Guest contributor Mindsweeper writes:
Free market idiots (including Ron Paul, the Austrian school and libertarians) finally have a right idea, but for all the wrong reasons!
Ron Paul: "Blame The Fed For The Financial Crisis"
What's absolutely astounding is that, according to these morons, it's "government" that is perpetrating these 'disastrous anti-free market' policies. The Fed is not the government; it is a bunch of greedy private bankers who have usurped the rightful government's constitutional power to issue and regulate currency in order to become increasingly wealthy at taxpayer expense, with zero risk.
Congress is not the rightful government. It has largely become a bunch of bought-and-paid-for (through campaign contributions) corporate stooges who have usurped control of the legal system, creating and maintaining corporate 'personhood' as the means to implement laws and policy which benefit corporate royalty (who decide campaign contribution amounts and recipients). This is done at the expense of ordinary citizens to bolster Congress' re-election chances (incumbents are re-elected with over 90% frequency).
The executive and judiciary are no longer branches of the rightful government'. They do not provide the 'checks and balances' intended by the 'separation of powers' mandated by the Constitution, only the 'checks and balances' to ensure that nothing can challenge Fed-banker' or 'Congress-corporation' power and influence. To have even a remote chance of being nominated for and winning the Presidency, a candidate must receive the stamp of corporate approval in the form of tremendous campaign contributions. Upon election, the President typically appoints members of the banking elite to positions at the Fed and the US Treasury. Other appointees (including to the Supreme Court) must be approved by the corporate campaign-donation-controlled Congress. Members of the Supreme Court are appointed for life by the corporate/wealthy-financed President; a recent noteworthy Court decision was Citizens United, confirming the corporate right of 'personhood under the XIV amendment' and allowing unlimited, anonymous corporate campaign contributions. What applies to the national political scene is equally true of state and local campaigns.
Lowering taxes on the wealthy, banks and corporations has directly facilitated this corruption of 'rightful government' by systematically giving top income bracket earners ever-increasingly more $$ at the expense of the remaining 90-99% of the US population. This 'free money welfare to the rich' has then been 're-invested' through campaign contributions, think tanks, religious organizations, influence-peddlers, lobbyists, media lackeys and revolving-door jobs/bribes/kickbacks to ensure that the wealthy-banking-corporate control of all 3 branches of government continues to grow unchecked. Existing undesirable laws are systematically changed so that there are few or zero consequences for immoral, unethical and illegal behavior. American crony capitalism is the horrific result.
At every juncture, right-wingers, libertarians, conservatives and tea partiers scream in unison: "Too much government! Socialism! Fewer burdensome regulations, lower tax rates for the wealthy 'job creators' and drastic cuts in government jobs and spending and will allow the 'free market' to solve all our problems!" But that is of course exactly what has led us to the current abyss: 'Too much (wealthy-banker-corporate) government! (wealthy-banker-corporate welfare and) Socialism! Fewer burdensome regulations (on wealthy-banker-corporations), lower tax rates for the wealthy (non-) 'job creators' and drastic cuts in government jobs and spending (except to the oil and agricultural conglomerates, defense contractors, homeland security complex and the surveillance industry) have allowed the 'free (wealthy-banker-corporations only) market' to create all our problems!
So, by all means, let's get rid of the Fed! But let's stop the bullshit and recognize it's only one aspect of the many-faceted 'too much (of the wrong kind of) government!'
