History
On last week's PODCAST, Duncan and I yakked about an important concept introduced by Nicole Foss at THE AUTOMATIC EARTH blog site. This concept was "the trust horizon," which outlines how legitimacy is lost in the political hierarchy. That is, people stop trusting larger institutions like the federal or state government and end up vesting their interests much closer to home. Thus, life de-centralizes and becomes more local by necessity. Your own trust horizon extends only as far as other persons, businesses, institutions, and authorities immediately around you - the banker who will meet with you face-to-face, the mayor of your...
This is not hyperbole, demagoguery, or exaggeration. If we are honest with ourselves we will have to admit that eight out of ten of the Bill of Rights have been revoked. Chris Hedges is suing Obama and Panetta for the NDAA which revokes the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, not to mention Amendments 4,5,6,7,8. See link
I Have listed the Bill of Rights here which are the first ten amendments to the US Constitution. Anyone can look at this list and see that these rights no longer exist: Assassination of U.S...
Neither rain nor sleet nor snow may have stopped the Pony Express, but the nation's oldest and second-largest employer is now under attack. Claiming the United States Postal Service (USPS) is bankrupt, critics are pushing legislation that would defuse the postal crisis by...
In 2006, in anticipation of my retirement from academia, we bought 160 acres of beautiful land in the central highlands of New Mexico. There we were going to live out our cowboy fantasy by raising horses and riding them on my rancher friend’s cattle roundups. The high desert land was covered with grass, juniper, and some Pinyon pine trees, and offered a spectacular view of the Manzano Mountains. The land sat atop the Chupadera Mesa about 13 miles outside of Mountainair and six miles off the main road. Santa Fe was only an hour and a half to the North.
One beautiful March day, my rancher friend, and real deal ex-bull...
Wherever I go and ask people what is missing from their lives, the most common answer (if they are not impoverished or seriously ill) is "community." What happened to community, and why don't we have it any more? There are many reasons – the layout of suburbia, the disappearance of public space, the automobile and the television, the high mobility of people and jobs – and, if you trace the "why's" a few levels down, they all implicate the money system.
More directly posed: community is nearly impossible in a highly monetized society like our own. That is because community is woven from gifts, which is ultimately why...
Currency, Commerce, Economics, History, Foreign Policy, Transportation, Military, Politics
Ellen Brown begins a recent essay explaining the genesis of a bill to create bank credit in Minnesota for the funding of infrastructure: "In August 2007, the nation was stunned by the collapse of a major Minneapolis bridge, killing thirteen. The bridge had been rated structurally deficient by the U.S. government as far back as 1990, and it was only one of more than 70,000 bridges across the country with that rating. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimated that it would take nearly $190 billion to fix the country's failing bridges over the next two decades." See:...
A lot can happen in two weeks, which is what remains before the glorious orgy of gifts, sugar plums, and roast goose. Imagine what a global bank run would do for that ole holiday spirit - not to mention the GDPs of the world. Oh, weeping celestial choirs! I suppose we generally assume that God Almighty himself would move heaven and Earth to prevent such a dire convergence of Christmas and a banking collapse, but perhaps the Old Diety is asleep at the switch like the US Department of Justice, the SEC, and a whole alphabet load of other watchful regulators in this, our only known universe.
Reality is a harsh mistress. She insists that you pay attention and then, having done so, take care of business. Politics, on the other hand, is...
On November 25, 2009, a New York Times editorial headlined, "A Thanksgiving Toast" saying: "Sitting down with friends and family today, there will be thanks for the steady currents, flowing out of the past, that have brought us to this table...And there will be prayerful thanks for the future." Fact Check At a time when federal, state and local authorities increasingly turn a blind eye to growing poverty, unemployment, homelessness, hunger and despair, Times editors gave thanks for their blessings others lack.
They also ignored...
Henry Ford said, “It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
We are beginning to understand, and Occupy Wall Street looks like the beginning of the revolution.
We are beginning to understand that our money is created, not by the government, but by banks. Many authorities have confirmed this, including the Federal Reserve itself. The only money the government creates today are coins, which compose less than one ten-thousandth of the money supply. Federal Reserve Notes, or dollar bills, are...
I will diverge a bit from economics here to point out the death of America and what it means for Vermont Independence.
In a recent essay Paul Craig Roberts documents the death of America on Sept. 30, 2011. This was the day Barack Obama implemented a recent policy proclaiming the right to kill anyone, anywhere in the world who the executive considers a threat, including American citizens. In particular this was the day that the US implemented an extra-judicial assassination of US citizen and Yemeni cleric Anwar Al-Alaki and a colleague by drone attack. Extra-judicial means no due process of law, which we are all guaranteed by the constitution. Several weeks later Alaki’s 16 year old son was...
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