A Nation In Distress
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
Detention of Illegal Aliens Arrested for Drunk Driving
by Jessica Vaughan
Center for Immigration Studies
March 26, 2012
The Scott Gardner Act, a bill that will facilitate the removal of illegal aliens who are arrested for drunk driving offenses, addresses a very serious gap in immigration law enforcement that enables a particularly dangerous set of individuals to remain in our communities in defiance of our laws. Although United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement has the authority to detain and remove illegal aliens in general, and has programs in place that prioritize the removal of illegal aliens who are a threat to public safety, in practice many illegal alien drunk drivers are falling between the cracks, sometimes with tragic consequences.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Grilling the Fed
From Lew Rockwell:
Even more importantly, what is the impact of these programs on the dollar and on the U.S. economy? While the Fed seems to think that these swap lines eventually will be drawn back down to zero, what happens in the meantime? These hundreds of billions of dollars may be created out of thin air, but their effects on the real economy are anything but ephemeral. And the Fed has failed to consider the possibility that these swap lines may rise even higher than the $600 billion level that was reached in 2008. Given the still precarious position of European governments and the European financial system, it would not be surprising to see a few hundred billion dollars more being created to continue the bailout of the euro.
Grilling the Fed
by Ron Paul
Recently by Ron Paul: Advice to Geithner
United States House of Representatives, Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology, Hearing on "Federal Reserve Aid to the Eurozone: Its Impact on the U.S. and the Dollar", March 27, 2012
The Federal Reserve has recently begun to engage in an ongoing bailout of the European monetary system. Under the guise of providing dollar liquidity to strained European financial markets, the Fed is creating hundreds of billions of dollars out of thin air to prop up the euro. While still well under their 2008 peak, these latest dollar swap agreements are nonetheless a thinly-disguised bailout. Congress has been far too lenient in allowing the Fed to engage in unprecedented monetary policy operations without informing or explaining its actions to Congress. The American people need to understand the effects these actions have on the dollar so that the Fed can be held accountable. I hope that this hearing will get much-needed answers to the very important questions surrounding the Fed’s involvement in bailing out Europe.
For over 40 years, the Fed has been creating money out of thin air, propping up Wall Street while destroying the value of the dollar. This excessive money creation is what caused the financial crisis, yet just as a dog returns to its vomit, the Fed thinks that continuing to print money will somehow end the crisis. The trillions of dollars the Fed has created have eviscerated the purchasing power of American consumers, as anyone who has set foot inside a grocery store can see. While the government's official inflation rate is hovering around three percent, the original method of calculating the price index indicates that price inflation is over ten percent, which is more in line with what consumers are experiencing.
Despite a world awash in dollars, the Fed continues to view the cause of every financial problem as a dearth of liquidity. When the banks say they do not have enough money, the Fed unquestionably believes them and provides them with new dollars created from nothing. But a bank saying that there is not enough money is like a broke college student saying that there are not enough Ferraris. What he really means is that there are not enough Ferraris for sale at a price that he can afford. The same is true with banks; there are plenty of dollars available for banks to borrow, but the banks don't want to pay the going interest rate on loans, so they run to the central bank for cheap money.
Much of the Fed's intervention in the U.S. has been undertaken in an attempt to reflate the housing market. Rather than allowing house prices to fall so that supply and demand will re-equilibrate, the Fed has pumped liquidity into the system in an attempt to keep prices elevated. The federal funds rate has been kept artificially low for over three years now, and according to the Fed will be kept near zero for at least three years more. Because the Federal Reserve is so used to manipulating interest rates, it fails to see that interest rates are a price, the price of money and credit. While American banks may not be willing to lend dollars short-term to ailing European banks at 0.25 or 0.50%, you can bet that there would be a lot more dollars available to loan at 2, 3, or 4%. But in order for the markets to adjust and price loans at a market-clearing rate, the Fed needs to abstain from intervening to short-circuit this price discovery process.
The Federal Reserve has pumped trillions of dollars into the American financial system, with banks now holding $1.5 trillion of excess reserves at the Fed, money which is literally just sitting there. The Fed pays an 0.25% interest rate on those excess reserves, which lessens the incentive of the banks to loan those funds to anyone, regardless of how safe the loan might be. This leads to a lessened availability of credit both domestically and abroad, with the result that credit markets are more contracted than they otherwise might be. The Fed views this credit market contraction as having its root in insufficient liquidity, which it then attempts to counteract by creating more money.
This time around, the newly created dollars are being loaned through swap lines to the European Central Bank (ECB) in exchange for euros. The ECB loans the dollars to struggling European banks in exchange for collateral. Once those loans are repaid and the swap lines expire, the ECB returns the dollars to the Fed and takes back its euros. The interest rate on these loans is about 0.6%, so it is not surprising that American banks are keeping their excess reserves safe at the Federal Reserve. After all, why loan dollars to weak and risky European banks at 0.6% when you can get a guaranteed 0.25% from the Federal Reserve? So the dollar markets dry up and the Fed steps in to "fix" the problem it created.
We have to question what will happen if these loans from the ECB to European banks go bad. What happens if a major bank fails? If the ECB cannot return dollars to the Fed, does the Fed keep the euros it received from the ECB? Does it receive European government bonds, perhaps Greek bonds? Does it have recourse to the ECB's gold, as Chairman Bernanke alluded to last week?
Even more importantly, what is the impact of these programs on the dollar and on the U.S. economy? While the Fed seems to think that these swap lines eventually will be drawn back down to zero, what happens in the meantime? These hundreds of billions of dollars may be created out of thin air, but their effects on the real economy are anything but ephemeral. And the Fed has failed to consider the possibility that these swap lines may rise even higher than the $600 billion level that was reached in 2008. Given the still precarious position of European governments and the European financial system, it would not be surprising to see a few hundred billion dollars more being created to continue the bailout of the euro.
The Fed's continued intervention in financial markets creates a climate of uncertainty. For almost five years, financial institutions have had to wonder from one day to the next what the Fed will do. Will it continue with more asset purchases under its policy of quantitative easing? Will it bailout large firms in danger of collapse or allow them to fail? Will it allow markets to function or continue its intervention? In such uncertain times it is only natural for firms to sit back and wait to see what happens. And every action by the Fed, every attempt at stimulus, rather than placating that uncertainty, instead exacerbates it. The Fed's actions destroy markets, erode the earnings and savings of Americans, and sow the seeds for the next great crisis. I hope that this hearing is yet another step in holding the Fed accountable and will help both Members and the American people reconsider the necessity of a central bank.
Outrage as activist Ontario court strikes law banning brothels, prostitution
From LifeSiteNews:
Outrage as activist Ontario court strikes law banning brothels, prostitution
| Peter Baklinski |  | Tue Mar 27 15:18 EST | | Family |
TORONTO, Ontario, March 27, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Yesterday’s decision by the Ontario Court of Appeal that ruled as unconstitutional provisions in the law that prohibited brothels and living from the profit of prostitution has caused a firestorm of dissent from Canada’s leading advocates who champion the dignity of women and the strengthening of marriages and families.
In its decision Bedford v. Canada (Attorney General), the Court of Appeal found that Sections 210 and 212 (1) (j) of the federal Criminal Code that regulate prostitution were now suddenly “unconstitutional”. It suspended its “bawdy-house” decision for twelve months to give Parliament time to draft a new “Charter-compliant” bawdy-house provision. The overturning of the “living on the avails” of prostitution provision will take effect within 30 days of the ruling.
Father Raymond J. De Souza in an op-ed in the National Post that appeared yesterday criticized the constitutional bases for the prostitution case arguing that it is not plausible that Parliament “desired to protect the right to run a brothel as part of our fundamental legal liberties” when it guaranteed everyone in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms the “right to life, liberty and security of the person.”
“Section 7 now apparently includes the right to sell one’s body for sex in a licensed establishment fully compliant with safe drinking water standards and the requisite no-smoking signs,” he said.
“The naïveté of the Court of Appeal is this regard is astonishing”, De Souza continued. “The learned justices have a vision of professionally accomplished, commercially savvy young women, contemplating careers either as hookers or graphic designers, and concerned about the enforceability of contracts and provision of benefits. A few high-end prostitutes would benefit from no longer having to disguise their ‘escort’ services, but prostitution in Canada is not a high-end occupation. It preys upon the desperately poor, the drug addicted, the homeless, the mentally ill and other vulnerable women in the dark corners of society.”
The Post’s Catholic priest columnist argued that with the prohibition against brothels lifted, which he saw as “one of the few tools that law enforcement and social services could use to pry women out from a life that precious few of them would ever choose”, prostitution in Ontario will only increase.
“It’s simple economics: Reduce the barriers to entry and more firms will enter. As a public policy matter, it is also simple. At the margin, this judgment will ensnare women in prostitution who otherwise would not have been.”
REAL Women of Canada was “disappointed” in the decision and called the Ontario Court of Appeal “the most liberal court in Canada” for ignoring “the views of Parliament in this case”.
“Prostitution itself is inherently dangerous, no matter where it is carried out. Prostitutes should not be encouraged to engage in this activity by way of brothels or otherwise,” stated Gwendolyn Landolt, national vice president of REAL Women of Canada in a press release. The woman’s organization was an intervener in the case at both the Superior Court and Appeal levels.
“This Court partially upheld the lower court’s decision of Madam Justice Susan Himel to allow prostitutes to operate from legal brothels. It based its decision on the belief that this will reduce the risk of harm to prostitutes.”
Landolt pointed out that evidence from countries, such as Sweden, Spain, Australia and the Netherlands, indicate that the legalization of brothels only “increases the number of individuals involved in prostitution, both on the streets as well as in brothels.”
“The legalization of brothels in Canada can therefore greatly increase the risk of harm to prostitutes by assaults and even death, as more individuals will inevitably become involved in this activity.”
REAL Women of Canada has urged the Attorneys General that this case “be immediately appealed” to the Supreme Court of Canada so that Parliament may “ultimately decide the grave issue of the social policy on prostitution, not appointed unaccountable judges.”
The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) was “deeply concerned” that the court’s decision not only “fails to protect women from exploitation, but could lead to a situation in Canada where the most vulnerable are put at greater risk of violence, exploitation and trafficking.”
“Here’s the decision in a nutshell,” said Don Hutchinson, vice-president and general legal counsel with the EFC: “The court gave the federal government twelve months to reform the provision against prostitutes operating out of brothels, massage parlours and other forms of common bawdy houses; which does nothing to protect the rank and file exploited women, men and children working on the street.”
Hutchinson explained that the court simply redrafted the ‘living on the avails of prostitution’ section of the criminal code so that it only applies to those who are doing so in an exploitive way. He said that this “accommodates the rare few” who have the capacity to structure a business with support staff.
“All of this was couched in the concept repeated page after page in the decision that, and I quote, ‘In Canada, prostitution itself is legal. There is no law that prohibits a person from selling sex, and no law that prohibits another from buying it.’”
Christian Legal Fellowship (CLF), which was also an intervenor in the case, was “disappointed in the decision”, which it says “ignores Parliament’s disapprobation of prostitution and the harms it causes both to prostitutes and our communities.”
Ruth Ross, CLF’s executive director and general legal counsel stated in a press release that there are some positive aspects to the decision.
“The court did not strike down the ‘living on the avails’ provision in its entirety but instead recognized its importance in protecting those who are exploited by prostitution,” she said.
The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (IMFC) commented that while the court’s ruling is “being touted as a success that will make prostitution safer, international evidence exposes this [as] myth.”
IMFC pointed out in a press release that the Netherlands legalization of prostitution caused a dramatic surge in new criminal activity. In the aftermath of legalized prostitution Amsterdam’s former mayor Job Cohen was forced to concede that “this is no longer about small scale entrepreneurs, but that big crime organizations are involved here in trafficking women, drugs, killings and other criminal activities.”
IMFC’s also argued that the court’s decision “belies the realities facing the vast majority of prostitutes in Ontario today”.
“A high percentage of prostitutes have drug and sexual abuse in their pasts. Many are coerced into prostitution as minors. Prostitution is inherently dangerous and the legal changes that are currently being made in Ontario will not change that.”
Andrea Mrozek, IMFC’s manager of research and communications said, “Above all, the law should not in any way, shape or form allow men to buy women’s bodies. There will be no equality in Ontario so long as we sanction that,” she said.
The Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL), which also intervened in the case is “disappointed with much of the ruling”.
Landolt from REAL Women called it “ironic” that the Court of Appeal stated in its decision that “prostitution is a controversial topic, one that provokes heated and heartfelt debate about morality, equality, personal autonomy and public safety; it is not the Court’s role to engage in that debate”.
“Yet the Court has done just that,” she pointed out.
To contact the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
The Honourable Robert Douglas Nicholson
284 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H8
E-mail: mcu@justice.gc.ca
Ph: (613) 957-4222
The Honourable Robert Douglas Nicholson
284 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H8
E-mail: mcu@justice.gc.ca
Ph: (613) 957-4222
Friday, March 23, 2012
How To Buy Gasoline For 20 Cents A Gallon
From Personal Liberty Digest:
How To Buy Gasoline For 20 Cents A Gallon
March 23, 2012 by Chip Wood
PHOTOS.COM
Dimes, quarters, half dollars and silver dollars minted before 1965 were 90 percent pure silver.
Has the price of gas hit $4 a gallon yet where you live? As I mentioned in last week’s column, several analysts predict that price will seem cheap before the year is out. Are you ready to pay $5 a gallon?
Some neighbors and I were reminiscing recently about how cheap things were back in “the good old days.” I mentioned that the very first credit card I got was for one of the gas-station chains. Back then, gasoline cost less than 25 cents a gallon.
Then I said something that stopped them cold. “Do you know that you can still buy gasoline for about 20 cents a gallon?” They were all positive there was a trick to my question… and there is.
My claim is absolutely, totally, 100 percent true — if you pay with dimes that were minted before 1965.
Back then, dimes, quarters, half dollars and silver dollars were 90 percent pure silver. Today, those coins are commonly referred to as “junk silver.” But believe me, there is nothing junky about them.
These genuine silver coins are typically sold in bags with a face value of $1,000. If they were all dimes, that would be 10,000 of them. Each bag contains about 712 ounces of silver. A pre-1965 silver dime has about 1/14 of an ounce of silver in it. With silver now around $32 an ounce, one of those “junk silver” dimes is worth about $2.29. Selling two of them would buy you a gallon of gas anywhere in the country.
Remember when a loaf of bread cost 10 cents? Well, one of those silver dimes will still get you one of the fancy fresh-baked loaves in the bakery section of your local grocery store. One of the mass-produced marvels with more air than nutrients will cost half that amount.
My point is simply this: The value of the goods we buy every day hasn’t changed. A loaf of bread is still a loaf of bread — ditto a quart of milk, a gallon of gas or a suit of clothes.
The reason things cost 10 or 20 or 50 times more than they used to isn’t that they are that much more valuable today. It’s that our measuring stick, the U.S. dollar, is worth so much less. Back in our grandparents’ day, the dollar was not only backed by gold, but for most of this country’s existence the U.S. government promised that it could be exchanged for gold at any bank in the Federal system.
The Treasury also produced something called “silver certificates” that operated the same way, except that they could be exchanged for silver. And our government promised to keep enough gold and silver in its reserves to honor all of those commitments.
But that was then. Today, the U.S. dollar is an “I.O.U. nothing,” as a friend of mine likes to put it. Oh, it says it is backed by the “full faith and credit of the United States.” But let me ask you: When you look at the disaster that Washington has made of the budget process and our economy, how much full faith and credit do you have in the people running the show today?
And how much “full faith and credit” do you have in the pieces of fiat currency called the U.S. dollar that they are producing by the trillions? I hope the answer to both of my rhetorical questions is “very little” and “not much.”
Our Founding Fathers knew that gold and silver were real money. That’s why they put into our Constitution that only gold and silver could be used to create our coinage.
Sadly, we’ve allowed the powers that be to create “money” out of thin air, with absolutely nothing to back it. That is why the value of our currency has plummeted more than 95 percent in past 100 years.
But more and more Americans are learning not to put their “full faith and credit” in our politicians or the currency that they manipulate. Want to protect the purchasing power of your savings? Then I’d suggest putting them into things of real value. And for the past 5,000 years, nothing has preserved value better than the Midas metal and its less-expensive sister, silver.
Exchanging dollars for gold and silver could be the best investment you make this year. It certainly has been for the past decade.
Until next time, keep some powder — and some gold and silver — on hand.
–Chip Wood
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