Dear Progressives....Why You Are Losing the People and What You Can Do About It

"[The task is to] covertly lower the standard of living, the whole social structure, of America so that we can be merged with all other nations." -- Rowan Gaither (1909-1961) Attorney, investment banker, President of the Ford Foundation (1953-1956).  The Ford Foundation is a rich and powerful progressive institution.

Headlines can be hilarious as was Alternet's It's a Rout: Democrats Lose Badly as GOP Extremists Consolidate Power In Congress and Across America.  The article then goes on to bitch and moan about America's discriminatory election.  Guess what?  Nobody stopped anybody from voting.  Even the suffering Democrat base couldn't even hold their noses and vote because they knew they had been screwed.  Life for them was no better under Obama and Gang than it was under Bush and Gang.

OKAY, progressives are in deep mourning over the 2014 elections.  I'm not gloating or rubbing it in because as a liberty activist who abhors the damn wars, the thieving banking system, corporate welfare, the militarized police state, the Patriot Act, the NSA and many other nasties that have rendered America nothing more than a totalitarian empire controlled by oligarchs, I do observe and understand the American people.

I have no skin in the game; I didn't vote this year although when I do vote I generally vote 3rd party and AGAINST the Republicans and Democrats.  The DNC and RNC machines are wholly owned subsidiaries of the banksters, defense contractors and corporate welfare queens.  Moreover, my contempt for the Republicans is just as great as my contempt for the Democrats.  In many ways, I despise the Republicans more, especially since the GOP was hijacked by neocons and theocons years ago.  While I was happy that a slew of Congress Critters were fired by the voters, I was anything but happy that they were replaced with Republicans.

Rest assured, the American people didn't actually vote for Republicans.  The people were just so pissed off that they wanted to fire somebody and this election cycle it was Dems who were most vulnerable.   Why are the American people so pissed off?  Why it's the economy of course.  If folks are lucky enough to have a decent paying job, taxes are eating them alive.  Those who don't have jobs are suffering and many who do have jobs have low wage jobs with no future.

America is a place where the middle class is vanishing and the poor are getting poorer.  The rich are definitely getting richer and at the expense of the poor and middle class.  The Dems love the poor which is why they function as plantation owners doling out subsistence level goodies to their devoted slaves.  Vote buying can only go so far until it bankrupts a nation under the weight of the entitlement state where everybody is entitled to substantial freebies as evidenced by the fact that over 92 million Americans don't even bother to work, here, and many live off the dole.

Yes, progressives, the Republicans and Democrats are all responsible for the demise of the American middle class and the future-less lives of the poor. How did it happen?  Well, it started back in 1913 when progressives passed the Federal Reserve Act that transferred all monetary power to Wall Street. That was the beginning of the death of the middle class because it resulted in a massive wealth transfer from the poor and middle class to the rich.  But not to worry says progressive, we will pass welfare bills that throw you the picked bones of the steaks we eat because you don't need to build wealth and financial security, you must be dependent on US because we OWN you.

Things got far uglier in 1971 when Nixon de-tethered the dollar from gold and made the dollar a 100% fiat currency that totally destroyed the purchasing power of the dollar.

Yet, progressives pay scant attention to monetary policy and all they ever care about is throwing a few moldy crumbs at the dutifully compliant sheeple people who are definitely growing restless.

Besides collaborating with Wall Street to pass the Federal Reserve Act to destroy the purchasing power of the dollar, progressives were also instrumental in passing some job killing legislation and bankster protection bills over the years.

Although inflation, taxation, lower wages and massive job losses have been bleeding the middle class dry, the history of the loss of good paying manufacturing jobs is quite interesting. Even more interesting, it was actually planned! And while there are other components to the systematic sell-off of America, like our criminal Congress Critters passing bills that tax domestic corporate earnings at much higher rates if they produced and earned on US soil versus earning their dough offshore, another major component of our national misery is NAFTA and other horrifying trade agreements supported by Republicans and Democrats alike. The expediting of the real bleed of American jobs is fully attributable to Bill Clinton who enthusiastically supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Despite numerous warnings that NAFTA would be catastrophic to the American middle class and domestic manufacturing, the political class was more interested in filing its campaign coffers with special interest dough by selling multi-national corporatists legal protectionism.

NAFTA was a piece of legislation that was unprecedented in its scope and economic consequences as it conferred dictatorial powers of implementation upon the executive branch of government without any congressional oversight whatsoever. Moreover, NAFTA established secret working groups that are publicly funded, totally unaccountable to anyone and they operate off the radar of congressional and public scrutiny.

NAFTA passed in both houses of a Democratic controlled Congress in 1993. In the Senate, it passed with 61 yeas and 38 nays. In the House, it was much closer at 234 yeas to 200 nays. The Republicans in the House really came through for Clinton by providing 132 Yeas to counter 156 Democratic nays. Still, 40% of the Democrats in the House voted for NAFTA.

The vote itself is more than a bit intriguing. Many of NAFTA’s congressional supporters ended up as presidential candidates or secured congressional leadership positions. On the Senate side, the big name Democrats who voted for NAFTA includes Bill Bradley, Tom Daschle, Christopher Dodd, Ted Kennedy (deceased), Joe Lieberman, John Kerry and Joe Biden, now Vice President. A lot of these Democrats had made various bids for the presidency or vice presidency of the United States. Interestingly, big name NAFTA supporting Republicans includes John McCain, Bob Dole (defeated by Clinton), Mitch McConnell (soon to be Senate Minority Leader post 2014 elections) and many others who were none too eager to assist Bill Clinton in the sellout of the American worker.

On the House side, NAFTA supporters included big name GOPers like Dennis Hastert, Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, John Boehner and Ron Portman, all of whom rose to leadership positions in the House or the Bush Administration. Democrat Nancy Pelsoi, who voted yes on NAFTA, ended up Speaker of the House for her role in decimating U.S. manufacturing and jobs.

Clearly, these traitorous rogues were handsomely rewarded with greater political power for engineering the systematic dismantling of the world’s greatest manufacturing legend in all of human history.

Progressives handsomely rewarded Nancy Pelosi for her NAFTA vote by anointing her Speaker of the House.  Now that's truly ironic considering that progressives are chronically ranting about the injustice of rich Republicans, especially rich white Republicans, yet they rabidly endorse a rich white bitch and the 12th richest member of Congress, here.  LOL, Pelosi sold the poor and middle class down the river and was rewarded! For more information on NAFTA and its devastating economic consequences, see my blog post The Kleptocracy of Cannibal Crony Capitalism. Bill Clinton and his Republican NAFTA Baby Co-Conspirators.

As if playing a key role in the destruction of US manufacturing and middle class jobs with corporatist crony capitalist boondoggles like NAFTA isn't bad enough, progressive icon Bill Clinton paved the road in 1999 for Banksters Gone Wild that resulted in the 2008 financial crisis.

Photo Above: Bill Clinton signs into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, November 12, 1999

Who are the Architects of Economic Collapse? Global Research

This extraordinary Global Research article documents how the same folks that were behind the Financial Services Modernization Act ended up in top positions in the Obama Administration.

The simple truth is that Wall Street and its interests rule America and they also own both political parties.  It's even more interesting to note that liberal progressive icons were in fact part of the ruling elite cabal that's that been selling out the poor and middle class since 1913.

My issues with progressives are numerous and my most intense hatred of progressivism is their love of wars and interventions, although these days that mantle appears to have somewhat passed to the Republicans.  But let's look at the facts:  Who got us into WW I, WW II, the Korean War, Vietnam and the Balkan Wars?  All liberal progressive Dems  - Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, LBJ and Clinton.  The body counts of those progressive wars exceed 100 million folks.  Yes, progressive hands are dripping in blood.

Where's the anti-war movement that was so awesome in the 1960's?  Well, it's somewhere between invisible and non-existent.

Where were progressives when Bush and the Republicans needed the Patriot Act passed?  They were voting with Bush and the Republicans and they continued with each successive Patriot Act renewal. Who in Congress is standing up to the NSA?  Not many, just a few Libertarian leaning Republicans like Rand Paul and Justin Amash, along with a few Dems.

Progressive don't stand for civil liberties and privacy.  In fact, they seem to be addicted to totalitarian government power.  Progressive policies are rooted in command and control economies where nobody is allowed to earn a living unless they grant permission and that permission comes with economy destroying bureaucratic dictates.

Although progressives have embraced marijuana legalization and decriminalization, they've botched it up in CO and WA with insane bureaucracies and taxes to the extent that underground marijuana markets continue to flourish because the taxed price is too damn high (vs. the free market price) and it's quite difficult to grow and sell pot if one seeks to be a an entrepreneur.  New York, the poster child for anti-business, anti-entrepreneurship progressive economic policies, may be the most absurd example of how progressives botch something as simple as growing and selling medical marijuana.

$20M to Start an MMJ Business in New York?

Medical marijuana in New York might prove to be a pretty wealthy club.

Startup costs to open a dispensary and grow could run over $20 million, according to a recent report by The New York Times. And it might take upwards of $1 million just to navigate through the application process, estimated one cannabis lobbyist quoted in The Times piece. These lofty costs would make it difficult for small businesses to get involved.

What the hell do progressives have against folks seeking to start small businesses?  Apparently, a lot!  Economically, progressives are like the mafia demanding tribute for the privilege of working and earning a living.  When it comes to folks who want to work and produce, progressives are like Shylock from the Merchant of Venice demanding a pound of flesh.

While the Nazified Police State is a draconian assault on natural rights and civil liberties that is at least tolerated if not encouraged by progressives, the Progressive Economic Police State against small businesses is just as destructive because it utterly denies folks the right to earn a living.

Perhaps it's long overdue for progressives to do some serious soul searching, starting with admitting their own roles in growing Police State USA, destroying small businesses by making it impossible for limited capital small business operators to even start a business.  And then there are the damn wars that never end.

America needs less laws, less regulation and more freedom.  On the criminal code, progressives should embrace the Libertarian approach:  No Victim, No Crime.  America has more folks in prison than any nation on the planet and many of these folks are imprisoned for victim-less crimes. Progressives should stop criminalizing every act that they personally disapprove of.

Progressives need a revolution within the Democrat party and they need to get rid of the old, fraudulent leadership that is owned by the same special interests that own the GOP.

Progressives need to fight to end the damn wars and yes they also need to give up their imperial aspirations of non-stop intervention that so devastated the world in WW I, WW II, Korean War, Vietnam and other murderous interventions.

Progressives need to support limited government,  business growth and lower taxes.  If anything, progressives are famous for being anti-business.   Progressives need to be more Libertarian and they must learn to stop controlling everything at the point of a gun.  Speaking of guns, progressives should absolutely support the 2nd amendment because the right to defend yourself from violence, sexual assault or death is an absolute natural right that no free citizen should ever be denied.

Libertarians and 'sane' progressives, well, at least the progressives that aren't Nazis, have a lot in common.

Ralph Nader gets it and his book Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State lays out a solid argument on why liberals and Libertarians should unite to defeat the corporate state.  As a Libertarian, I find Nader to be honest and sane even if he is more statist than my Libertarian ideology but he's definitely on the right track.

Ralph Nader On Why Libertarians And Liberals Should Unite

Defeating the corporate state, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex and the security industrial complex is a damn good place to start where we can demolish the absolute worst aspects of government power.

This isn't a Republican or Democrat issue; there is only one issue at stake here - namely the freedom and prosperity of the people.

Hello progressives?  Where art thou? Can you possibly resist the temptation to CONTROL every possible aspect of human existence and champion historical classical liberalism that embodied a high level of personal and economic freedom with minimal government interference?

The principles of voluntarism enshrine classical liberalism because it's based on the absence of state violence and coercion.  I never understood why progressives are so supportive of state violence and coercion and so oppose voluntary cooperation and transactions among people to deliver peace, harmony, goods, services and consent.

Finally, while progressives may toss a few crumbs at folks to achieve political power they utterly fail to understand that humans desperately seek personal sovereignty, independence and economic opportunity.  People don't want to be tethered to the impoverishment of the progressive plantation anymore than more than they would consent to be slaves.

If progressives truly advocated for progress rather than raw and absolute power, they could kick GOP ass.  However, progress will never come from state power.



Image: Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. "The composition is part of a pyramid whose base are the bodies that have fallen in the struggle against tyranny, corpses lit to emphasize its importance." http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_libertad_guiando_al_pueblo.png

History Lesson - Why America Doesn't Need a Standing Army

During WW I, Japanese General Yamamoto supposedly said "“You cannot invade America. There is a rifle behind every blade of grass.”

Many Americans live in fear and dread of what would happen if America didn't have a military and standing army. However, most of America's founding fathers opposed a standing army because they understood that so long as one existed dangerous psychopaths would concoct reasons to use it for endless warmongering and war profiteering.

But Americans should also be thinking about the War of 1812.  The British invaded America and headed straight for DC but those in the capital, including the military, had all fled and never even offered an honorable defense.  So the Brits burned DC and headed straight to Baltimore where they planned a land and sea invasion believing that Baltimore would easily fall.  But the Brits encountered the armed citizens of Baltimore and butted heads with 1,0000 defenders of Ft. McHenry who valiantly fought the Brits from 6:00 a.m. on September 13, 1814 until 7:00 a.m. September 14th when the British shells fell silent and "our flag was still there".  Thus, the words to the Star Spangled Banner were born as a captured America lawyer, Francis Scott Key, watched as a prisoner of war on a British ship and wrote down those now memorialized words.

Folks near and around Baltimore also valiantly fought the British land invasion.  Defeated and demoralized by folks just defending their country from a foreign invasion, the Brits immediately sailed to New Orleans where they anticipated that the undefended city would easily fall.

But the Brits were forced to butt heads with the legendary Andrew Jackson and his hastily raised rag tag army of yeomen farmers who despite being vastly out-gunned and outnumbered managed to deliver a devastating and humiliating defeat to the Brits and sent them packing.

The passion and tenacity to defend one's homeland against a foreign invader is just so much a part of the human condition that it cannot be ignored.  The ghosts of history firmly attest to the fact that our current crop of wars will never, ever be winnable.  No nation wants to be attacked, have its citizens murdered and suffer the humiliating occupation of an invading foreign military.

America's only invasion by a foreign military, the War of 1812, not only resulted in a defeat for the invader, an invader considered the most military powerful nation on earth at the time, but proved that armies do not defend nations.  It was the American people who successfully defended America and sent the British packing.

Petro Dollar = ISIS Dollar, Saudi Arabia, Sunni Salafist Wahhabism and US Foreign Policy - Connect the Dots

In 1971, Nixon de-tethered the dollar from gold thereby making it a 100% paper-electronic fiat currency.  But there is way more to the story and The Daily Reckoning sums it up perfectly with quotes from Jim Rickards book The Death of Money.

Did you know that when Nixon made his ‘temporary suspension’ of the Bretton Woods Agreement that gold would back currencies around the world that the gold standard didn’t die right then and there? No, it took four years before the gold standard/Bretton Woods was euthanized.

“But the dollar immediately began to lose ground which is exactly what Nixon wanted it to do, for he had tons of debt left over from President Johnson’s great society, and Vietnam War, and needed to print dollars and get them weaker to pay down loans with cheaper dollars....

The “dollar monopoly in energy trade” is another legacy of 1971: In 1974, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger cut a deal with the Saudi princes: Saudi Arabia would price oil in U.S. dollars and use its clout to get other OPEC nations to do the same. In return, the U.S. government agreed to protect Saudi Arabia and its allies against foreign invaders and domestic rebellions.  Link here.

The green (color of Islam) flag of Saudi Arabia contains 2 things:  a sword and an inscription in Arabic "There is no god but Allah".  The sword is very significant Muslim symbol because chopping off heads as an implement of terror against infidels constitutes the symbolic power of Islam religiously, culturally, politically and historically.

The deal that Kissinger, a Jew no less, cut with the anti-Semitic House of Saud and Sunni Salafist Wahhabism was far dirtier and evil than anybody could ever imagine. In Saudi Arabia, Jews are banned from the country and every religion except Islam is also banned and the death penalty for practicing any religion except Islam has been enforced, usually by publicly beheading infidels (the term Muslims use for non-Muslims) as sorcerers and witches.

America and Europe effectively agreed to military bankroll the expansion of Sunni Salafist Wahhabism and jihad against the West, Christianity and other non-Muslim and even moderate Muslim nations, sometimes overtly but mostly covertly and this was accomplished through the massive importation of Sunni Muslims into Europe and the US, along with their radical jihad Imams, mosques and Islamic centers all of which were financed with Sunni Salafist Gulf money.  While the concept of separation of church and state are codified into western (European and US) law, it's appropriate and valid to state that the only state supported religion in Europe and the US is Sunni Salafist Wahhabist Islam.  Many radical Sunni Muslims teach in western public schools and western prison systems are loaded with taxpayer funded Muslim clerics.

As Europe and America ponder the horror of how many western coverts to Islam are among ISIS butchers, the answer is simple.  We allowed this to happen.

Besides facilitating and spawning the rise of the most radical form of Islam ever to exist and largely on western soil where Islam used to be close to non-existent, the West and its banksters didn't really care so long as these evil Sunni Salafist Wahhabist Muslims continued to trade oil in dollars, thus preserving the petro-dollar and the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

The logical question is:  why would the West do such things and purposely destroy western culture? At the elite level, they are very comfortable with Sunni Salafist Wahhabism.  In fact, many western elites admire the ability of tyrants like the House of Saud and Islam to control populations while guarantying that the people never revolt for liberty; this is largely accomplished by rigidly imposing religion into every facet of daily living and vigorously oppressing those who reject theocracy. Women have no rights under Islam and homosexuality is considered an offense warranting the death penalty in some Muslim nations.

If there is one thing that western elites fear more than anything, it's Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations pulling the rug out from under the petro-dollar and trading oil in non-dollar currencies.  This would immediately crash the dollar, the entire western banking system and America would be nothing more than just another bankrupt banana boat republic.  It's critically important to understand the vast and absolute power of being the world's reserve currency.  The demise of the petro-dollar would wipe out Wall Street and every central bank on the planet.

For the first time ever, western elites feel threatened because new players have arrived on the scene and they are swimming in oil and gas.  Russia has the largest natural gas reserves on the planet and it's oil reserves rival that of Saudi Arabia.

Top Natural Gas Reserves by Country 2014, here.
Russia has 1,688.00 trillion cubic feet
Iran has 1,193.00 trillion cubic feet
Qatar has 885.29 trillion cubic feet
Turkmenistan has 265.00 trillion cubic feet
US has 308.44 trillion cubic feet

Not only is the West committed to importing Sunni Muslims, mosques, Islamic centers and jihadists as well as arming, funding and protecting them and their murderous groups like ISIS, the West is also committed to preserving the OPEC energy cartel from any threatening competition.  With Russia being the new big energy player, the West is now committed to locking up Russia's enormous natural resources in energy to protect OPEC and it's monopolistic powers, as well as the DOLLAR as the world's reserve currency.

As western central banks, especially the Federal Reserve and Bank of England, increasingly become the focus of attention following Wall Street's 2008 meltdown that was immediately rescued with trillions of electronically created fiat money and bond buying, which was nothing more than welfare for rich investors, the volatility of western central banking finally started to get some much need attention.   Banks are swimming in bad loans and writing off all the bad debt paper would bankrupt every western bank by wiping out its capital.  Hence, the urgency of doing anything and everything to keep a failed fiat financial system from collapsing, as it should, is the only priority of banksters, governments, globalists and the NWO that controls all economic activity.

The deviously evil House of Saud understands that it literally owns the West, that the West will do anything to preserve the dollar as the world's reserve currency, including Islamizing western nations and funding the expansion of Sunni Salafist Islam, it's violence and it's jihads.

The West wasn't duped - all the players fully understood what they were consenting to but corporate power,  bankster power and empire trumped everything, including preserving western styled liberty, law and culture.

Counterpunch published an extraordinary Q & A interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1998 titled How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen.  Brzezinski was Carter's National Security Advisor.

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

Stirred up Moslems?  Indeed! The Saudis have dumped $100 billion into spreading its evil form of Islam.

Terrorists shaped by Wahhabi petrodollars

Over more than two decades, Saudi Arabia has lavished around $100 billion or more on the worldwide promotion of the violent, intolerant and crudely puritanical Wahhabist sect of Islam that the ruling royal family espouses.... The spread of Wahhabism sparked not only a separatist war against the Russians, but also a good deal of violence among Muslims....

There are similar strands leading back to Wahhabist indoctrination in the histories of very many of the known Muslim terrorists of the last 20 years.

The founder of the sect, Muhammad ibn abd al-Wahhab, was an eighteenth century Muslim zealot allied to the Al-Saud clan who promoted an extreme version of Salafism.

The US isn't fighting ISIS, the current brand of Islamic Sunni butchers on a rampage of murder and head chopping in Iraq and Syria, the US is pretending to fight ISIS when in fact it must support Sunni Salafist Wahhabism or risk having the House of Saud destroy the dollar by trading oil in non-dollar currencies.

The geo-politics of oil are indeed complicated, especially with big new players on the scene like Russia. Yeah, the US made the decision to jump in bed with Muslim butchers to protect the petro-dollar.  The blowback from American global empire builders has wrought devastation upon America's economy, America is bankrupt from endless wars, the phony baloney War on Terror is a joke that only beneficiaries are defense contractors.  Civil liberties have been crushed in America which is now just a Nazified Police State.  Moreover, every US intervention in the Muslim world actually serves to strengthen Saudi Arabia and its powers over us, all while vastly empowering recruitment for Sunni Salafist Wahhabism, radical Islam and its jihads.

Finally, America's neocon-theocons who are ferocious supporters of America's endless wars and the War on Terror are just to blind or stupid to grasp that they are effectively facilitating the spread of radical Sunni Salafist Wahhabist Islam, all in the name of squashing a religion that they perceive as an acute threat to them.

Although I detest Sunni Salafist Wahhabist Islam and consider it evil, I'm not anti-Islam or a Muslim hater. Moreover, I have documented why I believe that Sunni Islam is critical to world peace.  There are Muslims who oppose Wahhabism but many also fear it because of its savagery and butchery, as evidence by the carnage in Syria and Iraq,  The Muslim world remains in turmoil and God forbid that Wahhabism should win.

Why Sunni Islam is Crucial to World Peace and Crushing the NWO

Yet, Wahhabism has a huge advantage - it's got the US military fighting its jihads.  It's got western governments flooding western nations with nutjob Muslims, Saudi trained clerics and Saudi funded mosques.

The US government and Wall Street would rather see the entire planet Islamized than let the criminal banksters go bankrupt and sound money restored.  The US empire cannot exist with sound money.  The military-industrial-security complex cannot exist with sound money.  It can only feed off its victims of fiat central bank currency and the petro-dollar creates plenty of victims for feasting.

So long as the petro-dollar exists, the world will remain an extremely dangerous place and America will just continue on its journey to the black hole of totalitarian tyranny. 

Age Demographics of the Scottish Secessionist Referendum - Old Folks and Fear Killed Liberty

An astounding 73% of Scots 65 years of age and older voted NO and 57% of the 55-64 age group voted NO on Scotland's secessionist referendum.

All other age group hit YES at 51% to 59%, with the lions share of YES votes (59%) coming from the 25-34 age group.

What does this tell us?  It tells us that old folks don't give a shit about their children and progeny, and are so tethered to Britain's welfare state, its empire and its tyranny that they gladly would sacrifice anything for the privilege of compliant subservience.

In many ways, the Scottish vote demographics reminds me of America's Republican Party that is dominated by old, white folks who control Republican primaries; they consistently vote for establishment statist candidates.  Like their Scottish counterparts, these folks tend to worship the welfare state, empire, wars, fascism, the military and the wholesale slaughter of civil liberties.  Turns out the Greatest Generation isn't so great after all.

Michael Krieger who blogs at libertyblitzkrieg.com offered some astute observations on the Scottish vote including why the vote can accurately be interpreted as HOPE.

Fear and Loathing in Scotland – Why the NO’s Won and Lessons Learned from the Vote

In the wake of the results, I have witnessed a great deal of bitterness and anger about the vote. While I can relate to such sentiments, I try to take a much more constructive and optimistic approach to the future. First and foremost, we should all be proud that the vote happened at all. So many people within the so-called “liberty movement” are discouragingly extreme pessimists. While proclaiming to fight for liberty, many of them seem to think we are powerless in the face of the powerful. To them, the independence referendum is proof that nothing can ever be changed. I completely disagree with this perspective.

Yes, I believe there are many important takeaways, several of which are instructive going forward.

First, there’s the fact that fear was a driving force behind the NO voters.

Recall that the older lady yesterday (I would guess she was in her 70s) stated that her friends were all voting NO because they were “afraid.”

The NO vote was entirely secured by overwhelming support from those aged above 55. In fact, the “better together” camp failed to win any of the age groups below 55 years of age. For the 65+ crowd it was simply a blowout. 73% of them voted NO. So in a nutshell, old people filled with fear blocked independence. Similarly, fearful old people bailed out the banks in the U.S. several years ago, putting a nail in the coffin of the middle class and the youth generally. See what I am getting at here?

What we now know for certain is that old people in positions of wealth and power, and the ability to frighten others of their generation, is proving to be the most significant obstacle to global change. For those of us who wish to see paradigm shifting changes, this is a very positive realization. For starters, the older generation will gradually fade away, and the promises made to them via pensions will not be on the table for younger generations. Pensions were a huge issue for the 65+ crowd when it came down to their voting decisions....

As a result of the horrific and self-interested choices of older generations, the youth will be left with a much more difficult and uncertain future. This is already happening, but it will worsen considerably following the next severe economic decline, likely to start in late 2015. 

Of course, any rational and informed individual who follows monetary and fiscal issues fully comprehends that western style central banking and its accompanying 'cradle to the grave' entitlement state are on the cusp of imploding and that there is no money to fund these programs (there never was).

In the US, the Social Security Trust Fund is empty and has always been empty simply because Congress immediately stole the money and spent it on wars and other slop while leaving a worthless pile of IOU (US Treasuries) that can never be repaid.  When SS was created, there were 41 workers supporting every beneficiary but that ratio has plunged to 2.9 workers supporting every beneficiary.

Western nations have piled on mountains of debt and taxes in various vote buying schemes over the decades.  The day of reckoning is starting to arrive.  Interest on debt service will continue to rise and eat up larger and larger percentages of government revenues and there will be far less entitlement money to dole out.  Printing 'magical money' out of thin air will only result in massive inflation and currency depredation.

The game is up.  What is left is hope and fear and right now fear is winning.

The young understand that there is nothing for them in a once prosperous western economic system that was totally destroyed by the ravages western elites, statism, corporatism and unfunded entitlement promises, and they seek a glimmer of hope for an otherwise desolate future.  The old cling to fear and a prayer that the bankrupt system will somehow last at least until they exit this earthly paradise.

It's an economic lose-lose for everybody as well as a blueprint for future generational warfare in a statist society where nobody will have much of a future, young or old.

The Whys Behind the Ukraine Crisis by Robert Parry

Image Credit: Http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Simplified_historical_map_of_Ukrainian_borders_1654-2014.jpg

Investigative journalist Robert Parry at Consortium News has an excellent article on the situation in Ukraine, America's motivations, huge natural gas reserves ripe for fracking, oligarchs, Joe Biden's son and John Kerry engineering war for Rosemont Capital (a private equity company founded by his son-in-law Christopher Heinz).  Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz are business partners.

The Whys Behind the Ukraine Crisis

 

Exclusive: Given the very high stakes of a nuclear confrontation with Russia, some analysts wonder what’s the real motive for taking this extraordinary risk over Ukraine. Is it about natural gas, protection of the U.S. dollar’s dominance, or an outgrowth of neocon extremism, asks Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

A senior U.S. diplomat told me recently that if Russia were to occupy all of Ukraine and even neighboring Belarus that there would be zero impact on U.S. national interests. The diplomat wasn’t advocating that, of course, but was noting the curious reality that Official Washington’s current war hysteria over Ukraine doesn’t connect to genuine security concerns.

So why has so much of the Washington Establishment – from prominent government officials to all the major media pundits – devoted so much time this past year to pounding their chests over the need to confront Russia regarding Ukraine? Who is benefiting from this eminently avoidable – yet extremely dangerous – crisis? What’s driving the madness?

Of course, Washington’s conventional wisdom is that America only wants “democracy” for the people of Ukraine and that Russian President Vladimir Putin provoked this confrontation as part of an imperialist design to reclaim Russian territory lost during the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. But that “group think” doesn’t withstand examination. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Who’s Telling the Big Lie on Ukraine?”]

The Ukraine crisis was provoked not by Putin but by a combination of the European Union’s reckless move to expand its influence eastward and the machinations of U.S. neoconservatives who were angered by Putin’s collaboration with President Barack Obama to tamp down confrontations in Syria and Iran, two neocon targets for “regime change.”

Plus, if “democracy promotion” were the real motive, there were obviously better ways to achieve it. Democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych pledged on Feb. 21 – in an agreement guaranteed by three European nations – to surrender much of his power and hold early elections so he could be voted out of office if the people wanted.

However, on Feb. 22, the agreement was brushed aside as neo-Nazi militias stormed presidential buildings and forced Yanukovych and other officials to flee for their lives. Rather than stand behind the Feb. 21 arrangement, the U.S. State Department quickly endorsed the coup regime that emerged as “legitimate” and the mainstream U.S. press dutifully demonized Yanukovych by noting, for instance, that a house being built for him had a pricy sauna.

The key role of the neo-Nazis, who were given several ministries in recognition of their importance to the putsch, was studiously ignored or immediately forgotten by all the big U.S. news outlets. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine’s ‘Dr. Strangelove’ Reality.”]

So, it’s hard for any rational person to swallow the official line that the U.S. interest in the spiraling catastrophe of Ukraine, now including thousands of ethnic Russians killed by the coup regime’s brutal “anti-terrorist operation,” was either to stop Putin’s imperial designs or to bring “democracy” to the Ukrainians.

That skepticism – combined with the extraordinary danger of stoking a hot war on the border of nuclear-armed Russia – has caused many observers to search for more strategic explanations behind the crisis, such as the West’s desires to “frack” eastern Ukraine for shale gas or the American determination to protect the dollar as the world’s currency.

Thermo-Nuclear War Anyone?

The thinking is that when the potential cost of such an adventure, i.e. thermo-nuclear warfare that could end all life on the planet, is so high, the motivation must be commensurate. And there is logic behind that thinking although it’s hard to conceive what financial payoff is big enough to risk wiping out all humanity including the people on Wall Street.

But sometimes gambles are made with the assumption that lots of money can be pocketed before cooler heads intervene to prevent total devastation — or even the more immediate risk that the Ukraine crisis will pitch Europe into a triple-dip recession that could destabilize the fragile U.S. economy, too.

In the Ukraine case, the temptation has been to think that Moscow – hit with escalating economic sanctions – will back down even as the EU and U.S. energy interests seize control of eastern Ukraine’s energy reserves. The fracking could mean both a financial bonanza to investors and an end to Russia’s dominance of the natural gas supplies feeding central and eastern Europe. So the economic and geopolitical payoff could be substantial.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Ukraine has Europe’s third-largest shale gas reserves at 42 trillion cubic feet, an inviting target especially since other European nations, such as Britain, Poland, France and Bulgaria, have resisted fracking technology because of environmental concerns. An economically supine Ukraine would presumably be less able to say no. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Beneath the Ukraine Crisis: Shale Gas.”]

Further supporting the “natural gas motive” is the fact that it was Vice President Joe Biden who demanded that President Yanukovych pull back his police on Feb. 21, a move that opened the way for the neo-Nazi militias and the U.S.-backed coup. Then, just three months later, Ukraine’s largest private gas firm, Burisma Holdings, appointed Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to its board of directors.

While that might strike some of you as a serious conflict of interest, even vocal advocates for ethics in government lost their voices amid Washington’s near-universal applause for the ouster of Yanukovych and warm affection for the coup regime in Kiev.

For instance, Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, dismissed the idea that Hunter Biden’s new job should raise eyebrows, telling Reuters: “It can’t be that because your dad is the vice president, you can’t do anything,”

Who Is Behind Burisma?

Soon, Burisma – a shadowy Cyprus-based company – was lining up well-connected lobbyists, some with ties to Secretary of State John Kerry, including Kerry’s former Senate chief of staff David Leiter, according to lobbying disclosures.

As Time magazine reported, “Leiter’s involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry’s son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity company.”

According to investigative journalism in Ukraine, the ownership of Burisma has been traced to Privat Bank, which is controlled by the thuggish billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, who was appointed by the coup regime to be governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a south-central province of Ukraine. Kolomoysky also has been associated with the financing of brutal paramilitary forces killing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

Also, regarding this energy motive, it shouldn’t be forgotten that on Dec. 13, 2013, when neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations,” she was at a conference sponsored by Chevron. She even stood next to the company’s logo.

So, clearly energy resources and the billions of dollars that go with them should be factored in when trying to solve the mystery of why Official Washington has gone so berserk about a confrontation with Russia that boils down to whether ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine should be allowed some measure of autonomy or be put firmly under the thumb of U.S.-friendly authorities in Kiev.

There’s also the issue of Russia’s interest in exploring with China and other emerging economies the possibility of escaping the financial hegemony of the U.S. dollar, a move that could seriously threaten American economic dominance. According to this line of thinking, the U.S. and its close allies need to bring Moscow to its geopolitical knees – where it was under the late Boris Yeltsin – to stop any experimentation with other currencies for global trade.

Again, the advocates for this theory have a point. Protecting the Mighty Dollar is of utmost importance to Wall Street. The financial cataclysm of a potential ouster of the U.S. dollar as the world’s benchmark currency might understandably prompt some powerful people to play a dangerous game of chicken with nuclear-armed Russia.

Of course, there’s also the budgetary interest of NATO and the U.S. “military-industrial complex” (which helps fund many of Washington’s “think tanks”) to hype every propaganda opportunity to scare the American people about the “Russian threat.”

And, it’s a truism that every major international confrontation has multiple drivers. Think back on the motives behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Among a variety of factors were Vice President Dick Cheney’s lust for oil, President George W. Bush’s psychological rivalry with his father, and the neocons’ interest in orchestrating “regime change” in countries considered hostile to Israel. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.”]

There are also other reasons to disdain Putin, from his bare-chested horseback riding to his retrograde policies on gay rights. But he is no Stalin and surely no Hitler.

The Neocons’ ‘Samson Option’

So, while it’s reasonable to see multiple motives behind the brinksmanship with Russia over Ukraine, the sheer recklessness of the confrontation has, to me, the feel of an ideology or an “ism,” where people are ready to risk it all for some larger vision that is central to their being.

That is why I have long considered the Ukraine crisis to be an outgrowth of the neoconservative obsession with Israel’s interests in the Middle East.

Not only did key neocons – the likes of Assistant Secretary Nuland and Sen. John McCain – put themselves at the center of the coup plotting last winter but the neocons had an overriding motive: they wanted to destroy the behind-the-scenes collaboration between President Obama and President Putin who had worked together to avert a U.S. bombing campaign against the Syrian government a year ago and then advanced negotiations with Iran over limiting but not eliminating its nuclear program.

Those Obama-Putin diplomatic initiatives frustrated the desires of Israeli officials and the neocons to engineer “regime change” in those two countries. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even believed that bombing Iran’s nuclear plants was an “existential” necessity.

Further, there was the possibility that an expansion of the Obama-Putin cooperation could have supplanted Israel’s powerful position as a key arbiter of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Thus, the Obama-Putin relationship had to be blown up – and the Ukraine crisis was the perfect explosive for the destruction. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Why Neocons Seek to Destabilize Russia.”]

Though I’m told that Obama now understands how the neocons and other hardliners outmaneuvered him over Ukraine, he has felt compelled to join in Official Washington’s endless Putin-bashing, causing a furious Putin to make clear that he cannot be counted on to assist Obama on tricky foreign policy predicaments like Syria and Iran.

As I wrote last April, “There is a ‘little-old-lady-who-swallowed-the-fly’ quality to neocon thinking. When one of their schemes goes bad, they simply move to a bigger, more dangerous scheme. If the Palestinians and Lebanon’s Hezbollah persist in annoying you and troubling Israel, you target their sponsors with ‘regime change’ – in Iraq, Syria and Iran. If your ‘regime change’ in Iraq goes badly, you escalate the subversion of Syria and the bankrupting of Iran. “Just when you think you’ve cornered President Barack Obama into a massive bombing campaign against Syria – with a possible follow-on war against Iran – Putin steps in to give Obama a peaceful path out, getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons and Iran to agree to constraints on its nuclear program. So, this Obama-Putin collaboration has become your new threat. That means you take aim at Ukraine, knowing its sensitivity to Russia.

“You support an uprising against elected President Viktor Yanukovych, even though neo-Nazi militias are needed to accomplish the actual coup. You get the U.S. State Department to immediately recognize the coup regime although it disenfranchises many people of eastern and southern Ukraine, where Yanukovych had his political base.

“When Putin steps in to protect the interests of those ethnic Russian populations and supports the secession of Crimea (endorsed by 96 percent of voters in a hastily called referendum), your target shifts again. Though you’ve succeeded in your plan to drive a wedge between Obama and Putin, Putin’s resistance to your Ukraine plans makes him the next focus of ‘regime change.’

“Your many friends in the mainstream U.S. news media begin to relentlessly demonize Putin with a propaganda barrage that would do a totalitarian state proud. The anti-Putin ‘group think’ is near total and any accusation – regardless of the absence of facts – is fine.”

Yet, by risking a potential nuclear confrontation with Russia — the equivalent of the old lady swallowing a horse – the neocons have moved beyond what can be described in a children’s ditty. It has become more like a global version of Israel’s “Samson Option,” the readiness to use nuclear weapons in a self-destructive commitment to eliminate your enemies whatever the cost to yourself.

But what is particularly shocking in this case is how virtually everyone in U.S. officialdom – and across the mainstream media spectrum – has bought into this madness.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.

Social Security from 2% to 15.3% - Robbing the Poor and Middle Class since 1937

Image credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Historical_Payroll_Tax_Rates.jpg



There is no Social Security Trust Fund and every tax dollar collected was immediately spent on wars and other slop.  The SS Trust Fund was left with a worthless pile of IOU's totaling nearly $3 trillion, courtesy of thieving Congress Critters.

For decades, the Social System was nothing but a cash cow for the government because receipts far exceeded disbursements but that changed a few years ago.  The cash cow croaked and SS is running a deficit - meaning disbursements exceed receipts.  This requires the federal government to up the rate of interest it pays on the debt (treasuries) or dip into the general fund to finance SS payment obligations.

If SS was running a consistent surplus for many decades, then why did the government keep raising the tax?  It's a valid question, especially given that nearly $3 trillion vanished into the spending hole. The answer to the question is that both Republicans and Democrats plundered the SS Trust fund to finance wars.  The largest increase in the SS tax included LBJ and Reagan years; not only was the SS tax increased, the Medicare tax introduced in 1966 by LBJ at .7% but was quickly raised to 2.9%. Medicare is also bankrupt, even more bankrupt than SS because Medicare is basically an unfunded entitlement while SS is a plundered and looted entitlement that still generates significant cash.

It's interesting to note how the 2% SS tax grew from 2% to 15.3% and what presidents were responsible for the largest increases in SS-Medicare taxes. LBJ and Reagan were both ferociously loyal to the military industrial complex and both used SS-Medicare taxes to fun the MIC.

[hide]Historical Social Security Tax Rates Maximum Salary FICA and/or SECA taxes paid on[9]
Year	Maximum Earnings taxed	OASDI Tax rate	Medicare Tax Rate	Year	Maximum Earnings taxed	OASDI Tax rate	Medicare Tax Rate
1937	3,000	2%	-	1977	16,500	9.9%	1.8%
1938	3,000	2%	-	1978	17,700	10.1%	2.0%
1939	3,000	2%	-	1979	22,900	10.16%	2.1%
1940	3,000	2%	-	1980	25,900	10.16%	2.1%
1941	3,000	2%	-	1981	29,700	10.7%	2.6%
1942	3,000	2%	-	1982	32,400	10.8%	2.6%
1943	3,000	2%	-	1983	35,700	10.8%	2.6%
1944	3,000	2%	-	1984	37,800	11.4%	2.6%
1945	3,000	2%	-	1985	39,600	11.4%	2.7%
1946	3,000	2%	-	1986	42,000	11.4%	2.9%
1947	3,000	2%	-	1987	43,800	11.4%	2.9%
1948	3,000	2%	-	1988	45,000	12.12%	2.9%
1949	3,000	2%	-	1989	48,000	12.12%	2.9%
1950	3,000	3%	-	1990	51,300	12.4%	2.9%
1951	3,600	3%	-	1991	53,400	12.4%	2.9%
1952	3,600	3%	-	1992	55,500	12.4%	2.9%
1953	3,600	3%	-	1993	57,600	12.4%	2.9%
1954	3,600	4%	-	1994	60,600	12.4%	2.9%
1955	4,200	4%	-	1995	61,200	12.4%	2.9%
1956	4,200	4%	-	1996	62,700	12.4%	2.9%
1957	4,200	4.5%	-	1997	65,400	12.4%	2.9%
1958	4,200	4.5%	-	1998	68,400	12.4%	2.9%
1959	4,800	5%	-	1999	72,600	12.4%	2.9%
1960	4,800	6%	-	2000	76,200	12.4%	2.9%
1961	4,800	6%	-	2001	80,400	12.4%	2.9%
1962	4,800	6.25%	-	2002	84,900	12.4%	2.9%
1963	4,800	7.25%	-	2003	87,000	12.4%	2.9%
1964	4,800	7.25%	-	2004	87,900	12.4%	2.9%
1965	4,800	7.25%	-	2005	90,000	12.4%	2.9%
1966	6,600	7.7%	0.7%	2006	94,200	12.4%	2.9%
1967	6,600	7.8%	1.0%	2007	97,500	12.4%	2.9%
1968	7,800	7.6%	1.2%	2008	102,000	12.4%	2.9%
1969	7,800	8.4%	1.2%	2009	106,800	12.4%	2.9%
1970	7,800	8.4%	1.2%	2010	106,800	12.4%	2.9%
1971	7,800	9.2%	1.2%	2011	106,800	10.4%	2.9%
1972	9,000	9.2%	1.2%	2012	110,100	10.4%	2.9%
1973	10,800	9.7%	2.0%	2013	113,700	12.4%	2.9%
1974	13,200	9.9%	1.8%
1975	14,100	9.9%	1.8%
1976	15,300	9.9%	1.8%
Notes: Tax rate is the sum of the OASDI and Medicare rate for employers and workers. In 2011 and 2012, the OASDI tax rate on workers was set temporarily to 4.2% while the employers OASDI rate remained at 6.2% giving 10.4% total rate. Medicare taxes of 2.9% now (2013) have no taxable income ceiling. Sources: Social Security Administration, [40] and [41], accessed 7 Nov 2013

Source of chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States)

Social Security and Medicare taxes are like property taxes - you have the tax rates plus the base or assessment on which they were assessed. 

Medicare did not exist until LBJ created it in 1966 with a tax rate of .6 that was quickly raised to 1.2% by LBJ.  This was on top of LBJ's 16% increase in the SS tax from 7.25% to 8.4%.  Even worse, LBJ raised the base a whopping 63% from $4,800 to $7,800.   It's how LBJ funded the Vietnam War.

But the prize for the biggest SS tax hikes in history go to Reagan who raised the SS tax from 10.16% to 12.12%, in addition to raising the Medicare tax from 2.1% to 2.9%.  But Reagan also raised the base from $25,700 to $48,000, nearly doubling the taxable base by a whopping 86%.

These taxes fell squarely on the poor and middle class who obviously pay the brunt of SS and Medicare taxes. 

Reagan's SS-Medicare tax hikes combined with the increase in the wage base on which these taxes were paid constituted the biggest tax hike on the poor and middle class in US history, AFTER the Federal Reserves' wholesale robbery of the purchasing power of the dollar.

 

After Nixon de-tethered the dollar from gold in 1971, the purchasing power of the dollar rapidly declined and was permanently decimated.  During the Reagan years, the poor and middle class were hit with monster SS and Medicare tax on wage dollars that were buying less and less.  Still, every president and congress since SS was enacted has plundered the SS Trust Fund and left a worthless pile of IOU's.  Reagan, with bipartisan support, managed to royally screw the poor and middle class on a level unheard of in US history.

To put SS tax rates into perspective especially as it pertains to both the rate and the ever increasing  base, the best example is Teresa Heinz Kerry who disclosed her tax returns when hubby John Kerry ran for president.  Teresa Heinz Kerry, who is worth $200 million according to celebritynetworth.com, paid a paltry federal tax rate of 12% on unearned income (dividends and interest) in excess of $5 million, here and here, in 2003.

When the richest folks in America pays much lower tax rates than the poor and middle class, something is radically wrong. 

In America, the minimum tax rate for the poor and middle class starts with a floor of 15.3%, a rate that doesn't include federal taxes, state taxes, sales taxes and various other taxes designed to gouge ordinary working stiffs and the poor.

And if the ordinary folks think that the government is saving their money for them and their future retirement, they are brain dead and delusional.  Yeah, it's an absolute tragedy that damn few Americans even know what the government did with their so-called retirement savings.  Spending SS and Medicare taxes on wars and other slop is just another pathetic example of the thieving powers of government whose only goal is to plunder the people. And plundering the people is the only thing that government is good at.