[PLUG-TALK] Fair Use, etc.

J.A. Henshaw jeff at jhenshaw.com
Thu Mar 28 23:44:54 UTC 2002


Russ Johnson wrote:

> On Thu, 2002-03-28 at 14:03, J.A. Henshaw wrote:
> 
>>pay your taxes (rent)
>>
> 
> This is so far from rent it's not even funny. I've been paying rent now
> for 20 years. What have I to show for it. I'd GLADLY trade my rent
> payment for a house payment and tax payment. At least then I'd be
> getting something for my money.
> 


Something,  maybe... but not land ownership. I am still correct.


> 
>>follow the building codes ( setbacks, fencelines, etc)
>>
> 
> Yeah, those are the price we pay for living in a society. It also is
> somewhat based on safety. 
> 


Yes,  I know.. freedom for safety, yada yada Patrick Henry 
had a few words for you.


> 
>>the health codes (septic, water etc)
>>
> 
> Again, this is for safety and health reasons. Can you imagine what
> Portland would look like if everyone just drained their toilets into the
> gutter?
> 


Hmm,  1921 they passed some building codes,  and prior to 
that all Americans waded through their own feces every day 
right?


> 
>>the penal codes ( grow marijuana, etc)
>>
> 
> Well, duh.
> 


Well,  duh,  this is *only* unconstitutional.  But gee golly 
whiz,  we are safe from those nasty green plants while the 
MJTF attacks your neighbors with machine guns and 
helicopters.... what do I say to you?


> 
>>What else do you "own" that you need permission to do things 
>>with?
>>
> 
> How about my car? I have to have a license to drive it. I have to
> register the vehicle to drive it on public streets. I pay taxes on it
> each time I put gas in it. 
> 


Terrible example.. I have addressed this briefly already, 
and I tried to explain driving an it's legal definition.
I don't think you care,  you want safety in exchange for 
freedom.

See above reference to Patrick Henry.

I ask you this: If the jails are overcrowded with drunk 
drivers,  what has your licensing scheme achieved?

Safety?

> 
>>However,  the above is food for thought,  and not meant to 
>>be proof.
>>
> 
> It's not proof. It's spurious at best.
> 
> 


Spurious? Patrick Henry is spurious too then.  I would 
rather be associated with him than a person who gladly licks 
the hands that feed him.

( May your chains rest lightly)


>>I sense that you are genuinely interested in this and not 
>>merely being rhetorical,  so if you want the entire 
>>enchilada I will be more than happy to give you the history 
>>and the proof.
>>
> 
> Yes, I am interested. However, be warned that any proof that requires
> anarchy will not fly with me.
> 
> 


I strongly suspect that you consider constitutional 
authority anarchy.

I feel the opposite.


>>>>Oh really?  Again,  I think the rest of the world agrees 
>>>>that Marx was a communist.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>No, Marx was a socialist. His dream was communism, achieved through
>>>socialist methods. 
>>>
>>>America is more socialist now than it was 100 years ago. 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Same thing, whatever you say.  Is there a significant 
>>distinction?
>>
> 
> Socialism is when the government provides everything for the people.
> There is still someone (or group) in charge, and they decide what's best
> for the people.
> 
> Communism is when everyone is equal, and no one is in charge. 
> 
> In my opinion, Socialism can be achieved in this country (and is in many
> ways. E.G. Welfare). 
> 
> Communism can't be achieved. Humans want to be in charge. They want a
> hierarchy of power. 
> 
> 
>>Either one is antithetical to the constitution.
>>
> 
> How do you explain the rampant socialism coming out of Washington?
> 
> 



That has been my message all along,  the law is not applied 
and you have socialism to show for it.

Now you show me that you don't get it.

I am exasperated.

The text below addresses many of your questions:

The Economic Rape of America - Chapter Nine

GOVERNMENT RAPE, ANARCHY, AND MURDER

So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people 
who were asking him for a king. He said, "These will be the 
ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your 
sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his 
horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will 
appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders 
of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his 
harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment 
of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers 
and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields 
and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his 
courtiers. He will take one- tenth of your grain and give it 
to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male 
and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, 
and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your 
flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you 
will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for 
yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day."
1 Samuel 8, verses 10-18

"There are still peoples and herds somewhere, but not with 
us, my brothers: here there are states.
The state? What is that? Well then! Now open your ears, for 
now I shall speak to you of the death of peoples.
The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it 
lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth; 'I, the 
state, am the people.'
It is a lie! It was creators who created peoples and hung a 
faith and a love over them: thus they served life.
It is destroyers who set snares for many and call it the 
state: they hang a sword and a hundred desires over them.
Where a people still exists, there the people do not 
understand the state and hate it as the evil eye and sin 
against custom and law.
I offer you this sign: every people speaks its own language 
of good and evil: its neighbor does not understand this 
language. It invented this language for itself in custom and 
law.
But the state lies in all languages of good and evil; and 
whatever it says, it lies - and whatever it has, it has stolen.
Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth. 
Even its belly is false.
Confusion of the language of good and evil; I offer you this 
sign of the state. Truly, this sign indicates the will to 
death! Truly, it beckons to the preachers of death!
Many too many are born: the state was invented for the 
superfluous!
Just see how it lures them, the many-too-many! How it 
devours them, and chews them, and re-chews them!
... It would like to range heroes and honorable men about 
it, this new idol! It likes to sun itself in the sunshine of 
good consciences - this cold monster!
It will give you everything if you worship it, this new 
idol: thus it buys for itself the luster of your virtues and 
the glance of your proud eyes.
It wants to use you to lure the many-too-many. Yes, a 
cunning device of Hell has here been devised, a horse of 
death jingling with the trappings of divine honors!
Yes, a death for many has here been devised that glorifies 
itself as life: truly a heart-felt service to all preachers 
of death!
I call it the state where everyone, good and bad, is a 
poison-drinker: the state where everyone, good and bad, 
loses himself: the state where universal slow suicide is 
called - life.
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1884

The people who masquerade as "government" operate in the 
mode I call economic rape - the political means of obtaining 
sustenance - "greed armed with a gun." The justification is 
"the public good." The reality is self-interest and easy 
rewards for no results or negative results. Sometimes we 
suspect the motives include vicious, destructive 
vindictiveness. Consider the story recounted by George Roche 
in America by the Throat: The Stranglehold of Federal 
Bureaucracy:

"The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) 
today ordered the University of Illinois to tear down the 
handrails alongside walkways on campus, and to install new 
handrails exactly 42 inches high. According to OSHA, the old 
handrails are several inches too low to comply with 
regulations."

It is a true story - and it cost $500,000 to change the 
handrails. It is bureaucratic economic rape that has been 
growing geometrically or logarithmically. The growth of this 
rape over a ten-year period was encapsulated by Dr. Ravi 
Batra in his book The Great Depression of 1990:

"Many believe that the 1970s experienced an unprecedented 
growth in federal regulation. Between 1970 and 1980 
twenty-one new regulatory agencies, with extensive powers to 
intervene in business decision-making of numerous 
industries, were established. The budget of the regulatory 
bodies expanded approximately 600 percent during this 
period, while their staffing level grew by over 300 percent."

In his book The Squeeze, James Dale Davidson has a chapter, 
"The Bureaucratic Squeeze," which starts with a quote by 
Ringo Starr: "Everything government touches turns to crap." 
Government is a faecal alchemist. And, of course, 
politicians and bureaucrats touch themselves and each other. 
Davidson said:

"Since 1972 there have been more bureaucrats drawing 
salaries in America than all the people at work in "all the 
durable goods manufacturing industries, including such 
giants as autos, electronics, steel, and heavy machinery." 
["The Real Productivity Crisis Is In Government" by Richard 
S. Rosenbloom, Harvard Business Review, Sep-Oct 1973.] Each 
business day, the number of bureaucrats increases by about 
1,300. And each new bureaucrat contributes an additional 
overhead cost to everything you buy: he makes your groceries 
more expensive - by imposing 4,100 regulations on a pound of 
plain hamburger; when you buy a new car you are paying more 
for the accumulated efforts of the bureaucrats than you are 
for all four wheels - General Motors alone must employ 
23,000 persons simply to fill out government forms. If the 
estimates of experts are correct, then the total effect of 
all regulatory exactions is to impose an annual cost of more 
than $130 billion upon the economy. That is about $2,500 per 
family." [1980.]

And the growth of bureaucratic economic rape during the 
fifty years from 1935 to 1985 is described by George Roche:
"The problem is bureaucracy, and bureaucracy has become a 
national epidemic. The federal bureaucracy has more than 
tripled in size in the last ten years. It is ten times as 
large and powerful as it was twenty years ago, at the 
beginning of the Kennedy-Johnson years. It has swollen a 
thousand-fold in power in the last half century. This 
titanic expansion of bureaucratic power is shattering the 
foundations of a free society and menacing the well-being of 
every citizen. The federal government, designed and intended 
to be the Servant of the people, now bids to be become our 
Master."

The extent of the bureaucratic economic rape today and its 
continuing growth were encapsulated in an editorial - based 
on a study by the Heritage Foundation - in the Arizona 
Republic, dated July 14, 1992:
"... [T]he federal regulatory burden is strangling the U.S. 
economy. The explosive growth of burdensome rules during the 
Bush administration... has pushed the tab for the 
government's oversight of Americans' lives and livelihoods 
to a level at or above the cost imposed by even federal taxes.

Though economists differ slightly on their precise 
calculations, the cost of all the federal dos and don'ts 
ranges from $8,338 and $17,134 per U.S. household [per 
year]. The average federal tax take, in comparison, is about 
$11,000 per household [per year]. This "hidden tax" affects 
the economy in a number of counterproductive ways - from 
higher prices for consumer goods to additional 
unemployment... lower wages... overhead costs that 
businesses must absorb for processing paperwork... expenses 
of attorneys, accountants and others needed to comply with 
the bureaucracy's complex requirements... incalculable toll 
on business investment from the prospect of even more rules 
being passed at Washington's whim...

During George Bush's White House tenure alone more than 
14,000 pages of new regulations have been added to the 
Federal Register, which now totals 67,716 pages... The 
number of federal employees required to police these federal 
dictates also has risen enormously - from fewer than 105,000 
during Ronald Reagan's last year in office to nearly 125,000 
today. Funding for Washington's regulatory army has 
increased, over and above inflation, by nearly 18 percent 
during the same period.

All told, regulation is estimated to cost Americans from 
$881 billion to $1.65 trillion. In contrast, federal taxes 
this year are expected to total a "mere" $1.05 trillion."

In 1974 William E. Simon was appointed Secretary of the 
Treasury. I have in my hands the paperback edition of his 
book A Time For Truth. He wrote, "I had resolved to fight 
for the free enterprise system. And shout, "Stop!" to bigger 
and bigger government." On the front cover of the book it 
says, "Over 200,000 sold in hardcover!" and "30 weeks a 
national bestseller!" Simon wrote:

"The redistribution of wealth from the productive citizen to 
the nonproductive citizen had become the principal 
government activity. This process - carried out through a 
vast array of "social programs" - had roared out of control 
in the sixties and had continued to proliferate. In 1960 
federal, state, and local governments spent a total of $52 
billion on assorted social welfare programs. After Congress 
passed the Economic Opportunity Act in 1965, expenditures 
soared, rising over the next decade from $77.2 billion to a 
staggering total of $286 billion in 1975...

The actual number of federal programs for transferring 
producer's income to nonproducer's pockets had proliferated. 
In 1960, at the end of the Eisenhower years, there were 
approximately 100 federal programs. By 1963 there were 160 
such programs. By 1976 there were more than 1000."

Fourteen years after Simon wrote his book, what conclusions 
can we draw; what is the moral of the story? Might he as 
well have whispered into the wind, "Stop!" to bigger and 
bigger government? What can stop the cancerous growth of 
government? Simon quotes Frederic Bastiat, who about 150 
years ago said:

"The government offers to cure all the ills of mankind. It 
promises to restore commerce, make agriculture prosperous, 
expand industry, encourage arts and letters, wipe out 
poverty, etc., etc. All that is needed is to create some new 
government agencies and to pay a few more bureaucrats."

Today presidential candidate Bill Clinton is making the same 
promises. One poll gives him a 63% to 33% lead over George 
Bush. I'm afraid the moral of the story is that the cancer 
is terminal. Remember the first principle of taxation from 
the previous chapter: "Tax is terminal. Any civilization 
that introduces taxation will eventually tax itself to death."

The famous futurist Buckminster Fuller calculated that - 
given the resources we have on earth and the technology to 
utilize these resources - every man, woman, and child should 
be a millionaire many times over. If it were not for the 
colossal economic rape of our territorial gangsters, who can 
tell the riches we would enjoy? There would be no poverty, 
no famine, no homelessness, no unemployment problem.

Federal agricultural policy is economic rape on a vast and 
grandiose scale. According to an editorial in The Arizona 
Republic of July 20, 1992:
"For 60 years the U.S. Department of Agriculture has waged 
war against increased farm production and lower food prices. 
Since the adoption of the Agriculture Adjustment Act in 
1933, the intent of the government's farm policy has been to 
organize scarcity.

It is now apparent that this policy has failed. The 
government should declare a cease-fire in its war on 
agriculture and let the free market assume control of the 
nation's food supply.

... [T]he vast edifice of agriculture subsidies exists 
mainly for the benefit of a few millionaires and some 
behemoth agribusinesses. These are serviced by 108,000 USDA 
bureaucrats, or one for every three recipients.

"What does this system of socialized farming mean for the 
average American consumer? Higher prices, of course... Total 
subsidies run between $10 billion and $20 billion... A free 
agricultural market would work if it were given a chance."

Of course, it weren't for the 108,000 USDA bureaucrats, the 
oranges, apples, clover, corn, cotton, oranges, 
strawberries, and wheat wouldn't grow, and the chicken, 
cattle, pigs, and sheep would starve to death, and famine 
would wrack the land.

The Federal Reserve System with its consequent currency 
debasement and inflation is monetary and economic rape. The 
IRS is economic rape. Congressional spending is economic 
rape. The ballooning budget deficits are economic rape 
squared. And the national debt is economic rape times ten. 
In The Biggest Con: How The Government is Fleecing You, 
Irwin A. Schiff calculated that in 1975 the national debt 
was in reality over $5 trillion; whereas the government 
reported it as $538.5 billion. In a 54-page chapter Schiff 
provides extensive facts and figures, all obtained from the 
government. The discrepancy is due to the government not 
including in the national debt the "unfunded and contingent 
government debts and obligations." Remember what Harry 
Figgie said in Chapter Four about the government raiding 
trust funds?

"The government is doing that to nine trust funds, including 
Social Security, military pensions, railway pensions, and 
postal pensions. Uncle Sam is taking $120 billion in trust 
fund surpluses and replacing that with IOUs. Instead of 
funding them with cash, they're funding them with federal 
deficit. They don't count those IOUs or the interest on 
them. And when those IOUs start coming due, the government 
is going to owe trillions to Social Security, which will be 
supporting more retirees with fewer workers." [Emphasis added]

This corroborates Schiff's contention. The federal 
government has huge future obligations that are not included 
in the published national debt. Meanwhile most of the cash 
in the trust funds has been embezzled. Schiff describes 
Social Security as "The World's biggest Chain Letter." In 
1976 he wrote that, "there are no monetary reserves 
available to the Social Security System out of which future 
benefits can be paid." In 1990 Harry Figgie said essentially 
the same thing. The Social Security System is economic rape 
with a vengeance. In The Squeeze, James Dale Davidson made 
these points:

In 1979 the cost of Social Security cost per average working 
family was $1,400 in direct deductions, $1,400 in "employer 
contributions," and $2,000 in lost income. "Social Security 
taxes reduced the income of a middle-class family making 
$25,000 by almost $5,000 in 1979."
In 1971 Social Security taxes caused a decline in personal 
savings of $61 billion. "Social Security has reduced total 
private savings by 38%.
If it had not been for Social Security, GNP would be 11 
percent higher and wages would be 15 percent higher.
Given the 1979 rate, Social Security costs the typical 
worker about $750,000 (1977 dollars) during his lifetime.
"Courts have ruled that the government is under no 
obligation to ever pay anyone anything."
"... [L]arge numbers of Social Security participants die 
without receiving anything. ... The effect is that of a 
100-percent inheritance tax."

This is what Congressman George Hansen wrote in 1980 about 
federal spending and waste:
"... [O]nly utter contempt for the plight of the taxpayer 
could produce the incredible waste of many of the federal 
agencies created by the government. Recently, HEW, the 
biggest money burner on the scene, admitted that more than 
$6 billion annually was thrown away in multiple payments, 
frauds, and bureaucratic errors... It was explained in 
self-defense that $6 billion is really not so significant in 
view of the fact that it represented less than 4 percent of 
the more than $160 billion annual budget of HEW prior to its 
division into two departments.

HUD was empowered a few years ago by Congress to guarantee 
construction projects for low-income housing recipients. The 
estimated budgetary cost to the taxpayer was $4 billion. As 
of this writing, HUD has committed $140 billion to this one 
project. The same geometric explosion occurred in the 
Agriculture Department's Food Stamp Program.

In forty-eight years, the national debt has gone from $2 
billion to over $1 trillion, an increase of 500 times the 
original debt. The annual interest on the national debt is 
now more than $90 billion, forty-five times the total debt 
of 1932. No amount of idiot logic about owing it to 
ourselves or it being only a small percentage of the Gross 
National Product can jolly the beleaguered taxpayer out of 
his fear and anger that he personally and individually, is 
being pauperized by insane spending policies over which he 
has little or no control."

Since then the "national debt" the feds tell us about has 
ballooned beyond $4 trillion and the annual interest to over 
$250 billion per year - the Federal Reserve bankers must 
love it! And if the "Schiff ratio" still applies, then the 
real national debt is now over $40 trillion! Remember the 
words of John Danforth, Republican senator from Missouri, as 
reported in the Arizona Republic of April 21, 1992:

"I have never seen more senators express discontent with 
their jobs. ... I think the major cause is that, deep down 
in our hearts, we have been accomplices to doing something 
terrible and unforgivable to this wonderful country. Deep 
down in our hearts, we know that we have bankrupted America 
and that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. 
... We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected."

GOVERNMENT ANARCHY

Although the word "anarchy," based on its roots means 
"having no ruler," I shall use it in the popular sense of 
"lawlessness, chaos, and disorder." In a state of anarchy 
people form armed bands and shoot each other in the street. 
There is no respect for the law. In school, students learn 
violence rather than reason. Jails overflow. All kinds of 
systems break down - lawlessness, chaos, and disorder.

Theodore Becker, professor of political science at the 
University of Hawaii wrote a most interesting book in 1972, 
called Government Anarchy and the POGONOGO Alternative. He says:
"... [G]overnment has a great deal of anarchy, more trouble 
with anarchy in its own ranks than with anarchy outside it.

... Government anarchy has been, continues to be, and 
forebodes to be a worse subversion and perversion of much of 
our established legal order than any other anarchies, 
fancied or practiced. We don't need to destroy our system. 
We need to resurrect and salvage it, yes, even "liberate" 
it, from our own government officials.

... [G]overnment has become one of the most dangerous single 
factions in our society. Many high and low officials are 
drunk with delusions of superiority to us in the 
rank-and-file citizenry.

... [B]eing a government official gives a sense of being 
above the law and a sense of being more important as a 
person, a sense that rarely exists among those out of 
government."

Becker's book has a chapter on police anarchy. It analyses 
police riots, such as the 1968 Chicago police riot, similar 
riots in People's Park and Isla Vista, and the 1969 Jackson 
State police riot. Based on certain studies he estimated 
that one million Americans a year are arrested for no good 
reason and that 30,000 are physically abused for no good 
reason. In some studies, while police were being observed by 
independent observers, and the police knew they were being 
observed, the false arrests and physical abuse continued 
nevertheless.

Becker has this to say about government conspiracy:
"For those who might be appalled at calling government acts 
conspiracy, there is expert opinion to substantiate the fact 
that the first conspiracy statutes in English law were 
directed against government itself. Conspiracy, from the 
beginning, was a crime among officials to deprive 
individuals of their personal rights. One could only bring a 
conspiracy charge, though, upon being absolved of a criminal 
charge in a court of law; then one could sue the officers 
for conspiring to do him in. So a charge of conspiracy among 
government officials is in the best of tradition."

If you watch TV programs such as 60 minutes, 20/20, Inside 
Edition, etc. - not to speak of films like JFK and Incident 
at Oglala - you may begin to suspect that government 
conspiracy is not that uncommon. According to Robert Payne 
(The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day 
America):

"By its very nature, every bureaucracy tends to become a 
conspiratorial organization. Every bureaucracy becomes a 
closed society demanding implicit loyalty from its members. 
Implanted in all members is the need to serve the 
bureaucracy first and the public second. The bureaucracy's 
mistakes must be covered up, its black sheep removed as 
silently as possible. At all costs it is necessary to 
maintain the fiction that the bureaucracy works only for the 
public interest and is not in the least concerned with the 
perpetuation and increase of its own powers."

On police corruption, Payne writes:
"When the Knapp Commission met to enquire into police 
corruption in New York, it learned that there were two types 
of corrupt policemen - the meat-eaters" and the 
"grass-eaters." The "meat-eaters" were those who devoted 
their working lives to corruption, extracting huge payoffs 
and using all the weapons at their disposal for enforcing 
their demands, while the "grass-eaters" simply accepted the 
comparatively small payoffs that came to them whenever there 
was a sharing of the proceeds from gambling, drug traffic, 
and prostitution. In the five police districts they studied 
they learned that the monthly share per plainclothesman 
ranged from $300 or $400 in midtown Manhattan to $1,500 in 
Harlem. The pattern of corruption was strikingly 
standardized and institutionalized. Books were kept, and 
each plainclothesman signed a receipt for his "nut." Newly 
assigned plainclothesmen received nothing during their first 
two months of service while their reliability and 
trustworthiness were being investigated, and it was made 
clear to them that on no account must they reveal the 
existence of the "pad." Some of the "meat-eaters" became 
millionaires, but the Knapp Commission wisely pointed out 
that the "grass-eaters" were at the heart of the problem, 
because their great numbers tended to make corruption 
respectable."

This police anarchy is of course financed by we the victims. 
Other chapters in Becker's book covers military anarchy, 
bureaucratic anarchy, judicial anarchy, and local official 
anarchy. The most striking example of government anarchy I 
have come across, the Hsin dynasty during the reign of Wang 
Mang (9-23 AD), is described by Robert Payne in The Corrupt 
Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America:

"Under Wang Mang a new kind of state emerged: everything was 
owned by the new emperor. All the gold of the empire found 
its way into the imperial treasury. He established 
monopolies of salt, wine, and iron tools. He devalued the 
currency, levied heavy taxes on hunters, fishermen, 
silk-workers, artisans, and professional men, and he 
acquired enormous revenues through his "equalization 
offices," which were designed in theory to buy cheap goods 
in times of plenty for resale at the original price in times 
of scarcity, thus preventing excessive price fluctuations 
and safeguarding the poor. In fact the "equalization 
offices" bought cheaply and sold dearly to the consternation 
of the peasants who thought they were being protected. In an 
imperial edict announced the year he founded his new 
dynasty, Wang Mang decreed that "all the land belongs to the 
nation, all slaves whether male or female are attached to 
the land, and neither land nor slaves may be sold." By "the 
nation" he meant "the emperor." With this decree he became 
the sole possessor of all the land and all the slaves

The historian Pan Ku... says that China lost half its 
population during Wang Mang's short reign. Presumably they 
died of starvation and of mass executions, and many must 
have fled across the borders."

You might feel relieved by thinking it could never get this 
bad in "the land of the brave and the home of the free." 
Don't get lulled into a false sense of security. On January 
10, 1961 the Secretary of the Treasury issued the "Emergency 
Banking Regulation No. 1," described by Hans F. Senholz (Age 
of Inflation):

"Emergency Banking Regulation No. 1 is just one of a number 
of emergency measures that would impose government control 
over rents, prices, salaries, and wages, and introduce 
rationing. The Regulation orders the instant seizure of most 
bank deposits "in the event of an attack on the United States."

Right now, the President of the U.S. can at any time declare 
a "state of emergency" and "martial law" - and assume the 
kind of powers Wang Mang decreed for himself nearly 2,000 
years ago. As Robert Ringer wrote in How You Can Find 
Happiness During the Collapse of Western Civilization:

"Unbeknownst to all but a handful of Americans, the 
machinery to implement a police state is already in place in 
the United States. It exists in the form of an unpublicized 
little piece of "legislation" called Executive Order 11490. 
It gives the president the right to invoke emergency powers 
in "any national emergency-type situation." Of course, it is 
the president himself who decides what constitutes an 
emergency. Once he has activated 11490, the president can do 
virtually anything he deems "necessary," including 
confiscating gold, silver, and firearms, nationalizing 
businesses, controlling the media, freezing bank accounts, 
censoring mail, forcing you to "share" your possessions with 
others, and preventing citizens from leaving the country."

Executive Order 11490 combines earlier Executive Orders, 
which give the federal government widespread powers to take 
over:

All communications media (Executive Order 109950).
All electric power, petroleum, gas, fuel, and minerals (10997).
All food resources and farms (10998).
All means of transportation (10999).
All citizens to be drafted into work forces (11000).
All health, welfare, and educational functions (11001).
All housing and finance authorities (11004).

In addition Executive Order 11002 empowers the Postmaster 
General to register all citizens. 11004 subjects citizens to 
forcible relocation by the federal government. The time has 
come for Americans to wake up to the fact that a conquest 
has taken place. Congressman George Hansen thought in 1980 
that we were on the brink of totalitarianism - since then we 
have moved even closer to the brink:

"But our return from the brink of totalitarianism will not 
be as easy as our journey there has been. Other federal 
agencies have followed the IRS through the cracks opened in 
civil and constitutional law by the excesses of bureaucratic 
regulation. We are now fighting on more than one front and 
stand in danger of being outflanked. OSHA, EPA, CPA, ICC, 
and hosts of other acronymic monsters, along with IRS, are 
busily regulating America into another "gulag.""

AMERICA - CAPITALIST OR COMMUNIST?

By "capitalism" I mean an economic system characterized by 
private property and voluntary exchange. By "communism" I 
mean an economic system characterized by public property and 
compulsory exchange. The myth that the America is a 
"capitalist country" is widespread. According to the 
Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels (first published in 
1848), the following ten steps are necessary for a communist 
takeover:

"Abolition of property in land and application of all rents 
of land to public purposes.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolition of all right of inheritance.
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means 
of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Centralization of the means of communication and transport 
in the hands of the state.
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned 
by the state; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, 
and the improvement of the the soil generally in accordance 
with a common plan.
Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial 
armies, especially for agriculture.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, 
gradual abolition of the distinction between town and 
country, by a more equitable distribution of the populace 
over the country.
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition 
of children's factory labor in its present form."

For each of these ten planks I now give the measures that 
could be interpreted as implementing the plank, as well as 
my "communist percentage," determined by the extent to which 
I think the plank has been implemented:

1. Abolition of Property Rights.

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall 
have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and 
excises. (Taxes on things, including property.)
Zoning laws and regulations - the Supreme Court ruled zoning 
constitutional in 1921.
Federal ownership of land; Bureau of Land Management - in 
Nevada 87% of land is federally owned.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) - broad powers to 
seize any private property during "emergency."

Communist percentage: 25%.

2. Heavy Progressive Income Tax

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall 
have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and 
excises. (Taxes on things, including income.) The Sixteenth 
Amendment classifies income tax as an indirect tax, or tax 
on a thing, as opposed to tax on a person.
Corporate Tax Act of 1909.
Revenue Act of 1913.
Social Security Act of 1936.

Communist percentage: 85%. (Maybe 15% of the population 
don't pay the taxes.)

3. Abolition of Rights of Inheritance

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall 
have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and 
excises. (Taxes on things, including inheritances.)
Estate Tax Act of 1916.
Social Security Act of 1936.

Communist percentage: 30%.

4. Confiscation of Property of Emigrants and Rebels

Confiscation of property of American Indians.
IRS confiscation of property without due process.
Internment of Japanese-Americans during WW II; confiscation 
of their property.
Confiscation of drug-merchant property.
RICO Act of 1970 (Racketeering Influenced & Corrupt 
Organizations) - used as a basis to confiscate property.

Communist percentage: 20%.

5. Monopoly National Bank

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall 
have the power to coin money, regulate the power thereof.
National Bank Act of 1863 - established federal monopoly.
Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), 1933.

Communist percentage: 90%. (Maybe 10% of transactions are 
done by barter or private currency.)

6. Centralization by the State of Communication and 
Transportation

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall 
have the power to establish post offices and post roads.
U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall 
have the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, 
and among the several States.
Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 - placed railways under 
federal regulation; created Interstate Commerce Commission 
(ICC).
Federal Highway Act of 1916.
Air Commerce Act of 1926.
Federal Radio Commission, 1927.
Federal Communications Commission, 1934.
Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938.
Interstate Highway System, 1944.
Federal Aviation Agency, 1958.
Department of Transportation, 1966.

Communist percentage: 80%.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production 
owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of 
wastelands, and the improvement of the the soil generally

Department of the Interior, 1849 - now includes: Bureau of 
Land Management, Forest Service, Bureau of Reclamation, 
Bureau of Mines, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife 
Service.
Department of Agriculture, 1862.
Anti-trust Acts, 1902.
Department of Commerce and Labor, 1903.
Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933 - Hoover Dam, Muscle Shoals 
Project.

Communist percentage: 40%.

8. Equal liability of all to labor; Establishment of 
industrial armies, especially for agriculture

First labor unions, then called federations, 1820.
National Labor Union, 1866.
American Federation of Labor, 1886.
International Workers of the World, 1905.
Department of Labor, 1913.
Railway Labor Act of 1926.
Civil Works Administration, 1933.
Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1933 - farmers receive 
government aid only if they relinquish control of farming 
activities.
National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
Works Progress Administration, 1935.
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 - set minimum wages.
Civil Rights Act of 1964 - effectively the equal liability 
of all to labor.
Davis-Bacon and Walsh-Healy Acts - require government 
contractors to pay "prevailing wages."
U.S. Unemployment Service.

Communist percentage: 60%.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, 
gradual abolition of the distinction between town and 
country, by a more equitable distribution of the populace 
over the country

Farmers Home Administration (FHA).
Zoning.
Government subsidies favor large agribusinesses.

Communist percentage: 10%.

10. Free education for all children in public schools; 
Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form

Gradual shift from private education to state funded 
education began in the New England States in the early 1800s.
Smith-Lever Act of 1914.
Smith-Hughes Act of 1917.
Federal school lunch program, 1935.
Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938 - children work only with 
government approval.
National School Lunch Act of 1946.
National Defense Education Act of 1958.
Federal School Aid Act of 1965.

Communist percentage: 95%.

The average for my "communist percentages" is 53.5%, that 
is, according to these criteria America is halfway between 
capitalism and communism. Note that for four of the most 
important criteria - education, communication, 
banking/currency, and taxation - my "communist percentages" 
are very high.

Note that the U.S. Constitution specifically empowers 
Congress to implement five of the communist planks. In 
practice, Congress has demonstrated its power to implement, 
at least to some extent, all the communist planks.

Also note that the two essential distinguishing 
characteristics of capitalism are private property and 
voluntary exchange. The U.S. Constitution gave Congress wide 
powers to violate private property and voluntary exchange. 
In practice, this is exactly what Congress has been doing. 
The Bill of Rights has slowed down Congress's march towards 
communism. But gradually the Supreme Court has been 
effectively dismantling the Bill of Rights. Today many 
courts rule defense based on the Bill of Rights 
inadmissible, particularly regarding tax matters.

As quoted By Robert J. Ringer in Restoring the American 
Dream, British historian Thomas Macaulay predicted in 1857:
"The day will come when [in the United States] a multitude 
of people will choose the legislature. Is it possible to 
doubt what sort of a legislature will be chosen? On the one 
side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for rights, 
strict observance of public faith. On the other is a 
demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalism and 
usurers and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink 
champagne and to ride in a carriage while thousands of 
honest people are in want of necessaries. Which of the 
candidates is likely to be preferred by a workman? ... When 
Society has entered on this downward progress, either 
civilization or liberty must perish. Either some Caesar or 
Napoleon will seize the reigns of government with a strong 
hand, or your Republic will be as fearfully plundered and 
laid to waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the 
Roman Empire in the fifth; with this difference, that the 
Huns and vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from 
without, and that your Huns and vandals will have been 
engendered within your country, by your own institutions."

The Los Angeles riots of April 1992 could be seen as a case 
in point. Whether these are a harbinger of things to come 
remains to be seen.

GOVERNMENT MURDER

Norman Cousins - best known for his book Anatomy of an 
Illness - also wrote The Pathology of Power:
"The attachment to total power in our time not only has not 
served the purposes of national security but threatens to 
bring about a basic change in the kind of balanced 
relationship between government and people that is the 
central feature in the political architecture of the 
American Constitution-makers. No aspect of this threat is 
more apparent than the way genuine national security 
requirements have been allowed to serve as the occasion for 
an assault on the wealth of the American people. The 
chapters that follow summarize the reports of public and 
private investigators - reports documenting the loss 
amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars, through waste, 
bribery, kickbacks, circumvention of competitive bidding, 
flawed weapons systems, and sheer incompetence in the 
military program."

Cousins tells the story of "the M-16: a rifle that 
couldn't." He describes how the Vietcong, after winning a 
firefight, would strip the dead American bodies of 
"everything useful - boots, canteens, knives, grenades, 
rations, and so on. Even relatively outmoded rifles of World 
War II were eagerly snatched up. Yet the Vietcong disdained 
the M-16s, leaving them behind on the ground." Cousins then 
quotes from an article on the M-16 by James Fallows in the 
June 1981 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. The article 
includes quotes from various letters from American infantry 
soldiers in Vietnam:

"Our M-16s aren't worth much... Out of 40 rounds I've fired, 
my rifle jammed about 10 times... These rifles are getting a 
lot of guys killed because they jam so easily... " "The 
weapon has failed us at crucial moments... as many as 50 
percent of the rifles fail to work." "During this fight... I 
lost some of my best buddies. I personally checked their 
weapons. Close to 70 percent had a round stuck in the 
chamber, and take my word it was not their fault."

Cousins then describes the development of the M-16, which 
started with the M-14 rifle. The M-14 had a major drawback 
in that its recoil during automatic fire was so violent that 
it bucked and jolted, and was difficult to aim. Weapons 
designer Eugene Stoner invented the AR-15 rifle as a 
solution. It was manufactured by the Armelite Corporation. 
It fired high- impact .22-caliber bullets, and was much 
lighter than the M-14 which used .30-caliber bullets. As a 
result a soldier with an AR-15 could carry three times as 
much ammunition as one with an M-14. The AR-15 was virtually 
jam-proof. It was a dream weapon. The Green Berets and the 
paratroopers requested and got them.

But in the early 1960s the Army Material Command falsified 
tests to "prove" that the M-14 was superior to the AR-15. 
They blocked the general issuance of the AR-15. The top 
brass considered Armelite an "outside" company. The Army 
ordinance "experts" decided to redesign the AR-15. Among 
other "bells and whistles," they introduced a new pattern of 
spiral grooving in the barrel. They changed the gunpowder in 
the ammunition. The end-result was a disaster, called the 
M-16 rifle. It overheated and jammed, both in tests and on 
the battlefield. In 1967 the House Armed Services Committee 
investigated the M-16. Their verdict included that "The 
failure... of officials with authority in the Army to... 
correct the deficiencies... borders on criminal negligence."

Cousins also writes:
"In 1966, [Rear Admiral Gene] La Rocque was asked by the 
secretary of the Navy, Paul Nitze, to head a task force of 
ten senior officers to study the Vietnam War and make 
recommendations for action. The question put to them: "What 
should the U.S. do?"

The team went to Vietnam. "We looked at all the options for 
completing the war, "La Rocque recalled. "It became obvious 
that we were wasting kids without really knowing why. There 
were no real goals. And that was what I told General 
[William] Westmoreland, 'You're spending $90,000 a day... 
and you don't really know why.'" After nine months of 
research, the group concluded that there was no way they 
could win the war in Vietnam, and advised Secretary of 
Defense Robert McNamara accordingly."

These are just two samples from three pages of Cousins's 
book. Before we look at more examples, let us examine why 
governments love war. Murray N. Rothbard, professor of 
Economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, wrote in 
For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto:
"... [W]ar, in the words of the libertarian Randolph Bourne, 
"is the health of the State." War has always been the 
occasion of a great - and usually permanent - acceleration 
and intensification of State power over society. War is the 
great excuse for mobilizing all the energies and resources 
of the nation, in the name of patriotic rhetoric, under the 
aegis and dictation of the State apparatus. It is in war 
that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, 
in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy 
and the society. Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its 
alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent 
from the official war effort, happily betraying truth, for 
the supposed public interest. Society becomes an armed camp, 
with the values and the morals - as the libertarian Albert 
Jay Mock once phrased it - of an "army on the march.""

The modern state has not shaken off its origins. It is still 
a murdering plunder-party, albeit more sophisticated. Some 
of the nations of the world are the modern versions of the 
ancient gangs of nomad-warriors raiding, murdering, and 
looting each other. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1991 
was an example.

War is of course one of the quickest ways for the Federal 
Reserve bankers to run up the "national debt," so they can 
print and issue lots of currency which must be repaid plus 
interest. One person who understood the connection between 
political power, money, and war was Lysander Spooner. In 
1869, soon after the Civil War, he wrote No Treason: The 
Constitution of No Authority:

"All political power, as it is called, rests practically 
upon this matter of money. Any number of scoundrels, having 
money enough to start with, can establish themselves as a 
"government"; because, with money, they can hire soldiers, 
and with soldiers extort more money; and also compel general 
obedience to their will. It is with government, as Caesar 
said it was in war, that money and soldiers mutually 
supported each other; that with money he could hire 
soldiers, and with soldiers extort more money. So these 
villains, who call themselves governments, well understand 
that their power rests primarily upon money. With money they 
can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. And, when 
their authority or is denied, the first use they always make 
of money, is to hire soldiers to kill or subdue all who 
refuse them more money. For this reason, whoever desires 
liberty, should understand these vital facts, viz.:

That every man who puts money into the hands of a 
"government" (so-called), puts into their hands a sword 
which will be used against himself, to extort more money 
from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its 
arbitrary will.
That those who will take his money, without his consent, in 
the first place, will use it for his further robbery and 
enslavement, if he presumes to resists their demands in the 
future.
That it is a perfect absurdity to suppose that any body of 
men would ever take a man's money without his consent, for 
any such object as they profess to take it for, viz., that 
of protecting him; for why should they wish to protect him, 
if he does not wish them to do so?...
If a man wants "protection," he is competent to make his own 
bargains for it; and nobody has any occasion to rob him, in 
order to "protect" him against his will.
That the only security men can have for their political 
liberty, consists in their keeping their money in their own 
pockets, until they have assurances, perfectly satisfactory 
to themselves, that it will be used as they wish it to be 
used, for their benefit, and not for their injury.
That no government, so-called, can reasonably be trusted for 
a moment, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes 
in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary 
support...

The whole affair, on the part of those who furnished the 
money, has been, and now is, a deliberate scheme of robbery 
and murder; not merely to monopolize the markets of the 
South, but also to monopolize the currency, and thus control 
the industry and trade, and thus plunder and enslave the 
laborers, of both North and South. And Congress and the 
president are today the merest tools for these purposes. 
They are obliged to be, for they know that their own power, 
as rulers, so-called, is at an end, the moment their credit 
with the blood-money loan-mongers fails. They are like a 
bankrupt in the hands of an extortioner. They dare not say 
nay to any demand made upon them. And to hide at once, if 
possible, both their servility and their crimes, they 
attempt to divert public attention, by crying out that they 
have "Abolished Slavery!" That they have "Saved the 
Country!" That they have "Preserved our Glorious Union!" and 
that, in now paying the "National Debt" as they call it (as 
if the people themselves, all of them who are to be taxed 
for its payment, had really and voluntarily joined in 
contracting it), they are simply "Maintaining the National 
Honor!"

By "maintaining the national honor," they mean simply that 
they themselves, tyrants, robbers, and murderers, assume to 
be the nation, and will keep faith with those who lend them 
the money necessary to enable them to crush the great body 
of the people under their feet; and will faithfully 
appropriate, from the proceeds of their future robberies and 
murders, enough to pay all their loans, principal and interest.

The pretense that the "abolition of slavery" was either a 
motive or justification for the war, is a fraud of the same 
character with that of "maintaining the national honor." 
Who, but such usurpers, robbers, and murderers as they, ever 
established slavery? ... And why did these men abolish 
slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general - not as an 
act of justice to the black man himself, but only "as a war 
measure," and because they wanted his assistance, and that 
of his friends, in carrying on the war they had undertaken 
for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, 
and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the 
great body of the people, both white and black. And yet 
these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the 
chattel slavery of the black man - although that was not the 
motive of the war - as if they thought they could thereby 
conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they 
were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and 
inexorable than it ever was before. There was no difference 
of principle - but only of degree - between the slavery they 
boast they have abolished, and the slavery they were 
fighting to preserve; for all restraints upon men's natural 
liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of 
justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each 
other only in degree...

The lesson taught by all these facts is this: As long as 
mankind continues to pay "national debts," so-called - that 
is, so long as they are such dupes and cowards as to pay for 
being cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered - so long 
there will be enough to lend the money for those purposes; 
and with that money a plenty of tools, called soldiers, can 
be hired to keep them in subjection. But when they refuse 
any longer to pay for being thus cheated, plundered, 
enslaved, and murdered, they will cease to have cheats, and 
usurpers, and robbers, and murderers, and blood-money 
loan-mongers for masters." [Some emphases added]

In 1937 Philip Noel-Baker, who later won the Nobel Peace 
Prize, wrote The Private Manufacture of Arms. He quoted from 
a message sent in 1934 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to 
Congress:
"The peoples of many countries are being taxed to the point 
of poverty and starvation... to enable governments to engage 
in a mad race in armaments... This grave menace to the peace 
of the world is due in no small measure to the uncontrolled 
activities of the manufacturers and merchants of engines of 
destruction, and it must be met by the concerted actions of 
the peoples of all nations."

 From the other side of the Atlantic, Noel-Baker quoted Lord 
Welby, Britain's principal Permanent Secretary to the Treasury:
"We are in the hands of an organization of crooks. They are 
generals, politicians, manufacturers of armaments and 
journalists. All of them are anxious for unlimited 
expenditure, and go on inventing war scares to terrify the 
public and to terrify the Ministers of the Crown"

Noel-Baker also wrote, "The British government has, it is 
probably true to say, given more knighthoods to Directors of 
Armaments firms than to representatives of all the rest of 
British industry put together." ("War is the health of the 
state.")

The Arizona Republic of November 12, 1991 reported as 
follows, under the headline, "Bush says gulf war healed 
'nation's soul'":
"Leading the nation's Veterans Day observances, President 
Bush placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns on Monday 
and said victory in the Persian Gulf war has kindled overdue 
respect for Vietnam veterans that was "good for the nation's 
soul." ["War is the health of the state."] Bush pledged that 
the United States will "always be a force for peace in the 
world" as he paid special tribute to veterans of the 
nation's two most recent wars. ["War is peace."]

... Bush... said again at the annual ceremony in Arlington 
National Cemetery that veterans of Operation Desert Storm 
"freed a captive nation and set America free by renewing our 
faith in ourselves.""

War is government murder. In the Civil War it was government 
murder of over 300,000 Americans. In dropping atomic bombs 
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was government murder of more 
than 200,000 people, mostly civilians. In The Pathology of 
Power Norman Cousins provides convincing evidence that Japan 
was already on the verge of capitulation, and few if any 
American lives were saved by the atomic bombs. General 
Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in Mandate for Change about, "my 
belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the 
bomb was completely unnecessary." Most of the other American 
military leaders were also opposed to dropping the atom 
bomb. General Douglas MacArthur was never consulted.

President Harry S. Truman ordered the bombs to be dropped. 
In 1979 the diary Truman kept in 1945, when the atom bombs 
were dropped, was discovered - it had been misfiled. 
According to the diary, Truman had originally ordered 
Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson not to use the atom bomb 
against civilians. He also ordered that a warning be issued, 
"asking the Japs to surrender and save lives." Later he 
changed his mind and ordered the atom bombs dropped without 
warning. The reason was given by Secretary of State James F. 
Byrnes in an interview with U.S. News and World Report on 
August 15, 1960, "We wanted to get through the Japanese 
phase of the war before the Russians came in." The Russians 
were scheduled to enter the war against Japan on August 15, 
1945. (Germany had collapsed in May 1945,) The atom bombs 
were dropped on August 6, 1945. The "powers that be" wanted 
the "spoils of war" for themselves - they did not want to 
share with the Russians. When Truman told the American 
public on August 6, 1945 that thousands of American lives 
were saved by dropping the atom bombs, was he lying through 
his teeth?

World War II was the first war, in recent times, during 
which civilians became cannon-fodder by the millions. 
Germany started the "trend" in 1939 with its V-2 bombing of 
London. Other notable examples are the saturation bombings 
of Dresden on February 13, 1945 (135,000 killed, practically 
all civilian) and Tokyo on March 9, 1945 (83,000 killed, 
mostly civilian). "Saturation bombing" involves high 
concentration bombing with incendiary and high explosive 
bombs to the point that an entire area becomes a burning 
fire-storm, consuming all the oxygen, and anyone who doesn't 
burn to death suffocates.

General MacArthur said in a talk to the American Legion in 
Los Angeles on January 26, 1955:
"The great question is: can war be outlawed? If so, it would 
mark the greatest advance in civilization since the Sermon 
on the Mount. It would lift at one stroke the darkest shadow 
which has engulfed mankind from the beginning. It would not 
only remove fear and bring security - it would not only 
create new moral and spiritual values - it would produce an 
economic wave of prosperity that would raise the world's 
standard of living beyond anything ever dreamed of by man. 
The hundreds of billions of dollars now spent on mutual 
preparedness could conceivably abolish poverty from the face 
of the globe... "

President Eisenhower, during his Farewell Address on January 
17, 1961, said:
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the 
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or 
unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential 
for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will 
persist. We must never let the weight of this combination 
endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should 
take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable 
citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge 
industrial and military machinery of defense with our 
peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may 
prosper together.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has 
been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in 
laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the 
free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas 
and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in 
the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs 
involved, a government contract becomes virtually a 
substitute for intellectual curiosity...

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by 
federal employment, project allocations, and the power of 
money is ever present - and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in 
respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal 
and opposite danger that public policy could itself become 
the captive of a scientific-technological elite."

Preparation for war is an excuse to rape the economy of 
America to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars every 
year. Examples from The Pathology of Power by Norman Cousins:

Fifteen-cent nuts and bolts for costing the taxpayer $25 
each, $8 hammers costing $435, $8 pliers costing $745, a 
$125 coffee brewer costing $7,600, and a $700 sofa costing 
$15,000 - many such items in bulk, resulting in billions 
wasted fraudulently.
General Dynamics charged the government $1.4 million for 
executive trips in its company planes, $320,000 for its 
company chairman to fly to his country home, $1.2 million to 
maintain a lobbying office in Washington, $22 million to 
transport its executives to ski resorts, and $10,713 for 
losses at its own barber shop.
Sperry Rand billed the government $177,222 for labor 
relations expenses, $160,480 for European expenses, and 
$899,982 for "traffic department" expenses.
Military contractors billed the government $7,900,000 for 
their own exhibits at a Paris air show.
Boeing charged the government $11,750 for its sponsorship of 
the World Paper Airplane Championship; and $2,485 for golf 
fees, cart rentals, and liquor.
Rockwell billed the government $1,040,588 for its own 
executive dining room and cafeteria.
McDonnell Aircraft claimed $1,558,377 for "rearrangement 
expenses."
The U.S. has 30,000 nuclear bombs - probably enough to wipe 
out all human life twenty times over.
The AH-64A Apache attack helicopter, costing $17 million 
each, was an "airborne dinosaur" in Vietnam - nearly 10,000 
were shot down, mostly by simple rifle and machine-gun fire.
The Air Force bought thirty-five AWACS planes at a cost of 
$9 billion. During a 1975 test, the radar images received by 
an AWAC were jammed by a navy plane 350 miles away. Two test 
"enemy" planes were able to get within fifty yard of the 
AWAC without being spotted.
The Army spent $13,7 billion on the "Bradley Fighting 
Vehicle," which was a complete dud.
The Stealth Bomber, supposedly invisible to radar, can 
probably be detected by heat-sensitive tracking devices, and 
is almost certainly a multi-billion dollar dud and boondoggle.
At best, the Star Wars system can only prevent a fraction of 
missiles from reaching their targets in a concerted nuclear 
attack. And the Star Wars lasers can be used to create the 
kind of fire-storms that occurred in Dresden and Tokyo. Star 
Wars is largely a boondoggle.

Cousins gives many more examples, but I think the above is 
sufficient to make the point: military spending is largely 
economic rape. I will let Lysander Spooner have the last word:

"The lesson taught by all these facts is this: As long as 
mankind continues to pay "national debts," so-called - that 
is, so long as they are such dupes and cowards as to pay for 
being cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered - so long 
there will be enough to lend the money for those purposes; 
and with that money a plenty of tools, called soldiers, can 
be hired to keep them in subjection. But when they refuse 
any longer to pay for being thus cheated, plundered, 
enslaved, and murdered, they will cease to have cheats, and 
usurpers, and robbers, and murderers, and blood-money 
loan-mongers for masters." [Some emphases added]


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