Category Archives: Democracy

US Already Inflicts ‘Deposit Taxes In Disguise’

Business, Debt, Democracy, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation

“Savers Pay for Spenders,” our March 19 BAB post on Cyprus, asked:

WHY is state-sanctioned theft from Cypriot savers any different to your paycheck being docked for statutory payroll tax deductions?
WHY is state-sanctioned theft from Cypriot savers any different in principle to the statutory theft called the income tax; and, in particular, from the progressive income tax, where the rich (“savers”) are penalized for the sins of the rest?
As to taxes on assets: Property taxes, taxes on investments—why are these seizures of private property any different in principle to the lunge on Cypriot savings accounts the bankers and bureaucrats of Europe have made?
You’d think the US doesn’t tax assets. It does. And how are the taxes above different in principle from a bank deposit levy?

Today comes the news, (via Forbes), that Cyprus and its puppet masters have agreed that, “the Popular Bank of Cyprus (Laiki Bank) will wind down” [presumably this is journo babble for “close”].

Laiki Bank deposits above 100,000 euros—which aren’t protected by EU law—will be frozen and used to pay for the deal. The frozen accounts are expected to yield 4.2 billion euros ($5.5 billion), and account holders will see an estimated 30% to 40% haircut on assets. Far greater than the original 9.9% levy.

“Haircut” is yet more journo mumbo-jumbo. The correct word is “theft.” Large-scale robbery of private property.

Financier Peter Schiff completes the thought expressed in this post’s lede, above—and shared by every clear thinking libertarian. This is all a formality—a more in-your-face lunge for private property :

…isn’t inflation, which allows governments to pay off debt through the creation of new money that transfers purchasing power from savers to borrowers, just a deposit tax in disguise? (Read more about Japan’s plan to do just that). British citizens of all means have been living with such a three percent stealth tax for the past three years, and it is expected to stay that high for at least two more years. Yet a one-time tax of 6.75% in Cyprus is seen as the ultimate act of betrayal?
Many are lamenting that Cyprus’ membership in the EU prevents it from devaluing its own currency to get out of the jam. How would such a course be morally superior? Taking actual losses on deposits is no different than taking losses through devaluation and inflation. Both result in the loss of purchasing power. Asking for a depositor haircut at least deals with the problem honestly and immediately. Although it’s not quite as honest, devaluation can also be effective.

Barack’s Barf Offensive & The Republican Red-Carpet Event

Barack Obama, Celebrity, Democracy, Media

The Big Dog’s lapdogs (media) tell us that Barack Obama has embarked on a charm offensives, defined as a “publicity campaign, usually by politicians, that attempts to attract supporters by emphasizing their charisma or trustworthiness.”

Yes, “American public life is full of prolix self-promoters.”

But why was this “offensive” necessary? Aren’t the lapdog media sufficiently charmed? I’d say they’re positively mesmerized by The POTUS and the FLOTUS.

Here is Mrs. Obama, beautifully accoutred and nicely airbrushed on the cover of Vogue Magazine, for the second time. (She looks lovely, if I say so myself.)

A week of fawning climaxed with a red-carpet event hosted by House Republicans, who gave the Celestial One “a standing ovation,” for visiting with them for a discussion.

The retarded U.S. Sen. Susan Collins has been regaling media with chummy inside stories about the presidential food taster. He was a no-show. So, although others around him were feasting, Obama fasted.

Are we Rome? Yeah we’re Rome.

In his weakened state, the president took only questions that had been screened in advance.

Food that is tasted, questions that are screened…

UPDATE III: Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel? (Opus Dei Smears)

Christianity, Conservatism, Democracy, Gender, Pop-Culture, Religion, Socialism

The following is from the current column, “Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel?”, now on LRC.COM:

“NO TO A ‘SUPERPOWER POPE.’ Mercifully, the new pope is not the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Shortly after Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as the 266th pope, Cardinal Dolan demonstrated why my prayers had been answered. The American had been bypassed.

Out of the papal conclave and into the limelight charged the vainglorious Dolan (who, it has to be said, harbored hopes of becoming pope). He then suctioned himself to the television cameras, American style. No other cardinal elector granted interviews on emerging from the Sistine Chapel; they were enjoined to secrecy.

Not the American cardinals. According to the Associated Press, these prolix self-promoters held daily press briefings near the Vatican to a room packed with reporters and television crews.

This was vulgarity, not transparency.

Not for nothing was the vow of silence once considered a test of character and spirituality in Christianity and in other faiths. This universal value has been inverted by American pop culture and pop religion. In the US, a deeply private person is considered defective; a blabbermouth who does and says anything on camera is canonized. …

… American public life is such that even our pick for pope (Dolan) struts his stuff like a “Jersey Shore” reality star.

MORE on why “THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS ON THE RACK,” in “Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel?”, now on WND.

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UPDATE I: “The Pope and the Injustice of Social Justice” by Jack Kerwick:

…some initial reports of his views on “social justice” most definitely do not sound fine and good. …Whether used by so-called secular “progressives” or Catholic clerics, the call for social justice is the call for a larger, more powerful, more intrusive government. That is, it is the demand for a government that is capable of and willing to confiscate the legally owned resources of some citizens so as to “redistribute” them to others. When social justice is the order of the day, anything other than a robust, activist government is not an option.
It is crucial for everyone, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, to grasp this: social justice and liberty are mutually antithetical.

UPDATE II (15/3): Father Bob Kind of Agrees.

UPDATE III (3/16): Via a LewRockwell reader of “Spared the Sins of a ‘Superpower Pope’” comes this link to a smear of Pope Ratzinger, for opposing the “Injustice of on Social Justice” (see Update I above, for Jack Kerwick’s critique).

The new pope Francis I, it would appear, champions the evils of social justice theory and liberation theology.

He and Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

What the Obamas imbibed from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ for the past 20 years was Black Liberation Theology. “We are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization,” reads a statement of “doxology” on the Church’s site. The church is proud of its separatist “Black Value System.”
Only just retired, Pastor Wright is as central to the Church as is Africa. His “Talking Points” are prominently plastered on Trinity United’s website. There, Wright states that this diverse “doxology” is of a piece with “Hispanic theology, Native American theology, Asian theology and Womanist theology.” (Spot the blanked-out Americans.) A black person in America, moreover, is deemed outside his traditional homeland.

Death By Democratic Socialism

Crime, Democracy, Founding Fathers, Paleolibertarianism, Private Property, Race, Socialism, South-Africa

I’ve just heard the neocons of The Five, on Fox News, lambaste the late Hugo Chavez for the crime levels in Venezuela.

Not that the panel said this, but populist, revolutionary movements that “empower” the masses can give way to lawlessness.

Obscene levels of crime in South Africa are a by-product of the overnight dismantling of what was once a hierarchical society.

The meme about crime in South Africa is that it’s apartheid’s fault (“the white man made me do it”). It’s a script that has no base in reality, and is the product of the twisted minds of liberals there and here. Never mind that South Africa was inhabited by genocidal tribes prior to the implementation of the policies of apartheid.

Except to maintain a vigil outside the ailing Nelson Mandela’s hospital—the news media refuse to report honestly about crime in South Africa.

Amy Chua did a remarkable job in linking violence to the outbreak of unfettered democracy in countries with a market-dominating ethnic minority. But Amy Chua is too bright to make it onto American TV (except to discuss, and be derided for, her non-progressive parenting).

Back to the subject: From the perspective of the flaccid Five, the link between lawlessness and democratic socialism is obvious in Venezuela, but not in South Africa.

By the way, what is America if not a social democracy?

In the US, a poll is the most popular argument for a policy. Might makes right. “Polls show that the American people want Obama care.”

“So bloody what” is what our Founding Fathers would retort. “You can’t have everything you want; and you can’t have what doesn’t belong to you.”