The Rule of Law Is Dead In America

Obama’s latest bypassing of Congress to implement a Climate Change Treaty by decree illustrates there is now only Rulers and the Ruled

I have been working for the last few weeks on an essay series related to what a moral and religious remnant must understand in the light of current events and politics under the Obama regime.

The affronts to what is left of our Constitutional Republic are happening now daily – almost to the point we cannot keep up with them.  We reel from yesterday’s affronts while new ones break today.  Americans are growing weary of outrage – as the tripwires to prevent despotic tyranny via the checks and balances instituted in our government system are compromised, ignored or overthrown altogether.   Most of the Federal Representatives in Congress have decided to go along with this velvet coup, because they know where the power is going to lie and they want a seat at the table so they can pass their hat and have our money thrown in it.

This is all by design – a technique of attrition to trod any resistance into surrender and capitulation.

What it lays before us in raw form, is the undeniable fact that the rule of law in America is dead.  There is now only law made or agreed to by the rulers to be imposed on those of us they rule.

Karl Denninger at Market Ticker just posted an excellent opening entree to the essays I have been working on and will post soon.

The Impending Catastrophe

It’s not difficult to see this coming, if you bother to look.

There is no rule of law any more if you’re a government employee — or one of those protected by same.

Let’s put together just a partial list:

• Health care.  Monopoly and/or cartel behavior of any sort is supposed to be illegal under 15 USC (Sherman and Clayton Acts) if market power exists.  When you’re flat on your ass with a heart attack in process there is no market; ergo, it exists.  Ditto when you were just stung by a scorpion, or when the so-called “treating facility” refuses to present you with a price before they have you on the operating table — and they told you that the operation was immediately necessary to save your health and/or life.  That’s essentially all procedures except for elective, cosmetic ones — where there is actual competition and prices have fallen over time.  All of this behavior, from charging $60,000 for two $100 vials of scorpion antivenom, charging someone $9,000 to bandage a finger or billing a routine $10-30 test at $10,000 is part and parcel of this, and in any unprotected line of business everyone involved would do 10 years of prison time and be fined $1 million each.
• Government agencies, such as the IRS and NSA.  The number of times that have been documented in which perjury has been committed, a crime, (cough-Clapper-cough!) is too long to list.  We now find out that in the IRS targeting investigation not only is there a backup of Lerner’s computer (as I originally asserted there had to be) but IRS lawyers admitted to the intentional destruction of the data on her BlackBerry after the investigation began.  For you or I that would immediately result in an obstruction of justice felony charge leveled against everyone involved – including Lerner herself.  Well, where is it?
• Education.  Cartel behavior at its finest.  You can find virtually any sort of knowledge and lectures on any topic you wish online nowdays.  Yet without obtaining them at a price infinitely higher than those freely available, the exact same material I might add and often delivered by the exact same professors, your knowledge is deemed immaterial and worthless.  This occurs due to cartel behavior between universities and businesses — again, something that should bring immediate prosecution under 15 USC.  Well, where is it?
• Education again.  Not content to try to force you to pay them something they also conspire to force you to pay more.  Once you’re a captive sucker you get hammered on all sides; you are first told to file a FASFA in which your parents must disclose their assets and income, never mind that you’re an adult.  Then, if you’re not poor, despite this being sold to you as being a means of obtaining “aid”, you are offered only loans, which are not aid at all.  This particular cartel behaviorincludes the government as they will attempt to force you to file one even to claim things they say are earned, such as “Bright Futures” scholarships!  Once you get to class it’s even worse; your son or daughter who paid the full price (and had to borrow the money and thus pay interest too!) is sitting next to a kid who paid little or nothing.  How?  Your son or daughter was effectively forced to buy his tuition!  Communism at its finest, all at gunpoint.
• So-called “law enforcement.”  Point a gun at another person when you are not legally permitted to shoot (e.g. to stop a forcible felony in process) and you are arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon (or aggravated assault in some jurisdictions.)  The identical behavior was documented on video and still camera images all over Ferguson by the police; where are the indictments?
• Banks.  Swindle someone out of $10,000 and it’s grand theft, extortion, fraud or any one of a dozen other crimes, all serious felonies.  Hell, all you have to do is a pass a bad check in many jurisdictions to wind up on the wrong end of a felony indictment!  It has been proved that myriad large banks sold securities to customers representing them as “good investments” when in fact their own internal emails document that their staff called them “vomit” (and other similar names) — that is, they knew they were worthless.  Where are the indictments?
• The Federal Reserve.  The Federal Reserve Act specifically charges the FOMC with regulating both money and credit so as to maintain stable prices, moderate long term interest rates and maximum employment.  Maximum employment may be a loosely-defined goal as may “moderate” long-term interest rates but stable is not a fuzzy word.  The Federal Reserve has willfully and intentionally violated this mandate serially since its inception.  You have about 3-4% of your earnings powerstolen every single year as a consequence.  Where are the indictments?
• Ben Bernanke has admitted that (in his view) virtually all systemically important financial firms were on the edge of collapse in 2008.  This, he cites, is justification for his extraordinary policy moves.  There’s a problem — his mandate is to regulate said money and credit systems all the time, not just in a crisis.  That filing is an admission that both he and the NY Fed failed to do so; that is, they failed to perform their statutory duty.  Why aren’t both he and Tim Geithner in prison, seeing as he made this admission before a court in a sworn filing?

Here’s the problem with this sort of behavior and the protection of same: Civility in general only exists because you, I, and most of the rest of society willingly conform our behavior to the law.  

There are not enough cops, no matter what sort of badge and uniform they wear, to enforce the law otherwise.  If any material percentage of the population decides to behave as these people in their protected circumstances have and do the entirety of law and order collapses instantly.

Well, why is it that you permit the above to occur?  Why did you allow it to develop?  Why do you still allow it?

And how long will it before all of this theft and fraud renders you unable to keep your head above water?

Let me explain that for you: For most people you’re already unable.

Look at the stock market, as one example.  There is more margin debt outstanding than cash in accounts as of today, and in fact this margin is worse than ever before in history (yes, even worse than in 2007.)  In other words, but for the claimed paper value of said certificates the market is factually bankrupt right now on a gross, “every man” basis!

Almost 20% of the gross domestic product of this nation (that is, everything produced) is siphoned off by the health care “system” with its grift, extortion and abuse.  That’s nearly one dollar in five!  A look at other developed, first-world nations (e.g. Japan) discloses that we should be able to buy our health care for somewhere between 1/10th and 1/5th of what we pay today.  Were that to be the case there would be no need for Medicare, Medicaid or health insurance — Obamacare or otherwise! Medicare is a great example; you’re responsible for 20% of the cost, by default, and you must pay a premium to the government.  But if your care was anywhere from 1/5th to 1/10th of today’s price you would actually pay less than the co-pay and deductible you pay today and you wouldn’t pay any premium at all!  In other words, even for the old guy or gal that currently is “on the dole” and allegedly “getting something” you’d be better off financially without Medicare were all of these acts to be prosecuted instead of protected!  Whether you’re rich, poor, young or retired, this scam steals from you each and every day without delivering any more value than it would without the theft.

Take the scam out of education and the cost collapses.  Now you could flip pizzas to pay for college as you could in the 1970s and early 80s before those schemes were instituted.  Prosecute The Federal Reserve Board and Banks and the price of assets, including houses would collapse — probably by 75% or more.  Not only does this mean you could buy a house for far less but for those who choose not to or who can’t rents would come down by 3/4 as well!

Why do you need Section 8 and other similar programs when your cost of housing is cut to a tiny fraction of what it is today?

You don’t!

If you believe that the cost of food hasn’t skyrocketed in the last five years you’re not paying attention.  It has.  Ditto for energy.  Oh yes, those are “excluded” from “inflation” numbers, but you have to buy them anyway.

So what happens when you can’t make the income balance against the outflow?  You borrow money in some form or fashion.

Yet that simply puts you further in the hole.

And that’s what’s been going since roughly 1980:

Of course borrowing against nothing, that is, creating credit with nothing behind it, looks good initially because it makes it appear you can keep buying things.  Unfortunately that credit comes with both a requirement to repay it and interest; the latter is a huge problem because over time it compounds just as do earnings.

The usual chestnut is that borrowing stimulates production and is of net benefit.  But the facts are that when borrowing accumulates faster than output that assertion is proved false; what is really going on is that people are borrowing to either consume or speculate.  The former permanently destroys value and the latter leaves you exposed to instant insolvency since the alleged “price” of what you speculate on has been disconnected from its value and is now largely (or even entirely!) predicated only on what someone else will pay.

The majority opinion appears to be that as long as you can get your little piece of the grift, whether it be Medicare, Food Stamps, Section 8 or a rising stock market it’s all ok.  Ask yourself — is that actually true or are you deluding yourself?  Are you falling behind despite getting your little piece of the grift or are you getting ahead?  What about your children?  Are they able to get ahead?  Is the same sort of investment you made 20 or 30 years ago credible as a means for them to obtain results similar or superior to what you obtained, or are they staring down a black hole of indebtedness while pulling coffees at Starbucks?  How about that “new car”; nearly $40,000 today as a “median” price and loan terms extending toward eight years — when just a little while ago the normal term was four.  How’s the job market in your area?  More importantly than the number of jobs — how’s the pay and how does that compare against the increase in health care, food, fuel and insurance expenses you must pay every day just to remain solvent?

Think about it for a while.

Then once again contemplate this: For how long as you going to allow all of the above to continue?  Will you allow it to continue right up until civility is lost entirely or will you demand that it stop and that those committing these acts face the same charges and penalties that you or I would for the same offenses?

Red Letter Christian Socialist Jim Wallis Concurs With Obama’s Attack on Banks

The High Priest of Obamanation and Socialism urges changing the free market for the “common good”.

One of the greatest dangers besides the Marxist in the White House that our culture faces is the Christian Socialist Movement.  Combining Leftist (Progressive) politics with selected parts of the New Testament, Red Letter Christian Sojourners seek to equate Christianity with Socialism – and therefore Christian duty.

Along with attacking Biblical Christian stands against Homosexuality and Abortion, this week Jim Wallis decided to give religious weight to Obama’s plan to nationalize the banks by regulating their size and activities. I’m still trying to find the scriptures where Jesus said Christians should empower the government to order businesses to give charity and to regulate their business to ensure ‘righteousness’.

I’m going to comment on this backwards religious Marxism as prompted by the article.

Liberal Evangelical Christian Jim Wallis Rips Banks; Calls Bonuses ‘Sins of Biblical Proportions’ 

When you breach the sacrosanct wall between church and state, and use religion to promote policy, bad things happen. At least, that’s what the left has been telling us for years.

But Rev. Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine and author of “Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street and Your Street,” sees it differently. Wallis used his interpretation of religion, particularly the Bible, to play the populist card and categorize portions of the American private sector as greedy on MSNBC’s Jan. 21 “Morning Joe.”

“These bank bonuses, I would say, are a sin of Biblical proportions,” Wallis said. “But to pick on the banks alone misses the point. It’s a symptom, I think of a real erosion of societal values because new maxims have taken us over – ‘greed is good,’ ‘it’s all about me and I want it now.'”

Yes, this is true.  Especially if you are a Marxist like Obama or a Christian Socialist like Wallis, who see no problems with being greedy with YOUR business, YOUR property, YOUR money.  It’s all about THEM and they want to tell you what to do with your money NOW.  Greed is good if you can disguise it as government charity.

Wallis suggested our society adopt a values system that sounded more like socialism than the rugged individualism that has made American great. He proposed using the economic downturn to implement these “values.”

Wallis is a known Socialist who has been busy creating “The Christian Left“, an amalgamation of Socialism and Community Leftist Activism coupled with their insistence that Jesus was a Socialist due the red letters He spoke.   They use the Sermon on the Mount as a proof text to justify their assertion that being a good Christian means being a good Socialist. 

“To those, I want to propose some old virtues like ‘enough is enough,’ ‘we’re in this together,’ and I love the Native American notion that you value decisions today by their impact on the seventh generation out,” Wallis said.

Yes, he’s proposing pagan virtues not found in scripture.  I do not find any translation of either the Hebrew, Greek or Chaldee that says “enough is enough” or “We’re in this together and therefore the government should nationalize your business”

“Now that would change things. So, I think we need to use a crisis to recalibrate and to think, if we miss the opportunity, all pain, suffering – my hometown of the Detroit, I was just there to launch a book, launching a book in the worst city in the country but it was the right place before going to New York. We don’t do this, we won’t redeem this crisis. So, let’s use the chance to rethink our values here.”

Hmmmm, “use a crisis to recalibrate what we think”?   Who was it that said “Never let a crisis go to waste”?  Oh yes, Obama’s very own Rahm Emmanuel.  It’s interesting that Wallis is of the mind we should use this crisis to ‘rethink our values’.  Didn’t Obama suggest something similar in his crusade to “change the foundations of the country”?  If you do some digging on their website, you’ll discover what those ‘progressive’ values actually are.  They are not biblical.  They are massaged to appear biblical.

But I’m curious there Mr. Wallis, in the spirit of ‘rethinking our values’ – the profits you are making from this book of yours – I assume you are sending them to Haiti or to someone who needs to keep his house in Detroit being foreclosed on?

From a policy standpoint, Wallis suggested America use these reassessed values to create this so-called “new economy.”

“Well, wealth doesn’t trickle down,” Wallis said. “We’ve learned that. But bad behavior does. And so, I think underneath this economic crisis there is really a values crisis. And how we get a moral compass for a new economy and I’m hearing this from business people, from unemployed workers.”

I do not find Jesus asking His disciples to use their values to create a ‘new economy’.  Make disciples, baptize – yes.  Make a Socialist economy?  No.  In Wallis’ estimation, Capitalism is of the Devil, Socialism is of God.  In his mind, Capitalism and the Free Market are the ‘values crisis’ that needs to be changed.  Socialism is the new ‘moral compass’ in his liturgy.

Wallis related a story about a protest in which he participated in Dec. 2009.

“I was standing on the steps of the Treasury Building with people that were being foreclosed upon and they talked about what happened,” Wallis said. “And they began to cry and I get up as the religious leader and I just got mad. I said, you know, we extended grace to these big banks because we are afraid after meltdown. They’re extending no grace to the people who need it – small businesses need help to do jobs. That’s right.”

I thought Grace was the province of God?  I was not aware that grace is about extending money to people who owe on mortgages they could not afford in the first place.  All Wallis advocates here is irresponsibility and the religious virtue of helping people be irresponsible.

As for the Wall Street bonuses, which banks are contractually obligated to pay and some employees rely upon in lieu of a regular salary – Wallis said to send them to Haiti.

“And these $150 billion, these bonuses, this could erase the budget gap in 50 states. this could provide health insurance for 30 million people. A quarter of it could prevent and postpone foreclosures until 2012. This is a lot of money. I say send the bonuses to Haiti or something like that.”

So, a “Christian virtue” is to have others dictate and tell you what you should do with your own money?  Matthew 20 more than counters this envious and tyrannical mindset, for Jesus Himself says in His parable of those who want to tell the Estate owner what he should do with his money “Am I not permitted to do what I choose with what is mine? Or do you begrudge my generosity? Is your eye evil because I am good?” Matthew 20:15

Wallis channeled his inner-Ellsworth Toohey to bash the market system and called for the change for “the common good.”

Yeah.  Marx, Engels, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and Obama all said the same thing.

“We lost, Mike [Barnicle], the notion of the common good,” Wallis said. “The invisible hand of the market let go of the common good. How do you restore a sense of community again? That’s I think the issue before us.”

“Morning Joe” panelist and CNBC “Closing Bell” anchor Maria Bartiromo asked Wallis if the American dream was still achievable.

“The chances of that are less than ever because of how the debt is stacked from the top,” Wallis said. “That kind of opportunity is what we need.”

The “common good” Mr. Wallis?  James 1:27 defines what pure and undefiled religion is.  What you mean by ‘common good’, is not the same thing James or Jesus advocated.

‘Common good” to you is “Communism”.

Our Future Is In Mortal Danger

I’m A Student of History: A Change of Historic Proportions is Happening

Except It Will Not Be The Change You Were Promised or Expecting.

By TPS

I am a student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied it all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten – fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why?

We learn just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the 700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “we the people,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?).

We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is medicare and our entire government, our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about)–the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x ten. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders?

No? Oh of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more imporant.)

Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: change.

Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now.

This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning.

And I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully them into submission. And then, he was duly elected to office, a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy.

The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe, and across the world.

He did it with a compliant media–did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and . . . change. And the people surely got what they voted for.

(Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.)

Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.

Don’t forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe. It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years–a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency–it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me.

Some people scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe–and why I believe it.

I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am.