Medical Due Process

The Bush administration and the Obama administration have ignored legal due process by ignoring a petition to reclassify a drug under the Controlled Substance Act.
In the meantime, the Obama administration is protecting the pharmaceutical providers by allowing their equivalent synthetic product to be classified as a less risky drug. Why is Obama continuing the Bush-era policy of protecting the pharmaceutical cartel?

Ron Paul, acknowledging the "War On Drugs" is a failure says he would decriminalize drug possession, similar to the recent success in Portugal.

In the Bill Maher interview:

"What about when FDR came to office in '33," asked Maher. "One of the first things he did was repeal prohibition. He said we can't afford this anymore. Well, we have prohibition in this country. ... When he was making radical changes he said look, we're serious now. We're going to make serious changes and people like liquor."

Ron Paul reminds us:

"I don't like pot," said the congressman. "But I hate the drug war, so I would repeal all of prohibition. But, I wouldn't even bother taxing it. People have the right in a free country to make important decisions on their own lives. If they want to make mistakes, they can. They just can't come crawling to the government to get bailed out or taken care of if they get sick.
"I believe in freedom of choice in all that we do, as long as the individual never hurts anybody else."

Federal Debt Ceiling

The excessive federal spending is enabled by the Federal Reserve, which buys (through the "primary dealers") the debt issued by the Treasury. This is the funding mechanism of outrageous deficits. If the dollar was backed by something tangible, this scheme of uncontrolled deficit spending would end. Since the dollar is backed by nothing, the attempt to control deficit spending is the debt ceiling which prohibits the Treasury from issuing debt beyond the debt ceiling. Politicians have found they can simply raise the debt ceiling.

In the following article, Ron Paul points out that future obligations are not included in the debt ceiling calculation.

Stop Raising the Debt Ceiling

The federal government once again has reached the limit of its legal ability to borrow money, meaning it cannot issue new Treasury debt without action by Congress to increase the debt ceiling limit. As of this month, our “official” national debt- which doesn’t include the staggering future payments promised to Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries- stands at $14.2 trillion.

The debt ceiling law, passed in 1917, enables Congress to place a statutory cap on the total amount of government debt rather than having to approve each individual Treasury bond offering. It also, however, forces Congress into an open and presumably somewhat shameful vote to approve more borrowing.
...

Iowa Endorsements

Endorsements for Ron Paul are starting.

ANKENY, Iowa (AP) — Texas congressman Ron Paul has collected his first endorsement from a sitting member of the Iowa Legislature.

At a news conference Monday at his campaign headquarters, Paul got the backing of Des Moines Republican legislator Glen Massie. Massie says he decided to endorse Paul because of the Texan's devotion to the Constitution.
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IMF In Trouble

IMF chief Strauss-Kahn charged with attempted rape
IMF chief and possible French presidential candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn was charged Sunday with a criminal sexual act, attempted rape, and unlawful imprisonment of a hotel maid in New York City.


This provides an opportunity to ask the obvious question, "Why does the IMF have so much influence?"


From the Daily Bell:
Our view, extreme as many might think it, is that if every UN agency vanished from the face of the earth, the globe would be a much better place. That includes non-UN agencies like the World Bank and BIS. The IMF in particular does nothing but wreak havoc on people unlucky enough to be living in nations where their psychopathic leaders have squirreled away billions leaving their countries unable to pay their bills.

The IMF's prescriptions are always the same – and never work. Taxes are raised, services are cut and national assets are sold off to favored (Anglo-American) bidders. If leaders don't go along, their countries are bullied.


Paul, who makes no secret about his disgust of IMF policies, said Strauss-Kahn demonstrates why the Fund has problems.

"These are the kind of people that are running the IMF and we want to turn the world finances and the control of the money supply to them," Paul said. "That should awaken everybody to the fact that they ought to look into the IMF and find out why we shouldn't be sacrificing more sovereignty to an organization like that and an individual like he was."

Short History of Monetary Debasement

Ron Paul has been speaking of corruption of monetary policy and the Federal Reserve for decades.

Here is a great article on the Cara Community about monetary policy, debased money, and the Coinage Act of 1792. It describes how Treasury employees were required to post a bond equivalent to ten years of salary, and misdeeds could be punished by death.

Here you have employees who had to put a bond to cover 5-10 years of their service (pay) in advance and if that was not enough they faced this …

“… falsification of weight, debasing currency and or embezzlement of metals under said officer’s charge … every such officer or person who shall commit any or either of the said offences shall be deemed guilty of felony, and shall suffer death.” Chap 16, Section 19

There has been no attempt whatsoever to restore sound money to our Nation in the past 40 years. By allowing debt to increase by using a monetary system based on increasing debt we have rubber stamped the misery of global Wars and poverty. We now have 1 in 7 Americans who can no longer afford to feed themselves.

America defaulted on the gold standard in order to continue the Vietnam War and to assume the mantle of World Police. Mr. Geithner you are wrong. America did default and America defaulted when you were alive. In 1971 America could no longer fulfill our monetary and trade obligations to foreign creditors under the gold standard. Since that default the “store of value” of a US Dollar has been radically debased.

Any way you slice it the US Treasury is mismanaged, which is just a reflection of our entire government … its all been mismanaged, not by just the Democrats or the Republicans, but by the American people who continue to fail in their voting responsibilities. America is run by two gigantic rampaging monopolies … one political and one monetary.

The Young & Ron Paul

NPR has a story about the young who frequently attend Ron Paul's events and want to talk about monetary policy and individual liberty.


The NPR page has a link to the audio version of the story.

Why The Young Flock To An Old Idealist

Sixteen-year-old Rob Gray says the age of the crowd doesn't seem odd to him.
It's "the old canard of the young being more open-minded than the old," he says.

Finland Is Awake, Wall Street Journal Is Asleep

It has come to my attention The Wall Street Journal has changed the original article.

Link to full original article.
Link to newly revised Wall Street Journal article.
Link to prior comments on this blog about the article.

In the spirit of secretive government, many sentences and entire paragraphs have been redacted. Even the harmless sentence, "Let's follow the money." was removed!

Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal can not be trusted. Ironically, I received a mailer today asking me to subscribe to their fraudulent shill of a newspaper.

Finland Is Awake

Finland is not going along with the forced EU banker bailouts. The leader of the True Finn Party, which gained in recent elections, had an article published in WSJ that shows he understands the people have the power and the elected govern by the consent of the people.

When I had the honor of leading the True Finn Party to electoral victory in April, we made a solemn promise to oppose the so-called bailouts of euro-zone member states. These bailouts are patently bad for Europe, bad for Finland and bad for the countries that have been forced to accept them. Europe is suffering from the economic gangrene of insolvency—both public and private. And unless we amputate that which cannot be saved, we risk poisoning the whole body.

...

To understand the real nature and purpose of the bailouts, we first have to understand who really benefits from them. Let's follow the money.

... We'll begin with the obvious: It is not the little guy that benefits. He is being milked and lied to in order to keep the insolvent system running. He is paid less and taxed more to provide the money needed to keep this Ponzi scheme going.

...

In a true market economy, bad choices get penalized. Not here. When the inevitable failure of overindebted euro-zone countries came to light, a secret pact was made.

Instead of accepting losses on unsound investments—which would have led to the probable collapse and national bailout of some banks—it was decided to transfer the losses to taxpayers via loans, guarantees and opaque constructs ...

In a democracy, where we govern under the consent of the people, power is on loan.
...

Amazing to come from a modern politician: we govern under the consent of the people, power is on loan.

Read the entire article here.

The Ron Paul Moment

This week was the first GOP debate, and Ron Paul ranked highest in competition with Obama. Ron Paul also raised over $1 million to support a 2012 campaign, which dwarfs every other potential candidate.

Is This the Ron Paul Moment?

Representative Ron Paul established himself at the forefront of the Tea Party movement in the first Republican Presidential debate in Greenville, South Carolina. The debate has more and more establishment figures wondering if this might be the perfect political storm for the Texas congressman and obstetrician.

NPR wrote:

Asked if they would authorize use of the torture technique, candidates Pawlenty, Cain and Santorum raised their hands to signal that they were cool with violating the 8th amendment to the Constitution.

Santorum chirped, "Sure!"

The crowd applauded the supporters of waterboarding.

But Johnson and Paul refused to shred the Constitution, with Paul arguing that so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques. The Texas congressman said waterboarding hasn't accomplished anything — and won't. Santorum disagreed, claiming that torture helped "get" Osama bin Laden.

Paul was right. Santorum was wrong.

The Tea Parties Now Have Their Man

Will the Tea Parties compromise for a big government neo-con such as Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney? Chuck Baldwin says the Tea Parties now have their man:

We need to get this straight: the Tea Party movement was never about electing Republicans–especially neocon Republicans!

Many GOP shills and toadies have jumped on the Tea Party bandwagon and have attempted to redefine its goals and objectives, including many of the talking heads on FOX News.

Here we are four years later. And, once again, the man who was responsible for the Tea Party movement coming into existence has entered the 2012 race for President.

America's Econony

The Economist has an article about what is wrong with America's economy. The article has some great points to usefully redefine the debate about competitiveness. The article also points out how most politicians are failing to promote changes that will truly improve the economy of the majority of working people.

He [Obama] likes to frame America’s challenges in terms of “competitiveness”, particularly versus China. America’s prosperity, he argues, depends on “out-innovating, out-educating and out-building” China. This is mostly nonsense. America’s prosperity depends not on other countries’ productivity growth, but on its own (actually pretty fast) pace.

The system of corporate taxation is a mess and deters domestic investment. Mr Obama is right that America’s infrastructure is creaking. But the solution there has as much to do with reforming Neanderthal funding systems as it does with the greater public spending he advocates.

The budget deficit is huge and public debt, at over 90% of GDP when measured in an internationally comparable manner, is high and rising fast. Apart from Japan, America is the only big rich economy that does not have a plan for getting its public finances under control.

The bad news—and the second reason for gloom about what the politicians are up to—is that neither party is prepared to make the basic compromises that are essential to a deal.