US policies exploit citizens, their prosperity, and the peace.

Question – what is up?

Has this post degenerated? Or are we merely revealing the fundamentals? The nation is confronting the excesses and looking for leadership and concrete solutions to the problems and losses in prosperity and civil liberties that have been exposed – slowly but surely. Do we not need to know the function of government before we can allocate resources to it? The impetus of my arguments drive at the notion that the fundamentals in gov’t and “the economy” are being assumed, but not audited. Which is why people that I listen to for leadership make the claims that these measures we see being proposed by so many (in the three branches of gov’t) are not going to fix the problems but exacerbate them. This is why Ron Paul always stresses that we cannot address these issues without confronting the role of government in our lives. That’s why he is my President, by choice.

What “crime” did Spitzer commit?

This is from the search warrant application:
7. As demonstrated below, the evidence obtained during this investigation includes, among other things, statements of a confidential source who worked with the Emperors Club; statements of an undercover officer; more than 5,000 telephone calls and text messages intercepted pursuant to court authorized wiretaps; more than 6,000 e-mails recovered pursuant to court-authorized search warrants; bank records; travel and hotel records; and physical surveillance.

The (government) banks reported to the IRS, which turned it to the DOJ, and then the Public Corruption Squad.

He will be charged, most likely, with a crime called structuring. It’s a “derivative crime”.
Derivative Crimes and Federal Injustice
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0403f.asp

All this is due to unconsitutional laws, some of which are passed as anti-terrorism measures, or in the case of the Bank Secrecy Act: “”have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax and regulatory investigations and proceedings.”
One can see how this activity can be used for other reasons than terrorism.
As well as possible alterior motives.

Joint Hearing on ‘Bank Secrecy Act’ Reporting Requirements
Subcommittee on General Oversight and Investigations
Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit
House Committee on Banking and Financial Services
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec99/bank042099-goi-ficc.htm

The Bank Secrecy Act
http://www.privacilla.org/government/banksecrecyact.html

So… just like the Presidential elections, people fail to talk about law and order, but focus on gossip.

Businessweek, Most Popular Stories, Ron Paul and Maria Bartiromo

Ron Paul on the Evil Fed, the IRS, and Saving the Buck

So nice to see it in black and white for once. [And in businessweek!!] Paul’s the man.

“The most important thing is to get control of the budget, because the more we spend and the higher the deficit, the more we have to tax and borrow and inflate the currency—literally create new credit to buy Treasury bills. We need to restore confidence in the dollar before [its decline] gets out of control. The easiest place to cut spending is overseas because it’s doing so much harm to us, undermining our national defense and ruining our budget. I would start saving hundreds of billions of dollars by giving up on defending the American empire. I’d start bringing our troops home, not only from the Middle East but from Korea, Japan, and Europe, and save enough money to slash the deficit. We can actually pay down the national debt and still take care of people here at home. That would restore a lot of confidence.”

But as President, you’re supposed to be independent from the Fed. You would encourage the Fed to stop printing money?

“You know this idea that we can create a secret bank and they manage things and rarely tell us—or Congress or the Executive Branch—what they’re really doing, there’s a problem there. I can’t even go to a monetary policy board meeting of the Federal Reserve, and I’m on the Banking Committee of the U.S. Congress. I want open government, and certainly the Fed ought to be open. But it’s an institution that really shouldn’t exist. [Its financing] allows Big Government to get bigger without being responsible. And that’s why we have runaway spending for both warfare and welfare.”

I have a bill right now that is very popular, especially for people who are trying to work their way through college or who are having a tough time making ends meet, and that is to exempt all taxes on tips. People who have a first job or a second job waiting on tables and doing other things, they’re harassed by government rules and regulations, and sometimes they have to pay higher taxes than the tips they actually receive. I’d move next to saying no taxes on anybody who’s trying to get through college. Why do we tax them, make it hard for them, then give them grants? It doesn’t make any sense.

Who are your economic advisers?

I don’t have any. I read Austrian economics, which I’ve been doing for 30 years. So my advisers have been [von] Mises and Hayek and Sennholz.

You have vehement new supporters. What’s driving the sudden interest in your candidacy?

I think they’re sick and tired of what they’re getting. They’ve lost all trust and faith in the government. They believe in the American Dream, and they’re getting a nightmare. And they’re rallying behind the program I’ve been working on for 30 years—defending the Constitution, limited government, free markets, sound money, and self-reliance; believing people can take care of themselves better than government can. The nanny state doesn’t work, the police state doesn’t work, and neither does the warfare. And they know it.

Ron Paul’s first actions as President.

From the Iowa Independent:
See this page/video
Paraphrasing:
As Commander-in-Chief you can literally change the world by changin our attitude about our use of our military. Back off our Navy and express our willingness to diplomatically resolve these issues.

From Vox Populi:

VD: What are the first five things you’d do if elected President?

RP: There’s some things you’d like to do but you can’t necessarily do all five things in one day. You have to work within the system. On the big things, I’d reduce spending enough to get rid of the income tax and the IRS. I’d change our monetary policy so the Federal Reserve couldn’t create money out of thin air, causing problems like inflation, investment bubbles and the ups and downs of the business cycle. One thing the president definitely can do on his own is that I’d immediately start bringing our troops home from around the world. I’d also stop building up missile sites and antagonizing the Russians. The biggest thing would be to get Congress to balance the budget, and we could do that if we were willing to give up on this foreign policy where we’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars and getting nothing for it.

Of course, there’s a lot more things that we’re doing now that I would stop doing. I would never violate habeus corpus, the violation of which has now been legalized. I’d be very cautious not to violate the liberties of the American people. But you can only do what there is a consensus for doing, action requires the cooperation of Congress and the American people.