GALTGULCH8

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    William R. Cohen, M.D.
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  1. An article appeared at the FEE, Foundation For Economic Education website, written by Jeffrey A. Miron who is a senior lecturer at Harvard University Economics Department, entitled: Legalization of Opioids would drastically overdose deaths. Miron points out that prohibition of opioids restrictions on access force users to the streets where normal quality control does not operate. They may seek heroin but receive fentanyl or fentanyl laced heroin leading to their deaths from suppression of their respirations. I wonder about the motivation of those who are lacing Heroin with Fentanyl. Drug dealers generally want to keep their customers alive whereas fentanyl assures their demise. Given that last year over sixty thousand involuntary overdoses occurred, more than the number of Americans killed in all the years of the Vietnam War, I wonder if the fentanyl is being given by those associated with the Islamic State who seek death for Americans. The solution would indeed be to end prohibition of all drugs with legalization of opioids as a priority. I intend to develop a resolution to that effect to present at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Medical Society House of Delegates in the Spring. I would appreciate any sources of material which would help to make the case. galtgulch8
  2. It is instructive to watch as Trump acknowledges that he has supported politicians of both parties over the years on the grounds that he needed to do so in order to be able to carry on his business dealings with the help of those politicians. He does not apologize for this behavior and I am not aware that it is even considered to be crony capitalism or government intervention and is more consistent with a government of men and not of laws. He doesn't show any sign that what he does in rubbing elbows with politicians for his own benefit is evil or immoral or even just unfair. He justifies it as a necessity for a businessman to do business. He is unaware of the distinction between a capitalist, which he is not despite his wealth, and one who seeks to benefit using bribes rather than innovation and productivity. Another issue which is seemingly inexplicable is the idea that the power brokers within the Republican Party, the so-called Establishment, would rather that if Trump gets the nomination, that he actually lose the election to the Democrats. The thinking is that if he did win he would replace all of them from lucrative positions in the GOP hierarchy which would be devastating for them personally. That may be the case. It brings to mind what might become of anyone who poses a substantial threat to those who have been prospering as shareholders and owners of the Federal Reserve System. Some think that JFK's attempt to create a gold backed redeemable currency to compete with Federal Reserve Notes led to his assassination! The third issue on my mind is the idea that Kasich might win in Ohio and then continue to do well in subsequent contests as he expects. I don't know if the math is in his favor to get the 1237 rather prospect of succeeding on a multi ballot contest in the convention in Cleveland. I would rather that Gary Johnson win but I am not yet sure whether the LP has chosen their nominee yet. Last time Johnson did get over one million votes in the presidential election of 2012. Does anyone here think that the president might declare a bank holiday and then confiscate money from deposits to pay down the national debt or the like? I think that retirement accounts are another appealing source of revenue and are vulnerable as well.
  3. On the news Bernie Sanders is on a roll. The public schools and "leftist" college professors have sufficiently indoctrinated enough generations that they do not see socialism as the evil it is. Many respond by saying "we already have socialism, Medicare and Medicaid." So we can only hope that the voters in the upcoming primary states will vote against him but that would leave us with another socialist in the form of Hillary who may yet be indicted. If that happens then maybe Biden will get back in for the Democrats. Trump is calling Sanders a Communist and the Republicans are likely to see him as the antidote to the Establishment candidates. Where is John Galt when you need him? Gary Johnson comes to mind as he is running as the Libertarian Party candidate! Got my vote!
  4. Thank you for your input. I appreciate your response. My interpretation of your analysis in this context is that sure enough the value of the fiat paper currency which is unconstitutional will indeed, as has happened to every other paper currency including the one used to pay the men who came forward to fight the British in the American Revolution, will become, to use your conclusion: "worthless."
  5. No, I cannot say except to point out that these men who are making us aware of the danger have their reasons for doing so. There is no question that every central bank in the world has been competing to weaken the purchasing power of their own currency supposedly to facilitate their own exports. It is evident that many countries have been reducing their holdings of U.S. Treasuries to the point that the Federal Reserve has been purchasing U.S. Treasuries with newly printed fiat paper. Trillions of U.S. dollars, not to be confused with Constitutional dollars which the Coinage Act of 1792 held to be a coin containing 371 grains and four sixteenths of a grain of silver, have been printed during the last few years, enlarging the national debt to over 19 trillion which does not count the unfunded liability of promises made to pay retirement and Medicare payments for the baby boom population which are reaching the age of eligibility at the rate of over ten thousand a day for the next ten to fifteen years. Lawrence Kotlikoff estimates that the national debt is actually in the realm of 256 trillion dollars! Is that not specific enough for you? Is it any wonder that our leader is tempted to help himself to the retirement accounts of the nation as well as the bank accounts? I believe that enabling legislation has been adopted in the US as well as Europe since the banking crisis in Cyprus. Not to mention the enormous derivative market which is in the quadrillions at risk. Hope you are prepared as there appears to be no doubt whether it will collapse just just when. gg
  6. Has anyone else encountered quite a few announcements recently by well credentialed pundits in the financial sector, e.g. James Richards, James Dale Davidson, Bonner, who are all warning of a collapse which will not just affect shareholders, investors, homeowners, retirees, those on Social Security, the employed, in other words virtually everyone in society. Of course they offer their advise in their newsletters as to how to prepare for, survive the collapse with your assets intact or even profit from the disaster. There are threats of not being able to access your savings as banks become unwilling to let you withdraw from your account or the government announces a bank holiday and all the banks close at once. ATMs do not let you withdraw funds. One even mentioned that SWAT teams enter your home to search for any money which you may have sequestered there! Has anyone here tried to make a withdrawal lately? I think there is a limit as to how much one may withdraw with out the bank being required to inform the government of amounts over or equal to $5,000 at a time? It gets worse. Fortunately we all are susceptible to "normalcy bias" so hardly anyone allows themselves to accept the possibility this might happen. That will only make matters worse if and when it does happen. Bonner has taken out radio ads for you to go to his video entitled "strange warning.com" in which he laments the failure of our credit system. Just wonder if anyone here has paid any attention to this stuff?
  7. I am glad that both Carly Fiorina and Rand Paul will stay in the race, although both are anti choice on a woman's right to choose. I imagine that either would get a boost if they came to their senses and became pro choice, at least in the general election. I realize that is a dream. At this time, 4:44AM, Cruz won and beat Trump by a good margin, and Rubio came in third, followed by Carson at 10 and Paul at 5%. Have yet to hear Trump's take on the outcome. Part of me wishes Trump would decide to drop out but given his narcissism he will go on at least to New Hampshire. Maybe if he loses there too he'll drop out. Interviews with voters in Iowa were revealing at the ignorance and shallowness of their decision making.
  8. A patriotic business is selling a generator so people with one will be able to survive an electromagnetic pulse attack on the USA which they claim is a goal of the jihadists. All it would take is a detonation of a nuclear weapon tens of thousands of feet above the country to render our electric grid useless causing the country to go dark for enough months or years to lead to the deaths of nine our of ten citizens. If there were a way to protect us and the grid our government evidently has other priorities. I haven't heard any of the candidates for president talk about it or make promises to deal with this threat. Another way to shut down the electrical grid would be to destroy the nine or so power stations which remain vulnerable to attack as they were built in a gentler time where no one even dreamed that anyone would think of doing so. Not paranoid enough! In the meantime SFL and YAL continue to grow in number exponentially. Given enough time there will be millions and tens of millions of such enlightened folks. Maybe then.
  9. Is it true that pollsters are able to reach people who use only cell phones nowadays? In any case the whatever you want to call it is coming. James Dale Davidson makes an irrefutable case that we are on the verge of a severe collapse of the economy, the stock market, the housing market, the dollar, the bond market... and its all because of the curse of growing and unsustainable national debt. Well they still have the printing press which will only make matters worse. If the democrats get re elected they will blame everyone else and use the crisis to expand their power. If the GOP gets in will they know what to do and what not to do? The rumor is that the GOP upper echelon intends to broker the convention and might fund a run by Paul Ryan to be the next president! Even if that were to happen I don;t know if he would know what to do either but would surely be better that most of the alternatives. We find ourselves living in interesting times!
  10. I was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, but my family moved to Brooklyn when I was four years old. So I feel a little kinship with your guy. I heard him criticize Trump about his unconstitutional stands but detect a certain hypocrisy. Why Cristee upholds the War On Drugs as a proper function of the Federal government is beyond my understanding. He poses as an advocate of individual freedom doesn't he? Maybe I am not aware of other inconsistencies. Don't these people think? Even the most libertarian among the Republicans is anti choice on the abortion issue and does not appear open to reason. That would be Rand Paul who made the point that most if not all of his supporters are young and use cell phones and not land lines which accounts for his low numbers in the polls. I gather he has a strong ground game in Iowa so should do unexpectedly well in the caucuses.
  11. How I wish there were no clouds overhead in central MA tonight so I could witness this meteor shower. Unfortunately the weather is not cooperating and I will have to find other amusements. Doing jigsaw puzzles or using my Kregjig to build a TV stand will not compare to the thrill of watching such an astronomical occurrence. Maybe next year. Be sure to go outside and to look up if the sky is clear where you live tonight.
  12. If we can only convince the Muslims that there is in fact no such thing as an afterlife that might put the damper on their enthusiasm to end their own lives on this Earth to "get there" where they have been indoctrinated from childhood to believe they will continue to exist in their version of Heaven or Nirvana. That will be tough coming from a country like ours which is filled to the brim with people who have also been indoctrinated from childhood with a belief in such an Afterlife themselves! Supposedly if one person believes such nonsense he is considered to be delusional and psychotic but if an entire society of such individuals holds such a nonsensical belief it is considered to be cultural and normal rather than delusional.
  13. I was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey but my family moved to the Flatbush section of Brooklyn when I was four years old. I was drawn to science and had no interest in politics until many years later. I had the good fortune to meet a fellow resident after I moved back to Brooklyn from San Francisco where I had done an internship after medical school in Buffalo, N.Y. He was involved in a discussion over lunch one day at which I learned that the interns and residents in the city hospitals had formed a union and were suing the city for an increase in pay. Various job actions were being considered and in response to one fellow's objection to a plan to turn away patients sending them to other hospitals I heard this comment which I have never seen or read in Objectivist literature: "No man's need constitutes an obligation on the part of another man to fulfill that need!" It was met with derision and argument but after the dust settled and everyone left I asked the fellow to explain. He took my question to be for him to prove what he had said and proceeded to say that in order to do so we had to agree on certain laws of logic and certain axiomatic concepts. This led to a statement that there are no contradictions in the universe. Just a restatement of the law of identity. He went on to derive a moral standard of Man's Life on Earth being that principle. On to an exposition of the concept of rights and the proper function of government in a free society. He recommended that I read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand which led to The Objectivist Newsletter etc. Incidentally, I am sure that most if not all of those student activists recruited by SFL and YAL are being encouraged to read such works as well. This manifestation of the movement to restore our constitutional republic is more likely to be sustained from what I see of it. Both websites for http://studentsforliberty.org and http://www.yaliberty.org have their annual reports available for all to see. Their growth to date is impressive and one might extrapolate to one's hearts content. Between the two of them there are about 500K student activists. Of course it takes time for a new recruit to read, study and learn enough to be a successful recruiter him or herself. Still if the time to double is as long as one year to 1M, 2Y to 2M, 3Y to 4M, 4Y to 8M, 5Y to 16M, 6Y to 32M, and you begin to see how powerful this movement can be given that ideas move the world and their ideas are rational.
  14. YAF sounds to me to be an organization for young conservatives decades ago. I am not aware if it was on college campuses as both YAL and SFL are. I just received a mailing from YAL whose founder started it in 2008. It has grown impressively to being on over 675 campuses and has over 400K following it on social media with over 247,000 student activists who are recruiting others to the cause as well as educating themselves and working with the many other organizations devoted to the same objective.
  15. JTS, Thanks for the links. I hope everyone checks out these sites to see for themselves that these young people are passionate about being part of a rapidly growing movement. Many say that they have personally benefitted by being involved in the activities of these two organizations. Certainly knowing that they are not alone in helping others, one at a time, to learn about the liberty movement is inspiring in itself. I have no doubt that these two groups, SFL and YAL will simply continue to increase their presence on more and more campuses across the country and within each campus as well. I attended one of their conferences to see for myself and it was worth the effort. Their affiliations with so many other organizations within the pro liberty movement assures that they are being made aware of the work of Ayn Rand, the Austrian school of economics and so many others. Despite the recent happenings on certain campuses in which students show their lack of respect for sharing ideas which might be offensive to some I have no doubt that SFL and YAL have staying power with reason on their side. We will see.