.

The images are easily manipulated to make full color photographs of passengers—and that includes pre-teenagers who are now subject to the scans in airports. To see what can be done with the images, (Caution: these images may not be suitable for viewing at work or on a monitored computer) click here.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a lawsuit asking a Federal judge to grant an immediate injunction to halt the use of the scanners. Hopefully the Federal judge will recognize the DHS effort to install these scanners in every major airport for just what it is: an assault on our 4th Amendment rights and a further effort to monitor and control our daily lives and turn us all into passive sheeple content to be herded about in the name of safety.

You can read more about the dangers, capabilities and shortcomings of naked body scanners by clicking here, here and here.

A Hundred years running in the wrong direction…
Prior to 1913, there was no federal income tax, the states had rights and representation in Washington DC, there was no Federal Reserve Bank and the federal government lived under the enumerated powers afforded it within the US Constitution. What a difference one year can make…

Almost a hundred years later, it’s clear that the policies established in 1913 must be revoked in order to restore power to the people and the states. But can the American people get the Genie back in the bottle?

The History of the US Tax System can be summed up in one paragraph…

“Prior to the enactment of the income tax, most citizens were able to pursue their private economic affairs without the direct knowledge of the government. Individuals earned their wages, businesses earned their profits, and wealth was accumulated and dispensed with little or no interaction with government entities.”

Passage of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution would forever change life in America and not for the better.

The 16th – The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

It’s hard to imagine how this amendment could have been written any broader, or why 36 states would agree to such an open ended federal power to strip citizens of their rightful earnings via taxation without representation and with literally no boundaries or limits to how far the federal government could and ultimately would go in their effort to buy the votes of some with the assets of others.

Since 1913, the federal tax code has been used as a primary tool of leftist social engineering in which the people have been forced to fund a government they no longer recognize and no longer support. The US Congress has a mere 11% approval rating today and the Executive branch is supported only by the 28% of citizens who benefit personally by the robbing of fellow citizens.

Some call the Barack Obama administration progressive. Some call it socialist. Other terms used are Marxist and communist.

I have called it fascist and corporatist in the past. Now I’ll just call it Evil.

That’s because the rule of law is dead in America. Now we have the rule of man—or government agency. The rule of man—or government agency—is a rule of Evil because it knows only the moral bounds of those making the rules. And it’s evident this administration, its appointments and its goals are amoral, if not immoral.

In America there is a Federal law that makes being in the United States illegally illegal. There is a requirement in the law that those who are not United States citizens but are here legally must carry papers designating their legal status.

That law is not enforced. Why? Someone decided not to. Granted it hasn’t been enforced for some time, maybe since its enactment in the 1940s, but it is a law and it should be enforced or changed. Were we under the rule of law it would be.

In Arizona the legislature followed the rule of law—and the will of its citizens—and passed an immigration law, subsequently signed by Governor Jan Brewer, that mirrored the U.S. law. However the Obama administration made it plain it would not only not help Arizona enforce its law it would work actively against its enforcement. It sued to stop the law from being enacted. It ordered its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Division not to pick up any illegals Arizona arrested under the law.

1. Read Article III, US Constitution. This Article establishes the federal courts (the 3rd branch of the federal government).  Section 2 enumerates the categories of cases which federal courts are allowed to hear.  Section 2 also distributes the “judicial power” (the authority to hear cases) between the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts.

Article I, Sec. 8, clause 9, authorizes Congress to create courts inferior to the Supreme Court. Accordingly, Congress has set up some 94 federal district courts and 13 circuit courts of appeal (11 numbered circuits plus the DC Circuit & the Federal Circuit). This Chart shows the territorial jurisdiction of the 11 numbered circuit courts. Federal district courts are scattered throughout these United States. Click on your circuit, and you will see the locations of the federal district courts in your State.

The trials of most federal cases take place in the district courts. The loser may appeal to the circuit court of appeal for that district. The Supreme Court hears some appeals from the circuit courts of appeal.

2. But in TWO of the categories of cases enumerated in Art. III, Sec. 2, the Constitution grants “original” [i.e., “trial”] jurisdiction to the Supreme Court:  (1) All cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers & Consuls; and (2) Those in which a State is a Party.  For these TWO categories of cases, the Supreme Court acts as the trial court.

In all the other enumerated categories of cases, ”…the Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”

What does the quoted phrase (the so-called “exceptions clause”) mean?

• a) Alex Glashausser of Washburn University School of Law, says the phrase means that Congress may extend the Supreme Court’s “original” (trial) jurisdiction to include more cases than just (1) Those affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers & Consuls, and (2) Those in which a State is a Party.  Glashausser’s view is COMPLETELY WRONG & UNCONSTITUTIONAL!  Congress may not unilaterally amend the Constitution by expanding the supreme Court’s “original” jurisdiction!
• b) Some conservatives, such as David Barton of Wallbuilders, say the phrase means that Congress may withdraw from the federal courts authority to hear certain types of cases.  That is also incorrect.  It is true that the federal courts have been hearing cases which they are not authorized by Art. III, Sec. 2, to hear; but the remedy for that is impeachment & removal of the usurping judges.  The “exceptions clause” does not permit Congress to diminish the enumerated powers of the federal courts!
• c) Alexander Hamilton explains the original meaning of the phrase in Federalist No. 81. When we have sworn to support the Constitution, then we must defend it or we violate our Oaths. If we reject the original intent of the Constitution – the meaning it was understood to have when it was ratified – then we don’t have a Constitution. All we have is a pack of judges, law professors & others running around spewing out their own personal evolving opinions as to what the provisions in Our Constitution mean.  That is the rule of men – and they want to be “the men” making the rules.

3. Let us examine these views:

a) As to Professor Glashausser:  The Constitution dictates the categories of cases for which the Supreme Court has “original” (trial) jurisdiction, and the categories for which it has appellate jurisdiction! Hamilton explains this in Federalist No. 81:

…Let us now examine in what manner the judicial authority is to be distributed between the supreme and the inferior courts of the Union. The Supreme Court is to be invested with original jurisdiction, only “in cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, and those in which A STATE shall be a party.” Public ministers of every class are the immediate representatives of their sovereigns. All questions in which they are concerned are so directly connected with the public peace, that, as well for the preservation of this, as out of respect to the sovereignties they represent, it is both expedient and proper that such questions should be submitted in the first instance to the highest judicatory of the nation. Though consuls have not in strictness a diplomatic character, yet as they are the public agents of the nations to which they belong, the same observation is in a great measure applicable to them. In cases in which a State might happen to be a party, it would ill suit its dignity to be turned over to an inferior tribunal….(at para 13) [boldface added, caps in original]

After Clinton appointed Judge Susan Bolton ruled Wednesday that — for all intents and purposes — Arizona does not have the right to protect itself or its citizens from invading drug cartels and the illegal foreign hordes that are bleeding it dry of its resources, it should have become apparent to even the dimmest that We-the-People no longer exist. We are now living under a tyranny developed, directed, implemented and enforced by the Marxists in power.

To add insult to injury, as The Obama and its minions refuse to enforce the invasion of a foreign power from assaulting OUR border and willfully and with malice refusing to protect US citizens, Hezbollah terrorists who have already invaded with blessings from The Obama will be allowed to continue to do so.

With this latest atrocity perpetrated by the US Federal government against We-the-People, isn’t it time to at least consider replacing the Federal government with something that works for us instead of against us? That is, assuming we citizens (almost serfs) still have any choice at all. Isn’t it time to give back the power to the United States? With its bought and paid for leftist judges, election fraud and openly racist units, The Obama and is now being given Carte Blanche to do anything he wants to control and destroy We-the-People and what used to be our country. Not even a provable US citizen, The Obama and his masters are the worst things to have ever invaded the United States of America; a USA that has now been destroyed. No more a Republic, Judge Bolton has also now ruled that States have NO right to their own sovereignty.

The Republic may have now come to its end, folks. Obama can now cheer and have another wild and extravagantly expensive party on the backs of We-the-People. Who would have thought we would be totally destroyed by a foreign power called Obama? Oh yeah! Our founders did when they incorporated Article II into the US Constitution, which reads: “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President…” They may not have known The Obama’s name but they knew — if given the chance — what it would do. It has now done it.

Judge Blocks Key Parts of Immigration Law in Arizona:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/us/29arizona.html

Hezbollah incursions and invasion:
http://forum.pafoa.org/national-11/103958-congresswoman-raises-red-flag-hezbollah-cartel-nexus-u-s-border.html

US Constitution, Article II:
http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii

Well, this is quite a striking contrast to the Arizona ruling today protecting illegal aliens and the feds from “burdensome” ID checks. The government is creating a national registry/fingerprint database for mortgage brokers in the U.S.

Priorities:

Mortgage loan originators will have to be fingerprinted and sign up to a central registry to do business in future, according to final rules issued on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve and other regulators.

The rules are part of the Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act of 2008, also called the S.A.F.E. Act.

They were issued by the Fed, Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, Office of Thrift Supervision, Farm Credit Administration and National Credit Union Administration.

Mortgage brokers came under tough scrutiny in the wake of the 2007-09 financial crisis, with some lawmakers and regulators sharply critical of underwriting standards and practices that were seen as so loose they helped foster a housing price bubble.

The S.A.F.E. Act specifies that mortgage brokers who are employees of agency-regulated institutions must register with the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry,

When the NAACP allowed itself to be used by the Democratic party to try and smear a grass roots movement for smaller government as racist, the resulting controversy shone a light on more than just racism by individuals associated with the NAACP, but with the organization’s inability to delink class warfare from racism. If there is one thing that both the white media elites at Jornolist and the NAACP leadership agreed on, it’s that fighting for smaller government is racist.

The peculiar notion that reforming government by reducing its size is racist originates from the marriage of racial equality with class warfare to create the 40 Acres and a Mule politics covering everything from wealth redistribution to affirmative action to social welfare programs– all under the aegis of the federal government. And yet this same brand of 40 Acres and a Mule politics underlies the particular tragedy of the black community, whose leaders traded in aspiration and equality for government handouts, forcing them to make the argument over and over again that there can be no social justice without total government control.

When the Democratic party was forced to make the transition from a party of Northern businessmen and Southern plantation owners, after two Republican Presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, put a severe dent in their Southern plantations and the Northern business offices that had formerly given the party a death grip on the country’s economy– it did so by redefining the “Company Store” to mean the Federal government. The Republican notion of individual rights and free labor met the new Democratic notion of ward boss handouts at the Federal level in a battle for the soul of the Black community, and the Democrats won. Not immediately, not conclusively and not absolutely– but they won, and the NAACP’s leadership demonstrates why.

The black leadership has gained distinct advantages for itself as a separate class, while disadvantaging the black community as a whole. Civil rights leaders who made their money on lawsuit shakedowns and diversity training seminars, corporate executives and business owners who got where they were through affirmative action programs that encouraged companies to hire one black executive for appearance not merit, and rewarded minority business owners for the color of their skin, rather than for results– helped create a black leadership that owed its position and power to government intervention, rather than ability. And in the process that same leadership marginalized more qualified people within the black community, while teaching the lesson that aspiration and ability did not matter, only connections and politics did.

Affirmative action politics closed far more doors than it opened, but those who got through the open door knew exactly what they owed it to. Creating racial quotas as a way to select leaders was an effective tool for perpetuating the same system over and over again, marginalizing black candidates and business owners as a whole, while rewarding a select few who would then be in a position to praise and maintain things the status quo.

The racism charge leveled against the Tea Party is the doing of a leadership that sees itself as completely dependent on the Federal government, so much so that it finds any talk of reducing it to be dangerous and threatening. And as the Democratic party has identified itself closely with the domestic expansion of government and wealth redistribution politics, it has been able to manipulate the black community, to appropriate its decision making powers and use it as a political tool, while virtually eliminating its actual political clout. The sad state of affairs in which the official black leadership damns anyone who doesn’t toe the Democratic party line as Uncle Toms and “not real black people” reveals just who really calls the shots in this arrangement. And it is not the black leadership, which gets trotted out when the Democratic party needs them, and gets told to go home when it doesn’t. Which is no different than the treatment accorded to women’s or Jewish groups.

The attacks hurled at the government reforms advocated by Tea Party groups rely on invoking sixties racist boogeymen about States’ Rights, but the Tea Parties are not fighting to resegregate schools or lunch counters, as many times as liberal political bloggers may try and market that particular smear. Instead the Tea Party is an attempt to salvage the financial viability of the Middle Class that has traditionally been America’s only reliable bastion of political and social equality. And their targets are not Eisenhower’s forced desegregation and challenges to States’ Rights, a Republican President, but the out of control government expansion that began with FDR’s New Deal, which enforced racial segregation and plunged the country deeper into the depression.

Wealth Redistribution will never solve the black community’s problems, only worsen them. Which may be why most of the greatest African-American inventions took place before it, not after. All that spending has not helped the black community, in part because while the spending may use social welfare as a justification, it is mostly directed at building up the size of government itself. The gargantuan bureaucratic structures that form as a result only perpetuate poverty for everyone, while feeding money to a small group of insiders who are politically connected enough to benefit from it. The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disasters in which black homeowners were saddled with debt, that was then resold worldwide by bankers and brokers, is a typical example of what happens and where the money really goes.