During the hearing we’ve been following today Bill Posey used his time to continue the same line of questioning that Ron Paul began with Bernanke.
He begins by discussing the definition of inflation and then elaborates more on an audit of the Federal Reserve. Bernanke continues his decidedly illogical argument that knowing what the Fed is doing is the same as directing the Fed on monetary policy.
Of note is that Posey uses Judge Napolitano’s quote repeated on Freedom Watch over the past few weeks: “We know more about what the CIA is doing than the Fed”.
Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat who has been very critical in the past of Fed actions takes it to Bernanke today regarding foreign central bank lending. If the 90 or so Democratic cosponsors of Ron Paul’s HR1207 bill doesn’t convince you that Fed transparency is bipartisan then Grayson’s grilling of Bernanke should.
What I find especially horrid about this is that the U.S. is bankrupt and the Fed is not only printing money and handing it out to U.S. financial institutions, but is handing it out to foreign central banks so they can hand it out to their own financial institutions. Meanwhile the value of the dollar takes more of a hit exacerbating the “hidden” inflation tax on every person in the world who holds dollars.
For far too long those with a liberal/progressive agenda have successfully turned the debate around so that more and more things have become every citizen’s “right” and they are therefore correct to feel entitled to them (and demand them from their government). The subject of health care insurance is a huge one. Ron Paul correctly points out in his weekly Texas Straight Talk column that there’s a big difference between rights and “goods” (despite the level of need):
Political philosopher Richard Weaver famously and correctly stated that ideas have consequences. Take for example ideas about rights versus goods. Natural law states that people have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A good is something you work for and earn. It might be a need, like food, but more “goods” seem to be becoming “rights” in our culture, and this has troubling consequences. It might seem harmless enough to decide that people have a right to things like education, employment, housing or healthcare. But if we look a little further into the consequences, we can see that the workings of the community and economy are thrown wildly off balance when people accept those ideas.
First of all, other people must pay for things like healthcare. Those people have bills to pay and families to support, just as you do. If there is a “right” to healthcare, you must force the providers of those goods, or others, to serve you.
Here is Ron Paul’s quickly delivered opening statement during the Federal Reserve hearing today. Chairman Barney Frank told him he had 2 1/2 minutes, but ended up giving him three.
Paul hammers home the idea that if we use non-government statistics for determining unemployment the rate is around 20% not the already high 9.5% the government would have us believe. He also talks about the skyrocketing debt.
“Net U.S. debt is now 372% of GDP. In the crisis of the 1930′s it peaked at 301%.”
Today Ron Paul had the opportunity to question Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Capitol Hill.
Paul starts off by quoting Bernanke and asking him to clarify his quotes regarding transparency and HR1207. Then he asks Bernanke about inflation and whether it is a rise in prices or an increase in the monetary supply.
Quote of the Day: “Yesterday Democrats in the House introduced a 1,000-page national health-care plan. To make sure at least some people read it, they named it ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Pound Proposal.’” – Conan O’Brien During the Presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised he’d do something Congress wouldn’t, post bills on the Internet for five days after passage before signing them into law. Yet he has failed to do this for any bill, and now has formally changed abandoned his promise.
It’s easy to see why. Consider the AIG bonus provision in the stimulus bill. Had Obama waited five days to sign the bill the bonus provision would likely have been exposed sooner, and Obama would have been pressured to send the bill back to Congress. But it was the Obama Administration that wanted the provision in the first place!
Some may say that Obama didn’t personally know about the AIG bonus provision, but that’s not the point. The point is, Obama’s a party leader and political parties exist in order to raise money for themselves and grant favors to those who help elect them to power. Obama may not have known about the AIG swindle, but he appointed the people who pressured the Democratic Congress to pass it.
More than lobbyists, the most corrupting influence on Congress is the President of the United States. This is the dirty little secret of American politics. Most provisions of bills that increase the size, scope, and power of government aren’t written by a lobbyist, or an ideologue in Congress, but rather by the Administration. This is how it works regardless of whether a Republican or Democrat is in the White House.
Congress is now considering whether the federal government should take total control of your health care. Most of the legislation they’re considering wasn’t written by them, but by the Obama Administration.
Is it so unreasonable to tell Congress to at least know what it is they’re passing?
The 1,017-page health care bill (H.R. 3200) was introduced on July 14 and already two committees have approved it. It’s hard to believe that any staff member of these committees read the bill in full, let alone any member of the committee. It will be harder to believe that any other member of Congress will have time to read it before it comes to a vote.
Ron Paul chose to enter politics in 1971, the year I was born. The reason he entered politics was due to then President Nixon driving the last nail into the gold standard coffin. Nixon severed all ties of gold to the U.S. dollar. This event implicitly granted the Federal Reserve to print money without bound. For Ron Paul being anti-Fed is not just another political position, it is the political position. It is in his blood.
In those early years and up until the economic crisis of last year Ron Paul was brushed off as crazy whenever he brought up the unchecked powers of the Federal Reserve. Once the bailouts began and continued it became politically expedient to be more like Ron Paul. That is, as long as you are talking about economics. On foreign policy Ron Paul is still apparently crazy for firmly believing in non-intervention.
I am not alone among the Ron Paul faithful when I say that I’m very tired of reading articles with any of the following labels attributed to Ron Paul:
Radical
Quixotic
Fringe
Extreme
Crazy
In a recent article he had a few labels of his own for Sarah Palin supporters. He called them “establishment” and “country club” Republicans. Palin-ites reacted with fervor in dismissing Paul as just being envious.
“You can’t get corporate jets. You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas, or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime.” – Barack Obama, February 2009
by Jake Towne, the Champion of the Constitution
Originally published at http://www.nolanchart.com/article6466.html
Apparently Obama’s advice does not apply to flying in 700 of the Social Security Administration’s 62,000+ employees to a resort in Phoenix, spending $700,000 in taxpayer money in the process as ABC reported here. The SSA claims that due to threats of bodily harm received, the event was necessary in order to reduce stress rather than videoconferencing or a meeting. While I certainly do not condone threats, one might wonder why these threats have been received in the first place.
Liberty Maven
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