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aherodias.1

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Member since : Jun-01-2009 (Verified)
0 Ideas, 7 Comments, 1 Votes

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aherodias.1 9 months ago
Phylmike (Phyliss and Mike?):

I wish you could either a) stop posting this idiocy or b) take it to a different forum, preferably the former.

Just so's you know: There are many, many instances in which acts of government, substantial in their effects on the people, are passed in clear and flagrant violations of the Constitution. Your resort to that honored document to support a trivial cause is less than foolish, it's actually juvenile.

Couple of examples:

In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company [118 U.S. 394 (1886)], the Supreme Court decided that corporations are "persons" with the same constitutional rights as ordinary citizens, despite the fact that the 14th Amendment begins with the language "All persons born or naturalized in the United States..." I know I don't have to persuade you that corporations are neither born nor naturalized. I leave it to your judgment whether that decision in fact codifies corporations as constitutional "persons."

The Constitution definitively gives Congress the power to coin money and regulate its value (i.e., the content of the present discussion). Nowohere does it say that Congress can delegate these powers to private individuals or businesses. Yet as we know, both the Federal Reserve and many private banks create money daily, presumably justified by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

The Internal Revenue Act... and so on and so on. You may as well give it up. The USA does not support its own Constitution unless they find that the document rules in favor of corporations and banks.

Regarding Obama's birth certificate: I don't give a damn and why should you? He could be from Mars as far as I'm concerned, but given that as a man and as president he's about a thousand times an improvement over George W. Bush.

And by the way, Big Rooster (or should I call you Small Cock?), your argument that Islam is not a race is a tired and lame diversion. How about we lump all forms of bigotry into the same basket and I just call you a super-bigot whose opinions are not worthy to be heard?

As a result of the repeated racism I find in this thread, I am bowing out, regardless of compassionate encouragement from others (phirestalker). It's a waste of time to debate with fools.
aherodias.1 9 months ago
npolimeni :

Not at all. It seems I owe everyone in this thread an apology - I conflated some racist views I found on a different threat - put it down to old age and disintegrating brain cells.

While I don't necessarily agree with all of your analysis, I believe you have thought considerably about the money and banking issue.
In addition, I appreciate that you are coming forth with solutions. I should add that I belong to a group in Tucson that is designing a local currency. I personally like the approach taken by 4th Corner Exchange (www.fourthcornerexchange.com), but we are wrestling with the issue of how to combine a scrip issue with a ledger system.

Maybe I will get back on line, as well as participate in the forum recommended by Jere Hough.

Once again: I am sorry for my error! This has been one of the most enlightened discussions I have found on the web.
aherodias.1 9 months ago
To all:

While I have enjoyed the comments and analysis of many of you, I simply cannot abide the repetitive and tedious racist bigotry of those who cannot even admit they are racist bigots.

Further, these same people spout cliched and ignorant nonsense in a forum which is dedicated to discussion of a serious subject: How can we dismantle a monetary system that robs every working person of their labor and even, recently, of their life savings?

In any case, my tolerance has been exceeded. Perhaps I'll see this bright crew in a different location.
aherodias.1 9 months ago
While I expect that racism will creep into every public discussion of political issues, I am surprised that such virulent, blind bigotry should pop up on this site, where most respondents are thoughtful and intelligent people.

White Christians in this county grow up like fish in a white Christian ocean. I understand how this warps their perspective relative to every other human group. What I don't understand is how this immersion enables people to brand a single violent act by a person of X race and/or culture representative of the entire body of X race or practice.

Consider the following historical examples: Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczinski, Eric Rudolph, Terry Nichols, the bombing killers of 4 black children in church, the many who burn clinics that perform abortions (and the recent assassin of a clinic doctor), the Ku Klux Klan, The Weathermen, bombers of the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple of Atlanta, the Jewish Defense League, the killers of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit, The Armed Resistance Unit, The Order, the Earth Liberation Front, Lucas John Helder (The Mailbox Pipe Bomber), and so on and on.

Now all these people, while not necessarily Christian, were all to my knowledge white Americans. So based on this record of domestic terrorism, don't you think we should be going after white Americans as a class? Don't they at least rank with the 19 men who allegedly plane-bombed the World Trade Center?

After the Oklahoma City bombing, didn't you tell everyone you know, "You gotta watch out for these white Americans, especially the fundamentalist types. They can't be trusted and shouldn't be allowed to live in MY country"?

So would all of you racist creeps put a sock in it and give us all a break? You contribute nothing to a rational discussion and YOU deserve to be exiled from the good old USA.
aherodias.1 9 months ago
Phbura:

While I can see that you have some understanding of the operation of the Fed, I think it’s important to clarify the issue of “hard money”, which confuses many well-meaning people and clouds the issue of what is money and what is not.

The major justification given for having money “backed” by gold or silver is that these relatively rare metals hold their value and thus act as a brake on inflation; this idea was promoted by the hero of theoretical economists, Adam Smith. Unfortunately, Smith’s ideas, vigorously supported by bankers and their economist stooges, are based entirely on theory and do not rest on any verifiable data.

Smith and his followers, even up to the modern day, held that gold and silver have intrinsic value. So how do we measure this value? Obviously we look to see what the metals would buy X years ago and compare that to its purchasing power now or Y years ago.

There are numerous historical examples that prove just the opposite of the gold/hard money position, but two ought to suffice for now.

Throughout the 16th century, as gold stolen (or obtained through slavery) from native Americans made its way to Europe, gold, measured against staple commodities, lost 80 percent of its value.

Even more conclusive is the period from 1914 through 1919, when the US was firmly on a gold-backed currency, the value of gold coins (again, against commodity prices) dropped by 75 percent. Why? Probably because the European nations, already at war with each other, were pouring gold into US banks to buy our military supplies (Friedman and Schwartz, “A Monetary history of the United States”).

But whatever the reasons, gold and/or silver are no more stable than any other form of commodity money. Just because they are commodities their values are variable. So rather than putting forth empty theories about gold, wouldn’t it be better to rely on the historical data?

Regarding your argument that government-issued dollars lead to inflation: once again, facts are ignored in favor of Adam Smith, the most influential bank-whore of all time. You need to study the 17th and 18th century economies of the American colonies, especially the writings of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine, to understand the enormous value of a fiat currency the amount of which is sensibly controlled. Even when such controls are infeasible – during our Revolutionary and Civil Wars – fiat money was able to support huge government expenditures for years. You can find plenty of evidence that the greenbacks loss of value in the end was caused by speculative manipulation (see Hamilton’s national bank) and/or counterfeiting by hostile governments (Great Britain in both cases).

For heaven’s sake, even Hitler was able to support a tremendous military outlay for nearly six years on government-minted money (not that I would use him as an example for anything else).

If you want I can supply you with plenty of references to back up these arguments. Can you do the same?
aherodias.1 9 months ago
john66bessa

While I agree with your perspective on workers, exporting of jobs, service economy, etc., you’re over-simplifying the views on banking expressed in this thread. Of course monetary reform is only one facet of the kind of changes this society needs to take care of the real needs of real people and not just transfer wealth into the pockets of the wealthy. It would be great to replace the entire competition-for-profit economy with a truly humane system that honors everyone’s place in the world – but I’m content to work on a few important issues that stand a chance of implementation.

If you don’t think that bankers and banking are crucial, then how about this:

Senator Dick Durbin, the second ranking Democrat in the Senate, was interviewed on on WJJG 1530 AM's "Mornings with Ray Hanania." In that interview, the subject of which was banking reform, Sen. Durbin said, “And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."

Then this week, Collin Peterson, Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, told the New York Times, “The banks run the place,” He went on to say, “I will tell you what the problem is — they give three times more money than the next biggest group. It’s huge the amount of money they put into politics.”
Many brilliant people have noted that whoever controls the money supply controls the economy of a nation, and hence controls the government and all the rest.
But there’s one point on which you’re seriously off track. While it’s true that banks and corporations are indeed busy, with the assistance of our government, in shipping their businesses overseas where they can take advantage of cheap labor – your comments about “foreign rejects” coming from Latin America are pure bigotry. Unfortunately you’re swallowing the same old racist line of crap that the folks in charge have been ladling out to the working class since this country began.
And Badhack:
If you don’t think that discussion of a secretive process of creating money by private for-profit banks belongs in a forum on “open government” I don’t know what your idea of open government could be. Why is the issue of controlling money off the table when it is the principal factor in keeping our wealth so egregiously maldistributed?
The essential argument is that our government should be in charge of money creation, not a cartel of bankers. Nobody is arguing that the process of loaning money should be discontinued, just that it should be operated in its proper place.

And by the way, banks do not “loan” money. If you loaned me 50 dollars, you would not have access to those 50 bucks while I would. When a bank makes a “loan” it can credit your account for the dollars – and get to use the same dollars over again by “lending” to someone else!
aherodias.1 9 months ago
The current economic crisis provides a needed window through which we can see some of the fatal flaws inherent in our country’s system of finance. The practice of legally condoned counterfeiting of money, which has been carried on by banks since 1913, has managed to create a permanent funnel for the upward flow of wealth – from working people to financial parasites.
One topic not discussed here yet is how the creation of money by private banks has robbed the people of our country for a hundred years, since every dollar put in circulation this way reduces the value of every other dollar in existence – in other words, causing continual inflation. The second critical effect has been the imposition of compound interest on loans, leading to a national debt that can never be repaid but condemns every working man and women to fruitless labor for their entire lives. Ms. Brown expalins this phenomenon quite well in her book.
While Ellen Brown’s proposals are welcome, we should also be aware that legislation has already been drawn up (not for the first time, by a long shot!) that would resolve the issues that concern her and us, called the American Monetary Act, a bill supported by Rep. Kucinich. You can learn the details of this legislation at www.monetary.org.
Finally, in addition to Web of Debt I also encourage you to read Stephen Zerlanger’s The Lost Science of Money, National Economy by Arian Forrest Nevin, and anything at all by Frederick Soddy!
As a side comment: While the Federal Reserve has been attacked in good faith by folks like Ron Paul, these well-meaning people have not properly thought out the issue of commodity currencies such as gold and silver, which have since time immemorial been vehicles for transferring wealth for the people who already have it – including but not limited to the banks.