![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/images/quotes_7a.gif)
Police State • This Is What Tyranny Looks Like
May 18, 2013
This Is What Tyranny Looks Like
Bryce Buchanan
Here is a woman we will need to learn much more about in the coming weeks. Sarah Hall Ingram is a highly valued employee at the IRS. In the last three years she has received $103,390 in bonuses for her excellent work. She was the Commissioner of the Tax-Exempt and Government Entitles Division. Under her leadership, groups that expressed a fear of large, out-of-control government were systematically crushed by her branch of our large, out-of-control government. They were specifically singled out for harassment for political reasons. Secret information about the conservative applicants was leaked to leftist opposition groups to facilitate further harassment.
This was an organized political operation using State power to silence opposition voices. It is part of every tyrant’s playbook. It tells you everything you need to know about the current state of our country to see that those who favor a limited government, the explicit goal of our founding documents, are now considered enemies of the State.
In a 2009 speech, Ms. Ingram explained her approach:
As a practical matter, we cannot subject every application for tax-exempt status to a painstaking, leave-no-rock-unturned review. Nor can we audit every organization’s 990 every year. Nor would you want us to do so, right? To govern is to choose, and we must choose appropriately which applications or 990s to focus most attention on.
It is clear now that by "choose appropriately", she meant to harass the limited-government groups endlessly and let liberal and Islamic groups sail right through the approval process.
The good news is that this woman is no longer in charge of that department. The bad news is that she has been promoted and is now the head of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office. She and her comrades could have access to all your medical records. They will "choose appropriately" who has trouble with the state-controlled medical system and who sails right through. They will decide if it is appropriate to share your medical history with others.
But don’t worry. I heard the outgoing IRS Commissioner say in Friday’s congressional hearings that he has reviewed the situation and found that there was "no partisanship" in the years-long practice of singling out conservative groups for IRS harassment. None at all. There is just no reason to think that specifically targeting one side of the political spectrum had anything to do with politics.
And when Commissioner Steven Miller was asked why conservative groups were targeted for prolonged scrutiny, he said that it just happened because people were trying to be efficient. Sure. Months and months of delays with endless demands for more paperwork is the efficient way to go.
Miller was forced to admit that secret information gathered from certain conservative groups was passed along by the IRS to their leftwing political opposition. So the IRS illegally gathered information and illegally passed it along for political reasons. Mr. Miller said that these actions were "inadvertent".
There is more evidence of direct lies from IRS officials in Kevin Williamson’s column, "The Nine Lies of Lois Lerner". One thing we learn from Williamson’s article is that the current campaign by some officials to act surprised and disappointed by the news of IRS criminality is just a scam to deflect their own culpability. Everyone knew the Inspector General’s report on the IRS was about to be released. The IRS needed to jump ahead of the report and act concerned. They were not concerned for years prior to being caught.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 … _like.html
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Sat May 18, 2013 12:49 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Senator Reid spins out, This is not the first time the IRS was used as a tool to target political opponents. (Thanks for the newsflash Senator, guess that makes it OK)
The IRS and the income tax are very powerful tools of coercion. Do I think the tactics employed against Tea Party groups recently would be employed by a big government “conservative” against groups which challenged his or her authority?
OF COURSE!!!
Is This the Libertarian Moment?
David Boaz
In 2008 Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch hailed a “libertarian moment,” encompassing everything from the Internet to the collapse of “legacy” industries and legacy entitlement programs. I’ve used the same term here, when NPR talked about Ron Paul and when polls showed rising support for smaller government, gay marriage, and drug legalization.
But suddenly, today, everyone seems to see a libertarian moment. Driving in to work, I got so tired of the smug self-satisfaction on public radio’s pledge drive, I switched to the vigorously right-wing Chris Plante Show just in time to hear Plante say, “This is a great day for libertarianism” in regard to the abuse-of-power stories dominating the mainstream media.
And then, mirabile dictu, I got to the office, opened the Washington Post, and found today’s column by Michael Gerson. Now, as he says in today’s column, Gerson is “conspicuously not a libertarian.” Indeed, he is the most vociferously anti-libertarian columnist in contemporary punditry. And yet his column today is titled (in the print paper):
Making libertarians of us all
Man, you’ve got to abuse power something awful to make Michael Gerson start thinking libertarian. So thanks, IRS and Justice Department!
And now that the Obama administration’s abuse of power has got our attention, can we broaden our focus to take in health care mandates, recess appointments, campus speech regulations, the anti-constitutional Independent Payment Advisory Board, similar extra-legislative bodies in Dodd-Frank, the expropriation of Chrysler creditors, and illegal wars?
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Agriculture • US Corn Planted At 28%, Normally 65% At This Time
Corn planting races to 28 percent
Angela Bowman, Staff Writer | Updated: 05/13/2013
Farmers took advantage of the break in wet spring weather in a rush to plant crops before the next round of rain.
The USDA’s latest Crop Progress report showed that 28 percent of the nation’s corn has been planted, compared to 12 percent last week. This is lower than the five-year average of 65 percent and significantly behind last year’s speedy pace of 85 percent.
All reporting states made progress from last week — thanks to a window to dry weather. However, four states in particular are substantially behind their five-year average:
State
May 12, 2013
2008-2012 Average
Difference
—-percent—
Illinois
17
64
47
Iowa
15
79
64
Kansas
31
73
42
Minnesota
18
68
50
Two states – Nebraska (43 percent) and Ohio (46 percent) – made the biggest jump in progress this week.
The dry weather is forecast to end later this week, which puts even more pressure on farmers hustling to plant their crops.
"Psychologically, this (week) is a critical one for getting corn planted. Many analysts claim corn seeded after mid-May tends to see lower yields," Karl Setzer, a commodity trading adviser with MaxYield Cooperative in West Bend, Iowa, told Reuters in an article here.
Nationally, 5 percent of corn has emerged, which is also well behind the five-year average of 28 percent.
Soybean planting is also slow-going with 6 percent of the nation’s soybeans in the ground. Most states have reported progress in corn planting, with the exceptional of Illinois. Illinois has yet to show any soybean planting progress, putting it 19 percentage points behind its five-year average.
http://www.cattlenetwork.com/cattle-new … 62531.html
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Mon May 13, 2013 10:40 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Business • Don’t fall for this banking scam
Don’t fall for this banking scam
by Simon Black on May 9, 2013
If I told you that your bank only held 1% of its customer deposits in reserve, would you feel that your money was safe?
If I told you that the insurance fund which backed your bank deposit only had enough cash to bail out 0.35% of the banking system, would that make you feel any better?
Probably not. But this scam is the reality in the US banking system… and across the West.
As an example, US Bancorp has $248 billion in total customer deposits according to their most recent reporting, yet a mere $6.9 billion in cash… roughly 2.8%.
PNC Bank holds just 1.8% of its customers’ $248 billion deposits in cash. And BB&T holds barely 1.0% of its customers’ $131 billion deposits in cash.
These figures are indicative of the entire western financial system. Banks hold a very small percentage of customer deposits in cash. The rest is sitting in loans, bonds, and other securities of indeterminable value– mortgages that are still under water, shaky commercial real estate deals, etc.
Truth is, nobody really knows what’s on their books. Loan portfolios are like a black box, and the liquidity structure doesn’t leave a lot of room for error.
Think about it. If the slightest thing goes wrong– a spike in customer withdrawals, a decline in bond prices or commercial real estate, etc.– banks simply don’t have any rainy day funds set aside to handle it.
And who can blame them…? The FDIC, one of the US banking system’s chief regulators, has a mere $33.0 billion reserve fund to insure $9.3 TRILLION worth of deposits in US banks… a ratio of just 0.35%. And the FDIC is backed by the insolvent US government!
Bottom line, we simply can no longer afford to blithely assume that our bank… our most intimate financial partner… is in good financial condition.
The good news is that in 2013, it’s no longer necessary to save within the confines of our home country; it’s possible to establish a bank account in a country where the banks are actually well capitalized and liquid.
Singapore is one of those places. In fact, Singapore has ZERO net debt and has never had a banking failure in its history. Plus the banks are swimming in cash.
UOB Bank, for example, has 33.7% of its customer deposits in cash equivalents. OCBC holds 35.8%. These banks are literally 10 to 30 times more liquid than their western counterparts.
With a bit of legwork, it’s possible for both individuals and businesses to open insured accounts at either of these banks.
Today I even managed to convince one of my bankers here to open business accounts for US LLC’s… which means that anyone with a global self-directed IRA can hold retirement savings at a well-capitalized Singaporean bank. More on this soon.
The advantages of banking here are obvious; pitting the US against Singapore, there’s simply no comparison.
If everything goes fine and there are no major hiccups in the world, you won’t be worse off for holding some savings at a highly capitalized bank in Asia’s most dominant financial center.
Yet if there’s another major meltdown like we saw in 2008, or worse… these insolvent Western governments pull a Cyprus… then having funds in Singapore may turn out to be one of the sharpest financial decisions you could have made.
http://www.sovereignman.com/finance/don … cam-11817/
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Thu May 09, 2013 10:59 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
This Mother’s Day, Give Moms School Choice
Jason Bedrick
A new study this week finds that school mothers overwhelmingly support school choice. According to the Friedman Foundation’s survey, 69 percent of American mothers of school-aged children supported scholarship tax credit (STC) programs while only 19 percent opposed them. Americans in general support STC programs by a margin of 66 percent to 24 percent and non-schoolers support them 64 percent to 26 percent.
The survey found even higher support for STC programs among political independents, middle-income families, and African Americans (72 percent each). The greatest opposition (35 percent) came from high-income families who are already financially able to live in a district with a high-performing public school or to pay for their children to attend a private school.
The high level of public support for school choice is consistent with the findings of Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, which conducts an annual survey measuring public support of various education policies. Harvard’s 2012 survey found that 72 percent of Americans favor STC programs.
Voucher programs, which entail direct government expenditures of tax dollars to provide school choice, were less popular than STC programs but still supported by a plurality of mothers. When asked about their support for voucher programs without providing a definition for “voucher,” 43 percent of mothers supported vouchers and 22 percent were opposed. When provided with a definition for “voucher,” support increased to 66 percent and opposition increased to 26 percent. These findings are also consistent with the 2012 Harvard survey, which found 43 percent of the general public supported vouchers with 29 percent opposed and 28 percent neutral. When the “neutral” option was eliminated, the support-to-opposition ratio was 50-50.
Some of the Friedman study’s other findings include:
- If given the choice, a plurality of school moms would select private schools for their children (42 percent) compared with public schools (36 percent), charter schools (9 percent), or homeschooling (9 percent).
- School moms are almost twice as likely to support universal eligibility (66 percent) compared to school choice programs based on financial need (35 percent).
- School moms support education savings accounts by 65 percent to 25 percent.
- School moms support charter schools by a margin of 45 percent to 19 percent. When supplied with a definition of “charter school,” support increased to 63 percent with 25 percent opposed.
- Nearly twice as many school moms think that U.S. education is on the wrong track (61 percent) versus the right track (32 percent).
- More than four times as many school moms rate the federal government’s involvement in the education system as “fair” or “poor” (79 percent) compared with “good” or “excellent” (17 percent).
- A majority of school moms and the general public underestimate the amount that federal, state, and local governments spend per pupil in the public schools.*
[*Note: The Friedman Foundation’s survey uses operating per pupil expenditures as its point of comparison, but these figures omit significant expenditures such as buildings. A more accurate figure would be total per pupil expenditures.]
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
At Ohio St. Obama showed that he does not understand the nature of this country, “Individual ambition” is the problem?
For a supposed Constitutional scholar Mr. Obama seems to lack a basic understanding of why we have the Constitution.
It is probably more likely that he actually does understand it but doesn’t like the nature of the document which fundamentally limits the power of the government over the people.
That’s why we have it. A group of colonists decided that they could think for themselves, that individuals who lacked noble birthright were capable, indeed could do a better job of running things than the established aristocracy. So they threw off the shackles of a king and enshrined the rights of the citizen to pursue his or her own ends in dignity.
What the Constitution absolutely did not provide for was a vision of a centralized government which seeks to achieve “great” ends at the expense of the individual. The kings of Europe had done that for a 1000 years. Wars were waged in the name of the greatness of the home country and were always paid for with the blood of the unlanded peasantry. Our founders specifically sought to limit the grandiose vision of the government. Individual ambition, the pursuit of happiness was and as far as I am concerned, is the very point of America.
But our president, the president of the United States, doesn’t believe this. ”Individual ambition” is the problem. This idea is in direct conflict with the very core of what America is. And again, this guy in the President.
(From The Wall Street Journal)
Mr. Obama’s vision. “The Founders left us the keys to a system of self-government,” he went on, “the tool to do big and important things together that we could not possibly do alone.” And what “big and important things” cannot be done except through government? On the president’s list are railroads, the electrical grid, highways, education, health care, charity and more. One imagines a historical vision reaching as far back as the New Deal. Americans “chose to do these things together,” he added, “because we know this country cannot accomplish great things if we pursue nothing greater than our own individual ambition.”
View full post on AgainstCronyCapitalism.org
This Month at Cato Unbound: The Future of Right-Libertarian Fusionism
Jason Kuznicki
This month our online ideas journal Cato Unbound boasts an all-new design, with new software to make reading and navigating a whole lot more intuitive.
Our latest issue tackles the topic of fusionism – the old-new idea that libertarians belong on the right side of the political aisle.
Fusionism has a long history. But will it play to millennials? That could be one of the most important questions in American politics.
Young voters are a lot less conservative on social issues like gay marriage and drug policy. In this, they echo previous generational trends on questions like interracial marriage and pornography, neither of which are live political issues anymore. Younger Americans also seem more skeptical of corporate influences in politics. That fact may tilt them to the left, but it could also pave the way for a less corporatist free-market movement, if only we can make the case to them. And some millennials might not even remember a time when America was at peace – a thing we can’t say about any previous generation.
How does the old right-libertarian alliance fare in this new environment? We decided to ask some young activists who’ve given some thought to the question.
Making the case for fusionism is Jacqueline Otto of the American Enterprise Institute’s Values and Capitalism Project. Economic liberty unites us, she says – and we ought not to let the rest divide us.
And contra, we have Jeremy Kolassa, a writer for United Liberty. He argues that libertarians haven’t gotten much from their old alliance with the right, and it’s time to stand on our own. Libertarians should offer good ideas to whoever will listen and form coalitions wherever specific issues allow it.
Over the next few days we’ll also have essays from Clark Ruper of Students for Liberty and Jordan Ballor of the Acton Institute. Also be sure to stop by our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter as the conversation develops.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
If the Senate Will Lie About This…
Jim Harper
On Monday, I reported here and on the WashingtonWatch.com blog how Congress was trying to push through a bill that hadn’t been passed in the same form by both the House and Senate.
Well, the Senate solved the problem by lying. It said that the Secretary of the Senate had erred in engrossing the bill–preparing it for transmittal to the House.
There was no error on the part of the Secretary of the Senate. The Senate passed a bill that used only the word “account” and the House-passed bill said “accounts.” The bills weren’t identical, but the Senate is calling it the Secretary’s error.
The “fixed” bill now includes a quite non-grammatical sentence. I detailed that in a new WashingtonWatch.com post entitled: “From Farce to Tragedy.” But who needs precision when you’re moving a mere quarter-billion dollars around?
Were he to enforce it, President Obama’s Sunlight Before Signing promise would require more careful deliberation than this. The public would have five days to review legislation, exposing errors like this and bringing disrepute on those responsible. But the president received the bill on Tuesday and signed it on Wednesday.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Twinkies coming back, but this time union free.
If I bought Hostess I would want absolutely nothing to do with the myriad of unions which took the original company down. The AFL-CIO has threatened any new owners of Hostess with a boycott if the new company goes union free.
Let them do it. My bet is that when Twinkies find their way back onto supermarket shelves people will buy them by the case.
View full post on AgainstCronyCapitalism.org