Bob Livingston, the founder of Personal Liberty Digest™, is an ultra-conservative American author and editor of The Bob Livingston Letter™, in circulation since 1969. Bob has devoted much of his life to research and the quest for truth on a variety of subjects. Bob specializes in health issues such as nutritional supplements and alternatives to drugs, as well as issues of privacy (both personal and financial), asset protection and the preservation of freedom.
The Historical Perpetrators of Our Disastrous "Great Society"
The gospel according to Wall Street, the White House and propaganda media is that the U.S. economy is recovering just fine.
Last week, happy-faced talking heads told us that unemployment was down to 5.4 percent — the lowest rate since May 2008 — even while the number of Americans not in the labor force climbed to a record 93,194,000. The Labor Force Participation Rate (the percent of people 16 years old and older eligible to work) stands at 62.8 percent. Still, government men dutifully claim all is well, that the stock market is bullish. Now the Fed is talking about raising interest rates.
Yet as of January 2015, the number of Americans receiving food stamps, officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, had topped 46 million for 41 straight months, according to data released by the Department of Agriculture (USDA). Every month now for more than three years, going back to September 2011, 14.5 percent of the American population received food stamps.
In the Great Depression, long bread lines of hungry people waiting hours to get a meager bite to eat were visible reminders to everyone of the country’s economic pain. This went on while, thanks to FDR’s Agriculture Adjustment Act; farmers were paid to slaughter livestock, burn crops and leave their land fallow in order to prop up farm prices. [Editor's Note: Bismarck's 1881 style Central Planning.]
Today’s digital bread lines are invisible and easy to ignore. Food stamps are today’s soup kitchens. Most Americans are totally unaware of their magnitude. But they are real.
So in an economy that is supposedly percolating along nicely, the government still spends $6 billion a month to keep U.S. citizens from starving? It doesn’t make sense that in a prosperous country, participation in the food stamp program has ballooned 1,517 percent since 1969. When something doesn’t make sense, usually government is involved. [Editor's Note: Lack of production, heavy taxes, ridiculously restrictive regulations, massive debt, and the resultant "deflation" are all caused by government involvement.]
Even though jobless claims and the unemployment rate reported by the government are down, the Labor Department’s figures are based only on people receiving unemployment benefits. When those benefits run out, a person is no longer counted as unemployed by Uncle Scam, even though he or she still doesn’t have a job. Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO of Gallup, has called the official unemployment reports “a Big Lie.”
A truer picture of actual unemployment counts not only the short-term unemployed, but also the short-term and long-term “discouraged” workers — those who have given up looking for work. That unemployment rate is 23 percent, according Shadowstats.com. That number rivals the heights of the Great Depression.
Children and the elderly once were the main beneficiaries of the food stamp program, but now working-age adults make up the majority. High school graduates are the largest group at 37 percent. But since 1980, workers with some college training have been the fastest-growing component of the recipient base, now with 28 percent of them having some college, compared to only 8 percent 35 years ago.
In fact, the majority of American families on public assistance — including food stamps, Medicaid, Temporary Aid to Needy Families and the earned income tax credit — have at least one full-time worker. More than half (56 percent) are working families. And 60 percent of food stamp recipients who are of working age and not disabled were employed while receiving the benefits, according to the Census Bureau.
A recent study by the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Labor Research and Education reports that persistent low wages costs the taxpayers $153 million in public assistance every year to make up the slack. Some think tankers blame it on robots and overseas sweatshops, as automation and outsourcing to other countries with cheaper labor removes available jobs for the people at home.
But the real culprit is government tax policy and faux “free trade” deals that give multinational corporations breaks and incentives to take their manufacturing jobs to other countries, while burdensome regulation, high taxes and Obamacare destroy jobs that would be created by U.S. small businesses.
There is collusion between the globalists in government and the large multinational corporations to destroy the middle class and turn America into a Third World backwater of government dependents. This policy is endorsed by the leaders of both political parties.
Everything done in the District of Criminals is to the benefit of the large corporations and to grow government. Just look at the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership deal — at least what you can see of it, as it’s shrouded in secrecy — which Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) claims would let foreign firms challenge U.S. laws, potentially overruling those laws and costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars in fines. And which Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) claims will undermine U.S. sovereignty. And which Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) claims contains a “living agreement,” which is language allowing the treaty to be changed by the president after Congress approves it. [Editor's Note: The superficial, theatrically staged, choreographed appearance of debate, disagreement, and stalled legislation always resolves into more government and less FREEDOM for us.]
Editor's note:
There is an inherent tendency in all governmental power to recognize no restraints on its operation and to extend the sphere of its dominion as much as possible. To control everything, to leave no room for anything to happen of its own accord without the interference of the authorities--this is the goal for which every ruler secretly strives.
Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism, p.67
When you have such diametrically opposed politicians agreeing that a treaty is bad because it gives such breaks to large corporations and benefits to government, the deal has to be suspect.
Washington prints large sums of money to hand to corporations in the form of corporate welfare. And it jiggers the tax code and passes so-called “free trade” laws to make it more profitable for them to outsource American manufacturing jobs. All the while, it imports millions of aliens — legally and illegally — to flood the market with workers content with slave wages. Obamacare is causing small businesses to close or to cut employees and hours in order to avoid complying with its mandates. [Editor's Note: Jobs for all engineering specialties, i.e software, aeronautical, electrical, chemical, electronics, civil, etc., robotics, computer programmers, various math specialties, and on and on for college graduates in the hard sciences. There is a great transition from unionized groups of socialist/progressive people who have destroyed industry in the USA by demanding more than employers can provide. Of curse, the Federal Reserve and federal government created inflation since 1913 is the real cause of destruction.]
These policies drive up unemployment and drive down wages. Meanwhile, government food stamp recruiters have quotas of 150 signups per month. The program has an advertising budget of $41 million per year; and advertising extends across the border into Mexico, explaining how illegals can sign up for the system. And eligibility requirements are constantly being eased in order to grow the rolls of dependents.
And ever since the New Deal, the government has manipulated prices and production of farm products. This has created artificially inflated food prices and cost consumers trillions of dollars by forcing them to pay higher-than-market prices for food and surrender ever increasing sums of their wealth to taxes and inflation.
And then there is the rapid rise of acceptance by the American people of government dominance in our lives. The people no longer shrink from a handout from Uncle Scam, and the stigma once attached to doing so is fading. In fact, we have reached a time in America where most people consider handouts from government as something that they deserve as a right rather than a privilege because of their financial hardship or unemployment.
This attitude will be very bad when the food stamp system fails, as it surely will when the worthless paper money system collapses. [Editor's Note: when unemployment soars to 75% and production ceases like the failure of the Soviet Union.]
The elected class and the bureaucratic enablers hold themselves up as paragons of virtue whose chief aim is to serve the public interest. History has shown that when governments act to “protect the people,” as often as not, death, destruction and dependency result. [Editor's Note: "The politicians only want power so they can 'serve' you." Larken Rose]
[Editor’s note: I go much more in depth into this problem and tell you everything you need to know – and what you can do about it – in the upcoming month’s issue of The Bob Livingston Letter™. To subscribe and get immediate access, go here now.]
[Editor's Note: what I have dubbed the "Legislative-Executive-Judicial Cabal" which the American People have caused by ignoring the generational transition from our Constitutional Republic to what now is, in effect, an "elected" dictatorship. Never mind who is elected. Never mind which bogus party is in power. The superficial, theatrically staged, choreographed appearance of debate, disagreement, and stalled legislation always resolves into more government and less FREEDOM. We the People still lose more freedom after every "emergency" or unnoticeably when CON-gress passes another general, open-ended law that enables the Executive (dictator) and its unaccountable agencies to formulate more freedom-restricting regulations (200 pages a day get posted to the Federal Register). The "Dictator's" agencies (police force) continue to pile-up more weapons to squelch uprising(s) when the People finally realize and understand their tyrannical government.
A Constitutional Convention is necessary to amend the Constitution for Congressional Term Limits to twelve (12) years and restrict time in DC to only six (6) months per year. Such an Amendment is only a FIRST step in restoring America to its Constitutional roots. Back in the day when the People still feared kings, the president's term was limited by Constitutional Amendment.
Currently, CONgress is just a group of socialists, progressives, and faux-conservatives (career politicians) that, on a daily basis, ignores the Constitution, many of their own past statutes, and cedes their responsibilities to the president ("elected" dictator). A comparison to the history of Rome becomes more and more credible with the Executive and its "featherbedded" lackeys gaining more power while CONgress sits back all fat-dumb-and-happy.
CONgress has made recent efforts to expose State Dept. failures in Benghazi (inept political leader), Fast-and-Furious gun-running (criminal AG), IRS 1st amendment violations, gov't union Veterans Administration fraud, and whining about Obama(Reid)-killer-Care, but these efforts are mostly politics as usual. Most "citizens" will forget about these infringements from our unaccountable, uncontrollable Executive branch with its tyrannical agencies staffed by socialist unions that extort "juicy" contracts from the "elected" dictatorship.
Most positions in the federal government whether elected, appointed, or hired are nominal, make-work jobs (confidentially) designed merely to grow government, bilk money from private businesses and citizens, and eventually fully transform America into a totalitarian state. When this happens, CONgress will have destroyed the economy and the country by their negligence and counter-liberty policies, and it will be almost impossible to Restore America. The 'Restore America' list is only a beginning too.]
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
James Madison, Federalist Paper 47, Friday, February 1, 1788
Anyone who believes this country is free is an idiot!
"Extortion and thuggery are good things when they're called law!"
Larken Rose
[Editor's Note: a Constitutional Convention is required to reverse the damage to freedom and liberty since 1900.
The States must "demand" a Convention and explicitly specify an agenda of:
laws to be repealed or modified,
Amendments to existing constitutional clauses that define the co-equal branches to further specify and define, and
new Amendments or statutes to be eventually ratified by States.
These Amendments should further specify and clarify the powers of the Legislature and Executive Branches. A good example is the definition of a "Bill".
A Bill should contain ONLY verbiage in regards to the topic of the future law. NO earmarks and NO unrelated sections or attacments.
Many past Bills sent to a president for signature contained unrelated but essential funding sections that rendered the Bill veto-proof when it warranted a veto.
CON-gress can override a veto if the Bill is deemed absolutely necessary by CON-gress.
If the Bill requires SPECIFICALLY related amendments, the CON-gress can "debate" (with its usual theater) and vote any new amendments.
The original text of the Constitution contains some very GENERAL clauses enabling both CON-gress and Executive branches to write laws and
regulations with their particular nuances expanding powers beyond intent. "Intent" may be gleaned from a complete understanding of
Federalist Papers.
An example of further specification and clarity for CON-gress should be a clear, very specific definition of the boundaries for the interstate Commerce Clause.
To restore freedom, liberty, and individuality - minimally these must be repealed:
Currently, even with computer-searching systems, the list of antiquated and/or obsolete statutes (and related regulations) is unwieldy.
These statutes must be invalidated unless there remains an applicable reason for retaining the law(s).
Aside from invalidating statutes, there are many regulations that are biased in favor of large enterprises (who buy support from bureaucrats)
at the expense of the competition, effectively repressing the Free Market. Any regulations not related to public safety that gives a financial advantage
to some companies over their smaller rivals must be rescinded to enable all companies with good consumer products to excel without burdensome regulations.
Additionally, the Convention should adopt for ratification at least these new Amendments or statute modifications:
clearly define and limit the role of government in regards to the term "general welfare",
Term Limits for CON-gress (12 years) including a 6 month limit on time residing in DC,
strict Prohibition of Lobbying (with a comprehensive definition of "lobbying"), and
a Balanced Budget Amendment to stop wreckless spending. During a CON-gressionally declared "war" (only after USA is attacked or attack is proven "imminent"),
deficit spending is permissible.
Restore America to its roots, i.e. Defense, State, Treasury, and Justice. Some Agencies are required like CIA and NSA, both respectively focused on defense against real foreign aggressors and not fictitious paranoid delusions of war mongers. Other agencies help where certain interstate communications are necessary. Most agencies like Agriculture, Education, DEA, IRS (eliminated with 16th Amendment) and many other listed here should be eliminated.
Restore the world Gold Standard with five contentious steps, and
Replace the IMF, World Bank, and Export-Import Bank with facilities that reflect the new Gold Standard, and
After decentralizing and economizing, if tax revenue is needed to fund all or part of the federal government, then implement the Fair Tax.
Regarding a Constitutional Convention itself, some of the available literature warns the reader about a possible "unstructured" and "mismanaged"
Convention that might propose and adopt amendments that could damage the Republic.
Possible, however, it is difficult to envisage how much more damage could done over what the L-E-J Cabal has already done.
If the Convention's agenda and rules of order strictly prohibit violation of the rules and enable a vote on unlisted Amendments AFTER all others are adopted,
then the Convention will be properly structured and managed. ]
Those who seek out positions of power tend to be paranoid, hypocritical wimps. Consider the issue of firearms. Politicians have many thousands of mercenaries (soldiers and "law enforcers") wielding all sort of deadly weapons--guns, tanks, missiles, drones, etc. Yet those same politicians pee themselves at the thought of the rabble owning semi-automatic rifles. From their twisted, elitist perspective, it's perfectly fine for them to swipe many billions of dollars from their subjects to spend on all manner of armaments, but if YOU want to possess a rifle, they think you should have to ask their permission, and register it, and make sure they always know what you own.
They also expect to be allowed to do things in secret, while claiming the right to spy on you and everyone else. As far as they are concerned, it's none of your business what they do, or what weapons they have, but it is their business to know everything that you do and everything that you have. Of course, they will pretend that their goal is to protect you from the "criminal element," but you'd have to be pretty dense to actually believe that. Why do you suppose they mostly whine about civilians having weapons that:
are used in only a tiny percentage of actual crime, and;
are the most effective types of weapon for resisting "government"
aggression?
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. People who gravitate towards political office think they have the right to rule you. That's the job they applied for. And, of course, extorting you and bossing you around could be rather more difficult if you are better armed than their enforcers. So they hand out machine guns to their mindless thugs, but have tantrums about you having a 30-round magazine.
A new Congress has been seated, and it brings the prospect of perhaps, maybe, potentially, in a possible way doing something about the runaway federal deficits. And in other news, several New York area bridges are for sale, which you can acquire at a bargain price.
Excessive Spending Destroys!
Feds Have a Spending Problem — DO NOT RAISE THE CEILING!
Feds Have a Sewage Problem!
Becky Gerritson: "...government is out of control!" and "...our representative government has failed us."
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the IRS to detail under oath how some of former agency official Lois Lerner’s emails went missing, as well as any potential methods for recovering them.
Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington gave the Internal Revenue Service exactly a month — until Aug. 10 — to file a report, which he demanded as part of a lawsuit from a conservative watchdog, Judicial Watch, against the agency.
Judicial Watch is seeking a wide range of documents from the IRS, including Lerner’s emails, as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. It has complained that the IRS didn’t tell it that the agency couldn’t recover all of Lerner’s emails from 2009 to 2011.
Sullivan cast his ruling as a compromise, and a potential way for Judicial Watch to get answers without the court wading any deeper into the matter. Judicial Watch had asked the court to potentially compel IRS officials to testify about the lost emails, through a process called limited discovery.
The FairTax is a consumption tax unilaterally applied to all Americans at the same rate. For businesses, payroll taxes would no longer exist. Our exports would include a heavy tax for overseas buyers purchasing our products, while our imports would be cheaper for us to purchase. I'm not sure how this would affect GDP, as more information is necessary.
According to the FairTax website, "Under the FairTax, every person living in the United States pays a sales tax on purchases of new goods and services, excluding necessities due to the prebate." The prebate gives every legal resident household an "advance refund" at the beginning of each month so that purchases made up to the poverty level are tax-free.
So a family of four making something like $50,000/year should not have to pay taxes, thus preventing an unfair burden on low-income families. Since the FairTax eliminates both federal and payroll taxes, you get to keep your gross pay amount of each paycheck earned.
John Adams said, “Without [term limits] every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey”. That being said, here are some of the reasons we believe our country needs Term Limits.
Term Limits can help break the cycle of corruption in Congress. Case studies show that the longer an individual stays in office, the more likely they are to stop serving the public and begin serving their own interests.
Term Limits will encourage regular citizens to run for office. Presently, there is a 94% re-election rate in the House and 83% in the Senate. Because of name recognition, and usually the advantage of money, it can be easy to stay in office. Without legitimate competition, what is the incentive for a member of Congress to serve the public? Furthermore, it is almost a lost cause for the average citizen to try to campaign against current members of Congress.
Term Limits will break the power special interest groups have in Congress.
Term Limits will force politicians to think about the impact of their legislation because they will be returning to their communities shortly to live under the laws they enacted.
Term Limits will bring diversity of people and fresh ideas to Congress.
[Editor's Note: If you want to get rich, i.e. advance from a low paying government bureaucrat job on the local or state level, THEN GET ELECTED TO THE US CONGRESS (House or Senate). Once you're elected, it's easy to steal from your campaign contributions or the Congressional budget allocated to your seat and staff. You can go on a government-funded junket with 'lavishly' paid expenses. The list of ways to steal from the government while in office is inexhaustible. There are only a few Congressmen who left Congress just wealthy instead of a multi-millionaire. Of course, there are several who arrived in Congress as multi-millionaires and don't need to steal from the government.]
