‘Audit the Fed!’

Conservatism, Federal Reserve Bank, Founding Fathers, Inflation, Journalism, libertarianism, Republicans, Ron Paul

What I appreciate about Jack Hunter, also a Taki’s Magazine writer, is the way he marries solid principles and a pragmatic approach to politics. Unless a commentator achieves this feat in a consistent, principled manner, he is worthless. Yes, worthless! Some of our readers have been seduced by the habit so many libertarian scribblers have of vaporizing libertarian theory into the ether, while sitting on the fence and playing holier-than-thou when it comes to politics. Worthless as it is easy. Aside from the pleasant Southern lilt, Hunter has a natural knack for cleaving to reality while retaining principles. In ‘Audit the Fed!’ he narrates thus:

“While Bush and McCain were ‘abandoning free-market principles to save the free-market system’ by signing off on an $800 billion Wall Street Bailout, the Republican establishment still treated the truly free-market Ron Paul as some sort of crazy, irrelevant money crank.

It’s amazing the difference a year makes.

As of this writing, every single Republican in the House and over 60 Democrats have co-sponsored Paul’s H.R. 1207 Federal Reserve Transparency Act, which calls for an audit of the Federal Reserve. Given the current economic crisis, it turns out that many legislators are eager to see just how the Fed is able to print new money out of thin air. In the 1980’s, Paul introduced similar legislation with virtually no help from his fellow Republicans. In 2009, the entire party has lined up behind Ron Paul.”

Listen here.

Update III: Socialist America Sinking

America, Founding Fathers, IMMIGRATION, Journalism, Liberty, Old Right, Political Philosophy, Socialism, Taxation

In “Socialist America Sinking,” Pat The Patriot pulls open and holds back a curtain to reveal what the blind and bombastic leadership and commentariat don’t see: an America in permanent decline, “far … off the course the Founding Fathers set for our republic”:

“In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called George III a tyrant for having ‘erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.’

What did George III do with his Stamp Act, Townshend Acts or tea tax to compare with what is being done to this generation of Americans by their own government?

While the hardest-working and most productive are bled, a third of all wage-earners pay no U.S. income tax, and Obama plans to free almost half of all wage-earners of all income taxes. Yet, tens of millions get Medicaid, rent supplements, free education, food stamps, welfare and an annual check from Uncle Sam called an Earned Income Tax Credit, though they never paid a nickel in income taxes.

Coming to America to feast on this cornucopia of freebies is the world. One million to 2 million immigrants, legal and illegal, arrive every year. They come with fewer skills and less education than Americans, and consume more tax dollars than they contribute by three to one.

Wise Latina women have more babies north of the border than they do in Mexico and twice as many here as American women.

As almost all immigrants are now Third World people of color, they qualify for ethnic preferences in hiring and promotions and admissions to college over the children of Americans.

All of this would have astounded and appalled the Founding Fathers, who after all, created America – as they declared loud and clear in the Constitution – ‘for ourselves and our posterity.'”

[SNIP]

A must read, as is the case with most of Mr. Buchanan’s columns. He is assuredly one of the few patriots left among the government-fed news filters.

Update I July 20): Actually, there is no chance of “turning things around”—not so long as the US practices unfettered immigration, importing millions of people each year, into a country that no longer transmits or practices its founding values. The nature of immigration policies is such that it ensures most newcomers will end up consuming rather than paying taxes, and voting for more and more Statism. I wish people would realize that there will be no liberty when America is a Third World country. The reason Americans refuse to articulate this simple fact—that the American people are being dissolve and a new people elected—is, I suspect, because they are brainwashed about the wonders of diversity and multiculturalism, and have been taught that America is nothing without this tsunami of immigrants.

So no, Pat knows as I do that it’s all over. Pat is sad. Smart people will be sad.

Update II: Myron; you misunderstand Pat, who is 100% correct in his assertion about taxpayers vs. tax consumers. He is referring to those people–50% or so–who get back more from you and me than they pay in all taxes combined. I call them net tax consumers.

Update III: As I mentioned, people refuse to concede–are unable to due to a hippie, left-liberal state of mind—that not all immigrants come to this country to be rugged individualists. In fact, most are lured by a generous welfare state. Or, as I have pointed out a million times in immigration columns; one productive immigrant brings in a tribe (under the family reunification program), which falls to you and me to support.

The premise for our good reader’s optimism is precisely what has just been said: the goodness of the immigrants the law selects. So what if the economy is rapidly being socialized? There are still a few Atlases who carry the $13 trillion economy on their weakening backs. It takes a while to break the backs of the best. Decades hence, immigration will slow. Until then, the hordes will come to feed at the trough, which is still relatively full compared to other troughs.

But as I complain again and again, a liberal state of mind among Americans refuses to recognize that American immigration policy guarantees that socialism spread like kudzu. But since we have a mixed economy; not one in which all the means of production are nationalized, there are still a sufficient number of good people for the parasites—via the state—to feast upon for decades to come.

Updated: Barbara Boxer Speaks Down To Head Of Black Chamber Of Commerce

Business, Democrats, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Race, Racism, Reason

Democrat Barbara Boxer takes a slow, labored, condescending tone with Harry Alfred, Head Of the Black Chamber Of Commerce. The Senator also makes sure that the testimonies she produces to counteract his are all from black groups. Watch Alfred deftly nail her for appealing to his race rather than to his facts. The annoyance in this little vingette is that only a black or Latin person could hope to get away issuing a similar challenge. And: there are very few such crusaders around.

Update (July 18): John Danforth is absolutely right: Mr. Alfred is locked in a performative contradiction. He is a participant in the discussion in his capacity as a representative of a racial organization, yet he objects when his data is discarded and his race addressed instead. Still, beggars can’t be choosy. Truth is in such short supply that we must welcome it even when it comes from imperfect, self-serving sources.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Barack Obama, Economy, EU, Healthcare, Iran, Neoconservatism, Politics, Regulation, Russia, Socialism

A girl has to have some fun: In my new WND.COM column, “And Now For Something Completely Different,” I invite you to laugh along about the EO (The European Onion), “A-Jad,” Geithner (the gift that keeps giving), and Obama who “never runs out of things to say, only things worth saying”:

“Although Obama has appointed more czars in six months than Russia’s Romanov Dynasty had occasion to anoint over three centuries, he is still missing a Vegetable Czar. If he acts quickly, Barack might be able to recruit a cheap VC with experience from The European Onion (formerly the EU).

The EO has been regulating fresh produce for quite some time. Duly, the Brussels Sprouts that run the Continent had barred “curly cucumbers, crooked carrots and mottled mushrooms – any odd-looking fruit and vegetables” — from Europe’s markets and supermarkets

But things are about to change. As the BBC News reported in a burst of good cheer, “July 1 marks the return to our shelves of the curved cucumber and the knobbly carrot.” Indeed, Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has finally disavowed the rules that were introduced to ensure common standards among EU vegetables, “but are regarded by critics as examples of Euro-madness.”

Said the Patron Saint of ‘wonky’ vegetables…”

The complete column is “And Now For Something Completely Different.”

Miss the weekly column on WND.COM? Catch it on Taki’s Magazine every Saturday.