An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little..
The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. It could not be any simpler than that.
Remember, there IS a test coming up. The 2012 elections.

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

By: Ed Will with Bill Essmann

I found the above post on a friends FB wall, I wanted to share it but there was no share link, so I copied the text here, then clicked the image and realized it has 58,643 shares so far. I believe this so perfectly summarizes socialism, just as Maybury's article on LRC has shown that this very same experiment happened at the beginning of our country:
http://free-hollywood.com/blog.php?s=165

The NDAA is passed by the House, Senate and signed by the President:

Just days ago, this was shot at a near by rail road stop:

And one radio news station, KFI, reported that Joint military training exercises will be held evenings in downtown Los Angeles through Thursday, their exercises are closed to the public, and are designed to ensure the military's ability to operate in urban environments according to the Los Angeles Police Department:

http://www.kfiam640.com/pages/NEWS.html?article=9653697

These are older armored personnel carriers, if they were being upgraded or stored state side, they wouldn't be shipped with logistic support, the tankers to fuel them, and how strange the coincidence that the military wouldn't just so happen to be doing training exercises, all right after NDAA was passed.

Question: I was asked what circumstances I thought would cause the military to apply NDAA in the foreseeable future?

Answer: A solar flare or EMP that wipes out our power grid, some unexplained phenomenon, the next and last right still protected by our constitution, a national gun ban. What ever it is, it will be "for our protection", power taken is never unused, like our first atom bomb, we couldn't wait to use it.

Whatever my speculation, and outside the report by the LA police, that this is a training exercise designed to be used over seas, logic would dictate that the military is wanting to carry military personnel in an area that is likely to be under fire. During WWII, Japan's Military Commander realized he could not defeat us, because he said "there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass". I really have no idea what the reason is for transporting so many armored personnel carriers and logistic support vehicles, but to me the three things that have happened in the last few weeks, are a cause for concern.

Edit:
The Anonymous video previously posted above, titled "Operation CNN Debate Blackout #OpDebateBlackout – Ron Paul " was removed by YouTube "as a violation of YouTube's policy on depiction of harmful activities". It called for a media blackout at 8pm on January 26th, encouraging others to participate in hacking CNN's website in protest of their unfair distribution of time given Ron Paul in the debates.

I've always found Anonymous interesting, as they represent what many years ago attracted me to the hacker culture in the first place, a sect of the hacker community called hactivists. I heard of this misterious group of hackers who purportedly called themselves the fifth column. Wikipedia says the term represents "a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group such as a nation from within".

The underground news letters that had been shared with me, claimed that the fifth column had hacked into the computer systems and discovered so much dirt on presidential candidates that they forced some to drop out of the race. The idea of discovering truth, and doing the job the six mega corporate media organizations are supposed to fulfill, exposing that truth, keeping politicians honest (ha), sounded like an attractive path to justice, which makes Assange a person to be celebrated, the ultimate distributor of truth, so I have some hope for the effect of the upcoming Julian Assange show to launch on RT this March:

Though, the main stream media is a very powerful force to be reckoned with, and even though the support for liberty might never have been stronger in our nation's history, as America is, in my perspective, in its darkest hour, the support for liberty, and the strength of the internet, doesn't seem to be able to outweigh the control the MSM has had over the critical mass needed to make any necessary changes to restore our once sustainable American society.



I have come to the conclusion, through much influence of my comrades of liberty, that there are many paths to liberty, and civil disobedience is one of those paths. I for one have decided that my path is one of self development, and network building, I hope to focus my energy to save and invest my resources, find those I believe I can count on, and one day build a community with, and keep myself physically fit, empowering myself in every way. This is the path that Tom Garret has found to be his, and is promoting in his foundation of the Society of Libertarian Entrepreneurs, and at this point seems to be the best option I can see.

What can we do to prevent the theft of our rights by these unrepresentative legislators, that's the million dollar question. Some form tea party rallies, some occupy federal property, and others launch cyber war on Congress.



http://rt.com/usa/news/anonymous-congress-ndaa-sopa-013/

I don't really think most Americans really understand how radically our form of government just has changed with the signing of this bill.

I would like to share with you a FB post from this evening, that I wrote after losing my patience with a few other participants in a 2012 Presidential Candidates FB group. Many of the people I used to debate with to no end have sent me friend requests after this post and others have softened to Ron Paul's message. Quite a few others asked me to post this in various forums, I just told them "do what you like with the content" and if they need contact information just have them email me at agaiziunas@gmail.com. Here is the post that turned enemies to friends and something I had to genuinely fight back tears to write as I wrote it (I lost the fight but came back after a few minutes to continue):


A post by Peter Conlon really hit a nerve for me tonight and I need to set the record straight, as well as share this with some of you who, like Peter, often lightheartedly mock the Paulbots in their dedication and discount the reasons we are fighting for his candidacy. I cannot speak for any Paul supporters but myself, but I can tell you his renowned ability to spark passion, in my case, is simply due to my experiences with a beautiful free society such as we have here, as well as a TRUE police state.

I am used to the insinuations I support Ron Paul because “I know no better” and “It’s fun”, or any other number of reasons which attribute my support to some frivolous or uneducated reason. But where my support for Ron Paul truly stems from and where it began is the respect for liberty and freedom in this country a lot of people are taking for granted. You see, my family emigrated to the United States from the Soviet Republic of Lithuania (before the Soviet Union fell). Living in this country has been the greatest gift I could ever ask for, because life in the USSR was in most cases “normal” as you would expect here, only sprinkled with examples like this from my own family and friends:

One day you're there, the next you're on a train to Siberia to cut lumber because you earned a degree in political science 30 years ago. One day you cut off your own hand with an axe so you can't be accused of being a resistance sniper, just because the local political officer heard a joke about you and how well you shot rabbits. One year your country's population of 3M drops by 200,000 and you personally know at least a dozen of them. HINT: they did not emigrate and you'll never see them again. If you talk about those who vanish, then you vanish yourself. This is the most difficult because it's not only the loss of the friend or loved one, but you can't even talk about them anymore.. it's like they get erased from society but your heart aches to burst out and tell everyone they existed.

I invite any of you to sit down with my family and hear the stories. I welcome you to watch as uncontrollable fits of sobbing and crying take hold, as our lives without liberty are remembered and relived. I want you to witness the sunken demeanor and lifeless eyes, in what are normally jovial and happy people, last for hours and days after recounting the tales. Have you ever seen the look of despair in someone's eyes? If not, you would that evening and it is something that haunts you.

When my family and I discuss developments like the Patriot Act, the Indefinite Detention rules, Guantanamo, the jumps to war for false purposes, SOPA… there’s a glimmer in our eyes noticeably lost because these are precisely the slow, gradual actions which lead to a state of oppression from where we escaped. These transformations do not happen overnight, folks. They happen gradually and to the sounds of applause. We are much further down the road to the unthinkable than you might imagine and there is no evidence of slowing. Only Ron Paul has been speaking up against our march towards either a socialistic, left-leaning Stalin or a nationalistic, right-leaning Hitler. Only Ron Paul has resisted the populist, easy-road legislation to grant more power to the federal government and erode our rights for what sometimes look like the best intentions.

In the end, it MAKES MY HEART WEEP that my family and I were lucky enough to get political asylum, risk our lives and successfully escape to the US, and are now watching people willingly bring down the walls of our freedoms down on our own heads, and some are even cheering and clapping as it happens.

I hope this helps explain, at least, my own support for Ron Paul.


Here is Andrew Gaiziunas' FB page:
http://www.facebook.com/agaiziunas

CBS gave Paul only 89 seconds in one debate, and now aired a "report" which covered every candidate in Iowa's caucus, even the candidate that dropped out, but excludes Ron Paul from any mention, and had the nerve to remove him from an on screen graphic illustrating a recent poll result, even though he came in second. A more accurate poll shows the following:

Jan. 9, 2012 (polled 1/7-1/8)
Romney 33%
Paul 20%
Huntsman 13%
Gingrich 11%
Santorum 10%
Roemer 2% (got 2 more voters than Perry)
Perry 1%
Undecided 12%

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/docs/2012/Suffolk_NH_0109.pdf

Here you can see the full history of Romney's slide and Paul's surge in the NH polls:
http://www.dailypaul.com/201909/suffolk-university-poll-shows-ron-paul-within-13-points-of-romney

Here's what CBS colleague had to say to Jan Crawford's reporting job:

Lou Miller: Jan, As a longtime employee of CBS Corp I find it embarrassing to be associated with our network when journalists such as yourself choose to fabricate the news rather then report it. You reported polling numbers that only added up to 65% of respondents, what about the other 35%? Do you really think your viewers are that stupid that they would not notice an obvious omission? In the future please try to demonstrate some integrity in your work, because your performance reflects on the network as well as your many fellow CBS employees who take pride in our work

Here's a link to the video which displayed the onscreen graphic:
http://cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7394032n

With media's blatant exclusion of Paul's successes and expose videos being spread around on the internet like the one below, I think we're going to see Romney's slide continue as Ron Paul's numbers continue to increase and the MSM will surely loose their credibility:

I posted this image on my facebook wall, and someone responded with this article:

The Federal Budget is NOT like a Household Budget: Here’s Why
"Whenever a demagogue wants to whip up hysteria about federal budget deficits, he or she invariably begins with an analogy to a household’s budget: “No household can continually spend more than its income, and neither can the federal government”. On the surface that, might appear sensible; dig deeper and it makes no sense at all. A sovereign government bears no obvious resemblance to a household. Let us enumerate some relevant differences..."
http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/new-roosevelt/federal-budget-not-household-budget-here-s-why

It goes on to list five points of contention with the household comparison, here's roughly the list:

• The US has an indefinitely long lifespan
  
• The federal government has always been in debt & the one time we had a surplus, two years later we had a deep depression in 1837.
  
• Each depression has followed a reduction of outstanding debt
  
• The federal government is the issuer of our currency and they are always accepted in payment.
  
• Only a moron would refuse to accept dollars on the belief that some unknown date it might be less than today's value.
  

All empires fall when they over expand their military adventurism. Just like Rome, Germany, Japan and the USSR, we are following in that same path of rapid expansion in our quest for supremacy and power. To say that the US, or countries in general, have an infinitely long lifespan, is quite short sighted.

It is true that early in our country's history, Hamilton had great success in plunging our nation into debt by taking all the debt that the states incurred during the revolution so that he could "make the wealthy dependent on the government so that in the future he could take more of their wealth!" [1] He was also a frenetic tax increaser as the nation's first Treasury Secretary, and his burdensome taxes caused our country's first rebellion requiring the brute and deadly force of 10,000 conscripts, Hamilton and Washington themselves to quell, in order to fund his relentless worship for a growing and powerful government. [2]. I start with the premise that taxation is theft, because it is clearly not voluntary, it requires violent force or the threat thereof to collect taxes.

I'd have to say that the depression sparked by the 2007 housing market collapse was not due to the contraction of debt, but the great expansion of debt, it is precisely the expansion of debt that has prolonged our economic woes today, a choice to reward the top tier banks and large corporations that had been poorly run and reckless, rather than to liquidate the bad investments, the debts were instead transferred to the tax payer and the homeowners paying those taxes were tossed out of their houses while the lean holding banks were rewarded.

Many times in history has debt based fiat currency, that is currency that is not based or backed by some kind of commodity, failed, always by inflation. In fact China and Japan have just agreed to no longer use the US dollar as a reserve currency to trade between each other [3], many countries such as Venezuela, Iraq & Iran have tried to dump the US dollar as their petrodollar. [4] It's pretty hard to believe that anyone can think all the countries around the world that are trying to rid themselves of our military oppression which is directly funded by our ability to create the world reserve currency out of thin air, are morons.

Austrian economics understands and predicts the booms and busts caused by the creation of debt, where Keynsiens are lost in the dark [5]

A very interesting conversation was started in a Robotics Guru group I'm a part of on Linkedi[in], it's one that in the 90's has greatly effected my perception of the future and how we may adapt to it:

"Computers and robots will replace humans in enough jobs that they will dramatically change the economy, said industry watchers and MIT economists at a robotics symposium Monday. And, they said, the transition has already started."

This has been a subject that initially caused me to lean towards more socialistic social remedies, but then I came to understand that even though, I believe in Ray Kurzweil's accelerating change theory which would require a very rapid social response to a radically increasing curve on innovation of automation, we have to remember that automation of jobs is not new to the human experience, computers enabled massive cuts of employees, automotive factories employ a far smaller person-per-car-produced ratio today than ever, and what do we get from all this automated labor force, what do we get when the standard of living (the goods produced that elevate our life experience) is raised with less human hours required, a higher standard of living.

If we didn't have artificially created inflation of our world reserve currency, I think we'd be much closer to living in a price point zero, Star Trek-like world and the class balance would be much less disproportionate. Think of it in a small scale of 10, if the 10 of us were required to hunt and gather, think of how much more time we'd have to build better tools or relax on the beach, or improve our homes, if we were able to figure out how to farm animals and crops, requiring half the human hours.

Another point I hope to make, is that the benefit gained from automation directly depends on who has access to that automation. If a home helper robot costs $500k, then only military, big dollar industries and the wealthy would buy them and they no longer need to hire soldiers, manual labor, yard maintenance, handy men, and house keepers, but if these same machines were only $1k, then most people would have them, enriching everyone's lives.

The understanding I have, is the way we can get to that point of low cost sophisticated robotics, lays in the open source collaborative community. Like the Reprap, individual investment into a robotics project would yield an asymmetrical benefit, very little time and money could produce a wealth of valuable resources.

I've long believed, since working in the electronics assembly industry, that we will see a day when out of a home garage, can be produced most household products, and with projects like Reprap, that's not so far away. Once these low cost collaborative technologies become the norm rather than the exception, and people go to their neighborhood nerd to print them a phone that they saw on their favorite phone blog, rather than buying from some mega-corporation, we will begin to see radical and empowering changes in society.

Typically I believe central planning fails on it's own, large corporations and governments are not capable of achieving the agility of smaller organizations. If robotic technology is available to the lower income brackets, then they will replace the productive capabilities of the larger organizations. Then this great challenge of unemployment will likely be minimized by the self employment opportunity that these low cost self replicating open source robotic projects that are already emerging. Instead of giving someone a fish, I think charitable organizations we will be giving the poor a locally produced robot so he can be self sustainable with the productive capacity of that robot. But I honestly think that's up to us, and our ability to lead the robotic industry with an open source project that is very accessible and reproducible primarily from parts from a RepRap type machine.

We can't look to government to be our safety net when production outpaces consumption and unemployment steadily increases. So then, what is the purpose of Government? Government only knows one thing, the redistribution of resources, all they can do is steal by the threat of violent force from one group to give to another that lobbies for it by special interest groups, campaign contributions or private sector job offers. I believe every service the government provides can either be automated or eliminated. As soon as someone can set up a "free society" in Honduras or some other failed state, implement pervasive levels of automation, with 3D printed concrete houses and no money being wasted on taxation and an effective security being provided predominately by antonymous drones and armed centuries and limited boots on the ground, then a society like that will quickly become radically wealthy and others will quickly emulate their example.

Some people would say let the rich pay for those who are displaced by automation, and those who don't are just greedy and need their wealth stolen and redistributed to the unproductive sector. The question that has been asked me once is, what is greed? Most people think the rich need to pay their "fair share", but if you continually raise taxes on the most successful producers of products that raise our standard of living and employ many people, as we have seen in America, they will find other places in the world that they can move to which doesn't forcibly steal their productive money to redistribute it to the nonproductive at the level America does, so in essence you lower your standard of living by driving away the people that raise the standard of living.

Besides the practicality of not stealing, where is the compassion in theft through threat of violent force. I believe it's better for people to be allowed to give voluntarily, and this kind of giving will be used in a far more productive manner than if Politicians order storm troopers to steal from some to give to others. Politicians are politically motivated, not altruistic angels.

But change does not happen by it's self, like the global social change that we have seen recently, I believe is directly tied to the increased ability for us to communicate with one another by means of the internet. People are empowered by the technology they have access to. No longer are the three major networks the primary source of information consumers, as of May last year, YouTube gets more prime time viewership that all three of the major network television channels combined. With that kind of social and technological change, I believe collaboration in life improving projects, such as the Global_Village_Construction_Set - Open Source Ecology, people are already building the foundation of future self sustainable modern living societies. I believe the natural evolution these low cost DIY society building block machines will be fully automated near price point zero societies.

Why is it today that a predominant perception is that a man's productivity is only found in a job? Why is it that entrepreneurship is such a lost concept? I believe robotics will have the ability of empowering the poor to produce an abundance of products or services that will be needed by others. I think it is clearly immoral to steal, kill and enslave, even if you are the government. Income tax is clearly slavery if you have to work for 3-4 months out of the year for the IRS.

I've found a very interesting article on the economist.com blogs section covering this topic. Here's a few clips, I hope you enjoy:

"Economists see [Henry Ford's Model T assembly line and increased wages] as a classic example of how advancing technology, in the form of automation and innovation, increases productivity. This, in turn, causes prices to fall, demand to rise, more workers to be hired, and the economy to grow. Such thinking has been one of the tenets of economics since the early 1800s, when hosiery and lace-makers in Nottingham—inspired by Ned Ludd, a legendary hero of the English proletariat—smashed the mechanical knitting looms being introduced at the time for fear of losing their jobs.

Some did lose their jobs, of course. But if the Luddite Fallacy (as it has become known in development economics) were true, we would all be out of work by now—as a result of the compounding effects of productivity."

"But here is the question: if the pace of technological progress is accelerating faster than ever, as all the evidence indicates it is, why has unemployment remained so stubbornly high—despite the rebound in business profits to record levels? Two-and-a-half years after the Great Recession officially ended, unemployment has remained above 9% in America. That is only one percentage point better than the country’s joblessness three years ago at the depths of the recession."

"This is what Jeremy Rifkin, a social critic, was driving at in his book, 'The End of Work', published in 1995. Though not the first to do so, Mr Rifkin argued prophetically that society was entering a new phase—one in which fewer and fewer workers would be needed to produce all the goods and services consumed. 'In the years ahead,' he wrote, 'more sophisticated software technologies are going to bring civilisation ever closer to a near-workerless world.'”

"In the end, the Luddites may still be wrong. But the nature of what constitutes work today—the notion of a full-time job—will have to change dramatically. The things that make people human—the ability to imagine, feel, learn, create, adapt, improvise, have intuition, act spontaneously—are the comparative advantages they have over machines."

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/11/artificial-intelligence

I bought a gas mask yesterday and had considered going to Occupy LA's last night, as I was compelled to go, but, in thinking of my personal objectives, self improvement and empowerment, I could see no objective to going, getting tear gassed, beaten and arrested.

I had a few friends that went, one was texting me most of the night as I watched live video feeds from helicopters and smart phones. Here's a few clips of our texts:

Me: Did you go? 11:56 PM
Jeffrey Phillips: Oh yeah 12:01 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: About to break a barrier with a crowd of a hundred 12:02 AM
Me: Hows it going? 12:02 AM
Me: Picture s 12:02 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: Look at my fb 12:05 AM




27 arrest vans at Dodger Stadium, they are moving in now. Thanks! - FB

Me: Keep your wits about you my friend 12:17 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: We just stopped 3 bus full of cops 12:18 AM


Jeffrey Phillips: On the onramp 12:18 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: So epic 12:18 AM
Me: Niiiiiiice 12:19 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: Ramzi is here 12:20 AM
Me: Wow, very cool, but are you guys going to avoid arrest try? 12:21 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: Been screaming end the fed into every newa camera 12:32 AM
Me: Nice, I'm just saying, arrest will only benefit the state and cost you 12:34 AM
Me: How are you doing buddy 1:27 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: Shit is ccccrazyyy 1:28 AM
Me: Just caught up on your facebook wall posts, are you able to break out of the circle 1:33 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: Ya the circled us then peaced out 1:36 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: Shitnis weird 1:36 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: No arrests 1:36 AM
Me: Wow, amazing 1:36 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: Lots of weird harassment 1:37 AM
Me: Pictures, post something 1:37 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: Are you watching feeds 1:38 AM
Me: Tear gas? 1:38 AM
Me: No, I'll check 1:38 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: Noooo 1:38 AM
Me: People are getting arrested, I'm watching it 1:45 AM
Me: Where are you? 1:50 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: None at the park 1:58 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: 1st street 1:58 AM
Me: Good 1:58 AM
Me: I'm watching first street now 1:58 AM
Me: Did you drive or ride, let us know if you need a ride 2:01 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: Drove 2:04 AM
Me: They just sent in the bomb squad 2:04 AM
Me: By elysian park 2:05 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: Weird 2:05 AM
Me: People are running away from the cops 2:07 AM
Me: West bound on fourth street, away from 30 bomb squad members and 60 cops 2:08 AM
Me: Across from the media line 2:09 AM
Me: I'm now watching a drum core march down a street with a hundred our so people 2:17 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: Im there 2:18 AM
Me: Thought I just heard your voice 2:22 AM
Me: You ok 2:23 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: Yup 2:24 AM
Jeffrey Phillips: My voice is gone 2:24 AM

I'm glad to hear he didn't get arrested, but 300 did by 1,200 cops in early hours of the night. As much solidarity as I do believe I have with the occupiers, at least on an instinctive level, I don't really believe in the validity of public property, as is the case with all public_property, "the State is the squatter, and it makes the rules," so why put yourself on the doorstep of the worst human rights violators in history, the State?

I wish some from the 99% would pitch in to buy some property and build up their own communities, build something permanent, peaceful and prosperous, without the State.

A friend and I recently got into a discussion about Christianity and taxation. In his view, paying taxes is God's will for the Christian. He referenced Matthew 17:27 to support this position.

When confronted by tax collectors, Jesus told his disciples "we don't want to offend them, so go down to the lake and throw in a line. Open the mouth of the first fish you catch, and you will find a large silver coin. Take it and pay the tax for both of us."

I did a simple contextual study of the passage and was astounded at its insights! The following is my response.

"Thank you for bringing up Matt. 17:27 about the fish and the coins! It's a powerful text that I've never heard preached on, nor studied myself. You need to read the passage in context starting in verse 22, and on into 18:1 to understand the overall meaning. A plain reading of the text makes it clear that Christ chose voluntarily to pay this tax of his own free-will, and not because God willed it. In the same way he was on his way to voluntarily go to the cross (17:22), not because God compelled him to obey man-made laws, but rather because it is what he needed to do in order to accomplish God's ultimate will. Check verse 26 in the NLT:

'What do you think, Peter? Do kings tax their own people or the people they have conquered?"
'They tax the people they have conquered," Peter replied. 'Well, then,' Jesus said, "the citizens are free! However, we don't want to offend them, so go down to the lake...'

His analogy draws attention to the oppression of his people of which they were all familiar. By paying this tax, Christ demonstrates that his way does not require violent revolution. It is a really subtle passage, much like the temple confrontation about Caesar and taxes. In both passages, Christ draws parallels and contrast between the kingdoms of Heaven and Earth. This was clear to the disciples who immediately questioned Jesus about who would be greatest in the kingdom of heaven ( Mat 18:1).

Jesus teaching becomes more poignant as he moves closer to Jerusalem and his ultimate death. Neither Christ's nor our obedience to the laws of man in taxation or anything else, gives the laws of man equal footing with the laws of God. We obey man-made law for convenience. We obey not to offend. We obey for self-preservation, but we do not obey because God compels us too. Furthermore, Jesus left us an example of direct disobedience at every point of man-made law that attempted to limit his spiritual freedom or distort the ultimate relevance of his faith. From this and other passages, Jesus' political philosophy seems a kind of peaceful anarchism."

I wanted to post a Thanksgiving article on here, but didn't have time to write an original one. Thankfully, LRC has a creative commons reprint policy, so here is their lead article from today in case we want to discuss it! Free markets vs. socialism in the 1620s.

The Great Thanksgiving Hoax

by Richard J. Maybury

Each year at this time school children all over America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very colorful and fascinating.

It is also very deceiving. This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving's real meaning.

The official story has the pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The Pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.

The official story then has the Pilgrims living more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.

The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.

In his History of Plymouth Plantation, the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years, because they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with "corruption," and with "confusion and discontent." The crops were small because "much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable."

In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, "all had their hungry bellies filled," but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first "Thanksgiving" was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.

But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, "instead of famine now God gave them plenty," Bradford wrote, "and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God." Thereafter, he wrote, "any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day." In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.

What happened?

After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, "they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop." They began to question their form of economic organization.

This had required that "all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means" were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, "all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock." A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take out only what he needed.

This "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that "young men that are most able and fit for labor and service" complained about being forced to "spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children." Also, "the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak." So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.

To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.

Many early groups of colonists set up socialist states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in 1607, out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive their first twelve months in America. Most of the work was being done by only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites. In the winter of 1609-10, called "The Starving Time," the population fell from five-hundred to sixty.

Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free market, and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth. In 1614, Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch there was "plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure." He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, "we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for themselves now."

Before these free markets were established, the colonists had nothing for which to be thankful. They were in the same situation as Ethiopians are today, and for the same reasons. But after free markets were established, the resulting abundance was so dramatic that the annual Thanksgiving celebrations became common throughout the colonies, and in 1863, Thanksgiving became a national holiday.

Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can have them.

Reprinted from Mises.org via Lewrockwell.com.

November 24, 2011

Richard Maybury writes on investments. This article originally appeared in The Free Market , November 1985.

A bit of a meme has emerged of the Occupy UC Davis pepper spraying incident, with pictures of the culprit cop pepper spraying anything imaginable!

While many in the liberty movement have worked to raise the "End the Fed" demand at Occupy, other libertarian observers have noted that some in the Occupy movement call for greater government regulation of the corporations they believe control the government. In this video, with over a million views in the last few days, a cop lumbers by a group of peaceful Occupy protesters at UC Davis engaged in a sit in and casually pepper sprays them in the face. If there is a silver lining in this ugly scene, it could be that some on the left, a part of the political spectrum long enamored by the idea that government power is a positive force that can cure social ills, might recognize the ugliness of state coercion after having been on the receiving end.


Is the spread of images like this part of how centralized power could lose its legitimacy in our era? Consider the cold silence by UC Davis students directed to the university chancellor in the video below -- talk about a walk of shame!


Meanwhile, word from Occupy LA is that eviction of the camp from City Hall's lawn is coming in the next few days. Liberty activists involved in bringing the "End the Fed" message to Occupy LA report that they are crafting a proposal for nonviolent civil disobedience in resistance to the impending eviction and bringing it to Occupy LA's General Assembly.

After falling off the Western media's radar for a few months, Egypt is back in the headlines as dozens of protesters have died in a new wave of clashes with state authorities. The interesting difference between what's happening now and the February uprising that toppled 30-year dictator Hosni Mobarek is that in February the demonstrators largely saw the military as their protector against the Mobarek government and its thuggish police. Now, on the other hand, demonstrations target the military junta that replaced Mobarek but is partially composed of former Mobarek-era insiders and seems reluctant to give up power. Presidential elections are scheduled for June, 2012, but many people don't want to wait that long. The police who the military protected protesters from in February are being unleashed against the same protestors in November. As the former military saviors of the revolution turn into the revolution's target and violently lash out against the people once again gathering in Tahrir Square, are people in Egypt learning the violent nature of the state the hard way? Egypt, as far as I know, has no tradition of classical liberalism or libertarianism (and certainly not anarcho-capitalism!) in the sense we understand it in this part of the world. If animosity to the state in general develops in Egypt from these experiences, it will be interesting to see what culturally-specific forms it takes.

The hipster mindset values being aware of obscure cultural trends before they hit the mainstream. What better example in the world of politics and economics than Ron Paul? Austrian economics and abolishing the Federal Reserve are previously obscure subjects that have suddenly become mainstream in the last couple of years...and not even in an ironic way!

http://www.bangstyle.com/2011/11/ron-paul-young-hipster-vote/

Upon launching Diaspora*, Zhitomirskiy declared, "No longer will you be at the whims of those large corporate networks who want to tell you that sharing and privacy are mutually exclusive... There's something deeper than making money off stuff," he proclaimed.

http://vimeo.com/11099292

Zhitomirskiy didn't set out to make money when he co-founded Diaspora* but to instead provide an open platform for users. Because Diaspora* is decentralized, those with invites join one of the distinct pods of fellow users set up on independently hosted servers rather than a single hub that connects everyone.

Their site declares that "open source is about individuality, transparency, creativity, and destiny. It is about having an idea, and making it reality. Diaspora* was founded to fulfill a passion for fun, and for making the Internet a better place. Open source is what enables us to change the world, for ourselves, and let our friends across the web benefit from our exploration."

His profile says "Ilya is a Russian. He is super passionate about building a world of hacker spaces, maker culture, sharing, cycling, and life satisfaction."

According to CNN, the San Francisco Police Department believes Zhitomirskiy committed suicide, before waiting for confirmation from the medical examiner’s office.

"Ilya was a great guy. He was a visionary. He was a co-founder of a company that hopes to bring a better social networking experience," said Diaspora* spokesman Peter Schurman.

I have to ask, does this at all sound like a person who is at risk of suicide? Which raises another question, who would have the motivation and the capability of making the murder of a founder of what is potentially Facebooks greatest competitor, look like a suicide?

I recently have spent much time at Los Angeles City Hall to participate and to educate the individuals there about sound economics.

I have seen much written lately from libertarians that “This isn’t the movement we’ve been waiting for” or “They are all leftists”, things of that nature.

As for the latter statement, I concede the point. The individuals at the Occupy Los Angeles site at least are by and large leftists/socialists/anarcho-communists, either self-proclaimed or through their “solutions” to the problem.

I have conducted an “Ask a Capitalist” Q&A session there several times, and let me tell you that the response I have received is nothing short of ASTONISHING- and in a good way.

Yes, there are some hardcore communists.
Yes, there are some hardcore anti-capitalists.
Yes, there are many without knowledge of sound economics.

Nevertheless, as Rage Against the Machine says, “anger is a gift”. The anger, frustration, and anxiety that many at the Occupy LA site feel is forcing them to look inside themselves, admit that they don’t really understand how the economy works, and ask excellent questions.

When I have conducted these sessions at City Hall, 70+ people have gathered around to listen to our libertarian group answer the crowd’s economic questions. These people are informed as is evidenced by the quality of their questions. They want to know how inflation works and what its effects are. They want to know what the word dollar means. They want to know how the Fed works.

No, they may not understand the nuances, but they are angry and they are hungry for knowledge. Will you travel to the Occupy movement near you and give it to them? Or will you sit and complain to your comrades about the anti-capitalist Occupiers, while they continue to develop bonds of friendship with each other and receive economic crapola from all the monetary/economic cranks there?

The Occupiers in LA are anti-war, they are anti-rich, they are anti-wealth gap. So? Use it! Conduct an “Ask a Capitalist” Q&A session with a megaphone with extreme politeness and a desire to teach.

Show these well-meaning people how the government’s monopoly control of money creates the wars.
Show them how some of the richest of the rich get that way through government largesse that is taken out of their paycheck through taxes and inflation.
Show them how the wealth gap is increasing due to the Cantillon effects of inflation, and how this also leads to the dreaded boom-bust cycle.

You have a choice. Either complain and talk bad about these people, or go down there and change some minds. There is only a short time before the movement is co-opted.


So in the spirit of Ludwig von Mises, vigorously thrust yourself into the intellectual battle. The Occupiers are ready to listen.

8 Northern California Sheriffs unite to protect people from out of control government. It looks like this will be the first of many coalitions to come around the country.

This is the Full length version of the Sheriff meeting:

Here are all the links to each of the sheriff comments:

Intro - Sheriff Jon Lopey – Siskiyou County, CA

Sheriff Dean Wilson – Del Norte County, CA

Sheriff Bruce Haney – Trinity County, CA

Sheriff Tom Bosenko – Shasta County, CA

Sheriff Jon Lopey’s second address

Sheriff Greg Hagwood – Plumas County, CA

Karen Budd-Falen - Wyoming Property Rights Attorney

Sheriff Glenn E. Palmer – Grant County, OR

Sheriff Dave Hencratt Tehama County, CA.

Sheriff Greg Growden – Lassen County, CA

WND acknowledges Ron Paul's second place victory to Cain in the latest WND/Wenzel telephone Poll by Wenzel Strategies. The WND article also acknowledges that Cain's meteoric rise following the Florida poll victory is like many who have come up against the Paul & Romney superpowers, and predicts that the Romney current fallout of support Cain and Paul are benefiting from, can't be held long by Cain's weak support, which will leave the only candidate who's got "solid support" with the top spot, Paul:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=361321

The WND article follows but ignores a huge Paul victory in Iowa at a GOP Straw poll with 82%. Here the CNN pundit is singing Ron Paul's praises stating that "Ron Paul was making sense" and that we should not rule out Paul's ability to take Iowa:

Many are seeing a divided GOP party, with voters rushing to the "anything-but-Romney" camp, and Perry and Bachman's campaigns have all but imploded, leaving Cain with the current top spot but a weak support base and some major blunders like this recent bizarre commercial:

Paul's campaign is shining with his significantly improved production quality in this campaign's commercials and hard hitting movie trailer like ads such as this one:

With his powerful ads he will overcome the well known media blackout, because he has purchased more than six times the advertising in Iowa's largest television market of any other candidate still in the race:
http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2011/10/26/paul-leads-the-pack-in-tv-spending-in-d-m/

Paul is now left with the likely prospect of taking the top spot, and while Cain is trying to hang onto his weak support by producing creepy commercials, we can supplement his self destruction by circulating videos like this rough edited piece with good footage that outline the differences between the old Federal Reserve insider Cain and Ron Paul's End The Fed stance on fiat currency:

Marines around the world are outraged by the police injustice inflicted upon their fellow marine vet Scott Olsen, a peaceful protester of the Occupy Movement who remained in a medically-induced coma after he sustained massive head injuries from an Oakland Police projectile October 25th. The marine in the picture above is not alone in his anger -- over 1400 comments in the last 15 hours have been posted on THIS reddit post where this marine uploaded his photo, each expressing how they feel. Here's a piece of the thread:

calebh70118: ..now Oakland PD has started the fight.
So let's fucking win.
Vestax159: If the Marines lead, I will follow.
itonhorsemtb: First ones in, last ones out.

The police claim that Scott had acted aggressively towards the police, however video taken just before he was shot paint a different picture of the truth:


It was a frame taken from this video @3:30:
http://vimeo.com/31136427

The police's percussion grenade thrown into the crowd that was trying to help him is well documented here:

This type of injustice has already been witnessed and outrage_expressed by fellow marine SGT Shamar Thomas, but now some vets have taken it to a new level. Armed private vets have organized with citizens to move into some occupy encampments with assault rifles to protect the rights of the protesters:

I think it's important for us to take a stand, stand up to the aggressors who have somehow displaced justice with psychopathic cops, with legislators that ignore their constituents' plea for no more bailouts of banks and corporations deemed "too big to fail," with the TSA who have degraded security while violating women and children with their aggressive infliction of "their job." We need to stand up, but we need the consent of the population to be there behind us. That consent is the key for real change, a revolution, one that is not violent, one that is philosophical, one that is more of an evolution of society, where man can throw off the shackles of oppression and aggression.

I get the sense that we may be at a pivotal point in history of these united states of America, it reminds me of this scene from V for Vendetta:


Now more than ever we need to stand together, we have more in common with one another than we may know, as this chart illustrates. I believe all of mankind wants to be free and to have a chance to succeed. Powerful organizations are the obvious enemy, it just seems that in this country, our ideas of who those powerful organizations are, are polarized, which has the effect of keeping the two sides of the ideological camp from working together: