If You Don’t Pay Attention, You Could Lose A Lot More Than Your Right To Complain

“If you don’t vote, then you don’t have the right to complain about the guy that gets elected.”

This is a phrase that I have heard being said to people who claim to not be interested in politics and don’t vote. I image that, more times than not, that phrase is used off-handedly and in a sort of lighthearted manner but I see why people say it. It’s another way of telling the politically uninterested that if they don’t vote (and I’ll expand it further to include “don’t pay attention to the political world”) then they didn’t do anything to stop bad politicians (and the bad policy they carry with them) from being elected.

Keep in mind, when I say, “politics,” I’m not referring so much to politicians themselves and who is the head of what federal or state department, etc. I mean political issues. At the end of the day, a politician is just a person – a medium for passing laws and bills. What I mean by “politics” is the issues that are dealt with in the political spectrum – taxation, foreign policy, the Federal Reserve, illegal immigration, economics, social issues, etc. Yes, it’s important to be familiar with who is in office or running for office, but it’s more important to understand the issues thoroughly. Politicians can be swayed to do the right (or wrong, of course) thing but there is a more solid right and wrong on the issues. Fortunately, the right side of the issues tends to be the side that grants the most liberty to the most people. I’ll explain why paying attention to politics (or political issues) is so important here in a bit.

I find myself at times (probably more often than not) trying to talk politics or ethics to the uninterested. Many folks politely decline the discussion when I may bring up the last political debate or a major political issue that has been in the news by saying, “I don’t really follow politics,” “My vote doesn’t count,” or “Politicians don’t care about what we think anyway.” I’m not here to muster up some grand movement to get out and vote come election day – at least that’s not my primary goal of writing this. However, I would like to cause you to stop and think about what’s happening around us because that is vitally important and relevant to our daily lives, though we may not realize it immediately.

Spending and Taxing

The largest example that I believe affects every person in America is government spending and, subsequently, taxation. Everybody hates taxes and everybody pays taxes. Even if you don’t have an income, you still pay sales tax. Ever had to register your license plate? That’s a tax. Ever had to pay to park at a meter? That’s a tax. Ever gotten a ticket? Yep – tax. The list goes on and on. In the case of taxation, it doesn’t matter whether or not we pay attention to politics – we pay taxes. Mark Twain once said, “The only two certainties in life are death and taxes.” How much we pay in taxes is dictated by politics. Some estimates say Americans spend up to forty percent of their income on taxes. That’s a large amount of money that the government takes from us without our own choosing before we get a chance to use it on bills, mortgage, rent, groceries or gas. Next time you get your pay stub, take a look at it to see how much is actually being taken out by the government. Then factor sales tax into anything else you might buy after income tax. What’s left is what the government decides you get to keep to pay your life essentials with.

As we all know, our tax dollars are used to pay for expenses within the government. Today our government has become so bloated with wasteful spending that I couldn’t scratch the surface of listing all the broken programs, bloated military spending and subsidies within our crony-capitalist (as opposed to a true free market) economy. Any time you hear about the debt of the United States, just remember that it is us (or our children) that will have to pay that off. Obviously we need some taxation to pay the nation’s expenses of defense and cost to run the government but a quick look at how many programs we have that we don’t need will tell you that you could be keeping a lot more of your own money if we ended all the Unconstitutional programs and spending. If you do a little research you would not only see that the government is wasting our money, but some of the things it is spending our money on is downright appalling.

I could go much deeper (and if you stay tuned, I will) into wasteful and Unconstitutional government spending but I’ve only begun on the reasons to pay more attention to what’s going on in the political realm today.

The Fourth Amendment

In case you don’t remember off hand, the Fourth Amendment basically guarantees our right to privacy from the government and outlaws arrests and searches without a warrant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution.) This Amendment is necessary for a free society because, in short, it keeps the government from babysitting us and treating us as if we’re guilty until proven innocent. I will also delve further into the Fourth Amendment and our rights to privacy at another time but for the sake of discussion, I’m just giving a brief overview of our rights to privacy.

Incidents of violations of the Fourth Amendment occurred on a more isolated basis in the past but ever since our “War on Terror” that former President George W Bush initiated, Fourth Amendment violations have been happening en masse, primarily thanks to the Patriot [sic] Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act) which allowed the government to perform wiretaps, intercept e-mails, etc without our knowledge under the guise of “stopping terrorism.” I know what you’re thinking. Why does this effect me? I’m not a terrorist. Maybe not but then again, it may also depend whose definition of “terrorist” you’re using.

If you think of the word “terrorist” in your mind, you probably get a vivid picture in your mind of a middle-eastern man with a turban, beard and AK-47 and since you probably don’t fit that description you may feel you don’t have anything to worry about. Our government may have a different definition of “terrorist” though. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qml7obNdmgk. You may notice in this video, the “terrorist” is a white, middle-class American. Sound a little different from what you’d define a terrorist as? The FBI also has a few other definitions of terrorists that you may be surprised at: http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/constitutional_terrorist.htm

I don’t say that in order to say that the government is watching you right now because you might be a terrorist, but they can certainly use the “suspected terrorist” cop-out any time they want in order to check up on your e-mail or phone calls or randomly search your vehicle or possibly worse.

The Sixth Amendment

Leading off of what I was saying with the Fourth Amendment, we recently had an issue in the news where President Barack Obama ordered the drone killing of an American citizen. http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/a/anwar_al_awlaki/index.html In case you didn’t know about that story, Anwar Al-Awlaki was an American born muslim who ended up joining Al Qaeda. Instead of capturing him and bringing him to justice, Obama killed Awlaki with a drone strike without giving him a speedy trial like the Sixth Amendment guarantees ALL American citizens. I’m not saying that Awlaki was innocent or that he was a good guy or anything like that. My issue with this situation is that Awlaki never got a trial. Awlaki was an American citizen, so he is guaranteed rights under the Constitution. If this right is subjective, then that means that your right to a fair and speedy trial are subjective as well. We need to ensure this kind of violation never happens again. If these violations go unbridled we could start living in a scary world for all of us.

The First and Second Amendments

Surprisingly I’m not going to delve into these topics deeply since violations of these rights are, unfortunately, well documented. The right to keep and bear arms is not an interpretive right. There weren’t any asterisks after this Constitutional amendment. Yet, we have a federal agency that is in place to solely to limit our Second Amendment rights (BATFE -and they aren’t really about the tobacco or alcohol anymore.) The abuses of BATFE have been well-documented, from Operation Fast and Furious  (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/29/nation/la-na-atf-guns-20110929) to Ruby Ridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge) yet this federal organization feels it has the ability to tell private citizens what kind of arms they can and can’t own. If there needs to be gun laws, they can be implemented at the state level. Our Second Amendment is more than just a right to keep hunting rifles. Much of the cannon that was used in the Revolutionary War was private cannon and our Founding Fathers were well aware of this. Since it has been ruled that the police don’t have to protect individual citizens (http://www.disinfo.com/2010/03/the-police-arent-legally-obligated-to-protect-you/) then it is up to us to keep and bear our own arms to protect ourselves if the case ever arises.

Like the Second Amendment violations, there are similar violations of the First Amendment. I use the FCC (a federal agency that limits our freedom of expression and speech) as an example. We are Constitutionally guaranteed the right to say what we want to say (exceptions for yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, etc.) The First Amendment wasn’t put in place to talk about the weather. Our right to free speech is guaranteed whether we have things to say that aren’t correct or possibly even racist, sexist or in opposition to the government or the common opinions of the public. This is a right that has been attacked for a long time and there are literally hundreds or even thousands of cases of the First and Second Amendments being restricted.

The Rights to Our Own Bodies

To my knowledge, there isn’t a specific Constitutional amendment that gives us the rights to make our own health decisions -perhaps because the Founding Fathers decided this was a given. I believe that the rights to make decisions about our own bodies is also a key facet to a free society, as most would agree (who wants someone else telling them what they can and can’t do with their own bodies?) To those who may not be looking closely this particular freedom may not appear to be under attack, though it is and has been for quite some time.

You may have started to notice a theme here. When our power-thirsty government wants to control a certain area of our lives, it starts with small, easy-to-pass laws that would seem as if they should “obviously” be illegal and then a steady progression takes place based on the premise we’ve allowed our government to take to pass said laws. Take cocaine and meth for instance. Both are hard, addicting substances that will wreak havoc on an individual’s personal health. The government made these substances illegal and many people probably didn’t think twice since there’s a fairly large consensus that these substances are so bad for your health. However, what the government did when they made those substances illegal is they allowed themselves the premise of outlawing something simply because it was deemed to be bad for you. Drugs don’t really hurt anyone else besides the individual using the drugs though (yes, there are the family relations of drug users to consider but if you go down that road, you should get ready to outlaw all gambling, unfaithfulness and alcoholism as well.) The war on drugs was the first step of our government in taking control of everything you put in your body.

Think I’m being extreme? Look no further than regulations that are being put in place on trans fats, government-forced meal plans in public schools, etc. Wisconsin has actually ruled that dairy farmers don’t have a right to drink milk from their own cows and you don’t have a right to grow and eat food from your own garden. (http://www.prisonplanet.com/wi-no-right-to-produce-or-eat-food.html) (http://www.thecompletepatient.com/storage/WIorder-clarification9-11.pdf). If the government was never given the premise in the first place to make “obvious” laws against drugs, I could almost guarantee that we wouldn’t be facing these silly regulations today, as they would seem blatantly unacceptable.We’re now also forced to buy health insurance under Obama’s ruling on health care last year commonly known as “Obamacare.” This was also a violation of our right to own our own bodies by deciding if we want to purchase (or can even afford to purchase) health insurance.

In Conclusion

I’ve gone over several of many areas where our rights are being chipped away. You may have noticed the trend that I tried to point as well – when the government wants to take our freedoms, they don’t take it in large chunks right away. They will usually start out by outlawing something “obvious” (belt-fed weapons, methamphetamine, etc) so that they can gain a premise to outlaw other things as they see fit. They also tend to use “for your safety” as a reasoning. These changes do not occur over night, which is why I really stress and encourage you to be vigilant now. Don’t take things at face value when you hear about some new silly regulation or ordinance (even if it’s in another state or city.) Look further into the issue. Under the premise that the government made law “X” can they now outlaw or regulate “Y” and “Z”?

There is much more to be said on the matter of our endangered rights – more than I could list here. I just want to stress the importance of paying attention to what the government is doing. When an entity (like our government) has power, they must continually be monitored and held accountable if we are to return to and maintain a free society. The only downfall of a free society is its fragility. It is the responsibility of the people to keep our freedoms and our republic. As Lord Dalton was quoted as saying, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” If we aren’t vigilant in preserving our freedoms, even when it’s hard or we don’t agree with the individuals having their rights violated, our government will gain absolute power and will most certainly “Corrupt absolutely.”

A Lesson In Economics, The Federal Reserve And How It’s Hurting America

This election cycle I’ve paid closer attention than normal to the Republican candidates running in the presidential primaries. In observing, I’ve noticed Ron Paul mention ending the Federal Reserve several times. In the past I brushed it off as unimportant and moved on. The Federal Reserve is not a new or hot-button issue (the Federal Reserve has been around for almost 100 years) and it is a complicated issue, so it is hard to assign an emotion to and get involved against. However, after hearing about the Federal Reserve issue a few more times, I decided to look into why Dr. Paul continues to push against the Federal Reserve and what I found was actually very intriguing. The past couple months I’ve been doing some independent research on the Federal Reserve and its effects on inflation and false economic booms and busts. Before the election cycle began I didn’t really think twice about the Federal Reserve – I hardly even knew what the Federal Reserve was, let alone why it was hurting us economically. A couple people tried to explain it to me but it went over my head. Now that I’ve gotten a grasp on what the real problem with the Federal Reserve is, I would like to make note of it here.

Let me begin by ensuring we’re on the same page. First, it’s important to have a basic understanding of the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is a private bank that is run by bureaucrats that print our money. This, in itself, is significant. In Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, it states, “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;” (http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#A1Sec8) as a power of Congress. Keeping in mind that the Federal Reserve is a private bank, this alone should raise some eyebrows. Our Constitution says that only Congress shall coin money, yet we have a private bank coining money. In other words, according to the Constitution, whenever the Federal Reserve prints a new dime or dollar, they are committing a federal offense (counterfeiting.) It seems that no matter how much candidates try to champion the Constitution in their campaigns, they always forget about this violation of the Constitution. Why is this so important and why should the average citizen care?

In order to begin, we must examine two very basic economic principles. The first one deals with trade value. Today, we have standardized trade value with Federal Reserve Notes (notice that the words “Federal Reserve Note” is printed on our dollar bills.) If I go to the store to go grocery shopping, I don’t hand the cashier clothes in exchange for the food I am buying. I hand the cashier dollar bills – our standard currency. I know this seems painfully obvious but I promise I am coming around to a point here. In Colonial America (and before) however, settlers would trade furs for muskets or beads for food and so on, just the same as they may use currency. It was a direct exchange of goods. This worked well at the time for the parties involved, assuming there was no exploitation because both parties could determine the value of what they were trading for versus the value of what they were trading away and determine the workings of the trade in that manner. For example, if one party needed furs for clothing but had a surplus of, say, gunpowder, they could trade the gunpowder for the furs and the trade was agreed upon. Of course some trading will still take place in this manner today. Our currency was later standardized by gold and silver represented by currency (the name of what we now know as “dollars” or “Federal Reserve Notes” changed several times throughout American history.)

This standardization of currency backed in gold or silver was a good thing, since it allowed for more fluid trading. Now, an individual who needed furs but only had, say, woodworkings to trade to the fur trapper (who may not want woodworkings because the fur trapper needed gun powder instead) could give gold-backed dollars to the fur trapper for his furs and the trapper could then go to someone who had gun powder and give them the gold-backed dollars for the gun powder. Trading evolved into a much more complex version of the latest scenario until we developed into what we have today. The critical point to take away from that is the value of the currency. You may have noticed that I said “gold-backed” currency was used for trading. Why is it so important that currency is gold-backed? Gold and silver are in a limited supply and have been recognized as desirable because of the value they hold for trading. Gold is used in jewelry of course, but even that has roots in being a sign of “status.” The reason that gold and silver make a good means of trade is because there is a limited supply of both on earth. This leads me to my second basic economic principle.

The more common something is, the less it is worth. This principle seems painfully obvious as well. If you and I are strangers and I ask you to fix my plumbing and you ask what I’ll pay you and I reply, “A stack of paper,” you’re probably going to laugh or be insulted. Why? because you can find paper many other places without having to deal with my plumbing job. Paper is quite common, hence does not hold as much intrinsic value. Now, if I offer you an ounce of gold to fix all the plumbing in my house, that would be far more satisfactory since gold is less common and has a higher value naturally assigned to it (naturally being a key word here.) You can’t walk outside and just find gold laying on the ground. You could take the gold I give you and trade it to someone else for something you want now because gold will have trading value to that person as well.

Now that we’re on the same economic page, let me explain how the Federal Reserve is hurting America and causing inflation.

American currency was formerly backed by gold and silver which, as we’ve already established, is a stable currency due to the desire to have it and the fact that it is a limited resource. American money, when it was backed by gold, could be exchanged at the bank for its value in gold. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_dollar) In other words, the paper currency was just a representation of gold value and was instituted, among other reasons, because it was easy to store and carry. In 1971, Richard Nixon ended the exchange of United States Dollars for gold and the value of the dollar plummeted. The reason for this is because the dollar no longer held the value that it previously had when it was backed by gold.

The Federal Reserve Bank was started in 1913 and today, they are the private entity that is responsible for printing American currency. There is no longer real, intrinsic value in Federal Reserve Notes because the notes aren’t backed by gold. Because of this, the Federal Reserve isn’t bound to limiting the amount of money that it prints to the availability of gold. When America is facing times of debt, the Federal Reserve can now print money (and has been doing it for some time) virtually out of thin air. At a glance, this seems like a good thing and, unfortunately, it often dupes people into thinking more money is available while value is still scarce, in reality since the money printed is backed by nothing of value (today our money is backed by debt purchased by the Federal Reserve Bank.) Because the Federal Reserve will print money basically at will in a time of crisis, false economic booms are created. Employers will hire based on the false idea that more actual trading value is available to the public because more money was printed. When reality checks in, this creates a bust in the economy. Employers suddenly realize that they’re short on trade value and may go bankrupt or have to release the employees they hired during the false boom.

Another interesting point to consider is that the Federal Reserve, being a private bank, doesn’t directly put the cash into circulation. They actually sell the new currency to our government with interest, further devaluing our money. For example, when the Federal Reserve prints money at 100% of its value and sells it back to our government with, say, 20% interest for example, we’re only getting eighty cents on the dollar.

Now let me get back to the economic principle that I spoke of earlier on the availability of actual value. The Federal Reserve, when it prints money, doesn’t really have to have available value first, before printing. In effect, they’d be the ones trying to hand the plumber from my example a stack of paper. When the plumber has done his work and it comes time to pay, they would say, “I have nothing of value that I’m going to give you, so let me just go grab some paper off the printer and write ‘Twenty Dollar Bill’ on a handful of them.” Needless to say, the plumber would be irate (one could draw a similarity between the plumber and the debt we owe to China.) Obviously the printer paper with “Twenty Dollar Bill” on it isn’t worth twenty dollars in value (to be put in exchange for the plumber’s time, materials and effort) now just because the Federal Reserve writes “Twenty Dollar Bill” on paper. As well, the Federal Reserve reduces the intrinsic value of the dollar each time it prints more dollar bills because they are making the Federal Reserve Note more common and, as discussed earlier, the more common something is, the less it is really worth.

This begins to explain how the Federal Reserve causes inflation. Now go back to my example about trade value. Stores are selling you tangible goods. Use the grocery store for example. Say you go to the store to buy bread. Bread contains a tangible value, since you can take it home and eat it. It has an intrinsic benefit to you. When a store sells you the bread, they want a value in return so they charge you money for the bread – say 3 dollars for the loaf. At the current time there are only so many Federal Reserve Notes in circulation. The next week, the Federal Reserve prints billions more dollars, making the dollar bill more common, so the value decreases. The store owner still wants to get the same value out of the loaves of bread he’s selling since bread, as a tangible item, has stable value. Since there are now more dollars in circulation and they have decreased in value, the store owner must increase the amount he charges for bread, causing inflation. This concept of inflation can be applied throughout the market.

What do I suggest? I suggest ending the Unconstitutional Federal Reserve and return to a monetary system that is based on real monetary value instead of money that is backed by debt. If we no longer have to pay interest on our money just to receive it from the Federal Reserve, if we return to a monetary standard that contains real value in our money and combat inflation, I believe we’d be well on our way to economic recovery.