The Loudest Isn't the Largest

After observing the events of the prior few weeks, I have come to two embarrassingly somber conclusions: 1) many Americans are not knowledgeable of civics as it regards the type of government we function under and 2) people are proud to display such a lack of knowledge for all to see.  America is a constitutional republic.  It is not a democracy.  Democracy is a synonym for mob rule and our founding fathers were very much aware of this principle. So much so that they defined a set of rules for the government to function within (the Constitution) and a treaty between the United States Federal Government and its citizenry called the Bill of Rights.

For as long as I have been alive, I have never seen a march specifically designed to take away a civil right.  I have seen marches pro or for civil rights but never a march for example, to take away the vote, or to take away free speech or any other basic right as outlined in the Bill of Rights.  But the recent manipulated and inorganic march against guns (which it should be called) is a first. Although they are too cowardly to state such openly, it is really a march to obviate the second amendment, since each argument and position taken expresses a semantic desire for some policy action to ‘infringe’ upon the Second amendment – an inalienable right as stated in the Bill of Rights.  Let me attempt to explain.

The general tenor is the suggestion that the second amendment is outdated, and for some 97-year-old liberal, “a relic of the 18th century.” I find this both simplistic and indication of a few lipofuscin granules on someone’s prefrontal cortex. The fact is defending against any tyranny by the government or foreign actor is a constant in the world we live in and to remove the possibility of such never occurring in the USA when we know men are both in good and evil form, would be dumb. Just as idiotic as the assertion that the second amendment is about hunting (which it is not) or that it was speaking about muskets (which it was not since muskets were the assault rifle of the day).

Appears that this self-absorbed and mindless horde of gun grabbers is too thoughtless to comprehend this let alone understand the history behind the genuine fear of government tyranny. Let me try and break it down.  The colonies once were run by the crown in England and as such, the original states were headed by appointed governors by the crown.  In Massachusetts, one of those persons was General Thomas Gage. He operated under several laws established by the British Parliament to exercise control of the colonies one of which was called the Townshend Acts. These four acts enabled the British to extract revenue in the form of taxes and tariffs and more importunately, gave them the power to suspend any form of representative assembly the colonist formed. They carried out enforcement of these functions via the British military by Writs of Assistance. These were documents that allowed for the redcoats to enter, search and seize anything from a private citizen they considered contraband. These were non-specific meaning that they did not require details for the search or where the search would be implemented (reason for the 4th amendment).

As one would reckon, the colonist did not like these actions and rebelled leading to the Boston Tea Party. After the Boston Tea Party in 1773, the British Crown and Parliament were mad as fuck at the colonies.  To show this anger, they passed the Coercive Acts in 1774 which many colonist found upsetting because it restricted town meetings (once a year) making them illegal, closed the Boston Port, made British official immune to prosecution and mandated that colonist by law would have to quarter British troops. Next the British put in place an import ban on firearms and gunpowder which was followed by actual house to house gun and gunpowder confiscation by British troops.

On one occasion, General Gage dispatched a garrison of troops to break up a meeting of citizens in Salem. There they were met by a few thousand-armed Americans young, old, male and female, for all Americans were armed and had plenty of powder to match. Given that there were only a couple thousand British troops in the colonies while Gage was governor, he realized it would be hard to enforce any of the laws aimed and controlling America, since there were many thousands of armed Americans in Massachusetts alone.

He went back to using Writs of Assistance to seize weapons and gun powder.  They could enforce these actions with the gun but failed to comprehend that the colonist considered the confiscation of their weapons through violence as an act of war. As history records, of all the things the British did, the most offensive to the colonist was seizing their guns and powder. This reached a fever on April 19, 1775, when British soldiers under the direction of Major ohn Pitcairn went to Lexington and Concord to seize the guns of the citizenry, starting the American War for Independence.

Therefore, after the Revolutionary War, the first three amendments of the Bill of rights dealt with speech, assembly, protest (1st), no infringements on gun ownership (2nd) and the quartering of troops in private homes (3rd). All of which are granted by God and not the government. Ergo, when the second amendment was written and ratified, its intent was that the civilian population would insofar as much as possible, have the same weapons as the military. Thus, it intentionally reads: “A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” It asserts via the employment of the comma’s, that the Second Amendment was to preserve and guarantee, NOT grant, the pre-existing God given right of individuals to keep and bear arms.

True, the 2nd amendment emphasizes the need for a militia, being a member of any militia (well-regulated or not), was written in such a way to say being in a militia was not a precondition or requirement for citizens to exercise the right to keep arms. This is clarified in Federalist Number 46. James Madison wrote: “Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned despite the legions which surround it.” Thus, individual Americans have a God given legal right of self-defense against the state and/or any foreign invader via the 2nd Amendment.

Alexander Hamilton too noted this in Federalist 29 when he wrote: “That there may happen cases in which the national government may be necessitated to resort to force cannot be denied. Our own experience has corroborated the lessons taught by the examples of other nations; … If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual State. In a single State, if the persons entrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair” He later adds: “As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow-citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their PRIVATE arms.” 

Simply put, the Second Amendment is the fail safe for the citizenry against authoritarianism and political mob-rule tyranny. Now I know the first argument will be this can’t happen today and that only the police/military should have these “weapons of war.”  Maybe, or maybe not is my response.  I grew up in the 1960s and in my life time I have seen tyranny mostly abroad. What if the Vietnamese had not been armed? They surely fought against tyranny albeit from abroad.  On the other hand it can be from the inside, as was the case with the Cambodian genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge against people who were perceived to be in opposition of the regime. After Pol Pot banned guns, he followed it with the murder of between 1.5 to 3 million people.

Guns were the reason slavery could be carried out flawlessly, they enabled the ability for Leopold of Belgium to inflict genocide on more than 10 million Africans. Then there was Sharpsville in South Africa and the attacks on the Black Panther Party in Chicago and Los Angles in 1969. History shows us that the only African nation that was not colonized by a European power was Ethiopia, which ironically was the only African nation to have guns to fight of the effort to do so by Italy (under Mussolini). The same is true as I write this, in South Africa, the government under the leadership of its new President Cyril Ramaphosa voted to confiscate white-owned land without compensation.

Still albeit historical accurate, I would be vilified if I confronted either David Hogg or Emma Gonzales with this information, which I find strange, for if I were in a classroom I would not.  These are rude children whom think they know everything about everything. I know because I am a parent with 25 years in the game and a teacher of college students with the same amount of years in the game.  I question and confront students daily because they typically repeat what they hear and do not read or engage in critical thinking. This is not by mistake, it is neurological and reinforced by contingencies of reinforcement (habit). Why can’t we ask Hogg, or question his views and correct him when his facts are inaccurate? I do it every day in class. Why can’t we ask Emma Gonzales why she wears a flag of Cuba, a communist nation, from which her family had to flee because upon take power Castro seized all arms and killed more than 100,000 Cuban citizens? Isn’t this fair game? Why not ask them why they resort to bullying and name calling when people have differing yet valid views than theirs? Why not push back when they call all against their wishes simple want to “murder children”? Is what you push collective punishment? Do you think all gun owners should be held up to the shooter of your high school as a standard? Are you comfortable asking to privacy rights should be reduced and that second amendments rights should be infringed because that is what you want but don’t want your right of wearing the book bag you want infringed? Is that fair? Do you know what an assault rifle is or when and AR-15 semi-automatic ever been used on the battle field?

I will tell you why, because it is anatomical.  In the adolescent 14-24, the prefrontal cortex is still developing. Consequently, he rational part of a teen's brain (the prefrontal cortex) isn't fully developed and won't be until approaching age 30. Thus, as opposed of critical thinking, the Limbic system, the amygdala is the part of the brain they rely on to make decisions where as adults think with the prefrontal cortex. The amygdala is associated with emotions, impulses and aggression behavior. This is clearly on display.  For example, they call it a March for Our Lives (which is eerily like the annual Pro-Life “March For Life) yet they do not consider unborn babies lives and are funded by Planned Parenthood (more than 900 black babies are aborted per day- nearly half are repeat abortions) among others while at the same time calls the National Rifle Association “child killers.” They want black people to side with them in the consideration that police and the military should be the only ones to have (long) guns while they gun us down relentlessly in the streets everyday (sure we kill each other daily also but this isn’t the point). The oke seems to write itself - rich white kids and liberal elites have tricked Black Lives Matter to embrace All Lives Mattter and the Police State (only cops should have guns). They want the age of voting to be dropped to 16 yet want the age of gun ownership increased to 21 (another inconsistency).

Last, they are bad at math and citing statistics. If they were truly concerned about saving the lives of kids, Assault rifles would be at the bottom of the list. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 2016 data shows 37,461 people were killed in 34,436 motor vehicle crashes, an average of 102 per day. According to researchers at John Hopkins and the CDC, there are 250,000 deaths per year due to medical error in the U.S., an average of 685 per day. Based on data from the National Vital Statistics System, Mortality, in 2016, there were more than 63,600 drug overdose deaths in the U.S., an average of 173 per day (a sizable number are between 15-20). Data collected by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis reveals that nearly 6,000 teen drivers ages 15-20 died from motor vehicle injuries because of distracted (cell phone use) driving, an average of 16 per day. According to the FBI, 1,604 people are killed by “knives and cutting instruments” annually, an average of 4.4 per day - 374 were killed by “rifles” in 2016, an average of 1.02 per day. But go ahead, you let your teenage child run your household and formulate fender government policy – not me.

I could continue but we all know that any military using AR-15 in battle against fully automatic MPT-76, FN SCAR-H or AK-47 (all fully automatic meaning pull thee trigger once it keeps firing) would be wiped out. What these kids are doing is using anger against law abiding gun owners, for they want all guns outlawed.  They want what Hitler did when he passed major gun control and seizure legislation. They are not progressives, they are totalitarians. They are more like the young generation in Communist China under Mao, who killed the older generation, assisted in his gun confiscation and the deaths of more than 100 million who did not agree with the politics of communism. They are a loud brood, but just because they are the loudest, doesn’t mean they are the largest and they or their handlers are too cowardly to go door to door with a gun to take any gun from a law-abiding US citizen.

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Cory Booker, Tom Price & Big Pharma

For decades now I have been saying that there was no difference between Republicans and Democrats and with the election of Donald Trump, no time since now has this even more clear. Sure folk will say that Trump is a Republican, but I dare anyone to show any ideological bent he has toward either party.  If he is a Republican, then Bernie Sanders is a Democrat.  But a more articulate example of this can be observed when one tries to make a distinction between the actions and policies of traditional partisans like Cory Booker and Tom Price.

For cats attentive to history, we must recall we have Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to thank for our modern day derivative of what are now considered Republicans and Democrats. Both these men founded the Democratic-Republican Party. It was founded by these men to serve as a challenge to the Federalist Party which was run by Alexander Hamilton in 1791.  Hamilton at the time was Secretary of the Treasury and a significant player in the administration in America’s first President George Washington.

Madison and Jefferson questioned Hamilton’s interest in truly wanting America to be a republic since he sided with the concept of federalism and disapproved of the manner in which the Constitution was written to limit the government and not the people. In contrast, Jefferson and Madison claimed the Constitution gave the federal government too much power such that it might place the citizenry at risk of being oppressed if there was no Bill of Rights to guarantee individual liberty. As an outcome of this, the first two U.S. political parties were formed – the Federalist Party (Hamilton) and the Democratic-Republican Party (Jefferson).

These two parties did not last too long and by the twentieth century, there was just one party divided in half – the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Both of which have decided their main objective is not to serve on behalf of the unalienable individual rights of the citizen but rather the mechanical apparatus of the national government . Moreover, instead of the business of the people, their goals, motivated by political avarice motioned toward personal enrichment by becoming a professional class – something the founding fathers feared when they desired citizen merchants to serve and eventually return to the community.

Seeing this truism in modern day partisan politics, there is no better example than the relationship between Tom Price and Cory Booker with big pharma. The record is clear on both these politicians and their relationship with large U.S. pharmaceutical giants. Price was the benefactor of large campaign contributions from a CEO whose company manufactured a drug with the shelf name of BiDil - A treatment for African Americans suffering from heart failure, although one study raised problems about its safety and effectiveness. Add to this, the recent.  Kaiser Health report that Price invested in an Australian biotech company named Zimmer Biomet which resulted for him a profit gain of more than 400 percent and may be even more profitable for the company with the enacting of the 21st Century Cures legislation Price supported. Likewise Sen. Cory Booker and 12 other democrat senators supported the same legislation which serves to lower drug safety standards. Booker also votedagainst the Sanders/Klobuchar amendment which would have allowed for the importation of pharmaceuticals from Canada and aided sugificantly in reducing the unreasonable and exploitive price gauging currently practiced by U.S. Pharmaceutical giants. Booker did this while remaining one of the biggest recipients of pharma, receiving contributions in excess of with $260,000.  Is there a difference between these two politicians although one is a republican and the other a democrat?

Well to answer this we have to beat the bushes a little more. Tom Price, the Georgia Republican nominated by Donald Trump to become head of the Department of Health and Human Services, received additional contributions from the CEO of Atlanta based Arbor Pharmaceuticals LLC who bought the rights to BiDil.  In return he sought to have the aforementioned study questioning the drug safety and effectiveness removed from the federal government website.   It was effective.  Emails show that an assistant to Price contacted the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality multiple times regarding having the study taken off their website according to documents obtained by ProPublica. It should be noted that Arbor is headquartered in Price’s district.

Similar to Price, Booker too seems to be in the pocket of big Pharma. He demonstrated his true colors (green and white) when he visibly stood in opposition to a Senate amendment allowing for the importation of pharmaceuticals into the U.S. that would have lowered the absurd cost for drugs that is a major economic burden on millions in the U.S. Considered to be a potential 2020 presidential contender, Booker’s office issued a statement saying that he was in favor of the importation of prescription drugs but that “any plan to allow the importation of prescription medications should also include consumer protections that ensure foreign drugs meet American safety standards. I opposed an amendment put forward last night that didn’t meet this test.” This alone is questionable and goes against attempting to aid the tens of millions of U.S. Citizens struggling to deal with the exorbitant cost of prescription drugs because it is the same argument made by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and the Obama Administration prior. Not to mention that Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden amendment to the Sanders/Klobuchar legislation included a clause for verified safety certification.

So is there a difference between Republicans and Democrats on ideology?  Would say no and that the Democratic-Republican Party established by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison are mirror images of each other and represent a professional class that have the singular objective to enrich themselves at the expense of the American people. 

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Notes on the Greenspan Culture

Most Americans are ignorant to the history and impact of central bank policy in the US on the problems we are experiencing and have experienced before regarding our economy.  The first failure came when Alexander Hamilton introduced the concept of having a Central Bank in America right after the revolutionary war. His idea was to place the US in a positon to be able to get loans or credit from lenders and be able to borrow great sums of money. To get the bank started, he proposal to fund a national debt via several bills in 1790 including the Debt-Assumption and Debt Funding Bills. With this concept would come massive speculation and fractional reserve banking. Many were against this idea. Thomas Jefferson wrote about this when his cousin Chief Justice John Marshall used the views of Hamilton to uphold the constitutionality of a national bank in his McCulloch v Maryland decision, in essence putting the nation on a dependency of credit. Jefferson noted that the constitution had not delegated to the congress to be able to incorporate a bank (10th amendment) nor to borrow or regulate commerce and that the establishment of a national bank was not necessary, merely a convenience and congress had the constitutional duty to do what was necessary only (pps. 502-574).

Failures of Federal Reserve policy since then and over the years have been too numerous to cite.  The issue is that the Federal Reserve and the concept of central banks in general act as if they are independent institutions when the truth is they are never independent. This was understood by both Andrew Jackson and FDR, and to a lesser extent Abraham Lincoln. Central banks seem to operate in a vacuum that is isolated from the public and even worse, the public angst and disdain regarding their policy efforts. 

Central banks are failing and have been failing for a long time since their most recent establishment under the Woodrow Wilson administration under the cloak of darkness. These chronic problems keep rearing their ugly head because the models that they employ are broken for they fail to connect monetary policy with the real economy (aggregate demand). This has become more problematic since the reign on Alan Greenspan. This Greenspan culture operates on constructs that don’t exist in the real world and even seems to suggest central bankers of the current batch have no idea of what is going on in the rest of the world outside of Jackson Hole. No matter what they do it always fails and never accomplishes the goals or objectives that said monetary policy was supposed to accomplish. 

Take the example of quantitative easing and keeping interest rates artificially low and constant.  This was supposed to put more loot into the coffers of business and to some extent the people and spur consumption - the assumption being that if you give folk more loot they will spend it, or at least consume more. But we see just by looking at consumption behavior, business are not spending by either investing or buying equipment and regular folks are saving instead of spending. Even with mortgage rates at 3.5 percent, people are not buying homes.  It begs the question what world are central bankers living in because all they talk about (if Janet Yellen can be taken at her word) is raising interest rates. On the one hand the public is being told the Central bank can control economic outcomes but can’t control inflation – a concept that anyone can see is not only problematic but also ridiculous.

Why would they slow the economy down by raising interest rates when it is growing at a staggering and paltry pace already? This makes no sense in particular when the average citizen is confronting real economic hardship and despair and all the evidence (weak fundamentals) indicates this. If this is the path the US central banks takes, it will only prove what many already believe, that the central bank is for the wealth plutocratic class only and it only implements policy on their behalf that presents modern capitalism as merely socialism for the rich. If this is the case then maybe, just maybe, central banks shouldn’t take on fiscal policy. In all honesty, maybe fiscal policy should be only implemented by folks the citizens vote on, or maybe we should vote for central bankers for that matter.

If I was given the authority first step I would take to destroy this Greenspan culture of hybrid fiscal/monetary policy would be to get rid of the Volcker rule in its entirety.  Maybe this way we won’t have to hear dumb azz Janet Yellen cite David Reifschneider anymore. Reifschneider for the record seems to be Yellen’s go to guy. Whatever he says she holds on to like it was the word of God. Reifschneider is a Senior Economist for the Federal Reserve Bank and posits (really guesses without evidence) that bond purchases and low-rate promises should be enough for the Fed to deal with severe recession if such were to occur. This is why I think she has not been out into the real world for she is always saying the same thing, or rather something to the effect that US GDP growth to lift labor markets. Again, an observation I don’t see even looking at BLS data, for there is no known value for potential economic output whether one is taking about labor or GDP – all of this is just speculative talk.

Simply put, central banks, in particular the US Federal Reserve should not be involved in developing, formulating or implementing fiscal policy. This should be left in the hands of the Treasury department in my opinion. One should ask what is their policy and where would we be if they couldn’t buy assets? Since 2008, the US Federal Reserve bank has amassed $2.5 trillion in Treasury securities and $1.8 trillion of mortgage-backed securities (maybe even more) through its asset-purchase programs, yet we still have deplorable growth and horrific levels of unemployment if you read between the lines. What will be next? Will we follow the lead of Japan and start to buy exchange-traded funds (ETFs), or the ECB and begin to purchase corporate debt? Or even worse follow the path of Prime Minister Modi in India and remove cash from circulation?  It is even easier to do in The US with electronic/digital money.  More so given that today, money has no real value in and of itself due to separation of them from the original sources of money – gold and silver. Used to be a time when paper money just represented how much gold and silver we had, but not anymore. Add this to the massive depreciation and devaluation of money over past decades, a cashless society could be a real manifestation. But I regress.

All I am saying is that the philosophical acceptance of Greenspan economics has shown the ineffective, foolish and disconnection from reality that Fed policy is, and that we need to move beyond the make believe boundaries of Central bank policy (guessing) before it is too late.  It is impossible to look at all economic activity in a contrived environment, under a contrived lens in which all stating points begin with full employment, inflation at 2 percent, and interest rates atnormal longer-run levels.  Honestly, like the Euro, the Federal Reserve Bank was flawed from birth.

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