Liberty Maven

Ron Paul’s red hot bill, HR 1207 to audit the Federal Reserve now has 222 cosponsors. The 218th, according to a press release by Paul, was Dennis Kucinich.

Washington, D.C. – Congressman Ron Paul’s Federal Reserve Transparency Act, HR 1207, has reached and surpassed the level of 218 cosponsors in the House of Representatives, which means it is now cosponsored by a majority of the members.

The 218th cosponsor was Dennis Kucinich (OH-10), and the bill has since received its 222nd cosponsor.

“The tremendous grass-roots and bipartisan support in Congress for HR 1207 is an indicator of how mainstream America is fed up with Fed secrecy,” said Congressman Paul. “I look forward to this issue receiving greater public exposure.”

Hearings on Federal Reserve transparency are expected within the next month, as part of the Financial Services Committee’s series of hearings on regulatory reform.

This is simply wonderful news, but now it becomes time to hammer on our Senators to cosponsor S604 which is HR1207′s Senate counterpart introduced by Bernie Sanders. The effort faces a stiffer battle in the Senate where Federal Reserve darlings sit on the Banking committee.

S604 currently has no cosponsors. We need a brave Senator to be the first. Jim DeMint could be that brave man. Drop him a line on Twitter: @JimDeMint and contact his office requesting he be the first brave cosponsor of S604.

UPDATE: Great News! Jim DeMint has stated (via his Twitter account) he has cosponsored S.604 in the Senate!

To Thank Jim DeMint go to his web site contact page here.

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

Quote of the Day: “We are in danger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper, mere paper, representing not gold nor silver; no sir, representing nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, cheated creditors and a ruined people.” — Daniel Webster (1782-1852), US Senator Source: speech in the Senate, 1833

What was the purpose of this $9 trillion? Who got how much, and why did they get it? No one knows. Congress doesn’t know, and neither does the Inspector General charged with monitoring the Fed, as you can hear for yourself in the video embedded in a blog post by David Theroux of the Independent Institute.

Likewise, neither Congress nor the Inspector General knows anything about the profits or losses the Fed may have experienced from the $2 trillion that is reported on its balance sheet.

Add up the numbers — the Fed has done things in your name with $11 trillion. This is only a few trillion shy of the total annual gross domestic product of the United States. It’s also several times the total annual spending of the federal government.

Would it be an exaggeration to say that the Federal Reserve has become a shadow government, several times the size of the entity that’s supposed to be our real government? If we can judge by the resources involved then we would have to answer yes. The Federal Reserve seems to be disposing of more of your wealth than even your cancerous elected government does.

But apparently, neither you nor the people you elected is even allowed to know what the Fed is doing, let alone exert any control over it. This is a strong argument in favor of Congressman Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Fed — the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 (HR 1207).

There’s good news in this regard. HR 1207 now has 200-cosponsors, which is 46% of the entire House of Representatives.

But there’s also bad news. Read More »

That pill is his bill to audit the Federal Reserve, HR1207. Yesterday on Freedom Watch he revealed that the bill now has 209 cosponsors and just 9 more are needed to attain a House majority. What was more interesting though were his own feelings regarding HR1207′s chances in the Senate and beyond.

While focusing on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of an audit by a government organization for a quasi-government entity like the Fed I missed the hidden benefits of such a bill getting this kind of support.

First, having a bill like this attain 209 cosponsors is a victory in itself. As Paul points out during his Freedom Watch segment he believes it is due to the support and activism among the people that have pushed so many lawmakers to cosponsor the legislation.

This means that it is now a positive move politically to support an audit of the Federal Reserve. Ron Paul’s next book, “End the Fed (preorder it)“, could not be arriving in bookstores at a better time. It is due to be released in September of 2009.

Read More »

HR 1207, Ron Paul’s Federal Reserve Transparency Act is up to 207 co-sponsor, close to a majority. So… what to do next?

by Jake Towne, the Champion of the Constitution
Originally published Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at http://www.nolanchart.com/article6522.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 for some time to audit and limit, even abolish, the Federal Reserve. The hallmarks of Dr. Paul’s twenty years in Congress are common sense bills that have been mostly ignored as our past Congresses and the Federal Reserve led us down the path to economic ruin. However, what happened next in the House is amazing – HR 1207 now has 207 co-sponsors, close to a majority!

The big picture is that 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 or control over how the FED used the money since that is not how the FED works. Without an audit, Congress does not even know how much gold our nation owns. Who wants to be on the “No” side with all of the popular sentiment against it? (photo)

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 even has time to read before voting on them and are passed in a blind panic.  In fact, I personally am insulted by this video of the infamous speedreader incident of this 900-page “Cap and Trade” lobbyist amendment from  May.  Ron Paul is a veteran legislator, and most of his bills this decade are quite short – HR 1207 is only 446 words.

Read More »