Category Archives: Legal/Political Columns

A collections of my popular ramblings concerning the law, Natural Law, and political issues. Enjoy!

What YOU Voted For

14 Tuesday Apr 2020

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Congratulations, voters of Amerika! You and your elected morons have done it yet again, though bigger than ever. Remember waaaay back, like a week ago, when your rats passed the biggest welfare bill in history? The one with the massive grant or loan fiasco for small bidnesses? Yeah, it’s already spent, with nothing to show.

One of the most celebrated pieces of the massive $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief package that’s just over two weeks old is on life support with no deal in sight to resuscitate it.

According to the latest projections, the Small Business Administration’s $349 billion appropriation for loans to eligible firms, which are forgiven if they use the money to keep workers on their payrolls, will run out of money by Friday.

And the Democrats want more money to waste. They’ll get it, and, really, why not? A reminder to the Republican, conservative, better than the Democrats, need a business man!! crowd: you got exactly what you wanted and now you’re getting what you deserve.

President Trump, with the support of Congress, is poised to preside over an unprecedented explosion of government spending that already is set to shatter deficit records and could grow further if plans for more coronavirus relief bills — nearing a potential total price tag of $5 trillion — become reality.

Even accounting for inflation, no modern administration has seen such levels of spending, covering everything from FDR’s New Deal to recession-era rescues in the early part of the Obama administration.

Not to worry: you still have your Constitution!*

*Constitution “temporarily” suspended.

MSM Notices the Evil of Usury

13 Monday Apr 2020

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In India.

Many families will instead resort to taking out loans at high interest rates in order to survive, while others will fall deeper into debt and end up trapped in bonded labour – India’s most prevalent form of modern slavery – according to activists.

India identified at least 135,000 bonded workers in its 2011 census, while the Australian charity Walk Free Foundation put the number at eight million in its 2018 Global Slavery Index.

Dear latecomers: this is a problem, a sin everywhere and at any interest rates. Thanks for siding with the good people in India, but you could have looked around and US or European town for the same or worse. Jubilee!

The Libertarian “Response”

11 Saturday Apr 2020

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Much like conservatives, when it comes down to it, libertarians have few if any principles.

“Libertarian though I may be, this is the right thing to do but, my goodness, we ought not to allow this situation to endure one moment longer than is absolutely necessary to save lives and preserve jobs,” he said last month. “We are implementing tonight in this bill at least a dystopian society.”

Libertarian principles of self-reliance and minimal government have been around for centuries. But they are being tested as never before in a time when much of the world, and many of their adherents, see a clear role for government restriction on basic liberties.

Blah, blah, blah – we all know where this is going: they’ll recommend more weed.

Brilliant Economist Notices The Obvious

09 Thursday Apr 2020

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That Princeton-Georgetown education is really paying off, let me tell you. Fed Chair Jay Powell says we’re going to hell in a handbasket.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell said Thursday the U.S. economy is in an emergency and is deteriorating “with alarming speed.” His remarks came shortly after the central bank unveiled over $2 trillion in new loans to keep the economy afloat as much of the nation goes into a lockdown to fight the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

In totally unrelated news, the long-lost bridge recordings from the SS Edmund Fitzgerald have finally surfaced. On the final log, Captain McSorley is heard saying, “It appears we are taking on water. Therefore, I have directed that the bilge pumps be reversed. The added ballast should surely solve our local emergency.”

We Are Rich!

09 Thursday Apr 2020

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I have some very good news for the pandemically-challenged! We Americans are just swimming in cash. So says one Jon Hilsenrath, writing in the WSJ today amount our collective and growing “mountains of debt.”

The Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank, will play the critical role of navigating the nation through the rising tides of debt. It sways the cost of debt service, whether inflation emerges and whether banks and other financial institutions can bear the burden of lending that the nation demands.

So far the Fed is getting high marks from President Trump and many economists and investors for moving quickly to make credit widely available, though it faces challenges and uncertainties deciding how far to extend itself and when and how to pull back. On Thursday, it announced more programs to support $2.3 trillion in lending.

I for one, am not tired of the winning! This is known as borrowing your way to prosperity. And, buddy, we’re there! The nifty chart Mr. Hilsenrath embedded in his article shows the grand fact that the nominal debt (not even including the really shady stuff) is now around 250% of the precious GDP. Praise be to someone! You’ll recall that we owe this to ourselves, so we are very wealthy from the accounts receivable point of view. In addition to whatever else they might own, each and every one of our 330,000,000 people in the nation-shaped kind of place can count as an asset nearly $200,000 from that mountain of golden debt.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow—
‘Shadow,’ said he,
‘Where can it be—
This land of Eldorado?’

Right here in the good old US of Empire, Eddie! The news gets even better! The Fed has announced – maybe more than once – that they’re flooding in another $2.3 Trillion in “gold” so as to “help” us. Something about Alexander Hamilton – and he’s a cool hip-hopper from Broadway or something. This adds a new Everest to the Himalayas of debt they’re created (for us!) in the past few months.

Now, don’t worry if you’re not Goldman Sachs. The money will trickle down to you little, unimportant plebs sooner or later. And, pay no attention to the negative Nancy’s talking about the worse depression ever. Just keep your eyes and your hearts set on your big piece of the mountainous pie. Tell ’em about it down at the breadline. Remember to stand six feet apart.

*Note: This column does not contain echoes when maybe it should. Sorry, I blame the (((virus))).

The Eternal ‘Dark Winter’ in America

08 Wednesday Apr 2020

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Snow in April?? Where’s “global warming” when we need it?

READ THIS from Unz.

The Dark Winter exercise began with a briefing on the geopolitical context of the exercise, which included intelligence suggesting that China had intentionally introduced Foot and Mouth disease in Taiwan for economic and political advantage; that Al-Qaeda was seeking to purchase biological pathogens once weaponized by the Soviet Union; and that Saddam Hussein of Iraq had recruited former biowarfare specialists from the Soviet Union and was importing materials to create biological weapons. It further notes that a majority of Americans had opposed a planned deployment of U.S. soldiers to the Middle East, which was also opposed by Iraq, China and Russia. The script also asserts that the soldiers were being deployed to counter and potentially engage the Iraqi military. Later, as the exercise unfolds, many of those Americans once skeptical about this troop deployment soon begin calling for “revenge.”

Amid this backdrop, news suddenly breaks that smallpox, a disease long eradicated in the U.S. and globally, appears to have broken out in the state of Oklahoma. The participants in Dark Winter, representing the National Security Council, quickly deduce that smallpox has been deliberately introduced and that this is the result of a “bioterrorist attack on the United States.” The assumption is made that the attack is “related to decisions we may make to deploy troops to the Mid-East.”

Not unlike what is unfolding currently with the Covid-19 crisis, in Dark Winter, there is no means of rapid diagnosis for smallpox, no treatments available and no surge capacity in the healthcare system. The outbreak quickly spreads to numerous other U.S. states and throughout the world. Hospitals in the U.S. soon face “desperate situations” as “tens of thousands of ill or anxious persons seek care.” This is compounded by “grossly inadequate supplies” and “insufficient isolation rooms,” among other complications.

Why, again, and how can anyone trust anything Washington says?

A Muddled Non-Ideology

07 Tuesday Apr 2020

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Charles Coulombe does a great job of defining the indefinable.

The point in this ancient and obscure history is that even with the best will in the world (and extremely educated people), “Conservatism” in America has always been well-nigh impossible to define, much less organize. Attempts to do so have rarely succeeded in the long run. After World War II, Russel Kirk attempted to do so with considerably more success than Collins (reflecting his own far greater depth and intellect). But this mixture, too, was unsteady; reaching its apogee with the election of Reagan, it blew apart afterwards with the fall of communism and had little effect in stopping the decay of American society.

A major part of the problem is that America herself lacks definition. Speakers on all sides of political spectrum will say such things as “America is more an idea than a country.” But that idea is sufficiently tenuous for players as diverse as the German American Bund and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to wrap themselves in it. In this writer’s opinion, what is needed is, first, a love of the country as it actually is, historical warts and all: its diverse peoples and customs and its real contributions to humanity—from cocktails to the Great American Songbook and the polio vaccine.

For the Catholic, however, this is only the beginning. At heart, the woes of these United States are not political but cultural—that is to say, religious. The best thing we can do about them is not to argue about whether Hamilton or Jefferson was “more American” but to strive our hardest to evangelize this country. A Catholic America would be truly something worth conserving.

Funny, but the definitions of “American” and “America” were crystal clear in the early days of the Old Republic. What slipped? I suppose it was yet another of the endless failings of these conservatives to conserve anything, even their own identity. It’s no wonder that they couldn’t conserve handshaking and toilet paper. A better goal would be the rebuilding of a Catholic or other Christian America. The way to do that is, after the dust settles on the current hoax, to reinstitute the traditional. One tradition we do not need is that of the non-ideology of conservatism. Take the bow ties and settle over in New Amerika or somewhere.

Separation of Church and State

03 Friday Apr 2020

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What happened to that? What happened to the “wall” from Jefferson’s letter and Everson V. BOE, etc? I suppose that only applied to running God and the Godly out of the government’s schools. Now, that the schools are all closed, the state has no problem whatsoever prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Worse, the churches and the people have gone along happily. It could be that, along with covering for the usurers, the hysteria was designed to empty the pews. This may be new but it isn’t normal.

“May” Need Help

01 Wednesday Apr 2020

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The rats begin to squeak:

“(In a) beyond-severely adverse scenario, then it could be that some banks are undercapitalized and at that point policy makers might have to take further actions such as recapitalizing or restructuring banking systems,” Adrian said.

Helping countries in times of distress was “bread-and-butter” work for an institution like the IMF, he added.

Translation: the global economy is in full meltdown. Bread and butter, like bread and circuses, comes to an end one day.

Remarkable Analysis

30 Monday Mar 2020

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Just moments ago, the babbling idiots on CNBC BRAGGED!!! about the multiplier effect, noting (correctly) that for every dollar in “public” loans from that hideous $2+ Trillion bailout, five to ten dollars in private bankster loans can be created. *Poof* Instant “money.” This sounds oddly like what Todd Vispoli tried to explain to the sheeple back on St. Paddy’s Day:

There used to be a ratio – nine to one or ten to one. For every dollar in public debt, they could technically manufacture another nine on the private side, though they didn’t always do it or have to. Now, that’s a thing of the past. There are, now, no reserves to manipulate. It’s all debt-based fakery and smoke, and now, they just print whenever and whatever they think will work. Or, that they think they can get away with.

They get away with a lot. And, people brag about it. So, two trillion could become ten to twenty trillion. Like magic.

Meanwhile, Orange Man is bigger than the Batchelor.

Welcome to Clown World, the pandemic edition.