HR 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act is referred to Committee as Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty focuses its efforts in generating a groundswell of support. So… uh… what happens next?
by Jake Towne, the Champion of the Constitution
Originally published on May 7, 2009 at http://www.nolanchart.com/article6397.html
This February, Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) introduced HR 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 to audit the FED. When I first reported on it in March, privately I was quite ecstatic that there were 11 co-sponsors, and three were Democrats. Why?
Well, Dr. Paul has tried this variants of this theme multiple times before over the past 30 years. For instance, HR 1148 was introduced in 1999 to abolish the Federal Reserve and obtained a whopping zero co-sponsors. This was repeated in HR 2755 in 2007. Result? Zero co-sponsors. Paul’s new clever strategy has been to extremely limit the scope of the bill – just audit the books of the FED, nothing more – and has been able to tap into the wide-ranging dissatisfaction surrounding the October 2008 banker bailout, the Obama stimulus plan, and the outright socialization of our banking, auto, and insurance sectors.
It only takes half a brain and a pulse to get angry about the fact that the central bankers gave the American people the equivalent of a middle finger on Bloomberg’s Freedom of Information Act request. The FED denied to disclose how they used $2 trillion dollars in open market operations that they executed outside of Congressional authority. Congress has no clue how the FED used the money either since that is not how the FED works. Without an audit, Congress also has no clue how much gold our nation owns. (photo)
So what’s the big picture? Basically, the legislative process in Washington is usually as slow as molasses, and most bills die in committee with the obvious exceptions of very long lobbyist bills like the USA PATRIOT Act and urgent banker bailout-stimulus plans that no one in Congress admittedly even has time to read before voting on them. Ron Paul is a veteran legislator, and most of his bills this decade are quite short – HR 1207 is 446 words – and follows the K.I.S.S. Principle: Keep It Simple Stupid. Obviously he has not had a lot of success, but that’s mostly been due to lack of cooperation.
re: HR 1207, Ron Paul’s Federal Reserve Accountability Act of 2009. 124 co-sponsors and rising!
by Jake Towne, the Champion of the Constitution
Originally published on Tuesday, May 5, 2009 at http://www.nolanchart.com/article6388.html
To the Reader -
I sent this letter to Congressman Dent urging him to vote to audit the Federal Reserve system through his contact form on May 5, 2009. I had previously contacted him on this issue through this contact form in March and April, and left a message at his office in April. Although there has been no reply to-date, this does not mean it is being ignored as his traffic maybe too heavy.
However, I recently discovered that I am not the only one. Wouldn’t it be great if after contacting your representative you could see who else has and what they had to say? This is one of the accountability problems my campaign will address.
Dear Congressman Dent -
Please consider co-signing HR1207, the Federal Reserve Accountability Act. This will open the FED to an audit of their monetary policy aspects by the GAO. As you may be aware, no one, including Congress, has any specific details on what our Central Bank is actually doing with our nation’s currency, and Bloomberg even filed a Freedom of Information Act request for information on the TARP bailout and disclosure of $2 Trillion in loans.
The American people also deserve to have an independent audit completed of our physical gold holdings.
I had previously called your Washington, DC office and written to your website on this issue last month with no reply. There are currently 124 co-sponsors of this bill. For more details, please read this article I wrote in March or feel free to contact me.
I would also like to bring to your attention that I have decided to run for Congress during the next election in our district. The biggest reason for this is our current monetary policy, which I strongly disagree with since it is not benefiting the people of our district, nor of this nation.
Quote of the Day: “I’ve come to expect that even nobly conceived laws will be manipulated and distorted for private ends. But once in a while I hear a story that gives me the queasy feeling that I’m nowhere near cynical enough.” — Christopher Hayes, The Nation
One intent of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was to reduce the use of fossil fuels. But now, because of this law, the paper industry is using more fossil fuels than before.
Prior to Congress deciding it could use tax policy to re-engineer America’s energy use from on-high, the paper industry had been 70% fueled by something called black liquor, a natural by-product of the paper making process. In other words, the paper industry was inherently energy efficient, until Congress got involved.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorized a 50-cent per gallon tax credit for mixing gasoline or diesel with an alternative fuel. To get the credit, paper companies began to mix diesel with their black liquor. In other words . . .
The government is paying the paper industry to use a less efficient, environmentally-destructive fuel!
The cost of this scam could reach $8 billion this year. [Source: The Nation]
Congress could mess up a train wreck.
At first glance, this appears to be an example of “unintended consequences,” but this assumes we really know what Congress intended . . .
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 was 1,273 pages.
The House passed the bill just one day after it was filed.
The Senate passed it one day after that.
It’s impossible to believe that any member of Congress had the chance to read and completely understand the bill. This means that those who voted for it didn’t really know what the intention was. Someone could have wanted the paper industry to have a hidden subsidy. But if the Read the Bills Act had been in force, the Energy Policy Act would have been . . .
Queue the music… Ron and Rand Paul may be on the verge of making Capitol Hill a family affair. CSPAN may turn into a smarter, libertarian version of “Sanford and Son” if Rand Paul becomes Senator Paul from Kentucky. Rand Paul comes across as a younger and more charismatic version of Ron Paul.
Tomorrow morning both Ron and Rand will be guests on the Mike Church show on Sirius-XM satellite radio. There are rumors swirling that Rand may take the opportunity to officially announce his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. Paul has already been making stump speeches around Kentucky and has said he will run only if current Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning retires.
The longest running satellite radio talk show host, Mike Church, will interview both Ron and Rand Paul tomorrow Thursday 5/7 on SiriusXM radio.
Ron is scheduled to be on the air at 9:30am (eastern) and Rand is scheduled at 10:05am (eastern). In case you are unaware Rand Paul, Ron’s son, is ready to run for the US Senate from Kentucky.
Mike Church’s website is:
http://www.mikechurch.com
If you have never heard Mike Church before you should know that he is a friend of liberty and a strict Constitutionalist. There are many individuals within the liberty movement that subscribe to Sirius/XM just to listen to Mike Church’s show.
So tune in tommorrow and hear what Rand and Ron have to say; it might just suprise you.
So if the announcement is made tomorrow, which I expect is forthcoming either tomorrow or very soon, be prepared for the return of the moneybomb. Perhaps we can fill the political coffers for Rand to win in 2010. I’d pay money to see “Ron Paul and Son” playing on CSPAN. Wouldn’t you?
Yesterday Ron Paul aggravated Obama’s choice as “Special Envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan” Richard Holbrooke during a Foreign Affairs hearing.
I can’t make any commentary better than the words Lew Rockwell used when he posted this:
Here he argues against intervention, mass murder, and financial disaster, and shows up one of the most sinister of Obama’s lying neocons, Richard Holbrooke. (from LewRockwell.com)
Now, as of an update on May 1st, the Fed has increased this number to 1.647 trillion, an increase of 3 billion additional counterfeit dollars.
The January and February numbers have also been revised . . . HIGHER!
Remember what this means — every time the Fed creates new dollars your money becomes less valuable. Also remember that those who get the money first (mainly banks, borrowers, and those with government contracts) profit from this legalized counterfeiting at YOUR EXPENSE.
How do you stop this? The easiest plan is to break the Fed’s monopoly control over what you use for money.
* Repealing the legal tender law that forces you (everyone) to accept Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs)
* Repealing the federal government’s monopoly over coinage
* Prohibiting federal and state taxes on precious medal coins and bullion
These simple changes would allow you to buy and sell using means of exchange other than FRNs. For instance, you could use gold and silver, either electronically, as paper notes, or as coins. FRNs would have to compete with other forms of money, and this competition would limit the Fed’s ability to counterfeit.
Few people will prefer FRNs if they’re constantly losing their value!
So we don’t have to abolish the Fed as our first step. We can start by de-fanging it.
Here’s the problem: Congressman Ron Paul has not yet re-introduced these bills. We don’t know what he’s waiting for! If you donated to his campaign, or one of his organizations, or you’re a constituent in Texas, we encourage you to call his Congressional office and ask. Then, hit reply to this message and tell us what you learn from the call. Here’s the office number: (202) 225-2831
Only the most die hard government teat-sucking person would be surprised by this. What most of us anti-auto-bailout folks believed back in December/January is starting to come to fruition. Chrysler has no ability to pay back the $7.2 billion in bailout money it received from your pocket and mine.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Chrysler LLC will not repay U.S. taxpayers more than $7 billion in bailout money it received earlier this year and as part of its bankruptcy filing.
This revelation was buried within Chrysler’s bankruptcy filings last week and confirmed by the Obama administration Tuesday. The filings included a list of business assumptions from one of the company’s key financial advisors in the bankruptcy case.
Some of the main assumptions listed by Robert Manzo of Capstone Advisory Group were that the Treasury would forgive a $4 billion bridge loan given to Chrysler in the closing days of the Bush administration, a $300 million fee on that loan, and the $3.2 billion in financing approved last week by the Obama administration to fund Chrysler’s operations during bankruptcy.
An Obama administration official confirmed Tuesday that Chrysler won’t be repaying the loans, though a portion of the bridge loan may be recovered by Treasury from the assets of Chrysler Financial, the former credit arm of the automaker which is essentially going out of business as part of the reorganization.
Couldn’t this all have been avoided if they listened to us earlier this year? Next up GM… when POOF! Another obscene amount of your money vanishes. Once again, further proof that “a depression is a recession that the government tries to fix”.
I adore the all-American game of poker. I’ve been playing it regularly for over a decade, and as a strong, free-market libertarian, I believe the government should have no role in it. (Certainly there’s no mention of poker in the Constitution).
But given the overreaching federal government we currently have, there have been numerous attempts to limit and/or ban the playing of the game, whether it be live or over the Internet. Often, such bills are passed by slipping them into “must-pass” bills, like when the UIGEA was snuck into the otherwise unrelated SAFE Port Act at the last minute.
In response, the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) was created. And several high-profile players, for whom I have great respect, such as Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, Andy Bloch, and Victor Ramdin got involved by campaigning and testifying in Congress on the subject. When the PPA was first created, I was happy to join, and I paid to become a registered member.
The main argument that the PPA should be making, from my point of view, is twofold:
Poker is primarily a game of skill, not a game of chance. Therefore, many of the “gambling” laws (which have language specifically referring to “games of chance”) do not apply.
The Federal Government has no Constitutional authority over games adults play, period. And prohibiting businesses of any kind on moral (or any other) grounds is blatantly unconstitutional and immoral.
However, with respect to the second point, the PPA is decidedly not taking a libertarian stance. Indeed, their main strategy seems to be to cozy up to government and appeal to its instinct for control to convince it to regulate poker instead of banning it, because, heck, a lot of money can be made by doing so.
Indeed, in talking with proponents of the PPA’s approach, the general consensus is that the choice is between prohibition and regulation. But I don’t see either as a positive choice long-term. What about freedom?
Ron Paul appeared on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC this evening. He discussed his own role in the GOP’s future. Pointedly, Maddow asks Paul his thoughts on Newt Gingrich.
“I don’t think either party right now offers a whole lot to the American people who want to see some really serious changes.”
In an excellent article by David Weigel we get a peek into just how Ron Paul’s efforts to educate his peers in the ways of Austrian economics are going. It appears that Tom Woods great book “Meltdown” is one of the the more useful education tools Paul is using to win friends and influence his lawmaking peers.
No, there is no massive support among his GOP colleagues but he is winning over a few of them and building his own “Old Right” coalition of sorts. Many Paul supporters were critical of McCain’s buddy Lindsay Graham saying that Ron Paul is not a leader of the GOP (see video). However, isn’t it an indication of Paul’s growing support that Graham felt the need to make such a statement in the first place? The old tactic of “ignore Ron Paul and he will go away” is obviously no longer working for the neo-cons. Ron Paul isn’t going anywhere, and it’s about time the GOP recognized their true conservative roots, a time before the neo-conservatives incrementally hijacked the Republican Party.
And then there are the luncheons. The off-the-record talks have brought in speakers such as ex-CIA counterterrorism expert Michael Scheuer, libertarian investigative reporter James Bovard, iconoclastic terrorism scholar Robert Pape, and George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. Perhaps the most influential guest has been Thomas Woods, a conservative scholar whose previous books include “The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History” and “Who Killed the Constitution?: The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush,” and whose current book “Meltdown” has inspired Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) to question Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner about economic fundamentals.
No, Ron Paul won’t be ignored and he isn’t going away anytime soon. In fact, there is a younger more charismatic version of Ron Paul preparing to make his own mark on the American political landscape. Meet Rand Paul.
Liberty Maven
It only takes half a brain and a pulse to get angry about the fact that the central bankers gave the American people the equivalent of a middle finger on Bloomberg’s Freedom of Information Act request. The FED denied to disclose how they used $2 trillion dollars in open market operations that they executed outside of Congressional authority. Congress has no clue how the FED used the money either since that is not how the FED works. Without an audit, Congress also has no clue how much gold our nation owns. (photo)
I adore the all-American game of poker. I’ve been playing it regularly for over a decade, and as a strong, free-market libertarian, I believe the government should have no role in it. (Certainly there’s no mention of poker in the Constitution).
In response, the 
” is one of the the more useful education tools Paul is using to win friends and influence his lawmaking peers.
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