galtgulch

This is a point Ken Wilber has brought up frequently about the fact that we have technology outpacing ethics, that people in places like Iran might have nukes. It's probably also unethical to build a machine that rapidly develops ethics. oh well... Christopher, I recall that you are the one who recommended that I explore the www.ChrisMartenson.com website some time ago. I did and watched all twenty videos twice. I was particularly impressed with his explanation of the suddenness with which exponential growth can happen. One minute all seems well and as usual then in no time one is overwhelmed. he uses an example of water filling up Fenway Park starting with one drop which doubles every minute. You are handcuffed in the last row in the bleachers. In less than an hour all still seems well. In another five minutes the stadium is filled to the brim. He applies this to growing population as we are already on the asymptotic stage of the graph. Also at a comparable point on the downswing of oil production. IT is intimidating to watch and I invite others to see for themselves and then come back here and tell us where is the fallacy! He makes it sound as if this will all happen within the foreseeable future as in any year now. Technology is supposed to be able to save us. I understand that the invention of internal combustion engines which run on H2O in which electrolysis occurs within the combustion chamber has been accomplished but suppressed including murder of the inventor by the big oil or auto companies.

As we all know Article 1 Section 8 authorizes the Congress to have the power to "coin money and regulate the value thereof." Here is the text of the Coinage Act of 1792. I draw your attention to section 19 below: <<<"The 1792 Coinage Act had an interesting provision under Section 19. SEC. 19. And be it further enacted, That if any of the gold or silver coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint shall be debased or made worse as to the proportion of fine gold or fine silver therein contained, or shall be of less weight or value than the same ought to be pursuant to the directions of this act, through the default or with the connivance of any of the officers or persons who shall be employed at the said mint, for the purpose of profit or gain, or otherwise with a fraudulent intent, and if any of the said officers or persons shall embezzle any of the metals which shall at any time be committed to their charge for the purpose of being coined, or any of the coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint, every such officer or person who shall commit any or either of the said offences, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and shall suffer death. ____________ FULL TEXT OF THE ACT ____________ Excerpts from the Coinage Act of 1792
Act of 2 April 1792, 1 Statutes at Large 246 CHAPTER XVI. – An Act establishing a Mint, and regulating the Coins of the United States. SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, and it is hereby enacted and declared, That a mint for the purpose of a national coinage be, and the same is established , to be situate and carried on at the seat of the government of the United States, for the time being; and that for the well conducting of the business of the said mint, there shall be the following officers and persons, namely, –a Director, an Assayer, a Chief Coiner, an Engarver, a Treasurer. * * * * * SECTION. 9. And be it further enacted, That there shall be from time to time struck and coined at the said mint, coins of gold, silver, and copper, of the following denominations, values and descriptions, viz., EAGLES – each to be of the value of ten dollars or units, and to contain two hundred and forty-seven grains and four eights of a grain of pure, or two hundred and seventy grains of standard gold. HALF EAGLES – each to be of the value of five dollars, and to contain one hundred and twenty-three grains and six eights of a grain of pure, or one hundred and thirty five grains of standard gold. QUARTER EAGLES – each of be of the value of two dollars and a half dollar, and to contain sixty-one grains and seven eights of a grain of pure, or sixtyseven grains and four eights of a grain of standard gold. DOLLARS or UNITS – each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver. HALF DOLLARS – each to be of half the value of the dollar or unit, and to contain one hundred and eighty-five grains and ten sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or two hundred and eight grains of standard silver. QUARTER DOLLAR – each to be of one fourth the value of the dollar or unit, and to contain ninety-two grains and thirteen sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or one hundred and four grains of standard silver. DISMES – each to be of the value of one tenth of a dollar or unit, and to contain thirty-seven grains and two sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or forty-one grains and two sixteenth parts of a grain of standard silver. HALF DISMES – each to be of the value of one twentieth of a dollar, and to contain eighteen grains and nine sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or twenty grains and four fifth parts of a grain of standard silver. CENTS each to be of the value of the one hundredth part of a dollar, and to contain eleven penny-weights of copper. HALF CENTS – each to be of the value of half a cent, and to contain five penny-weights and a half penny-weight of copper. SECTION 10. And be it further enacted, That, upon the said coins respectively, there shall be the following devices and legends, namely: Upon one side of each of the said coins there shall be an impression emblematic of liberty, with an inscription of the word Liberty, and the year of the coinage; and upon the reverse of each of the gold and silver coins there shall be the figure or representation of an eagle, with this inscription, “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” and upon the reverse of each of the copper coins, there shall be an inscription which shall express the denomination of the piece, namely, cent of half cent, as the case may require. SECTION 11. And be it further enacted, That the proportional value of gold to silver in all coins which shall by law be current as money within the United States, shall be as fifteen to one, according to quantity in weight, of pure gold or pure silver; that is to say, every fifteen pounds weight of pure silver shall be of equal value in all payments, with one pound weight of pure gold, and so in proportion as to any greater or less quantities of the respective metals. SECTION 12. And be it further enacted, That the standard for all gold coins of the United States shall be eleven parts fine to one part alloy; and accordingly that eleven parts in twelve of the entire weight of each of the said coins shall consist of pure gold, and the remaining one twelfth part of alloy; and the said alloy shall be composed of silver and copper, in such proportions not exceeding one half silver as shall be found convenient; to be regulated by the director of the mint, for the time being, with the approbation of the President of the United States, until further provision shall be made by law. SECTION 13. And be it further enacted, That the standard for all silver coins of the United States, shall be one thousand four hundred and eighty-five parts fine to one hundred and seventy-nine parts alloy; and accordingly that one thousand four hundred and eighty-five parts in one thousand six hundred and sixty-four parts of the entire weight of each of the said coins shall consist of pure silver, and the remaining one hundred and seventy- nine parts of alloy; which alloy shall be wholly of copper. SECTION 14. And be it further enacted, That it shall be lawful for any person or persons to bring to the said mint gold and silver bullion, in order to their being coined; and that the bullion so brought shall be there assayed and coined as speedily as may be after the receipt thereof, and that free of expense to the person or persons by whom the same shall have been brought. And as soon as the said bullion shall have been coined, the person or persons by whom the same shall have been delivered, shall upon demand receive in lieu thereof coins of the same species of bullion which shall have been delivered, weight for weight, of the pure gold or pure silver therein contained: Provided nevertheless, That it shall be at the mutual option of the party or parties bringing such bullion, and of the director of the said mint, to make an immediate exchange of coins for standard bullion, with a deduction of one half per cent, from the weight of the pure gold, or pure silver contained in the said bullion, as an indemnification to the mint for the time which will necessarily be required for coining the said bullion, and for the advance which shall have been so made in coins. * * * * * SECTION 16. And be it further enacted, That all the gold and silver coins which shall have been struck at, and issued from the said mint, shall be a lawful tender in all payments whatsoever, those of full weight according to the respective values herein before described, and those of less than full weight at values proportional to their respective weights. SECTION 17. And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of the respective officers of the said mint, carefully and faithfully to use their best endeavours that all the gold and silver coins which shall be struck at the said mint shall be, as nearly as may be, conformable to the several standards and weights aforesaid. SECTION 19. And be it further enacted, That if any of the gold or silver coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint shall be debased or made worse as to the proportion of fine gold or fine silver therein contained, or shall be of less weight or value than the same ought to be pursuant to the directions of this act, through the default or with the connivance of any of the officers or persons who shall be employed at the said mint, for the purpose of profit or gain, or otherwise with a fraudulent intent, * * * every such officer or person who shall be guilty of any * * * of the said offenses, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and shall suffer death. SECTION 20. And be it further enacted, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars or units, dismes or tenths, cents or hundredths, and milles or thousandths, a disme being the tenth part of a dollar, a cent the hundredth part of a dollar, a mille the thousandth part of a dollar, and that all accounts in the public offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. APPROVED, April 2, 1792.">>> I suppose that technically, since there is no connection between our paper currency and either gold or silver that Bernanke gets to live on. Or perhaps one may assume that simply doubling the amount of paper currency in existence, which Bernanke did do over a four month period recently, would constitute a kind of debasement in which case he gets to defend himself in court. He might find authorization for what he has been up to in acts of the Congress but not the Constitution itself. www.campaignforliberty.com 224,208

Chris, I didn't realize you had such a low opinion of the Constitution. Either it should be taken seriously as the Supreme Law of the Land or else it would be meaningless. I gather that in order to tell whether the allegation of treason were true or not the Grand Jury would have to overcome all the couple of million dollar obstacles Obama purchased with his attorneys to see for themselves whether Obama met the criteria set forth in the Constitution to be eligible to seek the presidency in the first place. This man is willing to risk his life to have this issue resolved. Your own comments betray your lack of appreciation for the issues involved. If the Founders did mean by "natural born citizen" that someone aspiring to the office of the presidency had to have parents who were both American citizens then it is evident that Obama does not meet that standard because his father was a British subject as he was a Kenyan which was under British rule. I suggest that you read the articles and refrain from casting aspersions and making ad hominem suggestions about me. I think the Democrat Party was complicit in keeping these issues out of the public eye. Once they realized Obama's potential their power lust took over. They probably advised Hillary Clinton to keep quiet about this as well. Otherwise she certainly would have made it an issue to eliminate the competition. But the Democratic leadership wanted Obama once it became evident that he could talk himself into the White House because of his huge popular appeal based on his appearance and eloquence. Why would Obama spend a small fortune on lawyers to keep his credentials a secret?

An article in the Canada Free Press informs us that charge of no less than treason is going to be heard on December 1st by a Grand Jury in Tennessee which contends that Obama is guilty of treason. here is the link: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17303 And here is the link to an earlier article entitled: "Is Obama Guilty of Treason" http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/11853 The charge is brought by retired Navy LCDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III and either the charge is true or LCDR Fitzpatrick is guilty of mutiny and the punishment would be death! Fascinating read. A Constitutional crisis is at hand. The charge was filed in March and the Secret Service did go to the retired Naval officer's home but did not arrest him after spending an hour with him. On 1 Dec the case was due to come before a Tennessee Grand Jury. www.campaignforliberty.com 223,684

Adam, Thank you for posting the real story of Thanksgiving. If only it were widely understood. I am thankful for the thoughts and efforts of all those, including the Founders who attempted to set every man, woman and child of every race free, and those more recently who have identified the philosophy needed to accomplish that feat, as well as the ideas necessary to make things work thus enriching our lives. I am thankful for those who had the courage of their convictions to take up arms against the tyrant in Colonial days and those these days who endeavor to enlist others to the cause of individual freedom. Loyalty to one's values suggests that one ought to take advantage of every opportunity to enlighten others one way or another, either face to face or via written words to the existence of the pro freedom movement and to the books which hold the key to the establishment of a society free from tyranny. www.campaignforliberty.com 223,453 <" "The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.-Thomas Jefferson" ">

Adam, I believe that one of the Blue dogs said that although he would vote to have debate continue that did not mean that he would necessarily vote for the bill in the end. Whether it happens or not there will still be hope as the Campaign For Liberty grows exponentially with the help of the Young Americans for Liberty which has chapters in over 150 colleges and universities. www.campaignforliberty.com www.YALiberty.com 223,150 gulch

I don't think Ayn Rand meant it in the way you suggest. I am reminded of the last scene of We The Living when Kira focuses her attention on the vision she had of the kind of life and the kind of world she longed to live in rather than to be distracted by the pain she must have felt by the wound inflicted by the unwitting servant of the careless State which stood for anti life on Earth. The trick is to be loyal to your highest values and not to let any pain and suffering stop you from achieving your own personal goals. gulch www.campaignforliberty.com 233,136

Perhaps a metaphor for laissez-faire Capitalism! gulch www.campaignforliberty.com 223,136

Ba'al, While you bemoan the current state of affairs not without justification there are efforts to rouse and enlighten the populace who are the ultimate sovereigns in this once freer country. For example, Judge Napolitano is offering a course on the Constitution on Fox. In addition there are many articles on the subject as well as online books on several websites including the Ludwig von Mises Institute site, www.mises.org. Gutzman has a new book: The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution. http://tinyurl.com/yktr9k2 The ever popular Campaign For Liberty site has a section on Education with a heading Constitution which lists many books on the subject. http://www.campaignforliberty.com/edu/constitution.php So there is the hope that the independent voters who enabled Obama to gain power and gave the Congress to the Democrats, aka "progressives", will give the Congress back to the Republicans next time. The pro Constitutional conservatives such as Rand Paul may find himself in the Senate from Kentucky and Peter Schiff may be there too from Connecticut giving a new voice to those who understand what the Founders had in mind when they reserved all powers not granted among the few enumerated powers to the Congress, to the States or to the people in the Tenth Amendment. http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/ The States are asserting their sovereign power in response to the Federal power grab. Witness the Virginia Health Care Freedom Act of 2010 which is one of several efforts to thwart Obama and Pelosi in their mindless power lust. I think that the ideas of Ayn Rand and other individualistic thinkers has spread sufficiently across the country to find support everywhere and a counter revolution is afoot. We have their number and the only disaster in 2012 will be the death once and for all time of the premises of the Platonists, the Kantians and the Keynesians. www.campaignforliberty.com 222,595 gulch

There is no way possible to prepare for anarchy. Further, I'm not interested in living in such a world. If the US degenerated into such a place I'd move somewhere safer or end my life. Perhaps you might be amused and enlightened to listen to the wisdom of Chris Martenson, a Fortune 300 VP and research analyst who has a twenty video crash course on his website: www.chrismartenson.com I am prone to paranoia but also willing to listen to reason. I am also hoping that a better mind will find the fallacies in CM's contentions. Most of the videos are less than twenty minutes each and there is a 45 minute version. I eagerly await someone's revelation that life as we know it will continue with new fangled technology getting me to and from work each day and food finding its way from the farms to the cities and the like forever and ever. gulch

I wonder what you mean by your statement that America was built on credit. To my way of thinking America rose because of the degree of freedom enjoyed by individuals whose rights to their property were protected and recognized and respected much more than they are today. It is hard to accumulate capital when the politicians and power lusters among them skim money from the earnings of the working man and woman. Notice that the Campaign For Liberty membership has grown by about one thousand people in about ten days and is now 222,050 here is a link to an illuminating article on the question of what the Founders meant or understood the concept natural born citizen meant: http://hesnotmypresident.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/chapter-2-constitutional-requirements/ And here is a link to Robert Shultz's Continental Congress which convenes Nov 11th and goes on for three weeks with some of it televised: http://www.cc2009.us/ gulch

Link to Operation Health Freedom: http://www.operationhealthfreedom.com/ <<"Tell Congress to Support the Health Freedom Plan! Campaign for Liberty believes America's health care system is in desperate need of reform, but current proposals only cement the status quo by mandating further government interference and requiring Americans to either carry a government-approved plan or surrender more of their hard-earned money to the IRS. There is a real alternative to yielding more power over our lives to Washington: implementing a plan centered on freedom, choice, and faith in the American taxpayers that they know how to spend their money better than some unelected bureaucrat. In pursuit of this alternative, Campaign for Liberty is proud to unveil our Health Freedom Plan. Our package includes legislation introduced by Congressman Ron Paul and Congressman John Shadegg. The cornerstone is Ron Paul's H.R. 1495, the Comprehensive Health Care Reform Act of 2009, which provides all Americans with a tax credit for 100% of health care expenses, a tax credit for premiums for high-deductible insurance policies connected with a Health Savings Account (HSA), and allows seniors to use funds in an HSA to pay for a medigap policy. In addition, it makes all medical expenses tax deductible. Also included are Ron Paul's H.R. 2629, a bill that prevents the government from requiring people to purchase health insurance, and John Shadegg's H.R. 3217, which permits the purchase of health insurance across state lines and will ultimately lower costs due to the resulting competition.">> There are several enlightening videos on the site's home page Also links to recent articles www.campaignforliberty.com 221,917 gulch

I found this article in the response section of another article by a neurosurgeon about the AMA on the Campaign For Liberty site. Here is the link to that article: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=322 <<<"Medical Control, Medical Corruption by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. The vested interests are sick over it: Americans are beginning, just slightly, to take charge of their own health care. Such best-sellers as the Doctor's Book of Home Remedies, the Physician's Desk Reference, and the Merck Manual can keep you out of the doctor's appropriately named waiting room, or at least help you understand what is being done to you, when an apple a day does not work. Who is unhappy with this increased knowledge? The American Medical Association, which for almost 150 years has sought to institutionalize a rip-off and to keep sick people and their families oblivious to it. Thanks to this central committee of the medical cartel, the number of medical schools and medical students is drastically restricted, state licensure further obstructs the supply of doctors, fees are largely secret and controlled across the industry, alternative treatments and practitioners are outlawed, pharmacists and nurses are hamstrung, and the mystique of the profession rivals the priesthood, although priests have a somewhat lower income. Meanwhile, the customer pays through the nose, even if he does not go to an otolaryngologist. Medicaid and Medicare have contributed to the problem, but the medical cartel is the original sin. Through its ability to keep incomes high by limiting supply and outlawing competition, organized medicine has punished its customers, although the word is never used so as to disguise what is, after all, an economic relationship. Hillary Clinton's proposed merger of the medical cartel and the state seems like a radical move, and it is. It is also the logical next step in the partnership of government and medicine. That is why, in addition to opposing Hillary hammer and tongs, we should reexamine the AMA's distortion of the medical marketplace and the very idea of medical licensure. Competition among providers – as with any service in a market economy – leads to rational pricing and maximum consumer choice. But this is exactly what the AMA has always sought to prevent. The American Medical Association, organized in New York in 1848, advanced two seemingly innocent propositions in its early days: that all doctors should have a "suitable education" and that a "uniform elevated standard of requirements for the degree of M.D. should be adopted by all medical schools in the U.S." These were part of the AMA's real program, which was openly discussed at its conventions and in the medical journals: to secure a government-enforced medical monopoly and high incomes for mainstream doctors. Membership in the new organization was open only to "regular" physicians, whose therapies were based on the "best system of physiology and pathology, as taught in the best schools in Europe and America." The public had a different view, however. Official treatments of the time, such as bloodletting and mercury poisoning, harmed and sometimes murdered patients, causing mass outrage. Emphatically not included among the "best" were the homeopaths. Homeopathy, a less invasive system that still thrives in Britain and Europe, may have done no good, but that was the worst charge lodged against it. Homeopathy did not kill people, as Orthodox medicine did. The homeopaths actually followed the Hippocratic injunction "First, do not harm" and refused to worship abstract Science. As a result, the clergy – an important interest group in 19th-century America – sympathized with them. As the president of the New York State Medical Society noted in 1844, "We feel severely the influence of the clergy as operating against our collective interest." One prominent pastor, for example, had called the medical establishment "an expensive vampire upon society." How the "regulars" came to crush the homeopaths and other competitors, and penalize patients in the process, is a story of deception and manipulation, of industry self-interest and state power. The organized regulars or allopaths first set out to demonstrate that the homeopaths were ill-educated and therefore should be shunned, but that was difficult to substantiate because most of them were converts from orthodox medicine. One was William H. Holcombe. When he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, he worried, as he wrote in his memoirs, that physicians "were blind men, striking in the dark at the disease or the patient-lucky if [we] killed the malady [instead of] the man." One day Holcombe was called by the parents of a seriously ill child, whom Holcombe subsequently set about to bleed. Bloodletting was considered especially important for children, and the younger the child, the more blood was to be drawn. But the mother clutched the baby to her breast and cried, "The blood is the life – it shall not be taken away." When the benighted father agreed, Holcombe "explained to him candidly, and with some display of professional dignity, that my opinion was worth more than his or his wife's." Holcombe left and returned the next day, expecting to find a dead baby. Instead, the child – who had been treated by a homeopath – was playing in the yard. Holcombe later wrote that "after having blistered, bled, and drugged my patients for twenty-seven years, I determined to find some more humane mode." He was charged with violating "medical ethics," whose first principle was: "A physician ... should cautiously guard against whatever may injure the general respectability of his profession." Eventually, homeopathy became almost as popular as allopathy, especially in the Northeast and Midwest. Many business leaders favored it and funded free dispensaries for the poor. This was made possible by the free market. From the early part of the century until 1850, state laws interfering in medical practice were gradually repealed. The AMA was founded to reverse the trend. New York, for example, got rid of nearly all of its criminal legislation regarding medicine, forbidding only malpractice and immoral conduct by physicians. As one state senator said, "The people of this state have been bled long enough in their bodies and pockets." He called on them to demand medical freedom, in the tradition of "the men of the Revolution." Most Americans were interested in nonorthodox treatments and believed they should be allowed to compete in the marketplace. Organized medicine claimed people were being fooled. But as Harris Livermore Coulter explains in his extraordinary 1969 study of the AMA's founding, "People were deserting orthodox medicine ... not out of ignorance, but out of knowledge of regular practice and consequent dislike of it." An 1848 AMA convention speaker laughed at the "mass of the community" who thought there was "a wide difference" between a physician's "Apothecary Medicine and our native medical plants." The first "they regard as almost uniformly poisonous – the other, as harmless and healthful." He called this "an absurd idea," although virtually none of the official treatments of the time is still In use and many drugs from our "native medical plants" have proven to be effective. Worse than absurd was the effect on doctors' incomes. "Quackery [i.e., unofficial treatments by unofficial practitioners] occasions a large pecuniary loss to us," lamented an 1846 editorial in the New York Journal of Medicine. Quacks "too frequently triumph and grow rich, where wiser and better men scarcely escape starvation." To the medical dean at the University of Michigan, the specter of free competition was a "discouragement" to "graduates in scientific medicine," rendering their work "arduous and unremunerative." In the golden age, "the doctor could tell his patient" anything, including, "'gape, sinner, and swallow,"' wrote J.H. Nutting in 1853. Then, with his "grave look of profound wisdom," the doctor had a "reputation for almost superhuman skill." Doctors, wrote the journal of the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1848, should be "looked upon by the mass of mankind with a veneration almost superstitious." Instead, there was public contempt. A Michigan physician reported that the profession had "fallen so low that there are few to do it reverence. Quackery and empiricism in diverse forms like the locusts and lice of Egypt, swarm over our state and are eating out the very vitals and sucking the life blood" of doctors, some of whom said they were denounced on the street for bumping off their patients. Organized physicians argued that popular reputation meant nothing. In fact, claimed the journals, a good standing in the profession usually meant a bad one with the public. At the same time there was the complaint – echoed by cartelizers to this day – that there were simply too many doctors. "The profession" is "crowded," argued one journal, with "unworthy and ignorant men" who ought to be prohibited from practicing. The regulars also villified their opponents with such works as Oliver Wendell Holmes' Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions (1842). In 1849, the AMA worried that simply outlawing competition would not override the public's perversity. The only long-term "remedy against Quackery, is medical Reform, by which a higher standard of medical education shall be secured." As part of this drive, homeopathic physicians were expelled from state and local medical societies, even if they were trained in official schools. The AMA claimed that the public did not know what was good for it and that the medical establishment must have total control. The organization knew it needed more than persuasion to secure a monopoly, so it also called for a national bureau of medicine to oversee state licensing and other regulations. In those limited-government days, however, the idea went nowhere. But in the statist Progressive Era after the turn of the century, anticompetitive measures became respectable, and the AMA renewed its drive for a cartel, spurred on by the popularity of self-medication and the increasing number of medical schools and doctors. (In 1902, an AMA study decried the competition that had lowered physicians' incomes.) The number of medical schools had increased from 90 in 1880 to 154 in 1903. As an official AMA history by James Gordon Burrow puts it, the "frightening competition" showed a need for "education reform," i.e., cartelization. The state legislatures showed little interest in more restrictionist laws, so the AMA appointed the secretary of the Kentucky State Board of Health to rouse the profession to lobby. Joseph N. McCormack spent a decade in agitprop among the doctors of more than 2,000 cities and towns, inspiring them with such speeches as "The Danger to the Public From an Unorganized and Underpaid Medical Profession." Like medical ethicists before and since, he denounced advertising (letting customers know services and prices in advance) and quackery (unapproved competition). Join our union, he said, and we will raise your pay. By 1910, about 70,000 doctors belonged to the AMA, an eight-fold increase over the previous decade. To help bring about a higher-paid profession, the AMA in 1904 created the Council on Medical Education, which sought to shut down more than half the existing medical schools by rating them on a scale of A to C. In cooperation with state medical boards composed of what Arthur Dean Boran, head of the council, called the "right sort of men," the AMA succeeded in cutting the number of schools to 131 by 1910, from a high of 166. Then the council's secretary N.P. Colwell helped plan (and some say write) the famous 1910 report by Abraham Flexner. Flexner, the owner of a bankrupt prep school, had the good fortune to have a brother, Simon, who was director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. At his brother's suggestion, Abraham Flexner was hired by the Rockefeller-allied Carnegie Foundation so that the report would not be seen as a Rockefeller initiative. And Carnegie, whose main goal was to "rationalize" higher education, that is, replace religion with science, saw the AMA cartelization drive as useful. Claiming to have investigated nearly every school in the country, Flexner rated them on suitability. Schools he praised received lush grants from the Rockefeller and associated foundations, and almost all the medical schools he condemned were shut down, especially the "commercial" institutions. AMA-dominated state medical boards ruled that in order to practice medicine, a doctor had to graduate from an approved school. Post-Flexner, a school could not be approved if it taught alternative therapies, didn't restrict the number of students, or made profits based on student fees. Why the opposition to for-profit schools? If an institution were supported by student fees rather than philanthropic donations, it could be independent of the foundations. The Rockefeller family had invested heavily in allopathic drug companies and wanted doctors to use their products. The Flexner Report was more than an attack on free competition funded by special interests. It was also a fraud. For example, Flexner claimed to have thoroughly investigated 69 schools in 90 days, and he sent prepublication copies of his report to the favored schools for their revisions. Homeopaths noted that his authority derived solely "from an unlimited access to the pocketbook of a millionaire." Homeopaths did not use synthetic drugs, of course. John E. Churchill, president of the Board of Education of New York, called the report a "menace to the freedom of teaching." Years later, Flexner admitted that he knew nothing about medical education. But he did not need to in order to serve his employers' purposes. Flexner's attack, stepped up by the AMA's Council on Medical Education and its state medical boards, closed 25 schools in three years, with more over the years to come, and cut the number of students attending the remaining schools in half. All non-mainstream practitioners were targeted. For example, from the early part of the century, consumers preferred optometrists to ophthalmologists on grounds of both service and price. Yet the AMA derided the optometrists as quacks, and in every state, the AMA-dominated medical boards imposed restrictions on these and other "sectarian" practitioners when they could not outlaw them entirely. Homeopathy still had a remnant of about 13,000 practitioners, supported by a fiercely loyal customer base, but decades of well-financed attacks had taken their toll. The battle-weary homeopaths eventually gave in, conceding major parts of their doctrine, but the AMA was not satisfied with anything less than total victory, and today, American homeopaths practice mostly underground. With its monopoly, the AMA sought to fix prices. Early on, the AMA had come to the conclusion that it was "unethical" for the consumer to have any say over what he paid. Common prices were transmuted into professional "fees," and the AMA sought to make them uniform across the profession. Lowering fees and advertising them were the worst violations of medical ethics and were made illegal. When fees were raised across the board, as they frequently could be with decreased competition, it was done in secret. But organized medicine still feared reporters. In Illinois in 1906, the publication of secret fee increases nearly incited public violence. The secretary of the Illinois Medical Society, N.L. Barker, admonished his fellow physicians to keep their higher "fee-bills" secret, "for the people will not appreciate what was intended for kindness and justice." To collect the higher fees, the AMA recommended that state-level medical societies develop formal systems. If a patient had not paid the full amount, especially out of dissatisfaction with the treatment, his name would go on a blacklist and he would be forbidden all future treatment by doctors until he had paid up and shut up. The AMA, in its constant quest for higher incomes through lower competition, also battled churches and other charities that gave free medical care to the poor. Through lobbying, it attempted to stamp out what it called "indiscriminate medical charity." A model 1899 law in New York put the control of all free health care under a State Board of Charities dominated by the AMA. To diminish the amount of free care, the board imposed fines and even jail terms on anyone giving treatment without first getting the patient's address and checking on his financial status. Then there was the problem of pharmacists selling drugs without a doctor's prescription. This was denounced as "therapeutic nihilism" and the American Pharmaceutical Association, controlled by the AMA, tried to stamp out the low-cost, in-demand practice. In nearly every state, the AMA secured laws that made it illegal for patients to seek treatment from a pharmacist. But still common were pharmacists who refilled prescriptions at customer request. The AMA lobbied to make this illegal, too, but most state legislatures wouldn't go along with this because of constituent pressure. The AMA got its way through the federal government, of course. There were other threats that also had to be put down: "nostrums," treatments that did not require a visit to the doctor, and midwives, who had better results than doctors. Also a danger was "contracting out," a company practice of employing physicians to provide care for its workers. This was "unethical," said the AMA, and should be illegal. Fraternal organizations that contracted out for their members were put out of business with legislated price controls, and hospitals – whose accreditation the AMA controlled – were pressured to refuse admittance to patients of contracting-out doctors. By the end of the Progressive Era, the orthodox profession as led by the AMA had triumphed over all of its competitors. Through the use of government power, it had come to control education, licensure, treatment, and price. Later it outcompeted fraternal medical insurance with the state-privileged and subsidized Blue Cross and Blue Shield. T'he AMA-dominated Blues, in addition to other benefits, gave us the egalitarian notion of "community rating," under which everyone pays the same price no matter what his condition. AMA control remains much the same, and as a result, even incompetent doctors are guaranteed high incomes. In law, a profession with much freer entry, some lawyers get rich, others make middle incomes, and others have to go into another line of work. But thanks to almost a century and a half of AMA statism, even terrible doctors get lavish incomes. The monopoly also allows anti-customer practices to go unpunished. For example, doctors routinely schedule appointments too closely together so as to keep their waiting rooms full, for prestige and marketing reasons. With little competition, they can get away with it, and advertising on-time service would be "unethical." The next time you have to wait 45 minutes amid six-month-old People magazines, thank the AMA. Now, if Hillary gets her way, licensing will become even more abusive. Her Health Security Act mandates racial quotas for medical students and faculties, as well as for practicing physicians in the health alliances. This is the wits' end of licensing, which began as an effort by the regulars to weed out the competition and will now force on us the spectacularly inept, scalpels in hand. Real reform would remove the AMA's grip on the marketplace and subject the entire industry to competition. Until then, stock up on home medical books. This article appeared in the June 1994 issue of Chronicles. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and editor of LewRockwell.com">>>

You might enjoy exploring the website of American Precious Metals Exchange at www.APMEX.com You would find the PEACE dollar under DOLLARS but not under SILVER in case you were looking for them, a lovely coin! HR1207 The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 has 310 Congressional cosponsors and 30 Senatorial cosponsors www.campaignforliberty.com 221,758 and growing exponentially! More than 1000 additional members every nine or ten days! Great feature articles with three new ones each day now. gulch

See entire article. There is only one relevant question: Do the vaccines work or not. All the studies I have read about, so far, indicate that they are effective and they are safe. Ba'al Chatzaf Ba'al, Here is a link to some info on the flu issue which you might find of interest. It appears that there are risks to taking the vaccine and risks with the flu itself: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/10/31/CDC-Says-Kids-That-Die-From-Swine-Flu-Have-Coexisting-Bacterial-Infections.aspx Excuse me while I go to wash my hands again and add vitamin D and stuff to my daily vitamin regimen. www.campaignforliberty.com 221,386 gulch

http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/checker.aspx?v=GdSU2GZu8z

Ba'al, <<<" Section 8 The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; To borrow Money on the credit of the United States; To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States; To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States; To establish Post Offices and post Roads; To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court; To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations; To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; To provide and maintain a Navy; To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress; To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of Particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards and other needful Buildings;--And To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.">>> Has it not been determined by historians that the Founders intended for the new Federal government be limited to those powers "enumerated?"After all the necessary and proper clause uses the word "foregoing" indicating rather than suggesting that the Congress was meant to have limited rather than broad powers to do whatever it wished if only enough votes were cast. Section 9 makes it clear that if the Feds wanted to raise a tax on the citizens of the states they could not do it directly rather they had to apportion the amount they wanted to raise from the states in accordance with the census. The Supreme Court found a direct Income Tax during the Civil War to be unconstitutional and the Chief Justice made it clear, as I understand it, that he would so find if any further attempt was made to tax the citizens of the states directly by the Federal government. He remained alive until about 1910 which led to the Sixteenth Amendment which should be abolished as it so clearly violates the original intent. <<<" Section 9 The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person. The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it. No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census of Enumeration herein before directed to be taken. No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State. No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear or pay Duties in another. No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time. No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State. Section 10 No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility. No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress. No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.">>> Notice the prohibition upon States regarding coining money and that States were to be forbidden to make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts. Nor could the states pass any Law iimpairing the Obligation of Contracts. Evidently there were those who had borrowed money in the form of gold coins and who had signed contracts to repay in gold coins. Many tried to get their States to issue paper currencies and to pass laws which would change the gold clauses allowing their debts to be repaid in paper rather than gold! It is thought this was a reason the creditors were motivated to create a Federal government over the States. The Founders had just won their independence from a Monarchy and had studied the forms of government which had existed throughout history. There is no way they wanted to create a virtually unlimited omnipotent government. There is no question that they enumerated the limited powers to be granted to the Legislative branch and that they established so many checks and balances as well. In fact James Madison ran for U.S. Senate in the first election after the passage and ratification of the Constitution. He ran on a platform which held that no Bill of Rights was even necessary claiming that the Congress had not been given the power to violate any of the rights of the people. He lost and ran subsequently for the Congress on a platform which advocated a Bill of Rights and won. No way was there an intent among the Founders, with the possible exception of the statist Alexander Hamilton, for the Federal govt to have broad powers requiring only a majority vote. Ron Paul has it right and has been the sole "No!" vote over 300 times when the Congress has sought powers not enumerated in Article 1 Section 8. The growth of the membership in Campaign For LIberty has been exponential since its creation a little over one year ago. Given the direction of the present administration and the previous administration as well, with the concomitant loss of freedom and egregious grasping of powers and actions which are unprecedented it is a simple matter to find citizens who are willing to join the fastest growing pro freedom limited govt movement since the First American Revolution. www.campaignforliberty.com 221,319

I think Ayn Rand would have advocated that we all read the works of Professor Antal Fekete who is a brilliant mathematician who became interested in monetary theory and is a staunch advocate of redeemable currency and the Gold Standard. I would encourage that you access his archive of articles at his website and read them all! www.professorfekete.com/articles/asp <<<"FORGOTTEN ANNIVERSARY: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LEGAL TENDER An Address by Antal E. Fekete Professor of Money and Banking San Francisco School of Economics at a Fund-Raising Dinner for the benefit of the Ficino School Auckland, New Zealand October 28, 2009 The year 2009 will most likely expire without commemorating the centenary of a most momentous event in history that figures prominently as the main cause of the Great Financial Crisis of the century. This event was the so-called legal tender legislation in 1909. The bank notes of both the Banque de France and the Reichsbank of Germany were made legal tender by law, first in France and then, a very short time later, also in Imperial Germany. The rest of the world followed suit. In this way all roadblocks were removed in the way of financing the coming world war through credits and monetizing the resulting debt through the issuance of bank notes. One unintended effect was that all efforts to avert the war and the concomitant great bloodshed and destruction of property through better diplomacy were short-circuited. The war parties in both countries had won a great victory. The cause of peace suffered a decisive defeat. Please note that I have said “so-called legal tender legislation” because ‘legal tender’ in this context was a vicious distortion of the meaning of the phrase. There was nothing coercive about legal tender before 1909. Bank notes circulated as money, but their acceptance was entirely voluntary. People had an unconditional right to exchange them for the coin of the realm, that is, for gold coins. If the bank did not comply, then it was in technical default and had to face the consequences. The original meaning of legal tender simply referred to a tolerance standard applicable to the wear and tear of gold coins. Coins meeting the tolerance standard circulated by tale, that is, their value was established by counting them out ― a great convenience. Others circulated by 1weight: each and every coin had to be weighed ― a great inconvenience. There was absolutely no coercion involved in this discrimination. The Mint exchanged gold coins within the tolerance standard by freshly struck full-bodied gold coins at no charge to bearer. The government absorbed the loss and covered it out of the general revenue fund. The cost was treated the same way as the cost of maintaining the nation’s highway system in good repair. Not only was there no coercion involved in legal tender laws; in effect a public service was provided by the government without charging user-fees. That was the meaning of the phrase “legal tender” prior to 1909. Notice the underhanded change in the meaning as a result of the legal tender laws of 1909. A public convenience was replaced by public coercion. Two governments with the greatest war-making power in the world introduced coercion forcing their subjects to accept and use debt as money. This was a ‘first’ in history. In particular, the governments were forcing the military, as well as civil servants, to take paper promises as ultimate payment for services rendered. Of course, the use of the phrase ‘legal tender’ in this way is an oxymoron. A promise to pay that is at the same time an ultimate payment is not a promise. It is an ukase. This was a reactionary step, designed to facilitate the unlimited augmentation of monetary circulation regardless of the gold reserve. It allowed the financing of the coming war with government credits, much of it interest free and with no maturity date. The burden was thrown on the shoulders of the people without their concurrence. The measure was represented as an innocent house-keeping change. There was no public debate on its wisdom. Nobody at the time could see the ominous consequences. Nobody suspected bad faith on the part of the government. As a proof of good faith gold coins were allowed to remain in circulation for another five years. Banks paid them out routinely as before, without fuss. There was no noticeable increase in the hoarding of gold coins by the people, a sign that they implicitly trusted their government. When the war finally broke out in 1914, the “guns of August” heralded the delayed effect of the legal tender laws. All gold coins went into hiding at once. Banks refused to meet any request for payment in gold. Members of the legislation, including all the socialist deputies, voted all the war-credits the government had asked for without demur. The first author to unmask the connection between the Legal Tender Laws of 1909 and the outbreak of the war five years later, in 1914, was the German economist Heinrich 2 Rittershausen (1898-1984). He also predicted the Great Depression, and linked the coming unprecedented wave of unemployment to legal tender, as I am going to discuss it in more details in a minute. We are left to second-guess history. Would the senseless killing and destruction of property have come to an early end in the absence of legal tender laws, just as soon as the belligerent governments had run out of gold to finance it? Most contemporary observers had predicted that it would have. There was no way to finance a conflict of this magnitude out of taxes. People did not understand that legal tender was an invisible form of tax to pay for the greatest war up to that point in history. They did not understand the power of credit that would enable governments to expend blood and treasure freely, without any restraint. People did not see the Moloch behind the façade of legal tender ― the god that was preparing to devour his own children. *** But there was also another, most sinister consequence of the legal tender laws that was not recognized at the time. Before 1909 world trade had been financed through real bills drawn on London. A real bill was a short-term commercial paper payable in gold coin upon maturity. It represented self-liquidating credit to finance the emergence of new merchandise in the markets demanded most urgently by the consumers. As its issue was limited by the amount of new merchandise on its way to the market, it was non-inflationary. The credit was liquidated by the gold coin released by the ultimate consumer of the underlying merchandise. You can look at a real bill as credit in the process of presently “maturing into gold coins”. As a medium of exchange, a real bill is “the next best thing” to the gold coin. It is virtually risk free to hold, as the underlying merchandise has a ready market waiting for its arrival. Clearly, real bills are incompatible with legal tender laws. It makes no sense to suggest that you can make real bills “mature in legal tender bank notes”. The fact is that the bank note is inferior to a real bill in almost every way. For one thing, real bills are an earning asset. This is due to the existence of discount applied to face value as the real bill is bought and sold before maturity. Real bills are most liquid: only the gold coin has greater liquidity. They are the best earning asset a commercial bank can have. 3 But what makes real bill paramount in the economy is the fact that, in the aggregate, they constitute the wage fund of society. They alone make it possible to produce and distribute goods now that the consumer will only pay for later. Up to three months later, to be precise. However, in the meantime workers employed in their production will have to be paid their due wages every week. Indeed, these workers must eat and satisfy other wants to be able to continue their production efforts. The payment of wages is definitely not financed through savings of the capitalists. It is financed through clearing, that is, through the spontaneous granting of temporary monetary privileges to real bills, thus enabling them to circulate before maturity. An unintended consequence of the legal tender legislation was the destruction of this wage fund out of which workers could be paid before the goods were sold. Legal tender laws bore direct responsibility for the horrible unemployment during the Great Depression ― as pointed out by Rittershausen. As long as the wage fund is intact, there can be no unemployment. Everybody who is anxious to earn wages can go into the production or distribution of some goods demanded by the consumers urgently, and get compensation from the wage fund immediately, even before his product is sold. The destruction of the wage fund changed all that. Workers could no longer be compensated for their labor expended in the production of merchandise unless it is ready for sale right away. The destruction of the wage fund was not immediately obvious in 1909. Military training and production of war materiel absorbed the available manpower. During the war labor was in short supply because of the vast expansion of the production of munitions. Unemployment hit society only after the cessation of hostilities. Had the victorious powers repealed legal tender laws after the war, thereby rehabilitating the market in real bills and replenishing the wage fund, the great Depression would have never occurred. But the victors were not interested in multilateral world trade. They wanted to punish the vanquished even more by making trade bilateral, to the exclusion of real bill circulation. In this way they wanted to retain control of the trade of their former adversaries. As a result the wage fund was never resurrected and workers could not be paid. The result was the greatest unemployment ever in history. Governments were forced to assume responsibility for the unemployed through the dole system. This system, an affront to people eager to work for wages, is still with us but its root cause, the absence of real bill circulation, remains unrecognized. 4 *** Legal tender laws, representing the unholy alliance (not to say conspiracy) between the government and banks, have never been repealed. Governments have come to love the extra powers they acquired through false pretenses. The banks were happy to take the bribe. They shifted their loyalty from their customers to the government. In exchange for the privilege to create bank deposits without the restraint of a gold reserve, as was the case prior to 1909, the banks were prepared to buy all the government bonds that have found no willing buyers in the bond market. “You scratch my back, I scratch yours.” This conspiracy still goes on under a new ‘social contract’ in which bribe and blackmail has replaced voluntary cooperation. The connivance of academia and media, in particular, the loyalty of the economists’ profession and that of financial journalists, has been bought by the central banks’ eagerness to sponsor research. “Whoever pays the piper shall call the tunes.” Authors who were prepared to sing the praise of irredeemable currency were handsomely rewarded. Authors critical of fiat money need not apply. Most of the economists and financial journalists today are scribes for hire, selling their pen to the government and the central bank. Propaganda is passed on as research. Mathematics has been prostituted as never before in the history of the Queen of Sciences. Research papers on economics and monetary theory studded with formidable-looking but otherwise vacuous differential equations are presented as Holy Grail. The studied gestures and hocus-pocus of latter-day economists is similar to those of the priesthood in ancient Egypt. By virtue of their knowledge of astronomy ― knowledge denied to the general public ― Egyptian priests could predict eclipses of the Sun and other celestial events. They keep their audience in awe and in fear of their supernatural powers. The difference is this: while Egyptian priests were professionals representing state-of-art scientific knowledge, mainstream economists are charlatans and quacks who, while basking in their own glory, are totally incapable of predicting financial collapse even when it is staring at them in the face, as their miserable performance in 2007 showed. Worse still, they are totally incapable to admit their own mistakes. They are a curse on the body politic and a wart on the body academic. They are leading the world into an unprecedented monetary and economic disaster right now as I speak here. *** 5 Our present financial crisis is the epitome of a tragedy brought upon us by coercion in the monetary field. The way out of the crisis, and the way to prevent another great Depression, is through the restoration of freedom in the realm of money: through an adroit repeal of legal tender laws. The gold standard must be rehabilitated together with its clearing system, the bill market. The monopolistic nature of government debt in the bond market must be eliminated through bringing back the competition of the gold coin to the promises of the government. Bondholders dissatisfied with the rate of interest offered by the coupons arbitrarily attached to government bonds must have their rights restored to them: the right to park their savings in gold coins, as they did before 1909. In this way they could force the government to pay competitive rates of interest on private savings, All coercion in the monetary field must be stopped. The dignity of the individual must be respected. The present collectivistic frame of mind of the government must be discarded in favor of one favoring the individual, restoring freedom and the free initiative of man. A century is just a fleeting moment in history. The past one hundred years must be looked upon as a reactionary episode in our civilization, a mindless experiment with irredeemable currency. The experiment has failed miserably, as have all similar experiments in the past. Unless stopped forthwith, it will plunge the human race in unprecedented economic misery. It literally threatens the survival of our civilization and the entire system of our values. Freedom in the field of money will bring us peace and prosperity. Continuing coercion is the road to war and misery.">>> www.campaignforliberty.com 221,073

What I have found to be most appealing within the Jewish tradition is the love and encouragement of learning and questioning and the fact that they gave up the practice of human sacrifice of little boys which I discovered to my relief when i was..........a little boy. gulch

Here are a few perhaps relevant quotes from one of the more individualistically oriented Founders: "I was in Europe when the Constitution was planned, and never saw it till after it was established. On receiving it, I wrote strongly to Mr. Madison, urging the want of provision for... an express reservation to the States of all rights not specifically granted to the Union." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, 1802" "The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.-Thomas Jefferson" "Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." - Thomas Jefferson "I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."-Thomas Jefferson "Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now." - Thomas Jefferson www.campaignforliberty.com 220,801 and growing also in the high schools and colleges via www.YALiberty.com on over 150 campuses. These youngsters are to be burdened with the national debt which is exploding as Obama adds deficits each year exceeding $1.4 trillion dollars. You bet they are joining and passing the torch. The day will come sooner than you think when there will be tens of millions, enough to replace politicians of the statist type who ignore the Constitutional limits on Congressional power with those who will keep the oath of office to preserve the Constitution. gulch

The process of evolution based on natural selection is falsifiable. However no evidence gotten so far falsifies the theory and tons of evidence corroberate the the theory. The theory of evolution by natural selection which is interaction between the organism and the environment by physical processes governed by physical law is totally consistent with physics and chemistry and can be observed (in some cases) in real time. In other cases the processes is very slow and takes a long time (relative to human life-span) and must be inferred by indirect means. No better falsifiable theory has been proposed and the theory of evolution addresses a large range of biological phenomena. Intelligent Design is a looser. It is not falsifiable by any empirical means. It is NOT a scientific theory. Unless there is clear evidence for the existence of a Designer operating according to a design scheme consistent with observable phenomena the hypothesis is unsupported. Berlinski is a very clever chap, but his is more glib than profound. Ba'al Chatzaf As I understand it the Discovery Institute is renown for being an advocate of Intelligent Design and Creationism. There are many religious scientists which has always struck me as oxymoronic who support the Discovery Institute. To my way of thinking there is just the natural Universe and whatever has happened in reality has had a Natural explanation. The supernatural is simply fantasy and mythology no matter how many people live by some traditional theology or another. No matter how complex any observable feature is, whether it is the human clotting mechanism, the human eye, the movement of hundreds of billions of stars in a galaxy, the mechanism which gave rise to it are invariably natural and not supernatural. Creationism or intelligent design are nonsense. The burden of proof is upon those who claim their view is correct. So far the score is Science 100 and Religions 0 unless you count the comfort of adults who prefer reinforcement of their belief that if only one believes one will survive death for eternity. How grandiose, but one can understand the appeal.

GM, I recall my earliest encounter with a young man who turned out to be an Objectivist. It was over lunch with two other gentlemen and they were debating the ethical basis for certain job actions under consideration, in case the city didn't meet their demands. The first words he spoke were, "No man's needs constitute an obligation on the part of another man to fulfill those needs!" I have never encountered those words in the literature of Ayn Rand expressed in just that way although it is a theme which is certainly consistent with Objectivism as I have come to understand it. After the dust settled, as the others vehemently objected to the notion that is implicit in that assertion, I asked him to explain. He took my question to be a demand for proof as he acknowledged that the statement is not self evident and suggested that in order to derive it we would have to agree that certain axioms are true, (truth being an identification of a fact of reality) and we would have to accept certain laws of logic. Since you are an exponent of "logic" I thought you would find that reassuring. He said that was important because there are those who hold a different philosophy and to them there are different laws of logic depending on one's social class. I recall he mentioned that Marxists speak of "bourgeoisie logic" which allows them to discount the logical conclusions or rational thought. He went on to mention in that context that there are no contradictions in the Universe. He pointed out that a contradiction would be that something exists which does not exist or something possesses an attribute which it does not possess. Since there can be no contradiction with regard to the existence and identity of any entity, whether we are aware of that entity or not, and the Universe refers to all of the entities which exist, it follows, logically, that there are no contradictions in the Universe. It is simply a restatement of the Law of Identity, that things are what they are. That being agreed with, he next mentioned that there are two fundamental axioms from which it is possible to derive his earlier ethical statement, Existence and Consciousness. I acknowledged that I agreed. At this point I will digress to point out that if someone does not agree then the discussion may reasonably come to an end. As in geometry, if someone doesn't "get" the axioms, one cannot proceed to prove anything based on those axioms. If someone fancies that Existence does not exist one might, our of respect for their opinion, ignore him, since, by his own lights, he must not exist either. This brings to mind Ayn Rand's notion of the "stolen concept" where one attempts to use a concept while denying its genetic root(s). Assuming now for the sake of argument that you accept that there is indeed an objective Universe, Existence, which exists independently of our perception of it, and that there are entities, human beings, which possess a faculty of awareness, Consciousness, which includes the capacity for abstraction or conceptual thought, and that this capacity is under our own volitional control, then the concept of morality is meaningful in the first place. I will not go further to show that Man's Life on Earth is the only meaningful standard of morality and that each human being possesses the right to his or her own life, because of his or her own nature. Science can study Nature in all its ramifications. I will not list the sciences but it is reasonable to me to consider that everything is open to the scientific method including philosophy and even theology. One's conclusions ought to be based on rational evidence whether they are conclusions in the realm of physics, chemistry and biology or economics, psychology and philosophy. As Ayn Rand has proposed, reality will show.

here is the link to an article in the Canadian Free Press which goes into some detail about the First Lady's staff : http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/12652# The grand total cost of all the salaries is over $1.2M Good thing the wasteful Republicans are out so the Democrats can show us how to be frugal and thrifty. Your own tax dollars at work! www.campaignforliberty.com 220,564

Here is the link to a CBS article about Nancy Pelosi's response to the question "where in the Constitution is there authorization for a health care mandate": http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/55971 The article includes an audio clip of the question and Pelosi's answer: "Are you serious? Are you serious?" Ultimately a release from her office mentions the Interstate Commerce Clause after their initial response: "That is not a serious question!". What a relief it is to know they think their imposition of "involuntary servitude" is Constitutional. Had me worried there for a second. gulch

LV, And here we once assumed, as did Ayn Rand, that Greenspan would "somehow" adhere to his once professed beliefs and principles even within the belly of the political beast. Given the secrecy of the Fed and Greenspan's facility for obfuscating in his testimony at hearings we will probably never know just which decisions were made by him in which he submitted to political pressure instead of taking principled free market positions. At least Ron Paul mentions Ayn Rand in his new End The Fed book although he betrays his own failure to understand the nature of Altruism so clearly exposed by Rand and Branden in The Objectivist Newsletter which Ron Paul writes that he read. Ron Paul wrote an intro to Thomas E. Wood, Jr.'s Meltdown in which Wood does not mention any awareness of Ayn Rand at all, nor of Objectivism, although he strongly advocates the works of the Austrian economists. www.campaignforliberty.com 220,370