Read this…

WASHINGTON | Asset sales came after meeting with Fed, Treasury chiefs

June 13, 2009

As U.S. stock markets plummeted last September, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, sold more than $115,000 worth of stocks and mutual-fund shares and used much of the money to invest in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

The Illinois senator’s 2008 financial disclosure statement shows he sold mutual-fund shares worth $42,696 on Sept. 19, the day after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged congressional leaders in a closed meeting to craft legislation to help financially troubled banks. The same day, he bought $43,562 worth of Berkshire Hathaway’s Class B stock, the disclosure shows.

(AP)

Altogether, Durbin sold investments worth $116,000 in September. By Oct. 2, he had invested $98,046 in Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway, the form shows.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index plunged 4.7 percent last Sept. 15 after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bank of America Corp.’s government-engineered takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co. By the end of October, the index had fallen 22.6 percent.

"Durbin was doing what a lot of other people were doing, taking a look at their savings" and seeing it "start to tank and trying to preserve some level of wealth by getting out of the market," said his spokesman, Joe Shoemaker.

Shoemaker said Durbin didn’t capitalize on anything Paulson and Bernanke told congressional leaders at the Sept. 18 meeting.

Whatever information Paulson gave lawmakers wasn’t secret or classified and was disclosed publicly the next day, Shoemaker said.

Bloomberg News

And you keep voting these people in election after election.  You didn’t know that sometimes you screw yourself America?

Publius

In a significant shift, White House and Treasury Department officials now say they can stretch what is left of the $700 billion financial bailout fund further than they had expected a few months ago, simply by converting the government’s existing loans to the nation’s 19 biggest banks into common stock.

Converting those loans to common shares would turn the federal aid into available capital for a bank — and give the government a large ownership stake in return.

While the option appears to be a quick and easy way to avoid a confrontation with Congressional leaders wary of putting more money into the banks, some critics would consider it a back door to nationalization, since the government could become the largest shareholder in several banks.

The Treasury has already negotiated this kind of conversion with Citigroup and has said it would consider doing the same with other banks, as needed. But now the administration seems convinced that this maneuver can be used to make up for any shortfall in capital that the big banks confront in the near term.

The complete New York Times report can be found here.

So, have you been wondering whether or not Uncle Sam is nationalizing or socializing private business?

It’s worse!  Uncle Sam is doing both nationalizing and socializing.  Hmm, where have I heard that before?

Nat… Soc…   Now I remember.

It’s the very definition of the German word “NAZI”!

Funny how Americans died to defeat NAZI Germany, and the Cold War with Russia only to implement their policies here in our own country.

Nice going, Uncle Sam.  You sly old man, you! 

You are so screwed, Amerika!

From the Wall Street Journal…

When government ‘competes,’ guess who always wins?

Above every other health-care goal, Democrats this year want to institute a "public option" — an insurance program financed by taxpayers, managed by government and open to everyone, much like Medicare. This new middle-class entitlement is the most important debate in Congress this year, because it really is the last stand for anything resembling private health insurance.

This public option will supposedly "compete" with private alternatives. As President Obama likes to put it, those who are happy with the insurance they have now can keep it — and if they happen to prefer the government offering, well, gee whiz, that’s the free market at work. The reality is far different. Not only will the new program become the default coverage for the uninsured, but Democrats intend to game the system to precipitate — or if need be, coerce — an exodus to government from private insurance. Soon enough, that will be the only "option" left.

A public program won’t compete in a way that any normal business would recognize. As an entitlement, Congress’s creation will enjoy potentially unlimited access to the Treasury, without incurring the risks or hedging against losses that private carriers do. As people gravitate to "free" or heavily subsidized care, the inevitably explosive costs will be covered in part with increased outlays to keep premiums artificially low or even offer extra benefits. Lacking such taxpayer cash, private insurance rates will escalate.

Much like Medicare, overall spending in the public option will be controlled over time by paying less for medical services, drugs and technology. With its monopsony purchasing power, below-market fees will be dictated on a take-it-or-leave-it basis — an offer hospitals and physicians won’t be able to refuse. Medicare’s current reimbursement policies pay hospitals only 71% of private rates, and doctors 81%, according to the Lewin Group.

In a recent analysis, Lewin estimates that enrollment in the public option will reach 131 million people if it is open to everyone and pays Medicare rates. Fully 119 million people will shift out of — or lose — private coverage. Everything depends on the payment levels that Congress adopts, as well as the size of the eligible pool. But even if a public option available to all takes the highly improbable step of paying at some midpoint between private and Medicare rates, nearly 68 million people will still be crowded out of private insurance. The nearby table summarizes Lewin’s eye-popping findings.

This public option would be the most radical change in the way American health care is financed — and thus provided — in at least 44 years, and maybe ever. About 170 million people currently have private insurance, which is already pressured by the price controls of Medicare and Medicaid. A significant share of government underpayments are simply transferred to the private sector, adding tens of billions of dollars every year to consumer health bills.

A 2006 study in the journal Health Affairs concludes that around 17 cents of every dollar in relative reductions in Medicare payments to private hospitals are shifted onto private patients — and that such cost-shifting accounts for fully 12.3% of the total increase in private payer prices between 1997 and 2001.

This share would be far higher were government payment rates not limited to the elderly and the poor but imposed over the entire system. This will only hasten the flight to government. Meanwhile, employers small and large will have every incentive to dump their plans and transfer their workers to the public rolls. The result will inevitably be a cascade of failures or withdrawals from the market by commercial insurers, with the public option as the only option for the diaspora.

Congress will finish the job with regulatory changes. Under the aegis of a level playing field, all private plans will be forced to offer benefit packages similar to those in the public option. They will also be required to accept all comers, regardless of pre-existing conditions, and also be forced to offer similar rates to all enrollees, ending the ability to manage risk through underwriting. Any private plan will essentially become a public utility where government decides what products it must offer and how much it can charge.

Democrats couldn’t be clearer on this point. House baron Pete Stark — who thought HillaryCare was too moderate and has long favored Medicare for all — said at a recent hearing that currently "We have no mechanism to directly push the private sector to do delivery system reform and address rising costs." But the public option, he added, would force private insurers to "modernize," which seems to be his term for industrial policy.

Under this model, the annual political warfare over Medicare payment policies would be imported to what is left of the private sector. Once government takes over the majority of U.S. health-care liabilities, it can either provide every service at huge and growing cost, or it can ration services. People who need an MRI or hip replacement or whatever will face waiting lines. Medical innovation will be at the mercy of the price controls hashed out in Washington.

Proponents of a public option point to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program to dismiss such criticism, but that program is offered only to a discrete population. Mr. Obama’s proposal would be open to everyone and necessitate a huge permanent increase in government spending as a share of the economy. Medicare and Medicaid alone account for 4% of GDP today and will rise to 9% by 2035, according to the Congressional Budget Office. CBO estimates that individual and corporate income tax rates would have to rise by about 90% to finance the projected increase in spending through 2050 — without the new middle-class entitlement.

Proponents will say we are exaggerating, but the consequences we describe are inevitable when government bulldozes into a market. Democrats want to sell their "public option" as a modest and affordable reform that won’t affect anyone’s private insurance. It isn’t true. Republicans, especially those in the Senate who want to cut a deal on health care, should understand that a public option is the beginning of the end of private health insurance.

Uncle Sam has his plan to this right under your nose, America!

So, what are going to do about it? Oh yeah, have phony “Tea Parties”.  Yes! That will get Congress and the President in line!

And where are the “conservative” Republicans?  Hello?

You are so screwed America!!

Publius

See, from the New York Times article below, how Ruth Bader Ginsburg rationalizes why the Supreme Court should throw out the Constitution and consider foreign court decisions.

LET THE SCREWING BEGIN…

By ADAM LIPTAK

COLUMBUS, Ohio — In wide-ranging remarks here, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg defended the use of foreign law by American judges, suggested that torture should not be used even when it might yield important information and reflected on her role as the Supreme Court’s only female justice. The occasion was a symposium at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University honoring her 15 years on the court.

“I frankly don’t understand all the brouhaha lately from Congress and even from some of my colleagues about referring to foreign law,” Justice Ginsburg said in her comments on Friday.

The court’s more conservative members — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — oppose the citation of foreign law in constitutional cases.

“If we’re relying on a decision from a German judge about what our Constitution means, no president accountable to the people appointed that judge and no Senate accountable to the people confirmed that judge,” Chief Justice Roberts said at his confirmation hearing. “And yet he’s playing a role in shaping the law that binds the people in this country.”

Justice Ginsburg said the controversy was based on the misunderstanding that citing a foreign precedent means the court considers itself bound by foreign law as opposed to merely being influenced by such power as its reasoning holds.

“Why shouldn’t we look to the wisdom of a judge from abroad with at least as much ease as we would read a law review article written by a professor?” she asked.

She added that the failure to engage foreign decisions had resulted in diminished influence for the United States Supreme Court.

The Canadian Supreme Court, she said, is “probably cited more widely abroad than the U.S. Supreme Court.” There is one reason for that, she said: “You will not be listened to if you don’t listen to others.”

She also offered a theory about why after World War II nations around the world started to create constitutional courts with the power to strike down legislation as the United States Supreme Court has.

“What happened in Europe was the Holocaust,” she said, “and people came to see that popularly elected representatives could not always be trusted to preserve the system’s most basic values.”

American hostility to the consideration of foreign law, she said, “is a passing phase.” She predicted that “we will go back to where we were in the early 19th century when there was no question that it was appropriate to refer to decisions of other courts.”

Justice Ginsburg turned 76 last month and underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in February. Here on Friday, she was energetic, enthusiastic and characteristically precise in her answers to questions from two law professors in a 90-minute conversation. She spoke mostly about her career as a litigator specializing in women’s rights and her years on the court.

In a videotaped tribute, Chief Justice Roberts described Justice Ginsburg’s work habits — including her “total disregard for the normal day-night work schedule adhered to by everyone else since the beginning of recorded history” — and congratulated her for reaching what he said was the midpoint of her career on the court.

In her remarks, Justice Ginsburg discussed a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court concerning the use of torture to obtain information from people suspected of terrorism.

“The police think that a suspect they have apprehended knows where and when a bomb is going to go off,” she said, describing the question presented in the case. “Can the police use torture to extract that information? And in an eloquent decision by Aharon Barak, then the chief justice of Israel, the court said: ‘Torture? Never.’ ”

The message of the decision, Justice Ginsburg said, was “that we could hand our enemies no greater victory than to come to look like that enemy in our disregard for human dignity.” Then she asked, “Now why should I not read that opinion and be affected by its tremendous persuasive value?”

Justice Ginsburg also discussed her career as an advocate, one that included six Supreme Court arguments and a role in shaping the language of the law. She helped introduce the term “gender discrimination” as a synonym for “sex discrimination,” she said, explaining that her secretary had proposed the idea while typing a brief to be submitted to male judges.

“ ‘The first association of those men with the word “sex” is not what you’re talking about,’ ” the secretary said, Justice Ginsburg recalled. “ ‘Why don’t you use a grammar-book term? Use gender. It has a neutral sound, and it will ward off distracting associations.’ ”

Justice Ginsburg expressed dismay at being the only woman on the Supreme Court. “There I am all alone,” she said, “and it doesn’t look right.”

In this area, too, the Canadian Supreme Court provides a model, Justice Ginsburg said. That nine-member court has four women, including its chief justice.

Justice Ginsburg concluded her remarks with advice to the students in the audience about one of her great passions.

“For a first opera, I would say, pick ‘Butterfly’ or ‘Bohème,’ ” she said. For her part, she added, she was looking forward a little warily to a six-hour production of Wagner’s “Siegfried.”

“Wagner is a great, great composer,” she said, “but he needed a good editor.”

You are so Screwed America!!

Publius

See for your self.  At just past 50 seconds into the video, you will witness the President of the United States bowing to a Muslim King.

Well there you have it folks! The President of the United States bowing to a Muslim King!

Thanks, Barrack Hussein Obama.  Now we know where your loyalties lie!

A real American born president would never bow to anyone.

America, you voted for this subject of a muslim king.  You are so screwed!

The Pentagon provides the House speaker with an Air Force plane large enough to accommodate her staff, family, supporters, and members of the California delegation when she travels around the country. But, Pelosi wants routine access to a larger plane.

It includes 42 business class seats, a fully-enclosed state room, an entertainment center, a private bed, state-of-the-art communications system, and a crew of 16. Pelosi wanted "carte blanche for an aircraft any time," including weekend trips home to San Francisco . Pretty nice but very expensive perk!

Her Air Force C-32 costs approximately $15,000 an hour or approximately $300,000 per trip home. And she has the guts to confront the Big Three CEOs for flying their corporate jets to Washington!

Newt Gingrich served in the House from Georgia from 1978 and as House Minority Whip in 1989. He was Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999. During that time he never made use of military air craft. Not once!

NANCY PELOSI FACTS:

Nancy Pelosi’s home district includes San Francisco .

Star-Kist Tuna’s headquarters are in San Francisco, Pelosi’s home district.

Star-Kist is owned by Del Monte Foods and is a major contributor to Pelosi.

Star-Kist is the major employer in American Samoa employing 75% of the Samoan workforce.

Paul Pelosi, Nancy ’s husband, owns $17 million dollars of Star-Kist stock.

In January, 2007 when the minimum wage was increased from $5.15 to $7.25, Pelosi had American Samoa exempted from the increase so Del Monte would not have to pay the higher wage. This would make Del Monte products less expensive than their competition’s.

When the huge bailout bill was passed, Pelosi added an earmark to the final bill adding $33 million dollars for an ‘economic development credit in American Samoa .

Pelosi has called the Bush Administration "CORRUPT." How do you spell "HYPOCRISY" ?

America, Pelosi has screwed you too!

The Office of Management and Budget included in the $787 billion stimulus bill the Davis-Bacon provision, a 1931 law typically only used on federal highway projects. But under the new spending plan, Davis-Bacon will apply to all state and local jobs on energy, housing, agriculture or construction.

Higher costs per project mean fewer projects completed, especially since some "shovel ready" projects were bid as non-union jobs. Some local officials and economists say the union wage mandate means taxpayer dollars won’t be stretched as far as otherwise was planned.

"All this recovery money being spent, you have a lot of hands out," said economist Jack Kyser. "And so people have said OK, this has to conform to Davis Bacon, which means prevailing wage. And so you get hung up. So as I say, you’re going to have projects, but you’re not going to have the money go as far as you’d wanted it to go."

Los Angeles County officials who received $8 million in Community Development Block Grant money to weatherize homes for low-income people said they typically bid the job low and pay about $15 an hour for a worker to caulk windows. However, under union scale, that job pays $25 an hour and $5 in benefits, so instead of repairing 100 homes, they might do 50 homes for the same price.

Elsewhere, the union wage for a plumber in Long Island is $45 an hour, the market rate is $30. In Las Vegas, the Davis-Bacon wage for a glass worker is $57 an hour, a job the Nevada State Housing division currently pays $15 to do.

On the flip side, organized labor says it is about time workers were making higher wages, and people should not have to work three jobs to live a middle-class life.

"That’s plantation capitalism, how do you justify working two or three jobs? Is that what we want is that what a middle class is all about, is that what this stimulus money supposed to be used for?" asked Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.

Organized labor insists the inclusion of the higher rates is not payback by the White House for its widespread support of President Obama in the campaign. But some critics are not so sure. Non-union builders’ associations say since Democrats took control of the House, more bills coming out with Davis-Bacon attached.

In the past, cities and states got around the Davis-Bacon provision by diluting federal money with local cash, but with the stimulus, that’s not allowed. One think tank estimates that with about $200 billion in the stimulus set for construction projects, Davis-Bacon raises costs by about $17 billion.

America, you’re getting screwed again!

Publius

Charlie Rangel, purported Congressman from New York, and former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, (now Obama advisor) Robert Reich , discuss in open committee how to create a stimulus bill for minorities while white middles class workers are too busy to notice.

And, Oh, by the way.  The commies wanted to FORCE mayors, Governors, etc into accepting their racist monies.  When Obama signed this bill into law, they got just what they wanted!

What need do we have of local and state governments when Charlie and his communist politburo members can govern from on high in Washington D.C.?

And where were the true Americans in this committee hearing questioning this line of thought?

No where!

You America, have no real representation in the federal government.  I doubt you have any in local or state because you see them on the news all the time jumping over each other trying to get this money.

You have been sold out and screwed America!  And hey, White America, are you listening?  You and your children are going to pay for it all!

Publius

You see, Uncle Sam can’t force Americans to “do” something.  They can however, force regulated “persons” to do something. 

In this particular case, an American Citizen was engaged in a business of providing an “internet based currency”, E-Gold.

Well, the E-Gold company didn’t spy on their clients and didn’t report the currency transactions to the Spy Master himself, Uncle Sam.  Why not?  Basically, because the founders of the company believed they lived in a free country and what their clients did not with E-Gold currency was not their business.

Can you imagine the gall it takes to believe that an American lives in a free country?  Amazing!

Well, Uncle Sam, the Chief Screwer of the American people, can’t stand not knowing what people do with their money.  So what to do?  Force companies like E-Gold to spy on their clients and report their transactions to Uncle Sam.  How does the government do it?

If the company volunteers to do so, they just apply for the proper U.S. Government banking licenses, and voila!  You have a newly incorporated spy.

If, like in the case of E-Gold, the company doesn’t start out spying for the government, Uncle Sam arrests you, forces you and your business to collapse, creating an environment whereby you can’t continue business, and capitulate.  When the smoke clears, you’re in jail and whatever is left of your company, applies for the necessary spying licenses, and voila!  You have a newly incorporated spy.

See how simple this is?

Read more below…

The criminal case of E-Gold, an internet company that allows users to make exchanges using gold as currency, highlights basic questions about both justice and the proper scope of policing.

America is very far from being a free country. Indeed, America is moving in the opposite direction. At some point – and I, for one, would say that point is now – the U.S. becomes a police state or, at the very least, a “soft” police state.

The E-Gold case dramatically illustrates the lack of monetary freedom in the U.S. and many other countries with similar laws. A person with monetary freedom can transact in any currency of his choice with anyone else willing to transact in that currency. He can transmit any amount of money in any form he wants to use to any place in the world where another party stands ready to accept it. A free person can use any available method of transmission to transmit the medium of exchange of his choice.

With monetary freedom, legal tender does not exist. People choose the media of exchange that they prefer to use, and no authorities force them to use the dollar, the euro, the won, the yen, the rupee, the renmimbi, the ruble, or any other money. They can use cowrie shells if they wish (used widely in Africa until the 20^th century). Dr. Roger McCain writes that “The colonies were required to use European money, and they did – but when the European monetary systems collapsed in hyperinflation, the West African people went back to using their cowrie-money to get past the crisis. It was the cowrie-money that proved most reliable for many years of the twentieth century.”

Monetary freedom also entails freedom for those in business who deal in money. They are free to provide the service of privacy to their clients who want it. Monetary freedom means that businesses are not compelled to spy on their clients. It means that they are not forced to report transactions to the authorities, and that they are not compelled to become part of a network looking for activities that the authorities have deemed to be suspicious. Monetary freedom means that if a business service permits it, a person can withdraw or deposit any amounts in any form he wants to without being subject to the prying and spying eyes of the authorities who have forced the business into being part of their police apparatus.

All of this can be re-stated in terms of rights. A free person has the right to choose the medium of exchange (money or currency) that he prefers. He has the right to choose any form of currency or money he prefers. His rights are being invaded when the State compels him to use a national currency, like the dollar, or not to use a currency like gold. His rights are being invaded when he is forced to accept a particular kind of money in transactions. A free person has the right to send any amount of money in any form whatever to wherever he wants to. He has the right to send it in secrecy and privacy if he can find an obliging carrier or transmitter. Conversely, his rights and those of financial institutions are being invaded if those businesses are forced by the authorities or anyone else into inspecting and reporting upon his financial dealings. Businesses that cannot operate or get licenses unless they agree to become spies for the authorities are having their rights invaded. They are being subject to extortion by the State.

This is by no means a complete catalogue of what monetary freedom entails. It serves as an introduction to the case of E-Gold.

The E-Gold Case

On July 21, 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice released a document with the headline: “DIGITAL CURRENCY BUSINESS E-GOLD PLEADS GUILTY TO MONEY LAUNDERING AND ILLEGAL MONEY TRANSMITTING CHARGES.”

Paragraph one noted “E-Gold, Ltd., (E-Gold) an Internet-based digital currency business, and its three principal directors and owners, pleaded guilty to criminal charges relating to money laundering and the operation of an illegal money transmitting business…”

The principal person involved is the company’s founder, Dr. Douglas Jackson, 51, of Melbourne, Florida. He “pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.”

Sentencing is due on November 20, 2008. “Douglas Jackson faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and a fine of $500,000 on the conspiracy to engage in money laundering charge, and a sentence of five years and a fine of $250,000 on the operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business charge.” Additionally, as part of the plea, E-Gold and Gold & Silver Reserve have “agreed to forfeiture in the amount of $1.75 million in the form of a money judgment for which they are joint and severally liable.” On top of that, at sentencing, the companies also face a maximum fine of $3.7 million.

Questions

The case raises such questions as these. Did E-Gold violate the rights of others? Or have the monetary rights of E-Gold been violated?

Suppose that a department store has a restaurant, and suppose that several criminals transact business at a table while having lunch there. Is the store guilty of a crime? Suppose that criminals communicate using newspaper ads. Is the newspaper company guilty of a crime? Did it violate the rights of the criminals’ victims? Suppose that criminals communicate secretly using some advanced telephone or internet communications device. Are the manufacturers of that device responsible for the crimes that these criminals commit? Are internet providers guilty of conspiracy?

Suppose that a bank receives deposits from criminals. Is the bank responsible for the crimes these criminals have committed? Is it responsible for knowing its customers and for detecting those who are criminals? Is it responsible for reporting monetary transactions to the authorities?

Should racetracks, gambling houses, and internet gaming companies be required to report large money bets and large winnings? Should stores, auto dealers, and real estate agents be required to report large purchases for cash?

Should every company be made to detect and
report possible criminal activities on its premises or among persons using its products or services? Should every company be made to monitor everyone with whom it deals in order to detect possible criminal activities?

Answers

A free person is certainly not free if he is forced into becoming a police spy. A person is not free if he is forced to monitor all the people and their activities that he encounters. The same statements hold for a business. If there is a law against dealing in drugs, that becomes a matter for the police, not a bank or a stock broker or a mutual fund, all of whom are being forced into reporting to the authorities.

Everyone has a right to his life, liberty, and property. To be forced into using one’s time, money, and property in order to detect possible criminal behavior is clearly an invasion of one’s basic rights. It is one thing to ask people to be on the lookout for a suspected criminal. It is one thing to ask people if they will post wanted posters, or to ask a business to donate some space to alert people to a suspected criminal. The voluntary cooperation of common people in finding and apprehending criminals is one thing, but compelling them to police one another is entirely a different matter. This is the difference between a free country and police state. The U.S. has crossed the line, and so have many other countries.

Another answer to all of these questions is panarchy. You choose your society, and I will choose mine. And they can co-exist side by side on the same territory. Societies that are without territorial control, living side by side, intermingling, are what panarchy is about. You practice your religion or none, and I practice mine or none. We live in the same town and there is no problem.

If you want to live in a society in which no one has privacy and everyone spies on everyone else, then do so. Your members can report on each other all they like. But you have no right to impose your restraints and dictates on those who think otherwise and choose a society in which their banks do not have to report large cash transactions to the police. You may want to reduce drug-taking and attempt to do so by imposing all sorts of police-state methods. You may launch billion-dollar wars on drugs and build a prison in each locality to house, feed, and clothe drug users, or you may execute them. But you have no right to impose your methods (or taxes or regulations) on anyone else who chooses a different society, although they may live on the east side and you on the west side of town, or even if they live on the west side too.

Tolerance is what panarchy is about, that is, tolerance by people of those who live across the social divides that they wish to make for themselves. Social divides need not be territorial divides. There is plenty of room for everyone and plenty of ways to accommodate the different ways of others without compelling everyone to live under one set of laws in this vast region we call the United States of America. You may be as intolerant of drug-users as you like to all those within your society who have agreed to that intolerance, but you may not extend your intolerance to my drug use within my society and my ability to buy drugs without a doctor’s prescription or to my having them administered by an alternative healer of illness.

Is Dr. Jackson guilty of a crime?

The fact that Dr. Jackson pleaded guilty does not answer the question of whether he is guilty of a crime. He was forced into a corner. He is seeking to continue the company he began 12 years ago. He is revamping it to comply with the State’s edicts. A guilty plea was his least-cost choice, in his estimation. Dr. Jackson’s statement can be found here. It is a complete cave-in to all the demands of the State.

E-Gold was not a fly-by-night business. Its customers did not bring about the criminal indictment. It was not customer complaints about missing gold, embezzlement, theft, or poor service that brought on the indictments. E-Gold did not steal anything from anyone. If it has, why hasn’t the DOJ trumpeted that? However, the criminal complaint did have a large negative effect on E-Gold customers who encountered illiquidity in their accounts.

The Department of Justice [sic] news release goes on at great length about the supposed crimes that Dr. Jackson committed. In fact, the document suggests to me that the company committed no crimes at all! If it did commit crimes, did the victims appear in court? Did they document their damages?

If Dr. Jackson actually committed a crime, what was it? The fact is that he pleaded guilty to the nebulous crime of conspiracy to engage in money laundering. This only means that other people used E-Gold to transmit funds possibly obtained via illegal activities and that E-Gold was not equipped to detect who they were and report them. What kind of cockamamie crime is it when one fails to kowtow to the State’s edicts compelling one to work with the authorities to detect money laundering? For that is what is involved in the other conspiracy charge. I quote the DOJ: “E-Gold…will move to fully comply with all applicable federal and state laws relating to operating as a licensed money transmitting business and the prevention of money laundering which includes registering as money service businesses. Also as part of the plea agreement, the businesses will create a comprehensive money laundering detection program that will require verified customer identification, suspicious activity reporting and regular supervision by the Internal Revenue Services’ (IRS) Bank Secrecy Act Division…”

Dr. Jackson has pleaded guilty to the crime of not verifying who his customers were, not making sure that they were not criminals, not creating a comprehensive program to detect money laundering, not detecting and reporting suspicious activity, and not operating under the supervision of the Bank Secrecy Act Division of the IRS. In other words, he didn’t become part of the State’s spying apparatus, and that makes him and his operation a criminal conspiracy. The crime here is not the commission of a crime. Instead the State is demanding that you do what it tells you, and if you don’t, then that is a crime. If you stand up for your rights and do not obey the State’s demands, you are a criminal!

Conclusion

In Wikipedia, we read: “The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 (or BSA, or otherwise known as the Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act) requires U.S.A. financial institutions to assist U.S. government agencies to detect and prevent money laundering. Specifically, the act requires financial institutions to keep records of cash purchases of negotiable instruments, file reports of cash transactions exceeding $5,000 (daily aggregate amount), and to report suspicious activity that might signify money laundering, tax evasion, or other criminal activities. It was passed by the Congress of the United States in 1970. The BSA is sometimes referred to as an “anti-money laundering” law (”AML”) or jointly as “BSA/AML”. Several anti-money laundering acts, including provisions in title III of the USA PATRIOT Act, have been enacted up to the present to amend the BSA. (See 31 USC 5311-5330 and 31 CFR 103.)”

The rest of the article introduces the reader to the reporting requirements under these laws.

These laws infringe the monetary rights of all persons who either are made to obey them or who are forced to transact under the watchful eyes of financial institutions that are applying these laws to their persons and propert
y.

These laws are one of the very many instances of the abysmal and wretched failure of Americans to have monetary freedom. Many other countries are in no better shape.

We have major laws that openly violate the rights of people. I protest! If I disobey one of these laws, then I am a criminal under these laws. If I am caught, then I will pay a price for my disobedience, that is, for exercising my rights. That is what happened to E-Gold. It’s a topsy-turvy world.

August 30, 2008

Michael S. Rozeff [send him mail] is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New York.

Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com

America, you are so screwed!

This will teach you how the Executive branch with the full knowledge and permission of the legislative branch, screws the American people with further debt!

By Robert Folsom
Fri, 06 Feb 2009 17:15:00 ET

About two months ago I discussed the “Oversight Panel” that’s supposed to hold the Treasury Department accountable for what it does with the $700 billion. Specifically, the panel had just issued its first report (on Dec. 10), which was a list of 10 tough but unanswered questions they had sent to Treasury.

In the time since, the panel has moved from asking tough questions to doing what it takes to get serious answers — by which I mean they have so far conducted themselves as surrogates of the taxpayer, instead of toadies to the political establishment.

Specifically: This week the panel released its monthly report for February, titled “Valuing Treasury’s Acquisitions.” It explores in detail one of their original 10 questions, namely “Is the public receiving a fair deal?”

The short answer is, Not Even Close. In January Treasury did send replies to the questions, but with language that can most generously be described as brief, perfunctory, and vague. In media interviews about its monthly report, panel Chair Elizabeth Warren said that then-Secretary Henry Paulson had said taxpayers were getting a “par” deal, meaning that the assets purchased under TARP had been priced accurately.

Now, given that Paulson had been the CEO of Goldman Sachs, one would suppose that he knows something about how to price financial assets. Even so, the Oversight Panel decided to check Paulson’s math anyway: they hired a top international evaluations firm “to perform the evaluation.”

In a highly detailed analysis, the valuation firm came back with a piece of simple math. For every $1 the Treasury spent, it received financial assets worth 66 cents.

Except, of course, that in the case of TARP funds, we ain’t talking “cents” on the “dollar.” No sir. What we are talking about is, paying $254 billion for assets worth $176 billion — or, an overpayment of $78 billion. So much for knowing something about how to price financial assets — it’s only taxpayer money anyway.

And who knows? Maybe by paying inflated prices for financial assets, the Treasury has found a way to fight deflation (whether it means to or not). If so, there’s probably more “deflation fighting in disguise” to come — don’t forget that the second half of the $700 billion in funds was just released. In the meantime, I’ll be pulling for and reading the reports from the Oversight Panel.

Not that they (or the TARP money they follow) can change the economic trends unfolding before our eyes. Talk of changing that trend is even less an option for individual investors. Instead, the key is to see that trend for what it is and be prepared — that IS an option, right now. Click here to learn how we can help.