A LITTLE REBELLION

The US Empire, Unmasked

Watch this video about the largest wealth-confiscating, liberty-destroying government program in the history of the world: the US Empire. It truly is a monster, turning boys into killers, countries into mountains of skulls, and sucking out the soul of the last vestiges of true American liberty. War, as Randolph Bourne famously said, truly is the health of the state. 

Fascist Congressman Says America is at Risk of Fascism

In the most recent piece of irony coming out of the Imperial City, Representative John Hall (D-NY) told the New York Observer that America "is at risk of fascism."

"I learned when I was in social studies class in school that corporate ownership or corporate control of government is called Fascism," [Hall] told the New York Observer. "So that's really the question-- is that the destination if this court decision goes unchecked?"

The court decision he is referring to is Citizens United, the controversial Supreme Court ruling that led to greater corporate spending in the midterm elections, much of it anonymous. In the wake of the decision, Democrats tried to pass the DISCLOSE Act, which would have mandated that corporate donors identify themselves in their advertising, but the measure failed amid GOP opposition. Ads from groups with anonymous donors were particularly prone to false or misleading claims.

Hall said the influx of corporate money in the wake of Citizens United handed the House of Representatives to Republicans.

"The country was bought," he told The Observer. "The extremist, most recent two appointees to the Supreme Court, who claimed in their confirmation hearings before the Senate that they would not be activist judges, made a very activist decision in that it overturned more than a century of precedent. And as a result there were millions of extra dollars thrown into this race."

Congressman Hall is right, of course, but for the wrong reasons.

First of all, to claim that America is "at risk of fascism" is to say that a cancer patient is at risk of having some terrible health complications. America is fascist, Mr. Hall, and has been for decades.

Hall defines fascism as the merging of corporate and state power, and even if we use this soft and mealy-mouthed definition, all one needs to do is open up the Federal Register to see that this fascist phenomenon is not new.

Nearly every federal regulation that exists today is the result of large corporate interests using the coercive power of the state to restrict competitors. This is where licensing, tariffs, subsidies, eminent domain, and most taxation stems from.

But a more accurate and thorough definition of fascism makes Hall's comments look very unprincipled to say the least.

Fascism is more than just private-public partnerships. It is the doctrine that the citizenry be allowed to own a certain amount of property and have relative freedom to act with that property, but that every transaction, exchange, and use of that property be subject to intense state regulation and monitoring. Freedom with chains, and not very long ones either.

Using this definition, Congressman Hall is guilty of the same fascism that he hilariously decries.

Just take a look at his "legislative achievements" in the House.

He has voted to increase the minimum wage law and voted in favor of state-funded stem-cell research. Both of these propositions are fascistic at their very core: in the former, the government is violently interfering with the voluntary negotiations of individuals in the marketplace. In the latter, the government is restricting the liberty of citizens by forcing them to hand over a portion of the wealth in order to fund something they may or may not agree with.

And in Hall's most ironic act of fascism, he voted for Obama's "healthcare reform bill," a bill that was lobbied for and monetarily supported by large healthcare, insurance, and pharmaceutical companies. It's as close to both definitions of fascism as you can possibly get.

So Congressman Hall, I have a suggestion. Before you pout like a little girl that you're party got pummelled in the last election because of the same dirty tricks that you and your party have employed for decades, look in the mirror.

The irony and parody that comes out of DC truly knows no bounds. It's almost like having a President who criticizes his predecessor's reckless spending while running up kajillion dollar deficits. Oh wait...

Decentralize and Repeal

"Big Government and Big Business ... will try to impose social and cultural uniformity upon adults and their children. To achieve this they will (unless prevented) make use of all the mind-manipulating techniques at their disposal and will not hesitate to reinforce these methods of non-rational persuasion by economic coercion and threats of physical violence. If this kind of tyranny is to be avoided, we must begin without delay to educate ourselves and our children for freedom and self-government. Such an education for freedom should be ... first of all in facts and in values — the facts of individual diversity and genetic uniqueness and the values of freedom, tolerance and mutual charity, which are the ethical corollaries of these facts."

- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

One of the biggest and most harmful myths in American civic discourse is the idea that Big Business and Big Government are opponents of each other. We all learned that Teddy Roosevelt and the "progressive" movement sought to use the noble power of the federal government to protect us against the evil, greedy cartels.

But a more thorough investigation into the relationship between business and the state reveal that they are and have been more friends than enemies. As much research has correctly pointed out, most of the top-down, government "regulation" that was enacted during the Progressive Era --and legislation that continues to be passed today-- was either heavily lobbied for, or directly written by, large corporate interests.

At first, this seems like a paradox. But a proper understanding of the nature of the state and how it operates reveals that this corporate-state relationship is fairly easy to explain. State regulation tends to benefit big business by creating uniform standards that only large corporations with their army of lawyers can accommodate. Tariffs, licensing, subsidies, land grants, and war are all government distortions into the free marketplace that make it nearly impossible for smaller businesses to compete or even get started.

As John D. Rockefeller famously said, "competition is a sin." State intervention, always done in the name of the "public good," allowed Rockefeller's axiom to be nearly cost-free to him and many of his other fellow corporatists.

This is why I can't understand when critics of libertarians label us as "apologists for corporate power." I hate the influence of mega corporations on our media, economics, and culture, which is exactly why I want less, not more, cartelizing government intervention into the economy. As the great libertarian Murray Rothbard pointed out in an article recently posted by lewrockwell.com, the Panama Canal Treaty was favored by business interests. It was, as he put it, the Treaty that Wall Street wrote.

The inevitable question arises: how do we stop this centralizing corporate power from having more and more influence over our lives? The answer, as I alluded to above, lies in a simple process: decentralize and repeal.

Repeal the thousands upon thousands of federal, state, and local laws that restrict the entry of new businesses into the marketplace. End corporate welfare. This would have the effect of not only localizing economic control but also of removing the coercive apparatus of taxation and regulation over economic activity.

Larry Gambone at the Porcupine Blog has some great analysis about this issue:

Eliminating the fraud known as the corporation as the “fictitious individual” would have far-reaching effects. Rights and freedoms were meant for INDIVIDUALS, not corporations. In order to give corporations these rights they invented the lie that a corporation is an individual. Thus, attempts to control corporate advertising and Korporate Krap Kulture are met with loud shrieks of censorship, and since the corporation has the rights of an individual, it cannot be touched.

Remember that it is state law and state judges that have given the corporation the legal status of an "individual" and granted them the privilege of "limited liability." This, in essence, socialized the costs of corporate losses and makes shareholders, workers, and their pensions suffer the losses of their decisions as opposed to the CEOs themselves. This is not a free market, but fascistic crony state corporate capitalism.

Intellectual property law --law that exists not through experience and custom but through legislative fiat-- also has a similar effect on the economy. Gambone continues:

Patents are harmful because they allow the patent holder a monopoly. With a monopoly they can gouge customers through artificially high prices or inferior goods. Patents waste a lot of energy as people invent procedures to get around the patent. A royalty system, like that of song-writing, would allow inventors a good return without these harmful effects. Patents made Bill Gates the richest man in the world. Without patents, he would still be rich, but not anywhere near the same extent.

Large corporations benefit from intellectual property law in the same way that they benefit from the state's regulatory system: they can afford the costs and burdens that these restrictions on the free market create, and in turn, are rewarded handsomely for doing so.

In summary, as Gambone puts it, "stop the state from acting like a goon squad for corporations."

This means repealing, not adding, federal laws, which would have the effect of actually forcing large corporations to compete on an unrestricted market. Government could then focus on its real job (protecting individual rights from aggression) and not on helping corporations maintain their top-heavy profits with the use of state violence.

Decentralize and repeal! Why not give the actual free market a try?

Your Money Is Being Used to Fund Child Sex Slavery

It is the duty of every patriotic American to pay their taxes. Government knows best on what to do with your money, not you. After all, there are countries to bomb, industries to cartelize, and prisons to be built. Oh ya, and Afghan children to be sold into sex slavery:

Wikileaks Reveals U.S. Tax Dollars Fund Child Sex Slavery in Afghanistan

by Amanda Kloer December 08, 2010 11:20 AM (PT)

The now infamous Wikileaks recently released a cable from Afghanistan revealing U.S. government contractor DynCorp threw a party for Afghan security recruits featuring trafficked boys as the entertainment. Bacha bazi is the Afghan tradition of "boy play" where young boys are dressed up in women's clothing, forced to dance for leering men, and then sold for sex to the highest bidder. Apparently this is the sort of "entertainment" funded by your tax dollars when DynCorp is in charge of security in Afghanistan.

DynCorp is a government contractor which has been providing training for Afghan security and police forces for several years. Though the company is about as transparent as a lead-coated rock, most reports claim over 95% of their budget comes from U.S. taxpayers. That's the same budget that DynCorp used to pay for a party in Kunduz Province for some Afghan police trainees. The entertainment for the evening was bacha bazi boys, whose pimps were paid so the boys would sing and dance for the recruits and then be raped by them afterward. That's your tax dollars at work -- fighting terrorism and extremism in Afghnistan by trafficking little boys for sex with cops-in-training.

Peaceful Sedition

Now that the TSA --after over 7 years of treating Americans like cattle-- is finally coming under intense scrutiny, there have been a lot of suggestions and "reforms" proposed as the anger grows.

The worst I have heard have been the calls for using racial profiling to more effectively "catch terrorists" like they do in Israel. But like all attempts at "reform," they tap-dance around the root cause of the problem that the TSA abuses represent.

The TSA is basically a michrocosm for what the federal government would like to do to all of us if it had the chance, namely assume nearly absolute control and demand submission. It is more effectively able to do this since it claims it is doing so for the sake of that evil phrase, "national security," aka security of the State's dominion over the life, liberty, and property of the rest of us.

It's always revealing to look at how and why government programs are created to see their true nature. After 9/11 --the biggest security failure in the history of the US-- instead of heads rolling, the Bush Administration created the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA. In other words, the government failed in its job to protect us, and got more money and authority.

The justification for the TSA, repeated ad nauseum, is that it must pursue these policies in order to keep us "safe" from "terrorism." But instead of trusting our security to a government agency that eats bajillions of dollars and robs us of our dignity, I have a few simple suggestions.

First, end the empire. Stop the bombs, the sanctions, the propping up of dictators, and the military bases that scatter the globe that predictably lead to the blowback of terrorism on our shores.

Second, allow the airlines to create their own security. One of the biggest tragedies perpetuated by the federal government was monopolizing airport security, like foolishly banning pilots and passengers from defending themselves with privately owned firearms. Airline companies have far more of an incentive to protect their planes since it is they that bear the costs of crashes, hijacks, etc.

And finally, what you and I can do is engage in activity that irks the State the most: peaceful sedition. Opt out of the TSA's porno-scanner (see the fantastic website wewontfly.com), opt out, and refuse to consent. This quiet protest of non-compliance is not only the best thing every American citizen can do against the TSA, but the entire corporatist federal government as well.

Yesterday, Representative Ron Paul introduced legislation into the House addressing the TSA abuses, and encouraging Americans to peacefully disengage from airport authoritarianism. As usual, he gave an excellent speech in defense of civil liberties and privacy.

 

Don't Ban Toys, Ban Corporate Welfare

So the city of San Francisco, in all of it's authoritarian, "progressive" wisdom, is banning restaurants from putting free toys in high-calorie meals in an effort to combat child obesity.

Now nearly all justifications for government intervention into the economy are due to problems caused by previous government intervention, so I have a radical suggestion. Instead of banning toys, how about not subsidizing large agro-businesses that supply fast food chains? This would likely lead to a more decentralized agricultural market, since US government subsidies are little more than welfare checks for rich farmers:

The very policies touted by Congress as a way to save small family farms are instead helping to accelerate their demise, economists, analysts and farmers say. That's because owners of large farms receive the largest share of government subsidies. They often use the money to acquire more land, pushing aside small and medium-size farms as well as young farmers starting out.

Large family farms, defined as those with revenue of more than $250,000, account for nearly 60 percent of all agricultural production but just 7 percent of all farms. They receive more than 54 percent of government subsidies. And their share of federal payments is growing -- more than doubling over the past decade for the biggest farms.

What 'Free' Healthcare Looks Like

This chart that shows Obamacare's web of bureaucracy and corporatist lobbying was prepared by a Congressional committee, straight from the horse's mouth. Via LRC:

 

Obama's Corporatism

Contrary to the daily rhetoric heard from most mass media outlets, America is not nor ever was a "free market" economy. There have been times when the economy has been much freer than it is now, but there has always been State intervention at one level or another since this country's inception.

The intervention was relatively mild until about World War 1, when the federal government became a "war economy:" price controls, rationing, regulations, restrictions, and the emergence of central banking and fiat monetary manipulation through the Federal Reserve. It reminds me of Randolph Bourne's famous axiom, that war is the health of the state, and since the "Great War," the State has grown quite robust.

Since then, the American economy has experienced the merger of corporate and State power --corporatism, state capitalism, or what was once called FASCISM-- and all of its ugly, centralizing, and looting repercussions.

In fact, it's hard to find any private entity or industry that doesn't directly or indirectly benefit from State intervention like subsidies, the forceful restrictions of competitors, intellectual "property," and taxation. The Wall Street Journal or the public school textbooks might refer to America as a "free market economy," but a simple look around pokes a lot of holes in this claim.

Which brings me to a recent story about our current Corporatist-in-Chief, Barack Obama. Obama's "food czar," Michael Taylor, used to be the executive of Monstanto, a large, government-subsidized agro-business known for its bullying and preferential lobbying. Obama, the "progressive" public servant, is sure looking out for the little guy huh?

But wait, there's more. Obama's food czar Taylor just might represent one of the four horsemen of the food apocalypse:

It`s not enough that former Monsanto executive Michael Taylor is the Food Czar in Obama`s administration. Monsanto recently purchased Xe Intelligence Services. Xe is the new name for Blackwater, the largest private mercenary military outfit in the world. Within that same time frame, Bill Gates purchased 23 million dollars (US) of Monsanto stocks.

Let`s take a look at each of the four horsemen.

Michael Taylor

He was Monsanto`s chief attorney and lobbyist. He knows his way around the FDA and USDA since he`s influenced both agencies. Monsanto Mike was the one who pushed Monsanto`s rBGH (recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone) to help poison milking cows and consumers` milk. Then he made it illegal for non-cooperating dairy farms to display "no rBGH" on their milk cartons. He made life financially miserable for those dairy farmers who didn`t play ball.

Some suspect a Food Czar link with the current raw milk raids. After all, milk is Monsanto Mike`s familiar turf, and his chief administrative duty is food safety.

Monsanto

In case you`re not sure of Monsanto`s destructive nature, here`s a short list of Monsanto`s toxic products: Agent Orange, PCBs, aspartame, rBGH, and Ready Roundup. Google them.

Monsanto developed terminator seeds, forcing farmers to buy new seeds because they cannot be recycled after first harvest. Monsanto is the world`s leading GMO producer. And they sue farmers for violating patent laws when non-GMO farms` crops are inadvertently infested by neighboring GMO crops.

Monsanto is making sure they own patents on almost all other non-GMO seeds as well. Their stated goal is to own the world`s food production. Think food mafia!

Bill Gates

Under the guise of philanthropy, Gates is constantly funding vaccine development and distribution. This includes GM crops containing vaccines and mosquitoes to deliver vaccines. The targets of these developments are usually developing countries.

Vaccines have been exposed as carriers for sterilization agents in developing countries over the past two decades. Perhaps Bill Gates` comment on reducing the population by ten to fifteen percent with vaccines was not a slip of the tongue or taken out of context.

Gates is also funding the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The Gates Foundation hired Robert Horsh in 2006 when he was a director at Monsanto! The AGRA is a front for stripping African farmers of their traditional seed use and force selling them GM seeds. This type of operation has had tragic results for poor cotton farmers in India.

Xe AKA Blackwater

Blackwater has a history of black ops and secret illegal activities. Their services are available to corporate as well as government operations. They changed their name to Xe because of their soiled reputation for exposed dirty deeds in Iraq. As a private mercenary army, Blackwater has been able to terrorize targets under secret contracts, while enabling their employers to claim deniability.

Through different shell company names, Xe has developed secret contracts with several multi-national corporations. Jeremy Scahill, the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, has recently exposed Monsanto`s relationship with Xe.

According to Scahill, Cofer Black the director of Total Intelligence, one of Blackwater`s shell companies, started pitching Monsanto in 2008. Black is former CIA director with a nasty reputation. Now Total Intelligence is part of Monsanto. That division`s purpose is to covertly infiltrate anti-GMO activists and resisting farmers. This would enable splintering those groups, or even assassinating some key individuals.

We must resist the evil synergy of this alliance. Jeffrey Smith`s anti-GMO campaign with his Institute for Responsible Technology is a starting point.

Ah, what a perfect example of the revolving door of state capitalism, where the marketplace is taxed and coerced in order to help subsidize and protect the donors and lobbyists that re-elect the crooks in DC.

This economic fascism has given ordinary, hard-working Americans an incalculable tyranny of debt, inflation, taxation, stolen wealth, and cartelized industries that endlessly perpetuates every time there is a bread-and-circus show election.

Why not give the decentralizing, wealth-producing, bottom-up order of a truly free market a try?

 

We Are All Enemy Combatants

Remember when the Bush Regime bent over backwards twisting the language of the law to justify indefinite detention, torture, and the imperial presidency? This resulted in the term "enemy combatants," meaning someone who can be stripped of their rights without due process and thrown in a cage forever.

And most people seemed to accept this massive power grab since it was done in the name of "national security," and since the torturing would only be done to scary Muslim gooks that lurked around every corner.

But all empires eventually turn inward, and now the Beltway chickenshit war hawks are revealing exactly what "enemy combatant" means: anyone who exposes and threatens the established order of perpetual war, corporatism, endless taxation, and police state slavery.

Via Antiwar.com:

Former State Department official Christian Whiton made his position clear, urging the president to designate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as an “enemy combatant” and calling on the Cyber Command to launch attacks against “any telecommunications company” that they believe are in league with WikiLeaks.

Others raised the prospect of sending Assange to Guantanamo Bay, America’s favorite legal black hole. Still others insisted that the military should be “waging war” against the whistleblower organization, which has released nearly half a million classified documents showing a myriad of US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Bailouts Are Working

It turns out that the trillion-dollar bailouts of the auto and banking industries that have been passed in the last two years are actually working.

The federal government exists to spend massive amounts of other people's money on itself and its friends, and the job of politicians is to spend this money and their time getting re-elected.

According to the Washington Post, the bailouts are serving their intended purpose beautifully:

Companies that received federal bailout money, including some that still owe money to the government, are giving to political candidates with vigor. Among companies with PACs, the 23 that received $1 billion or more in federal money through the Troubled Assets Relief Program gave a total of $1.4 million to candidates in September, up from $466,000 the month before.

In other words, the bailouts were not to "save the economy" or "save jobs," but the classic political con: spend, spend, spend, elect, elect, elect.

And even though the TARP program was passed under the evil Democrats, the evil Republicans are reeping the benefits:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) was a fierce critic of the federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler last year, saying he could not "ask the American taxpayer to subsidize failure."

But GM doesn't seem to hold a grudge.

The political action committee formed by the company, which is now largely owned by taxpayers, cut McConnell a $5,000 campaign check in September, a small piece of the $190,000 it donated to campaigns in the past month.

So let me get this straight. A vote for the Democrat snakes will give us corporatist bailouts, and a vote for Republican crooks will give us corporatist bailouts.

No thanks. This is one of the many reasons to vote for NO ONE in November.

Britain To Cut 600,000 Government Jobs!

For decades, Great Britain has slowly morphed itself into an Orwellian nightmare. The combination of a vast police state, an overseas empire encouraged by the US, and extensive government welfare programs has turned Britain into a poorer country with the largest government debt in the entire European Union.

But some in Britain are realizing that their welfare-warfare state can not go on forever. A few weeks after the Cuban government plans to eliminate one million government jobs, Britain is following the same sobering path by making their biggest spending reductions since WW2.

These cuts include an average of 19% of the budget, 600,000 government jobs which includes the budgets for welfare, police, and councils. In the next four years, $81 billion will be cut from the British State.

And this is incredibly encouraging news. Anytime the parasitical confiscation of the State is reduced it is always a good thing, and look for the spontaneous, voluntary order of the marketplace that emerges when coercive power of the State is reduced or abolished to flourish.

Here's British Chancellor George Osbourne revealing the plan for cuts:

 

Now if only an axe was applied to the American corporatist welfare-warfare state!

Manufacturing Hobgoblins

I have always been skeptical of trendy panics that (intentionally?) generate mass hysteria, especially when it's brewed up by the government. When it comes to the motives of politicians warning us about "terrorism," "Islamic extremism," or "global warming," I have one simple rule: guilty until prove innocent.

Because as the great H.L. Mencken said:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary..."

And there's a quite a lot of evidence to suggest that Mencken was speaking with more than just hyperbole. Political rule is the art of manufacturing fear for the purpose of instilling controls, consolidating power, centralizing wealth and property, and expanding the size and scope of the State. A scared population is easily lead, and since government ultimately deprives its authority on the consent of the governed, resistance begins to wither.

Plus, it's downright unhealthy. Remember the big, scary "swine flu" panic? That turned out to be a predictable bust. But you can bet the pharmaceutical industry made a killing poisoning people with antivirals trembling Americans subjected themselves to because "their" government told them to. Ironically, this is the same government that waged chemical warfare by dropping the pig flu on Cuban cities.

Creating panic and disorder is what States tend to do, and in that panic,  coercive and draconian laws are passed to give the illusion of order.

Here's Dr. Mercola in a recent article concerning the dangers of antivirals and vaccines:

Following a Lancet Infectious Diseases report of the spread of a new drug-resistant superbug spreading from south Asia, news agencies have reported "panic" over the germs' possible consequences.

Writing in the Guardian, for example, editor and columnist Sarah Boseley said:

“The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to knock out.”

Take the issue of healthcare in our country. Last year, American public debate was dominated by President Obama's "health care reform," spewing daily scare stories about "rising prices," "greedy insurance companies," and "the uninsured." These are legitimate concerns; however, the problems of healthcare are a direct result of State intervention dating all the way back to the early 20th century, not the free market. Obama's plan? Pass a bill that was lobbied, written, funded, and supported by the ugly pharmaceutical and insurance industry that government policy (through medical licensing, subsidies, regulations ec.) created.

As Mises pointed out, State intervention is always cyclical, stepping in and "fixing" problems it is usually responsible for, and it is no coincidence that the solution usually requires restrictions and taxation. So this winter, I will avoid flu shots, hand sanitizers, or any other trendy corporatist-Statist products and do what I always do: wash my hands, rest if I get sick, enjoy my dignity and some of the last bit of liberty I have.

Repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell!

It's time to finally end one of this country's greatest injustices, the US military's official policy of "don't ask, don't tell" when it comes to civilian casualties. Just in this century, the Empire has killed at least a million Iraqis and thousands of Pashtuns in Afghanistan, with barely a murmur from the State-stenographers in the media. This policy is intentional, of course. As war criminal Tommy Franks once said, "we don't do body counts."

Because if a majority of American were aware, or cared, about our killing fields all over the globe, they might start to question some of the nauseating cliches that are indoctrinated into our minds by State schools and the mass media. Like how the U.S. government is "exceptional," "benevolent," bringing "liberty and democracy" to backwards people everywhere.

People might just come to the conclusion that the State is NOT a public servant, but a parasitical monster, looting, taxing, controlling, coercing, and killing in service of its political interests and the interests of those who cozy up to it. This is why it spends millions of dollars every year convincing you otherwise, the manufacturing of consent.

Without these myths, without the consent of the majority of the population, the State falls apart. For the sake of peace, individual liberty, order, and the free production of goods and services, it won't come soon enough.

On a side note, I just can not comprehend the national attention given to the other "don't ask, don't tell" policy concerning gays in the military. Why would ANYONE fight for the right to participate in the slaughter and destruction of villages, cities, and entire countries, to come home with missing limbs so that Lockheed Martin's stock goes up a few points? Gays have been persecuted for far too long by governments; they deserve better than military slavery.

1 in 7 Americans Now Live in Poverty

From the AP:

The ranks of the working-age poor climbed to the highest level since the 1960s as the recession threw millions of people out of work last year, leaving one in seven Americans in poverty.

The overall poverty rate climbed to 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million people, the Census Bureau said Thursday in its annual report on the economic well-being of U.S. households. The report covers 2009, President Barack Obama's first year in office.

The AP and other media outlets may blame "the recession" for these frightening numbers, but it is a bit more complex that.

Maybe, just maybe, it might have something to do with the fact that Americans have witnessed an incredible growth of the size and power of the federal government. In fact, the US government is BY FAR the largest, most intrusive, most wealth-destroying, most deadly government in history.

Let's just briefly look at some of the ways the federal Leviathan makes all Americans poorer, especially the middle-class and poor.

First of all, there's the Empire, and it's accomplice, the Federal Reserve. $1 trillion a year is "spent" on the empire budget, meaning that every year Americans are compelled to transfer a huge portion of their hard-earned money to the Pentagon so that Boeing can sell more airplanes. This could not exist, however, without the Federal Reserve, a large central bank that manipulates credit, prints money, and bails out corporations and banks, all the while reducing the value of the average Americans' dollar.

Then there is the less apparent, but still destructive, government actions that discourage the production of wealth. Top-down, uniform regulations, licenses, tariffs, quotas, subsidies, land theft eminent domain; all of these policies restrict the free marketplace, cartelize industries, and raise prices. Who fits the bill? The poor and the middle-class. Who suffers? The poor and the middle-class.

Noticing a common theme here?

The State likes to position itself as a defender and protector of "the little guy," but through history it has been little more than an institution for the wealthy and powerful to have a cost-free, coercive way to keep the poor in their place.

All of the aforementioned government polices that restrict or prevent the production of goods and services (i.e, wealth) are even more tragic due to a concept many tend not to focus on: opportunity costs. Frederic Bastiat, the great French economist and philosopher, referred to this as the "broken window fallacy."

Since government has no money that it does not forcibly remove from others, there are tremendous opportunity costs every time the State does something. An Egyptian pyramid built by the Pharaoh's State sure looks grandiose; it's tall, beautiful, there it stands! But what is unknown and unseen is what could have been produced had the State not confiscated the wealth and bodies of the population to construct it.

The same goes for a military base, a NASA launch, or a large and soulless paper-pushing government building. Anytime you see one of these, just imagine the capital, investment, tools, gadgets, inventions, labor-saving devices, and WEALTH that could have been created by the market. Things that people actually value since they voluntarily spent their time and effort producing them.

The opportunity costs of the State are incalculable, to the detriment of all of us, especially the poor. This is why I lose sleep at night.

The Muslims Are Coming! The Muslims Are Coming!

When it comes to using propaganda and fear to stir up war hysteria and the expansion of state power, the Soviets and Nazis have nothing on the U.S. government.

To be fair, the U.S. government has been at it a lot longer, but this does not take away from its effectiveness.

In the first few years of the infant republic, Congress passed a series of laws, dubbed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which gave the federal government the authority to deport those "dangerous to the peace and safety to the United States," without a trial, during peacetime.

A little over a hundred years later, President Woodrow Wilson, in a stroke of originality, passed the Alien and Sedition Act, which gave the federal government sweeping powers to do what government enjoy doing: spying, snooping, and kicking in doors. Thousands who opposed Wilson's war machine were subsequently arrested and jailed for years.

Then there was the "Red Scare," where the U.S. government intentionally hyped up the Soviet threat and warned Americans of a vast communist conspiracy; there was a Red under every bed! Give us your liberty, sheeple, and we'll hunt them down. Give us your wealth and property too, and we'll incinerate some commie Asian villages too.

The latest scare campaign is the supposed controversy over the "ground zero mosque" being built in New York City. According to almost every news outlet that leans to the Right (i.e. authoritarian), this mosque represents a vast Islamic conspiracy to impose sharia law on Christian America. And did you know that the Imam refuses to "condemn" Hamas!?!?!?!

Never mind the defense of private property rights. Never mind that there are already hundreds of mosques in New York. Never mind (what's left of) our first amendment and the supposed protection of religous freedoms. Never mind that Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and other big government statists refuse to condemn the terrorism committed by the U.S. government. Mosque = Muslim = terrorist, and the club of the State needs to be used against these savages before they blow us up. Kill or be killed.

The fact that this ground zero mosque is even an issue is a sad testament to how anemic American debate is. Without any contradictory opinion, it is simply assumed that Islam was responsible for the savage murders of 9/11. But U.S. support for the Israeli government's crimes? Sanctions on Iraq? U.S. military bases in Muslim holy lands? Nah, these had nothing to do with it.

The ironic part of this whole controversy is that no one seems to be bringing up the very influential and powerful religious crazies here at home. Just listen to good ol' Pastor John Hagee:

Hagee has millions of evangelical Christian followers in the United States, and a lot of them vote and donate lots of money to political campaigns. This megolomaniacal nonsense also has significant presence in the Pentagon and the military (some have dubbed it the "Pentacostalgon"), where being anything other than a fundamentalist Christian is severely looked down upon.

And the fear-mongering just rolls on. If you ask me, no Muslim has ever confiscated part of my paycheck to fund empire and corporate welfare, regulated what I eat, smoke, or consume, restricted economic activity with licensing and taxation, or murdered 1/10,000th of the people "my" government has.

And I'm supposed to be scared of a mosque?

Thanks to Wikileaks, the Regime is Nervous

Writes Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com:

The reaction to the Wikileaks exposure of US war crimes – and Afghan corruption – has been quite interesting: the President responded by averring that there’s nothing new here, that "the fact is these documents do not reveal any issues that have not already informed our public debate on Afghanistan," but the facts are quite different, as anyone who peruses even a small sampling of the documents – such as is offered by the Guardian via a convenient interactive map – can readily ascertain.

I'm sorry, Mr. President, but what public debate? I can recall you out-hawking the bloodthirsty John McCain on who wanted to bomb more villages, but I don't ever recall a "debate."

And I can see why.

After all, the public debate was certainly not informed of the existence of "Task Force 373," an American assassination squad that roams the Afghan countryside wreaking murder and mayhem at Washington’s direction – and that killed seven children, as revealed by the Wikileaks document dump, in a strike at a supposed terrorist compound. And the public was definitely not informed that US intelligence had picked up evidence of Osama bin Laden’s personal participation in a series of meetings on the Afghan-Pakistan border as late as 2006, as revealed in the documents. Certainly the public debate could have been better informed if Leon Panetta’s interlocutor could have asked him about that when the CIA director, in a recent televised interview, denied having received any new information as to bin Laden’s whereabouts "in years."

The Pharoah is afraid. He currently presides over the largest domestic and international empire the world has ever seen, a combination of welfare-warfare corporatism and a large spying and policing apparatus at his fingertips. Who wouldn't be panicking if this power was under threat?

Presidents tend not to to enjoy when private citizens stand in their way. For over three years, Ramses Obama has been calling the war in Afghanistan "the good war," and has gotten his wish as it spills further into Pakistan. More war means more contracts, and more contracts leads to more contributions and re-election. Then more power. Then repeat.

So naturally, he's out to get rid of this little nuisance, whose work might just get more and more Americans to recoil from what "our" government does with our property and in our name. The Pentagon is now "desperately searching" for Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks, for ruffling feathers and exposing their crimes.

Also, Julian Assange has recently put up an "insurance policy" on Wikileaks that catalogs and lists all of the leaks from the Afghan War Diary. He is probably aware of the large target on his chest, and is not taking chances in making sure that this information is spread. I urge anyone to download the file and keep it on their computers as a testament to the brave work of Assange, Bradley Manning, and Wikileaks.

UPDATE: The Pentagram is closing in. They just arrested one of Wikileak's editors,  Jacob Applebaum. Here's Applebaum on the nature of political authority: "all governments are in a continuum of tyranny."

The Opposite of Progress is...

Oh, Congress, how you never fail to disappoint. From John Dennis' website:

Former Ways and Means chairman Charlie Rangel was formally charged with ethics violations today. He was taking corporate cash for two Caribbean conferences then going back to D.C. and writing tax law.

Who says that Congress doesn't represent the people? Sure, they happen to be the people who hand them large suitcases filled with cash, but that's just semantics. Big Pharma, Big Labor, and Lockheed Martin are people too, okay? Even some really important people in black government robes said so.

Rangel, like most Congressmen, belongs in prison. But to be fair, Rangel's actions are rather mild compared to what Congress usually is up to. After all, this imperial chamber is filled with war criminals, drunks, felons, torturers, wiretappers, and economic dictators.

It's members (and those who cozy up to it) live fat and happy off of our sweat and labor, coercing and taxing, creating thousands of laws to make sure our chains are nice and tight. George McGovern once said it "reeked of blood."

If it suddenly vanished, would you miss it?

The National Security State

As part of it's "Top Secret America" investigation, The Washington Post has run two articles (here and here) in the last two days about the rise of the vast "intelligence community" after 9/11. 854,000 people (including 265,000 private contractors) now have "top-secret" clearance and even closer access to the bajillion dollar trough at the government's finger tips.

Apparently, fear is incredibly profitable. The U.S. government has spent billions telling us to be very, very afraid of terrorists. All they need is more of your liberty, property, wealth, and some poor farm boys for cannon fodder to keep us safe.

The American sheeple shrug, and passively accept the TSA porno-scanners, wiretapping, and militarized cops.

It's the perfectly fascist mix of state power and corporate merchants of death, keeping eyes and ears on all of us, watching for any sign of disobedience or opposition to the looting. Rebellion is treason. Obey your masters. Slavery is freedom. Got it?

Wikileaks: Enemy of the State

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong" -Voltaire

Wikileaks has been in the press a lot lately since they leaked the now infamous video of U.S. Apache helicopters blowing some Iraqis and some journalists up like bugs.

They have already released more classified information than the rest of the dinosaur media combined.

And according to its founder, Julian Assange, that video is just the beginning of what they have. Because of this the U.S. government is after him, meaning he is a hero.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The No-State Solution

(via Examiner.com)

Because the American media's coverage of real news is so anemic, Americans' knowledge and understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is tragically wrapped in simplistic rhetoric and black-and-white portrayals.

But this conflict is at the heart of the U.S. Empire and the terrorism aimed at our shores. Since 1968, Arab terrorism can be directly attributed to the U.S. government's unwavering and blind support for the self-destructive and murderous policies of the Israeli government. Every year, Americans have a portion of their liberty and property confiscated in order to provide Israel with F-16s, white phosphorous, helicopter gun ships, and an unconditional defense of Israeli aggression, even when they intentionally kill American citizens.

Even Mass-Murderer "David" Patraeus has admitted that the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank --and the starvation, malnutrition, and utter poverty that has resulted-- is one of the main reasons that Arabs are willing to commit terrorism against the U.S.

The common denominator of this conflict, and of nearly every friction that occurs between peaceful, cooperative human behavior, is an excess of government power.

This is because governments are always at war. When states occasionally blow off steam and level a few villages, this is the direct and visible side of this constant warfare. But what is generally unseen is that governments are continuously at war with their own citizenry. Governments, despite thousands of years of self-aggrandizing propaganda, are nothing more than parasitic institutions with the moral authority of compulsion, theft, and violence over the citizenry.

If asked to voluntarily contribute to the full-scale slaughter of Palestinians or to the subsidizing of brutal Arab dictators that also oppress Arabs, most Americans would probably say no; they have better things to do with their money. This is why it has to be paid for through theft and compulsion (taxation), and sugar-coated with national-security propaganda.

The same goes for the Israelis living under the current right-wing Likud regime. The American press might tell you that Israel is "the only democracy in the Middle East" fighting the good war alongside the U.S. against Muslim ragheads, but Israeli citizens aren't buying this spoon-fed war racket. Israeli media outlets like Ha'aretz and The Jerusalem Post are highly critical of the Israeli government's counter-productive and militaristic policies, and their pro-peace leanings are far closer to the pulse of ordinary Israelis than the war planners in Tel Aviv.

And it's not just the Israeli citizenry that is sick and tired of the Israeli government's now 40-year occupation of Palestine. Israeli soldiers are beginning to refuse to kill for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

These brave Israeli soldiers, who have seen up close how ugly this apartheid is, are beginning to question the wisdom of what they are told to do: indiscriminately kill, no questions asked. Asking questions is what all States hate, of course, and the refusal of soldiers to carry out orders is a beautiful and liberating form of peaceful sedition.

Against the sentiments of these Israeli soldiers and a growing faction of Israeli citizens that are saying enough is enough, are the attitudes of the people that claim to "represent" the interests of their subjects.

For example, the web has been buzzing with the footage of war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netan-yahoo bragging about how he personally helped derail the Oslo Accords.  According to Bibi, American foreign policy is "easy to manipulate," and that the only way to deal with Palestinians is to "beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it's unbearable."

Despite the actions that Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans would likely take if left to their own devices --namely, peace, commerce, and minding their business-- their respective governments do the exact opposite in promoting corporatism, bogeymen, and endless war to serve the interests of themselves and those who cuddle up to the State.

This is why I have never been able to understand the calls, though well-intentioned, for a "two-state solution." I would definitely agree that the formation of a sovereign Palestinian state would be a far more preferable situation to the current apartheid regime.

But the Palestinians have suffered too much and for too long under the thumb of a foreign state; they (and all of us) deserve better than a parasitic, destructive, coercive, top-down institution like a state. Why trade a foreign occupier for a domestic one?

Instead of putting our faith in the same institutions that have created a majority of the modern problems plaguing the Holy Land, here is a radical, but simple, idea: a no-state solution.

Wait a second...no state? Why, that would be anarchy.

But before you scoff, just look at what large, centralized States have created in Palestine.

Prior to the creation of the state of Israel, Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived together in Palestine much more peacefully than they do now. They of course had, and will always have, their differences; but differences are far more easily managed without a nearly cost-free, centralized outlet of violence, exploitation, and oppression like the State.

President Truman's advisers realized this. After Truman immediately recognized the state of Israel in 1948, they warned him that this would be detrimental to American interests and peace in region. Israel would be trapped in a blur of perpetual warfare, they argued, and better to be neutral and not add fuel to the fire by taking sides.

Hamas, an organization that Israel uses a justification for the bombardment and deliberate starvation of the Gaza Strip, is also a product of the State. The U.S. and the Israeli governments did not like the power and influence of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and in order to combat this, funded and supported Hamas, at the time just a small group of individuals frustrated with the Israeli occupation. Governments have no concept of the long-term consequences of their actions, since they are nearly immune to the costs of their decision making.

The Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip and the subsidizing of settlements into Palestinian land --both large government programs-- have the effect of essentially banning free-market capitalism and trade, to the detriment of all parties involved. As Frederic Bastiat famously noted, "if goods don't cross borders, armies will."

Additionally, the Israeli government treats their own citizens like cattle. They are forced to serve in the IDF, and there is nothing more degrading, more detrimental to peace, than military slaves.

The same goes for the Palestinians. The groups that claim the right to rule over the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, are police-states that routinely abuse the rights and dignity of Palestinians. Random bomb blasts, assassinations from masked gunmen, torture, no access to lawyers, politically motivated arrests, indefinite detention, and the banning of peaceful protests are the norm.

Compared with this legacy of state power over the region, a no-state solution --where individuals act voluntarily in a marketplace, engaging in peaceful, mutually-beneficial interactions-- sounds like an idea whose time has come.