I reported in September that the Heritage Foundation estimated that the average American lost $4,200 since Biden became president. Within only a month, their analysis for October revealed that the average family had lost an average of $7,400. Around $6,100 of the loss came from annual income, while interest rates cost the average American $1,300 annually. For the analysis to nearly double in the course of a month is alarming, and it is reasonable to suspect that losses will become steeper due to current policies.
The Heritage Foundation said this estimate, obviously, does not “fully reflect the pain experienced by families.” They did not factor in losses from retirement accounts or investments. They certainly did not count the number who lost their careers due to pandemic mandates. Nor did they factor in the increased cost of borrowing money, mortgages, or the doomed bond market. They also did not factor in that he caused the public to lose all confidence in the government.
All gains under the Trump era were erased in less than two years. The changes that a new administration can implement are astronomical. The spending packages pushed forth acted as a temporary band-aid over a wound that will never heal. At least the generally uninformed public believed those packages would help, but that tide is turning as they can no longer offer unlimited free handouts. The economy was brought to a screeching halt in 2020, and absolutely nothing has been done by Washington to improve conditions since then. The spending packages lack all common sense and seem to be a deliberate attempt to hurt the country.
Anyone who wants to pay more for everything – go ahead. Those of us who voted for sensible politicians with real plans will send you the bill.
The collapse of the FTX Exchange is pretty straightforward insofar as this is the same lesson that constantly repeats in finance time and time again. Basically, FTX lent US$10bn of client funds to their trading arm Alameda, which used it for leveraged their own crypto speculation because the crypto market has been collapsing. Typically, someone like Sam Bankman-Fried had his whole life wrapped up in this venture. Lacking financial controls operating from the Bahamas, moving the money from client funds to his trading arm Alameda was possible. Historically, someone in this position sees his world collapsing but is not prepared to see that unfold for it requires admitting that he was wrong on crypto, to begin with. Consequently, such a person is not trying to actually rob clients’ money, they most likely see it as a temporary loan to save the company and the market will bounce back – or so they believe.
Our computer had picked the high in Bitcoin perfectly and has been projecting the collapse all along the way. But crypto has become a religion and in so doing it clouds the judgment of people who want to believe the story. Alameda blew up in a crypto meltdown because it did not want to accept that the crypto boom was over. The loan he probably thought would be temporary, vanished in the implosion. At first, I would have assumed they had actually invested the money and lost it on the bond market collapse. But that was perhaps too traditional. Here, it appears they were trying to defend their own cryptocurrency and trying to buy the low that kept moving lower. It appears he was allegedly simply using clients’ funds to trade keeping gains for his firm and the clients now suffer the risk.
It appears that they allegedly were trying to defend the crypto market and did not understand that the boom was over. The loans could not then be repaid. As crypto was crashing, some people needed to cash out. The attempt to pull out US$5bn from FTX exposed the fact that the cash was all gone. This is not so unusual. It has happened before. This time, the prosecutors are clamoring to be the one to charge him so they can become famous over his dead body.
FTX was a partner with Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF). Of course, the WEF has suddenly removed the page and is desperately trying to hide their involvement with FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried. Naturally, eliminating paper currency has been the goal of the WEF because they support the end of not just capitalism, but also democracy. Schwab’s push has been his Great Reset and to control society to impose his economic philosophy inspired by Marx and Lenin.
This is by no means the first violation of fiduciary responsibility that presents a custodial risk. MF Global Holdings Ltd., you might recall, was a firm formerly run by New Jersey ex-Gov. Jon Corzine was accused in 2013 of unlawfully using customer money to meet his firm’s funding needs. When MF Global went bust because of trading by ex-Goldman Sach’s Jon Corzine’s trading using his client’s money in London also outside the regulatory eye of the USA, he was NEVER prosecuted for illegally using $1.6 billion of 26,000 client’s money. That is not going to be the case this time. So what is the difference between Corzine and Bankman-Fried? Corzine was ex-Goldman Sachs.
Indeed, Corzine was well-connected right into the White House with Obama. Nobody went to jail and clients had to wait in bankruptcy to get their money – even cash in the accounts was taken. There are clear risks with the broker and clearer. As long as the SEC is run with former Goldman Sachs staff, there will NEVER be an honest regulator. Even when all the banks pled criminally guilty, the SEC exempted everyone from losing their licenses. They would NEVER do that with anyone outside of New York City. The SEC will never prosecute the banks – EVER!!!!
Indeed, several federal investigations had been launched into MF Global, including probes by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (its main regulator), the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Justice Department prosecutors in both Chicago and New York. The brokerage has also been the focus of several congressional hearings. Not a single one charged Corzine with trading with his client’s money. The losses that eventually drove MF Global into bankruptcy stemmed from high-risk bets on European sovereign bonds that Corzine made as he swung for the fences. Corzine bet big that the bond issuers would not default.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission simply fined Jon Corzine only $5 million over MF Global’s rapid descent into bankruptcy on Oct. 31, 2011, as an estimated $1.6 billion of customer money went missing. Anyone else would have been in prison for a minimum of 20 years.
It was Martin Glenn who was the judge in New York on M.F. Global bankruptcy. He was the first one to engage in FORCED LOANS by abandoning the rule of law to help the bankers by protecting them from losses taking client accounts to cover M.F. Global’s losses. He simply allowed the confiscation of client funds when in fact the rule of law should have been that the bankers were responsible and M.F. Global’s losses should have been reversed as they did even when Robert Maxwell’s companies failed in London from his illegal trading taking employee pension funds.
Yes, that was Ghislaine Maxwell’s father and the guy who was in control of the company that Bill Browder worked for before Edmond Safra. Never should the client’s funds be taken for M.F. Global’s losses to the NY Bankers. It was Judge Martin Glen who placed the entire financial; system at risk by trying to protect the bankers. Martin Glenn pampered these bankers making them the new UNTOUCHABLES. We have to be concerned that there really is no rule of law that will protect you in a crisis.
On Bloomberg TV, Sam Bankman-Fried explained why he even created FTX. He said he was experiencing his own frustration at Alameda Research, which was his crypto-focused proprietary trading firm. He was frustrated with the execution he was receiving at various crypto exchanges so he claimed that inspired FTX’s creation in May 2019. FTX grew rapidly to become the third largest crypto exchange in the world, with approximately $16 billion of customer assets under custody over 43 months.
Bankman-Fried stated that Alameda was making lots of money, but it could have been making more and he did not have access to venture capital. Claims of 100% annualized returns are not uncommon in a boom, but any experienced trader knows what goes up, also comes down. Alameda was relying on “cobbling together lines of credit” to expand its capital base. He then created FTX to solve his funding problem creating his own exchange that even the WEF cheered as a partner. He actually created a platform that was tailored for his own company, Alameda, to facilitate its trading needs. FTX coined the phrase “built by traders, for traders.”
There was an obvious conflict of interest questions regarding the close relationship between FTX and Alameda. Being operated from the Bahamas raised questions among those of us who are seasoned financial market observers whether the two were truly arm’s length from each other. However, people were so pumped up on adrenalin with crypto being the end of the dollar and central banks that this new free-wheeling crypto world believed what they wanted to believe and never looked too closely. FTX operated outside the reach of the US regulatory domain and there was a lack of any fiduciary confirmation. When the founder of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, Changpeng Zhao, openly questioned the soundness of the FTX/Alameda nexus on Twitter saying he would sell over $500 million worth of FTX’s token FTT, that was the kiss of death weather or not he realized he would unleash a crypto panic that would engulf the entire industry in a matter of days.
The collapse of FTX will now become a contagion for the crypto world. This 20-something group of inexperienced traders has signaled the demise of an industry that was getting all the hype with no substance. This crypto world will be seen as the DOT COM Bubble of 2000. With a recession on the horizon, the collapse of sovereign debt, and the monetary system as a whole, people will be looking for more of the safe bets rather than roll the dice on crypto. Nothing ever goes straight down. But by year-end, the volatility should perk up everyone’s view of the world.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 14, 2022 | Sundance
The Senate Leadership Fund is the Political Action Committee (PAC) controlled by Mitch McConnell. Within the quarterly FEC filings of the Senate Leadership Fund, we discover that in addition to funding Joe Biden and Democrats, the ponzi scheme known as the FTX cryptocurrency exchange was also funding Mitch McConnell with $2.5 million. [Document Source]
There is a lot of speculation about U.S. taxpayer funds going to Ukraine, then transferring into the FTX crypto exchange program, then exiting back out with FTX donations to the DC politicians who provided the Ukraine funds. If this ends up being accurate, then the FTX crypto currency operation was being used as a laundry system to funnel money from congress through Ukraine and back into the pockets of politicians.
Do not look for DC politicians to investigate or expose themselves in this potential laundry operation.
Most people think when they vote for a federal politician -a House or Senate representative- they are voting for a person who will go to Washington DC and write or enact legislation. This is the old-fashioned “schoolhouse rock” perspective based on decades past. There is not a single person in congress writing legislation or laws.
In modern politics not a single member of the House of Representatives or Senator writes a law or puts pen to paper to write out a legislative construct. This simply doesn’t happen.
Over the past several decades a system of constructing legislation has taken over Washington DC that more resembles a business operation than a legislative body. Understand this dynamic and you understand how politicians become multi-millionaires on much lesser salaries; and why ‘We The People’ are insignificant and annoying gnats to their business model. Here’s how it works right now.
Outside groups, often called “special interest groups”, are entities that represent their interests in legislative constructs. These groups are often representing foreign governments, Wall Street multinational corporations, banks, financial groups or businesses; or smaller groups of people with a similar connection who come together and form a larger group under an umbrella of interest specific to their affiliation.
Sometimes the groups are social interest groups, activists, climate groups, environmental interests etc. The social interest groups are usually non-profit constructs who depend on the expenditures of government to sustain their cause or need.
The for-profit groups (mostly business) have a purpose in Washington DC to shape policy, legislation and laws favorable to their interests. They have fully staffed offices just like any business would – only their ‘business‘ is getting legislation for their unique interests.
These groups are filled with highly paid lawyers who represent the interests of the entity and actually write laws and legislation briefs.
In the modern era this is actually the origination of the laws that we eventually see passed by congress. Within the walls of these buildings within Washington DC is where the ‘sausage’ is actually made.
Again, no elected official is usually part of this law origination process.
Almost all legislation created is not ‘high profile’, they are obscure changes to current laws, regulations or policies that no-one pays attention to. The passage of the general bills within legislation is not covered in media. Ninety-nine percent of legislative activity happens without anyone outside the system even paying any attention to it.
Once the corporation or representative organizational entity has written the law they want to see passed – they hand it off to the lobbyists.
The lobbyists are people who have deep contacts within the political bodies of the legislative branch, usually former House/Senate staff or former House/Senate politicians themselves.
The lobbyist takes the written brief, the legislative construct, and it’s their job to go to congress and sell it.
“Selling it” means finding politicians who will accept the brief, sponsor their bill and eventually get it to a vote and passage. The lobbyist does this by visiting the politician in their office, or, most currently familiar, by inviting the politician to an event they are hosting. The event is called a junket when it involves travel.
Often the lobbying “event” might be a weekend trip to a ski resort, or a “conference” that takes place at a resort. The actual sales pitch for the bill is usually not too long and the majority of the time is just like a mini vacation etc.
The size of the indulgence within the event, the amount of money the lobbyist is spending, is customarily related to the scale of benefit within the bill the sponsoring business entity is pushing. If the sponsoring business or interest group can gain a lot of financial benefit from the legislation, they spend a lot on the indulgences.
Recap: Corporations (special interest group) write the legislation. Lobbyists take the law and go find politician(s) to support it. Politicians get support from their peers using tenure and status etc. Eventually, if things go according to norm, the legislation gets a vote.
Within every step of the process there are expense account lunches, dinners, trips, venue tickets and a host of other customary financial waypoints to generate/leverage a successful outcome. The amount of money spent is proportional to the benefit derived from the outcome.
The important part to remember is that the origination of the entire process is EXTERNAL to congress.
Congress does not write laws or legislation; special interest groups do. Lobbyists are paid, some very well paid, to get politicians to go along with the need of the legislative group.
When you are voting for a Congressional Rep or a U.S. Senator you are not voting for a person who will write laws. Your rep only votes on legislation to approve or disapprove of constructs that are written by outside groups and sold to them through lobbyists who work for those outside groups.
While all of this is happening the same outside groups who write the laws are providing money for the campaigns of the politicians, they need to pass them. This construct sets up the quid-pro-quo of influence, although much of it is fraught with plausible deniability.
This is the way legislation is created.
If your frame of reference is not established in this basic understanding you can often fall into the trap of viewing a politician, or political vote, through a false prism. The modern origin of all legislative constructs is not within congress.
“we’ll have to pass the bill to, well, find out what is in the bill” etc. ~ Nancy Pelosi 2009
“We rely upon the stupidity of the American voter” ~ Johnathan Gruber 2011, 2012.
Once you understand this process you can understand how politicians get rich.
When a House or Senate member becomes educated on the intent of the legislation, they have attended the sales pitch; and when they find out the likelihood of support for that legislation; they can then position their own (or their families) financial interests to benefit from the consequence of passage. It is a process similar to insider trading on Wall Street, except the trading is based on knowing who will benefit from a legislative passage.
The legislative construct passes from K-Street into the halls of congress through congressional committees. The law originates from the committee to the full House or Senate. Committee seats which vote on these bills are therefore more valuable to the lobbyists. Chairs of these committees are exponentially more valuable.
Now, think about this reality against the backdrop of the 2016 Presidential Election. Legislation is passed based on ideology. In the aftermath of the 2016 election the system within DC was not structurally set-up to receive a Donald Trump presidency.
If Hillary Clinton had won the election, her oval Office desk would be filled with legislation passed by congress which she would have been signing. Heck, she’d have writer’s cramp from all of the special interest legislation, driven by special interest groups that supported her campaign, that would be flowing to her desk.
Why?
Simply because the authors of the legislation, the originating special interest and lobbying groups, were spending millions to fund her campaign. Hillary Clinton would be signing K-Street constructed special interest legislation to repay all of those donors/investors.
Congress would be fast-tracking the passage because the same interest groups also fund the members of congress.
President Donald Trump winning the2016 election threw a monkey wrench into the entire DC system…. In early 2017 the modern legislative machine was frozen in place.
The “America First” policies represented by candidate Donald Trump were not within the legislative constructs coming from the K-Street authors of the legislation. There were no MAGA lobbyists waiting on Trump ideology to advance legislation based on America First objectives.
As a result of an empty feeder system, in early 2017 congress had no bills to advance because all of the myriad of bills and briefs written were not in line with President Trump policy. There was simply no entity within DC writing legislation that was in-line with President Trump’s America-First’ economic and foreign policy agenda.
Exactly the opposite was true. All of the DC legislative briefs and constructs were/are antithetical to Trump policy. There were hundreds of file boxes filled with thousands of legislative constructs that became worthless when Donald Trump won the election.
Those legislative constructs (briefs) representing tens of millions of dollars’ worth of time and influence were just sitting there piled up in boxes under desks and in closets amid K-Street and the congressional offices. Legislation needed to be in-line with an entire new political perspective, and there was no-one, no special interest or lobbying group, currently occupying DC office space with any interest in synergy with Trump policy.
Think about the larger ramifications within that truism. That is also why there was/is so much opposition.
No legislation provided by outside interests means no work for lobbyists who sell it. No work means no money. No money means no expense accounts. No expenses mean politicians paying for their own indulgences etc.
Politicians were not happy without their indulgences, but the issue was actually bigger. No K-Street expenditures also means no personal benefit; and no opportunity to advance financial benefit from the insider trading system.
Without the ability to position personal wealth for benefit, why would a politician stay in office? The income of many long-term politicians on both Republican and Democrat sides of the aisle was completely disrupted by President Trump winning the election. That is one of the key reasons why so many politicians retired immediately thereafter.
When we understand the business of DC, we understand the difference between legislation with a traditional purpose and modern legislation with a financial and political agenda.
Additionally, while looking for the FTX donations, it’s worth noting that Citadel Investment CEO Ken Griffin also gave Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund, $20 million in 2022. This is the same Ken Griffin that is a major donor funding the Ron DeSantis 2024 effort. (SOURCE)
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 14, 2022 | Sundance
When we are intellectually honest with each other, we accept the traditional Republican apparatus has always been in favor of Wall Street interests, multinational corporations, multination trade agreements, offshoring jobs, overseas manufacturing, open borders to provide endless supplies of unskilled service workers to fulfill their affluent needs, and, in the most general sense, economically no different than the traditional Democrat apparatus. After all, both wings of the DC UniParty feed from the same trough.
The counter economic position to this multinational system has always been the America First outlook. An economic outlook that puts the U.S. worker at the heart of policy. Perhaps encapsulated by saying ‘Main Street over Wall Street’ etc.
It was also the economics of the thing that created the Bernie Bros (Bernie Sanders) and the MAGA team (Donald Trump) commonality.
As a result, the Big Club distraction and distinction game has always been played on the field of social issues. Social issues continually used as a wedge to keep the working class from recognizing their common assembly.
Skilled politicians, those tenured in the ways of the club power retention, play up the social stuff publicly, while both wings of the UniParty give a wink and a nod to each other as they pass through the halls. The “reach across the aisle” code of Omerta exists.
I have no idea how the pragmatic and angered view of President Trump, with full intent to fracture this UniParty apparatus, is going to play out. Fighting both enemies simultaneously has proven to be a massive whac-a-mole undertaking. However, that said, what is abundantly clear is the reassembly of the group trying desperately to block the populist upheaval.
The Multinational corporations are all-in within the process of this inverted Fascism. Corporations now determining the political agenda, and it’s not just here in the United States. We are seeing in in North America, Great Britain and throughout Europe. The larger “western democracy” assembly is expanding the corporate dynamic, while media run cover for the totality of modern expansion.
Specifically in the United States, we can clearly see the K-Street multinational lobbying groups trying to exploit the outcome of a midterm election they helped construct.
(Politico) The conservative Club for Growth is sending a warning shot at former President Donald Trump on the eve of his expected 2024 campaign launch — and indicating it might back his chief potential rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. […] provided POLITICO with a polling memo showing the former president trailing DeSantis by double digits in one-on-one matchups in Iowa and New Hampshire. (read more)
The transparency of the timing, amid an election outcome they helped create, is remarkable.
The CfG corporate folks are not good people, and CTH will battle them at every level as we have every moment in the past decade. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is not my/our enemy; however, if he aligns his political interests with the attempted refooting of the multinationals in the Republican party, then he has made a choice.
I am not going to draw a distinction between a group of multinational corporations who wants to diminish Main Street USA, and a potential ally who would align with them for political convenience. Pick up a weapon from inside the multinational armory and you become an America First enemy.
Align with The Big Club, and you are aligned with The Big Club.
Align with The Big Club, and you have chosen to align with The Big Club.
( Business Insider) – Plans for a Super PAC supporting a Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis presidential run are back on after a weak showing for former President Donald Trump’s favored candidates.
This is a reversal from just a few months ago. GOP strategist John Thomas, who is leading the soon-to-be unveiled super PAC called Ron to the Rescue, told Insider in August that DeSantis should not run for president against Trump. He’d even paused plans for the super PAC this summer after the primaries, in which Trump’s endorsed candidates did well. Trump, apparently pleased, shared the Insider interview on Truth Social.
But Thomas, founder and president of the political advertising and strategy group Thomas Partners Strategies, told Insider on Friday that the midterms have reset the calculus. Even in August, he’d said the one caveat for DeSantis pursuing a 2024 presidential run would be poor performance for Trump-favored Republicans in the midterms.
That caveat became reality on Tuesday. In addition to Trump’s weak showing, DeSantis won Florida by a historic, nearly 20-point margin that Thomas called “the perfect cascading of events politically for the governor.” Now, Thomas told Insider, his plans for the Super PAC are back on “full throttle with seven-figure gifts” and the group is ready to “get this show on the road.” (read more)
A presidential Super PAC does not exist without the approval of the candidate who it represents.
“Ron to the Rescue” does not exist without the group representing the interests contacting the people in/around Ron for approval of the creation. It’s just how the system operates. Super PAC’s cannot go out and solicit funds from supporters without gaining prior approval from the candidate network to make those contacts. It is a basic rule of fundraising, even amid the nudge, nudge – wink, wink, of Super PAC creation and plausible deniability.
If a Super PAC was fundraising for a candidate objective – and that candidate did not support the objective – the Super PAC doesn’t happen. Quite simply, this unspoken code exists so that donors do not get bilked out of their money by Super PAC’s being deceptive in their representation.
If a multinational Wall Street DeSantis 2024 Super PAC launches, it is with the support of Ron DeSantis, period.
New readers should be well aware, CTH is not going to play the pretending game.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 14, 2022 | Sundance
At a time when/if the economy was functioning as most economic pundits have previously proclaimed, Amazon and other retail giants would normally be beefing up workers in anticipation of the holiday shopping season. However, with the midterm election in the rearview mirror, exactly the opposite is happening. {Backstory on prior employment announcements}
According to multiple media reports, Amazon is expected to announce layoffs for approximately 10,000 U.S. workers this week. Yet another indication the economic pretending is coming to an end right after the midterm election is concluded.
(CNBC) – Amazon is planning to lay off approximately 10,000 employees in corporate and technology roles beginning this week, according to a report from The New York Times. Separately, The Wall Street Journal also cited a source saying the company plans to lay off thousands of employees.
Shares of Amazon closed down about 2% on Monday.
The cuts would be the largest in the company’s history and would primarily impact Amazon’s devices organization, retail division and human resources, according to the report. The reported layoffs would represent less than 1% of Amazon’s global workforce and 3% of its corporate employees. (read more)
“Bye”
As previously noted by Yahoo News, a “wave of layoffs” has begun that encompasses dozens of medium and large corporations [SEE HERE].
The layoffs, outlined in Yahoo, cover real estate, tech companies, banking, finance, automakers, EV startups, and brick and mortar stores like 7-11 and GAP. It should not come as a surprise, but it is sad to see, nonetheless.
Within the economy, a great pretending can only last so long… then reality hits.
The skilled trades should likely end up in the best employment situation, with the tech sector the worst. Service industries are also one of the first sectors hit when employment becomes an issue.
With rising interest rates, high inflation, excessive inventories, a shrinking production economy, extreme energy costs and diminished disposable income as a result of inflation and gas prices, there was going to come a time when it all starts to congregate.
2023 looks to be the year when economic pretenses collapse under the weight of having to admit a recession exists.
This is shaping up to be a painful holiday season….
Now that politicians have secured their positions in the elections prepare for the promises to fade. These people will say anything for our vote with no intention of following through. Biden has already announced that they will no longer accept student loan forgiveness applications. A Texas court barred future applications a day after the election – coincidence?
In fact, there is a website tracking Biden’s political promises, albeit not the most accurate. So far, he has kept only 22% of promises made during his campaign – at most. Many of these promises benefit absolutely no one, such as nominating the first black woman to the US Supreme Court, new fuel standards, increasing COVID testing, and rejoining the World Health Organization (WHO). That’s where his administration has placed their energy as if the entire world isn’t crumbling under their rule.
The website downplayed his broken promises after listing them at only 1%. He certainly broke his promise to “Build Back Better” – well… actually, he is following that plan accordingly. He has handed over America to the World Economic Forum on a silver platter. International objectives far outweigh domestic policies. The domestic policies in place and asinine spending packages have only made America less competitive and have hurt the pockets of not only the American people but the global economy.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 13, 2022 | Sundance
It’s just coincidental happenstance they say. Both George W Bush and Barack H Obama have scheduled conferences to highlight concerns over disinformation in the wake of the U.S. midterm election. Democracy is at stake if people do not blindly trust the constructs of the election systems that are now in place.
With a demand to accept the new normal….Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama are hosting back-to-back conferences about disinformation in the days following Donald Trump’s ‘big announcement.’
Bush, 76, will host his The Struggle for Freedom conference in Dallas on November 16, while Obama’s democracy conference will be held in New York City on the 17th.
Trump’s big announcement – largely rumored to be his 2024 presidential campaign announcement – is set for Tuesday.
Organizers said the conferences were not planned together, but will focus on the rising threats from authoritarianism and disinformation.
David J. Kramer, of the Bush Institute, said it was ‘terrific’ the two presidents would be focusing on similar topics, saying: ‘We’re very mindful of what’s happening in the United States, and we have to make sure we stay on a democratic path. (read more)
All just a coincidence…. nothing to see here, move along… move along.
Ignore any remembering that George Bush created the U.S. surveillance state (Patriot Act) and that Barack Obama weaponized it. However, also remember, the most dangerous time for a victim is that moment when the abuser realizes their battered victim has become numb to the continued psychological effort.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 12, 2022 | sundance
For his weekly monologue Neil Oliver outlines the reality of the British government no longer pretending to represent the people of the United Kingdom, but openly represents corporations and the interests of multinationals.
While the general topic of a disconnected governing body is referenced toward how the U.K. government is disregarding the opinion of the British citizens, the overarching theme outlined by Oliver also applies to the United States. WATCH:
(Transcript) – Does Britain still exist? Or is it being dismantled to make way for something else?
Obviously, there are some square miles of dry land off the coast of mainland Europe still going by the name of Britain. Britain is still on the map.
As a for instance, if you pay a people smuggler some thousands of bucks and say, take me to Britain, he will know where you mean and will transport you to a rendezvous with a British border force vessel or an RNLI lifeboat financed by donations from the British public, and either will cheerfully ferry you to the British coast where you will be collected and taken to a fine hotel and given food, money and access to all the facilities a person might need all of it paid for by taxes from those same British people millions of British people who are themselves painfully short of money and struggling to feed themselves and heat their homes.
Those taxes are predicted to rise, so that more of our money might be flushed out of Britain, away from the British, towards those deemed more deserving.
… but does that name, Britain, still define a sovereign country in any meaningful sense?
The crisis on the south coast is only part of a bigger problem. These islands of ours offer free accommodation, three meals a day and cash – no questions asked – plus more chance of bagging a council house than anyone actually born here. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance? But the setting aside of the border to make way for thousands of new arrivals every day is only a symptom of a homegrown sickness.
Ironically, in the aftermath of all the damage done to the personal immune systems of millions, billions of people worldwide, by the policies and medical practices of the past two years, Britain herself has been similarly weakened, deep down:
Instead of keeping the country safe and well those entities supposed to function like the nation’s immune system parliament, the institutions of state the civil service, the judiciary, the police have turned on the British people instead, and upon the structures that ought to protect us from harm. Like someone suffering from auto-immune disease, our national immune system is now destroying the healthy cells which is to say us, the British people.
Any country is a fiction when you get right down to it. For continued existence, every country depends on enough of the people who happen to occupy that space sharing the same idea about where they live. If enough people believe in the existence of Britain – and are prepared to give their all to maintain Britain – then Britain prevails. If the day comes when too many have forgotten what Britain is, or simply don’t care if she exists or not, then Britain is no more. The dry land will still be there, the roads and buildings, but that is all.
This is the time of remembrance, when we claim … claim to honour the ancestors who gave the last full measure of devotion to protect this country and see it handed on intact to future generations: “When you go home, tell them of us and say … For your tomorrow, we gave our today.”
Those words are graven in stone all over this country.
Today’s leaders have no loyalty to Britain or the British – none that I can see. Maybe a few still FEEL some loyalty – but are just too demoralised or scared to declare it, far less to do anything about it.
Whatever loyalties the rest of them have, on both sides of the aisle … they lie elsewhere, not honestly declared.
For one thing, they are loyal to those entities that DO make all the meaningful decisions, which is to say the markets and the banks. It was the markets that wanted rid of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng and so they went.
Now we have Rishi Sunak – the prime minister none of us voted for and therefore don’t want. Like Jeremy Hunt – blatantly the markets’ choice of chancellor – his loyalties lie anywhere but with Britain and the British. Imagine how both men drool at the prospect of a CBDC and the surveillance society it will force upon us.
If we are led by figures committed to objectives that are against our interests – are we even obliged to obey their diktats when they are undoing everything Britain has been?
Are the needs and wants of the British people to be set aside in favour of the needs and wants of everyone else, anyone else in the world?
I ask those questions sincerely.
Since we’re talking about the markets and the banks, we might as well focus on what it’s all about, all of this upset and upheaval, which is control … control of the people via control of our money.
At a time when British people are struggling in ways that have been unknown to millions for a very long time, a vast mountain of the money they pay in tax is being shoveled elsewhere. For the crime of having been born in the home of the industrial revolution that changed the world for the better and lifted billions of people out of poverty, this latest generation of British people is to be punished, diminished, made dependent upon a State that openly despises us and treats us with contempt.
Setting aside, for example, the fact that China has pumped out more pollution in the last 8 years than Britain managed in the 220 years since the Industrial Revolution began … more of the taxes paid by British people might be handed to the Developing World … perhaps China included, who knows … as our penance for making it possible for 8 billion people to be alive in the world at the same time … courtesy of cheap, efficient energy, plentiful food and all the benefits born of the modern medicine and technology OUR ancestors’ efforts made possible.
The fire kindled here more than 200 years ago made life better, made life possible, for billions. And in return we are to be mugged in broad daylight, our wallets emptied, and our hard-earned cash handed to anyone around the world that wants it.
A good whack of China’s recent output of CO2 came from burning coal to make our wind turbines and the rest of the vanity projects that let our remotely-controlled leaders spout lies about cutting emissions, but hey-ho … never let the facts get in the way of a good global scam.
Back to the point, British money … earned by hard-working, struggling British people … is being funnelled out of Britain and into the wider world as fast as the leaders can make it flow. Cynic that I am, I conclude that all possible efforts are being made to impoverish and so destroy once and for all that upstart aspirational middling class whose very existence so infuriates today’s rulers.
Natural law is summarised in three words: do not steal. It underpins all lawful behaviour. Do not steal the life of another … do not steal the private property of another … do not steal the product of a worker’s labour, which is to say taxation … do not steal a person’s rights. Do not steal. It’s simple. But that simple foundation of lawful society has been set aside for the benefit and enrichment of the few.
Every day and more and more, those calling themselves our leaders are stealing everything. They look us in the eye and steal from us. During lockdown they stole our rights and liberties … they stole the livelihoods of millions … they stole mental and physical wellbeing. They stole the way things used to be. They are stealing the futures we had planned for our children.
There is a line of Latin that goes:
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
It means, who will guard the guards themselves? Those words focus our attention on the situation that arises when people with the power to supervise others are not, themselves, subject to the same scrutiny. It applies also when those who entitle themselves to make the law, also empower themselves to enforce the punishments. That is the definition of tyranny that our constitution was shaped to prevent.
At a time when British people are struggling in ways that have been unknown to millions for a very long time, a vast mountain of the money they pay in tax is being shovelled elsewhere, says Neil Oliver GB News
There’s a Covid enquiry out there. The same people that caused all the harm are now deciding if they did the right thing or not. I think we all know what conclusions they will draw. I ask again, Who will guard the guards themselves?
The UK Border Force – in place to protect and maintain the border – might as well be working in partnership with the people smugglers. The same company involved in border control has the government contract for housing asylum seekers. This is a conflict of interest alongside an inversion of their role.
The police – a citizen police force supposed to protect the British public does next to nothing to keep law-abiding citizens safe from real, violent crime and instead monitors what people say on social media. When they’re not being thought police, they either dance the Macarena with protesters the State likes or take the baton to those it doesn’t.
SO, WHAT SHOULD WE DO NOW?
Philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote about how, without observance of right and wrong, human life was, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. He concluded that such chaos was ended only if individuals agreed, via a social contract, to surrender some liberty to a sovereign on condition that that sovereign would keep them safe.
Who is honouring their part of our social contract now? We, the people, have been doing so … not least because, legally, we have no option.
It is interesting to recall the words of the American declaration of independence:
“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness … that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed … that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.”
I say that by their actions over the last many years, our leaders have made the social contract null and void. They are not protecting our freedoms and rights – nor Britain herself.
On the contrary, they are working in league with others to remove those rights and freedoms and to unmake Britain. If they will not honour the social contract, then why should we?
While we were distracted our governments assumed outrageous powers over us. Body and mind we are being crushed and numbed.
The time for accepting all of this has long passed.
Here’s the thing: where should OUR loyalties lie now?
With those who by their actions have made plain they respect us not a jot?
… or with each other, those who have seen through the lies and the transparent grasping for power and control. On this Remembrance weekend I would honour those who gave their lives for a free world and a country called Great Britain.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 12, 2022 | sundance
FTX crypto currency exchange CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is a major donor to multiple progressive causes and politicians. This week as FTX starts to collapse, the financial system underneath the exchange looks more like a Ponzi scheme falling apart.
The CEO had been a major donor to regulators on Capitol Hill, and the tentacles of FTX extend to Ukraine where Sam Bankman-Fried was operating to support the Ukraine government with crypto currency collections and donations. The FTX corporation and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is now under multiple investigations. Here’s the 90-second recap of the current dynamic. WATCH:
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(Via Daily Caller) Sam Bankman-Fried, prolific Democratic donor and ex-CEO of now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, funded the campaigns of members of Congress overseeing the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), one of the key bodies tasked with regulating the crypto industry and the subject of Bankman-Fried’s aggressive lobbying.
Bankman-Fried’s FTX is currently under investigation by the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after Bankman-Fried allegedly moved $10 billion in client assets from his crypto exchange to his trading firm Alameda Research, and a liquidity crisis at his exchange which prompted the company to file for bankruptcy. However, prior to the agency’s probe, Bankman-Fried aggressively courted the CFTC – and funded several key lawmakers charged with overseeing the agency, pouring cash into their campaign coffers. (read more)
(Via CoinDesk) The past week has seen a dizzying downward spiral for Sam Bankman-Fried’s huge crypto empire. Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto exchange has paused withdrawals, and a tentative bailout from rival Binance appears to be kaput. That could put depositor funds at risk, and certainly spells a major setback for not only Bankman-Fried but for the cryptocurrency industry as a whole.
These downfalls aren’t rare in crypto, which is subject to extreme boom-bust cycles. But FTX and Bankman-Fried are unique in the stature they achieved before self-immolating. Over the past three years, FTX has come to be widely regarded as a reputable exchange, despite not submitting to U.S. regulation. Bankman-Fried has himself become globally influential, thanks to his thoughts on cryptocurrency regulation and his financial support for U.S. electoral candidates – not necessarily in that order.
These narratives about both FTX and Bankman-Fried are now clearly dead in the water, given recent evidence that everything was not as it seemed at the exchange, or at Bankman-Fried’s other firm, Alameda Research. (read more)
People laugh at Donald Trump for questioning the results of the 2020 US Presidential Election, where Joe Biden secured more votes than any other president in American history. How quickly they forget that the entire DNC rejected Trump’s appointment for the duration of his presidency. They denied previous elections for every political tier, and some refused to concede. They said Trump incited the January 6 protest by questioning the election results, as if they have never questioned the authenticity of an election.
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