Pridger - on The Wonderful New World

Black Friday: The symbolic day of the year that mass retailers hope to move their yearly balance sheets from red into the black, i.e., move from net loss into profitability for the year.

Tomorrow is our big day of Thanksgiving, and the very next day is what has come to be known as Black Friday – a very sinister sounding name for what Walmart and other corporate retailers have contrived to create a very irreligious consumer feeding frenzy. Huge numbers of shopper are expected to line up at the door awaiting the great openning. And Black Friday has proven to be a deadly feeding frenzy in some cases, as shoppers trample one another in their great and greedy eagerness to get through Walmart's front door.

Black Friday, in Pridger's opinion, is a leading indicator of what has gone wrong in this country, both morally and economically. It's a gauge or our present national character and the moral state of our society in general, and a very sad state it is.

Walmart has perhaps done more than any other single corporation to cause productive American jobs to be exported to Mexico and Asia, making our nation dependent on foreign production for a very wide array of consumer goods. It's at the Walmart checkout counter that the masses vote with their pocketbook for the New World Order – that which is presently crushing us.

Both Thanksgiving and Christmas are supposedly religious holidays, and Black Friday is a thick black mark across our national religious heritage. Most of the Black Friday shopping is characterized as "Christmas" shopping, or (to put it politically correctly) Holiday Season shopping.

A mass consumer culture has replaced both our religious and patriotic character. Mercantilism and speculationism have displaced both our national work ethic and our national business ethic. An appalling percentage of our population celebrate and revel in the consumer culture – and the one-percenters both nurture and celebrate this corporately created mass psychology.

It would be encouraging if the herd didn't show up as expected for Black Friday, or Black Eve, this year. But the retailers won't be disappointed – the mindless masses insist on voting for the Wonderful New World.

Ironically, that is the only meaningful vote the masses are free to cast, and they can be depended upon to cast it in the interests of the very ones who have diligently been politically and economically disenfranchising them.

We all know that the European Union is in dire economic straits, but it goes much deeper than rational outsiders might have imagined. The technocrats of Brussels have declared that water merchants cannot make the claim that H²O can prevent or treat dehydration.

What's next, banning bent bananas curved cucumbers? No – they've already tried that!

One wonders what the European Union would recommend as an alternative to water for quenching thirst.

No wonder the European Union, and the world, is in so much trouble. The European Union is one of the main proving grounds for global governance, and the Wonderful New World.

Makana sings his "We are the Many" to the Obamas and world leaders at a Hawaiian Luau dinner held for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit, which included participants from 21 economies around the Asia-Pacific.

It'll be interesting to see what the powers that be will do when they realize how they were entertained last Saturday evening. Will they attempt to ignore Makana, or will it be GITMO?

Just what we country folk need – a federal Rural Council! And a "White House" one at that – by executive fiat, no less! This looks like a federal onslaught against rural Americans on behalf of the United Nations Agenda 21! Look out folks, this can bode nothing more or less than trouble for rural folks. Here's hoping the next president will un-execute Executive Order 13575. Look who this so-called Rural Council is composed of!

Wow! This is certainly some council! It doesn't exactly look farmer friendly, or even people friendly. Obviously there'd appear to be enough power there to whip rural American into shape in a hurry! All we can do at this time is guess just what President Obama has in mind. One thing we can be sure of is that it can't be good. It would appear that the Owellization of rural America is about to go onto steroids. It isn't just NAIS (the National Animal Identification System) anymore.

This appears to be the domestic arm of Agenda 21 and the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) – a hidden plan for world government.

During the last 75 years or so (starting during the Great Depression), the depopulation of rural America, and the collectivization of agriculture, has been in progress. During this period, and particularly since the Second World War, farm policy has steadily transformed the agrarian sector of our economy. Today, the population of this nation is dependent on 2% of the population to produce its food, and the overall rural population has declined to about 16%. In other words, 84% of the people are piled upon one another in metropolitan areas. As Thomas Jefferson said:

Agenda 21, "sustainable development," and "biodiversity" projects, have an eye on a lot more depopulation of rural lands.

During the 50s and 60s the U.S. Department of Agriculture's message to the farmer became to "Get big or get out!" It was time to mechanize, collectivize, chemical-ize, industrialize agriculture. And now agricultural food species, both plants and animals, are being genetically modified and patented by the big scientific agribusiness combines.

They came after the small and medium diversified family farmers and drove most of them off of the land. Relatively self-reliant, independent, farmers, as a class, had to be eliminated. Now they are coming for the rest of us who continue to reside in rural areas, whether on small farms or merely on small plots of ground. They aren't telling us now, but they have big plans for most of our lands. "They," meaning corporate planners under the auspices and alleged "authority" of the United Nations and national governments.

Last Tuesday, the House on Tuesday reaffirmed "In God We Trust" as the national motto of the United States of America.

The non-binding resolution was approved in the House 396-9, with 2 abstentions. Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., sponsored the measure, and feels the the motto should be displayed in all public schools and government buildings.

It seems Forbes felt the resolution was needed because President Obama had apparently forgotten that "In God We Trust" is our official national motto – thinking that "E pluribus unum" was (a Latin phrase meaning "from many one"). That phrase was engraved in the new Capitol Visitors Center and Congress ordered that it be corrected.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., quipped that the resolution was a meaningless distraction from the nation's real problems, saying, "Nobody is threatening the national motto."

That is – nobody is threatening the national motto but a host of NGO's headed up by the powerful ACLU! Of course, trusting in God does not necessarily imply the Christian God or the Christian religion, but almost everybody once thought that it did, or wanted to believe that it did.

In fact, this was a Christian nation (albeit with a secular government), by virtue of its religious tradition and cultural roots – and the fact that the overwhelming majority of the population was comprised of people who professed the Christian faith. Though the government was secular, with no "official" religion, the overwhelming majority of our elected representatives and other government officials have been professing Christians since the founding of the republic.

Unfortunately, in spite of this, our present conduct clearly shows that we are no longer a Christian nation by any stretch of the imagination. Not only has the ACLU done a pretty good job, but so have hypocrites in high office who have tended to make a mockery of what Christianity actually entails, or at least should entail. Our fall from any sort of religious grace at all is clearly evident to all of the peoples of the world to see. It's evidenced by our conduct, both at home and abroad, both financially and militarily.

We no longer make any pretense to "Do unto others as we would be done by." We do as we damned well please in spite of ourselves. As a nation, we no longer have measurable amounts of tolerance, compassion, nor the least propensity toward true justice, much less forgiveness. Those concepts have seemingly become alien to us. We no longer display anything like brotherly love for either brother or neighbor. Least of all do we "love even thine enemies" and we insist on making emenies.

Our enemies are classified either as rogue states, which we attack and destroy, or terrorists to whom we deny due process or anything in the least commensurate with human dignity, much less, Christian charity. We revel in our ability to deal out death and destruction even to enemies who do not want to be our enemies. We celebrate mayhem and murder abroad and call it righteous self defense delivering salvation and "democracy," evangelizing with with a strange combination of righteous rhetoric, bombs, bullets, missiles, and drones.

The matter of reaffirming the national motto seems pitifully ironic to Pridger. One wonders what "In God We Trust" would actually mean to a nation (or government) such as ours has become. It reminds Pridger of William G. Camden's 1993 depiction of the corruption of the nation, and the religion of our future, illustrated on the cover of his Voodoo Economics – A B.S. Degree in One Easy Lesson.

Having lost our national fear of God – the Great Architect of the Universe in which we used to have trust – we are now learning that we have to fear our own government, and we certainly cannot trust it.

Pridger begs to disagree with Rep. Jerrold Nadler. Had we, as a nation, trusted a little more in God, and considerably less in our government and the broader corporate establishment it serves, our "nation's real problems" would not have developed as they have. We would not have become a "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace" nation; nor a "Never forgive, never forget" nation, nor a "Zero tolerance" nation; nor a "Do unto others what we will" nation, nor a "Torturing nation". Had we been a little more God fearing, debt money, public debt, speculative markets, and financial malfeasance would not have become the problems they have.

We are not in open warfare with Islamic countries because we are Christians attempting to bring them democratic enlightenment. We are at war with Islamic countries precisely because there is no longer even a hint of true Christianity evident in our governing establishment. A Christian nation would Do unto other nations and peoples as it would have them do unto it.

All of this said, it is well known that the adoption of "In God We Trust" as our national motto was really nothing more than a Cold War propaganda ploy. It's purpose was to give American Christians the feeling that not only was this a Christian nation, but that it, along with its government, was a politically and monetarily righteous nation. It proclaimed that God was on our side, and that the American government was on God's side, and would do God's will. At the same time, it was intended to accentuate the fact that the Soviet Union was a self-proclaimed Godless, atheistic, and anti-Christian, nation. The same Cold War motive was evidenced by the insertion of "under God" in the pledge of allegiance in 1954. In other words, government has used, and continues to use, blatant hypocrisy whenever it was useful to con the public.

Funny that we could go 28 years (now 32 years) without our representatives discovering that they have been on the wrong track, and that the nation obviously needed some serious course corrections. They still aren't considering any serious course corrections – in fact they've recently gone the extra mile to pour more steam onto our present course with the passage of the Panama, Columbia, and South Koreans free trade agreements.

This, of course, can only tell us the obvious – that American job destruction and income polarization has been, and continues to be, central to national economic and trade policy.

Rep. Levin is only partly right when he says “The rules have been changed by the unfair tax policies of the last decade and our tax code is doing less to level the playing field than it was in the past.” Tax policies have been changed, and they've been changed to create a "level playing field" for financial and transnational capital interests, leaving Main Street businesses (and businesses once loyal to the nation), and American workers, in the impossible position of having to compete with Third World wage and price structures.

Our economic "experts" and so-called representatives scratch their collective heads and wonder why America cannot compete with the rest of the world under globalization and so-called free trade policies. The answer is so simple that it begs the senses. "We the People" have been systemically betrayed by our own policy-makers over a period of at least forty years. American industrial labor, which had attained a level of prosperity which was the envy of the world, was put (by our illustrious leadership) into direct competition with ten-cent an hour labor in the Third World. The result was as inevitable as it was obvious. Thus the results that have followed obviously must have been the results that were intended.

Obviously it hasn't been a ten year phenomena. Nor was it all due to so-called free trade. Tax laws began to discriminate against the middle class in earnest during the Reagan Administration despite Reagan's probable "good intentions." The Reagan tax cuts came with the closing of a lot of loop-holes and tax shelters which the rich had always enjoyed, but which the working middle class was only beginning to take advantage of – because wage and price inflation, which resulted in bracket-creep, had finally put industrial labor into higher wage and tax brackets.

Though the rich lost some of their valuable tax loop-holes and shelters, their marginal tax rates plummeted, truly making Reagan's tax reductions a Bonanza for the rich, who could then keep much more of their income than previously. There was no longer any need to shelter it. The tax brackets of the truly rich had been as high as over 90% – yet innovation, ingenuity, and success were nonetheless amply rewarded. The rich had always remained plenty rich, but few were into the strata of "whole-cake" wealth!

At the same time, Reagan's "deregulation" initiatives failed to deregulate "we the people" or grass-roots free enterprise, but rather deregulated the very corporate capitalist entities and structures that most needed some regulatory shackles, and have since played the major role in gutting our industrial economy at their great profit. For them, deregulation literally meant license to engage in the most exploitive, cannibalistic, and predatory practices on a global basis, betraying both American workers and the nation itself by taking full advantage of global wage differentials, without the least concern for any peoples involved, whether here or over there.

While the corporate culture prospered as never before, the wealth reflected on Wall Street was quietly divorcing itself from productive American industries, Main Street, and the greater public good. This was done by shipping production to Mexico, China, and elsewhere, and by other means of "outsourcing" – literally moving America's once productive wealth-building dynamo offshore.

Oddly enough, the rich always got richer, even when their income tax rates were from 70 to 90%. Equally odd, during those same years and decades of high income tax on the very rich, labor and our nation as a whole prospered as never before. In fact, it became the greatest military and industrial power in the world. Additionally, some would say it also became the world's greatest benefactor during those decades of very high taxation of the rich.

When our nation was an industrial dynamo, not only was our nation wealthy and people prosperous, the nation was able to be generous to other nations less fortunate.

Since the rich got their big tax cuts, not only did they begin accumulating wealth at unprecedented rates, the fortunes of labor began to decline markedly, and they continue to decline. In other words, the great justification for lowering taxes on the rich – which was called "trickle-down" theory – simply didn't work as planned. Or did it?

The super-rich (though some were also American job creators as advertised), simply enlarged the size of their pockets to unprecedented proportions – allowing precious little money to trickle down. In fact, less was trickling down than ever before!

Typically, Rep. Levin didn't even mention the role of the new international economic order or free trade (both also coincidentally formally introduced by Reagan) as the major and root cause of job loss and income disparity in America. Clearly, the decline of the American working classes has been the result of our free trade policies – from the massive factory and job export to equally massive job outsourcing trends, all of which is still on autopilot with all engines set at full ahead.

Our so-called representatives talk a lot about the need for jobs for Americans, but they have yet to acknowledge the obvious facts as to what has caused our long on-going economic decline and the continuing declining prospects for American labor while "management" of the global corporatocracy has continued to compound it's own wealth, power, and profits.

They refuse to acknowledge that globalization has not only been a failure and catastrophic mistake, but demonstrably continues to be an accelerating disaster for the American people and the national economy. Indeed they continue to tell us it is a great success, and that all we have to do now is start tapping into the markets of the other 6.7 billion people of this world.

If our onslaught into the vast Chinese market is any indication, we're not likely to do very well at that high goal. The brilliance of our policy-makers has backfired and made us a dependent of Chinese production, credit, and good will – to the extent that we have effectively become both its economic vassal.

In the end, all of this is a national security disaster as well as an economic debacle. Yet, trusty leaders do not, and cannot, admit these things, because they are doing very well for themselves. They simply paper over the national security issues with such things as Patriot Acts, a "Department of Homeland Security," enhanced militarized policing techniques, TSA harassment, and Fusion Centers.

Meanwhile the greatest national experiment in self-government in the history of civilization continues to collapse due to long on-going gross incompetence and malfeasants in high places – and liberal republican government, "of the people, by the people, and for the people," with "liberty and justice for all," is presently perishing from this earth before the eyes of this generation.

"World power swings back to America"? "The American phoenix is slowly rising again"? The Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor thinks so, and at this point Pridger would like to at least pass on one rosy prediction – finally. Read:

Mr. Pritchard more or less envisions an upswing in America's economic fortunes through a process of attrition and natural market forces caused predominantly by outside forces. He does not envision anything positive happening because of anything proactive our legislators have done or are likely to do. Our comeback will be in spite of the policies that have been wrecking of America's industrial base and its economy for twenty years and more. The same crippling policies are continuing, as evidenced by the recently passed free trade agreements with Panama, Columbia, and South Korea. Talk about adding insult to injury!

Jobs, Pritchard says, are already beginning to return to our shores (though Pridger doesn't know of anybody else who has noticed), because of the rising price of Chinese labor and raw material costs, the rising costs of petroleum and sea borne transportation, and the inevitable rising value of the Yuan in relation to the dollar. For these reasons, together with the falling expectations of American labor, American workers are becoming more competitive. Thus some American companies are returning from Asia, and more will follow.

But this process will be a slow grind without proactive policy changes at our end to encourage the return of jobs. Unfortunately, because of this lack of action, more and more American jobs will be created by foreign corporations as they decide to put increasingly competitive American workers back to work. This is better than nothing, of course, but it also means more foreign ownership of a resurging American industrial base. Naturally American based foreign corporations will ship much of their profits home.

Still, though a mixed bag, that's about all the good news Pridger has read lately. The rest is typically atrocious – such as the latest news with regard to the barbaric wounding, torture, and killing, of former Libyan head of state, Gadhaffi.

It's difficult to believe that we (or at least our leaders) now celebrate murder and the macabre. What has happened to our national commitment to "due process" and the civilized view of warfare that once existed in the Western world – where honor has historically played a role in spite of the carnage? Apparently honor is no longer a significant factor in our national culture.

It appears that even the veneer of Christian culture has passed from our national genes. We've become an aggressive, zero tolerance, "eye-for-an-eye" culture – one which both covets and indiscriminately kills, apparently on behalf of transnational corporate interests.

Americans were not the ones who performed the outrages against a wounded and captive head of state, but our leaders undoubtedly sought it, promoted it, and facilitated it, and are gloating over it. And they have obviously facilitated the literal destruction of yet another nation, bringing death to thousands, and ruin to hundreds of thousands of people. In spite of the savage treatment that Gadhaffi received at the hands of his obviously uncivilized and frenzied captors, we appear ready to literally laugh it off, because "our side" won.

And just who or what was "our side"? Most of us really don't know. It appears a literal witches brew Islamic radicals supported by the a new breed of European colonial powers. All we can be fairly certain of is that our naval and air power, our bombs, missiles, and predator drones, played a major role in NATO's great triumph.

The cost of that great triumph has been thousands dead and yet another nation destroyed. And, as in the case of all of our wars, the costs will rise and continue into the indefinite future. The bounty that Libyans had enjoyed under Gadhaffi's rule is not likely to return any time soon. The Libyan people are now suffering, and will continue to suffer – and so will we in the fullness of time. Is it not written that "we reap what we sow"?

We don't need any more wars of any nature – with China or anybody else. But why is the prospect of putting tariffs on Chinese imports being characterized as the possible opening of a "trade war"?

The answer to that is that we have placed ourselves in an untenable situation where defending our own economic interests and protecting our markets is effectively "against the rules" (and we've been here for over two decades!). Now we're preparing to lash out in desperation at the results of our own free trade policies – blaming them on China.

We gave China all the advantages and hamstrung ourselves – and we're now upset that China has taken advantage of us handing them the American market. We made an obviously suicidal deal with China and now we want to change the fundamental rules of the game.

China isn't actually manipulated its currency. It has simply roughly maintained it's relative value in relation to the dollar. It pegged the Yuan to the dollar at the beginning of "our bargain," and we accepted it. China likes stability. Who doesn't? And isn't the dollar supposed to be the global benchmark currency? Naturally, it works in China's favor – that's the way we set the deal up.* China has even revalued downward a little to appease us, but we're not satisfied. We should have looked to our own stability a long time back, but we wanted change, and international interdependence. We got what we wanted, and it is hurting. China has played the game much better than we imagined, and has been eating us for breakfast.

But our trusty leaders have done it to us. Not the Chinese. China merely does what it feels is in its best interests, while giving us everything we wanted – a profusion of cheap imports and loaning us the money to pay for them!

We're in a situation of economic extremis with regard to our trade relations with China. We accuse China of manipulating its currency for unfair advantage. But we're the ones – that is, our trusty leaders are the ones – who set ourselves up. China has done nothing but taken advantage of the advantages we handed it and denied to ourselves.

We wanted cheap imports, and China provided just what we wanted. They could do it because Chinese labor is ridiculously underpaid compared to American labor. We knew that from the very beginning. We unleashed our technology and industrial corporations so they could turn-coat and abscond to China to produce for the American market in China. American corporations where given both license and incentives to become runaway flag corporations, ditching their American workers in favor of spectacular profits cheap Chinese labor could provide them.

We dropped our tariffs in order to make this happen. We hamstrung ourselves with debilitating WTO rules, which we had a whole lot influence in formulating. According to the rules, we're no longer supposed to protect our own markets by charging tariffs on our imports. Our leaders bargained away our sovereign advantages and created a crazy circumstance, and the results are as painfully obvious as they were foreseeable.

Now we are thinking of reestablishment of tariffs – not to protect our own market, as would only be natural, but to punish China for doing what it has done "for us" – i.e., providing the cheap imports we wanted.

Punishments should be reserved for hostile nations, but the right to institute tariffs to protect our own markets and domestic industries and workers, is a right that all nations should jealously preserve. Congress has not only the right, but constitutional duty "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations..." It was effectively unconstitutional for our Congress to cease protecting our domestic market and give China unfettered access to it, especially given the great disparity between our respective economies, wages, and living standards. Doing so was nothing short of criminal on the part of our rulers.

Congress also has the power and duty "To coin Money, (and) regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin...," (foreign coin in America) but it doesn't have any right to demand that foreign nations regulate their own domestic currencies to suit Congress.

Our sovereign prerogative was to maintain protective tariffs at a level that would have more or less leveled the price of Chinese imports at the water's edge. Had that been done the China trade would not have cost a single American job. No American company would have found it profitable to move it's productive plants to China (or anybody else).

Now that we've given China all the breaks and come to depend on China to provide us with imports that the increasingly under-employed American workforce can afford, we threaten to step on China a little bit while putting our own neck into a noose.

We had a deal with China. It was a raw deal for us from the beginning, but it was the deal that Washington wanted. Washington wanted it because the transnational corporations wanted it, and because Wall Street wanted it, and the New World Order people wanted it. Part of the deal was that we'd buying all the Chinese production our markets could absorb. At the same time China would accommodate us by purchasing a sufficient supply of our treasury bonds to cover our consumer excesses. What a crazy deal that was! Effectively, we'd buy everything they could produce if they'd loan us enough money to keep on buying!

The fallacious carrot on the ugly-stick? The future Chinese market! In other words, our economic brain trust supposedly actually imagined that somehow we would be rewarded with a considerable chunk of the developing domestic Chinese market. Sort of like trading markets! China gets ours now, and we get theirs in the long run. Brilliant, eh?

Destroy our own production plant and build China's, then expect that we are going to penetrate the Chinese market with all of our wonderful cheap production some years hence! The Chinese market is potentially some four times larger than our own. What a Bonanza it would be! But, guess what? China is going to keep it's own market, as is only fair and right. Just because we were crazy enough to give ours away, doesn't mean China is crazy enough to give us theirs!

Naturally, when China is fully industrialized, and we start trying to push it around, it will begin to turn its production inward to its own domestic markets, as it is already doing. That's only natural and to be expected.

Our farsighted leaders keep telling us that all we have to do to get out of our present black whole is to produce our way out of it and sell all of our stuff to China. But China isn't going to buy much of our stuff, even if we were producing it. American labor will not be competitive with Chinese labor for a long, long time. The Chinese industrial wage could increase several fold, and the cost of American labor would still have to be chopped in half to meet it on a competitive footing.

Our goal should not be to produce for China or any other foreign country. That would be a lose, lose proposition. There is no national profit in producing goods for poorer markets. Our goal should be to produce for ourselves, as we once did.

Now is the time to put modest tariffs on Chinese imports, aimed at slowly bringing up the price of Chinese imports in the American market. This will cause productive activity to increase in America – especially if our government would also reward American industrial corporations for returning, or remaining in the United States. As China is able to shift it's production inward toward it's own consumers, we should be retooling to once again produce for ourselves. As the process continues, tariffs should be incrementally raised until there is a price parity at the water's edge between Chinese imports and American produced goods.

The idea is that our tariffs on Chinese (and other) imports will never rise to the point of being punitive in nature or disruptive to trade. We can only reindustrialize relatively slowly, so we should seek to accommodate China's transition toward satisfying it's own consumer markets, and pace it to also accommodate our own reindustrialization, at a pace suited to both countries. It would not be a trade war, but a mutually beneficial transition that is much needed in both countries.

This would be an American jobs program that wouldn't cost us anything other than slightly higher prices on imports. The tariffs, of course, are taxes that would provide much needed revenue for the give-a-mint.

For example we imported $365 billions' worth of goods and services from China in 2010. A tariff of of only 2%, which wouldn't disrupt trade or prices all that much, would net the government $7.3 billion. That would help some. A 10% tariff would net $36.5 billion. But the tariff would be slowly increased over a period of years during which the tariff on Chinese imports might ultimately go to 30%, which (all else being the same) would net $109.5 billion from China alone.

Protective tariffs would help re-internalize our domestic economy. Imports would necessarily decline steadily in the process, and exports would not necessarily rise. But we'd eventually be producing most of what we consume once again – as we did at the height of our prosperity and national success – and retaining the lion's share of our wealth within our own economy.

*Globalization as we know it is the result of a plan to radically redistribute global wealth from the the industrialized West and North, to the Third World – East and South. See such works as RIO –Reshaping the International Order, A Report to the Club of Rome (published 1976), and NORTH - SOUTH, A Program for Survival, The Report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues under the Chairmanship of Willy Brandt (published 1980).

Obviously the plan has been vigorously pursued and carried out during these past 40 years, without the fully informed consent of the vast majority of the peoples effected. It has radically changed both our nation and the world, but not necessarily for the better. There have been winners and losers, of course, but, by in large, everything is now in a colossal mess – and that's more than just obvious! The winners (and there are many) have been transnational corporations and global capitalists, and the losers have been "We the People" of the United States and a host of other countries of both the West and the Third World. As far as nations are concerned, China appears to be the biggest winner, and, to a lesser extent, India.

Fifty years ago, China was an impoverished and backward nation. Today its economy is on track to pass ours within a few short years. It's economy is growing at breakneck speed while ours is in precipitous decline. Remove government spending, the alleged value in speculative market bubbles, the "China Trade," and deduct all the debt and deficits from our cooked GDP figures and our economic situation would probably look more like China's back in the 1960s than that of the "richest nation in the world."

The richest nation in the world has been living on stored social and industrial capital, and credit, for decades. It's industrial infrastructure is in ruins, and it's transportation infrastructure, along with its very core public institutions, are suffering accelerated deterioration.

Amidst the wreckage that is the American economy, only the military-industrial-security complex, the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance complex, and speculative markets, thrive. Main Streets nation-wide are dead, and/or dominated by corporate chains wed to Wall-Street and the China Trade. The service economy manages to thrive, but a service economy is only half of an economy. Half the working population works for some level of government, and most of the other half in some sort of services. Half of the population depend on some sort of government largess, from medicare and social security, welfare, food stamps, and subsidized housing, to full room and board in the prison system.

Without a vibrant and productive industrial economy to earn national income, nothing can actually be paid for. Our agricultural lands are still spectacularly productive, but they aren't really earning a profit for the nation. Agribusiness is locked into import dependence on one hand, and export dependence on the other. Actual agricultural production is priced toward global marketplace – a cheap domestic food policy (a very expensive one), and global commodity prices rather than that of the domestic American market.

We're locked into a sell cheap and buy cheap economy. So the few productive industries we have are trying to sell their production into lower global export markets or are having to compete with cheap imports, while we purchase most of what we need from those same lower markets abroad. While the traders, speculators, and bankers, get rich, there's no profit in it on the real national economics balance sheet. Obviously, the national economy is in deep deficit because of the way this nation has come to do business. This can only be described as the classic "race to the floor."

So, to remain as wealthy as we think we are and ought to be, we have to borrow money – lots of it – our own money – mostly from the foreign competition – in order to function and "thrive" as the "richest nation on earth." It's a good thing that its "our own money" in the first place or we would have crashed down resoundingly a long time ago – or, alternately, we would have been forced to both earn our own living and live within our means.

Obviously, there is something extraordinarily wrong with the way we have been doing business as a nation. We've been losing our sox for two or three decades or more!

In actuality, China is now rich and we are poor, though we still try to live as if we are rich. But how did this turnabout come about? To what does China owe its newly acquired riches? By in large, it boils down to American workers and consumers. Our leaders gave our market to China and as a result China has been absorbing American industries, American technologies, American jobs, and, of course, American money. Without those things China would still be a poor struggling nation.

China built its economy on those things, and American consumers have little choice now but to continue to buy more and more Chinese products – sending it more and more money – which enables China to loan money to it's dominate export markets. If it wasn't "our money" China would eventually be forced to foreclose – because we would have no way to either buy or borrow from it at the currently necessary rates.

While China is now the rich creditor, and we are its poor dependent customer/debtor, it's hands are tied by the fact that all the money it receives from us, for purchases and loans, has our treasury stamp on it. If they balk on loaning us enough to carry on the fiasco, we can simply bypass the foreign creditors entirely in favor of printing up any amount we want through the process known as "quantitative easing" – pretending to borrow it from ourselves. We can redeem any and all of our outstanding indebtedness bonds with this "quick-print" currency, and they can do nothing about it but complain about us debasing our own currency.

China is between a rock and a hard spot, while we are in a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation. The Yankee dollar is our big ace of spades in the hole. But China still hold the better hand, because it is China that has replaced us as a productive, "wealth producing," nation. While we print, spend, and borrow the money – or simply print and spend the money – China is producing the goods. There is more substance to goods and products than in fiat paper. So China definitely holds the better hand.

We are now hostage to our own perverse trade policies and Utopian New World Order visions. Our highly toted goal of "international interdependence" has resulted in crippling and crushing "dependence" on our part. If the China trade were cut off today, and the two trillion dollars in treasuries that China holds effectively became worthless to it, it could still support itself, but we could not.

Oh yes. We still hold the joker – and it's no joking matter. We're still the world's most powerful military superpower, and we have acquired very itchy trigger fingers. World Wars are always major game changers.

Ultimately, it is in our and China's best interests to bring industry back to America. China is now a prosperous nation in its own right, capable of profitably exploiting and providing for it's own vast domestic market. When and if it does this, it is also in the best interests of China to help America reindustrialize and once again gain the ability to earn its own way in the world. We don't need a global war – or any war – to do this.

China doesn't want war. It is sitting pretty without it. But war threatens precisely because America has become so dependent on China.

China owes us something, because a great deal of it's wealth has come directly from leaching both productive capacity and consumer wealth out of the American economy. Not that that this constitutes any kind of aggressive behavior on the part of China. Our leaders made it all possible and went out of their way to make it happen. They are much more culpable than China.

China should welcome our incremental reassertion of trade protection, and should be happy if it helps us reindustrialize and become more economically self-reliant. China should eagerly become a partner in rebuilding America's economy. It would cost it very little in real terms, since it has already gained so much. It's a small price to pay for all it has taken (or been given) by the American people. And it is the kind of payback that might prevent any eventual military confrontation between today's uncontested superpower, and the superpower now growing in the east.

Well, it seems the Panama, Colombia, and South Korea free trade agreements are going to pass with broad bi-partisan support in Congress. What is it about national economic suicide pacts that our so-called representatives and senators seem to love? Why is it that when our economy is desperate for jobs, and the evidence is in that free trade agreements are job killers for American workers, our mis-representatives claim that free trade agreements are jobs bills!

All free trade agreements that we have entered into have been disasters for American workers and the American economy. Yet our mis-representatives (what else can we call them?), along with certain industrial interests, including the national Chamber of Commerce, are repeating all of the same old worn-out arguments they've used for all of our previous free trade pacts. They keep saying free trade creates jobs, free trade makes us a richer nation, free trade is the most wonderful thing since sliced white bread!

Yet, look where we are! Where have all of our present free trade agreements gotten us? Right where we are today – and free trade has been the biggest killer of American industries, American factories, and American jobs than any other single thing troubling our economy, including the bankers' troubles and out monetary difficulties!

They (the experts and policy wonks) keep telling us that our national economic salvation resides in emerging markets elsewhere – everywhere else but here! Why not depend on our own market rather than theirs. Theirs will never be ours. The American market is ours rather than theirs, and it was the richest market in the world until our mis-representatives gave it away and destroyed the geese that once laid the golden eggs.

Our situation continues to worsen, as might be expected. And these new agreements will be more of the same. For every American job created or retained due to these free trade agreements, there will be several others that will flee the nation or be created in Panama, Colombia, or South Korea. We've been down this path before, and no course correction is in sight.

There's precious little that Panama, Colombia, or South Korea will be buying from us. American workers cannot compete against the workers of any of those countries – our economic circumstances are not yet desperate enough for that. This means American companies will be opening up shop down there, and over there, hiring Panamanians, Colombians, and South Koreans to produce for the American market – just as has happened with all of our free trade agreements.

All of our trade agreements are heavily weighted not only against most American companies and American workers, but against national security itself! They prevent us from protecting our own markets, our own industries, and our own workers, while inviting others to "Come and get it!" Our disastrous negative trade balance with all of our major free trade partners tells the tale so clearly that even the blind should be able to see. But not our Congress, nor our president, or any of their friends.

Correction: Most of them very clearly see what they are doing, but could care less about American workers or the American people. They do not represent the American people – they represent global corporate capital, Wall Street, and other special interests.

All of our free trade agreements are pro-financial-crisis bills. Yet our politicians consistently ad steam to the engine that has led to the great economic decline of our nation. Were it not for globalization and free trade, this would still be a prosperous industrial nation. The various financial Ponzi schemes that have precipitated our present economic crisis would have been much more toothless had our politicians not pursued policies that have effectively curtailed our national ability to support ourselves as a nation through production.

Our trusty leaders – the Washington and Wall Street brain trust – keep telling us that all we need to do to prosper again is "produce more for others elsewhere" when once we produced an abundance for ourselves, with plenty left over to trade and share. But then came the "new international economic order," free trade, international economic interdependence, and globalism. Ever since, our legislators and policy makers have been relentlessly pursuing a suicidal national business model, from which we are currently suffering the acute consequences. Yet, in spite of the obvious failures and an ongoing economic train wreck, they persist in pouring more fuel to the fire with hardy "Full speed ahead!" – toward continued inevitable economic disaster!

Earl Nightingale speaking from the 1950s, has an inspiring message that remains timeless. We live in a different nation and a different world today than the the era in which Earl Nightingale so eloquently broadcast his message of hope.

These are much more difficult and troubled times than the 1950s, but his message still holds true. There are far fewer good workaday job opportunities today than back in that golden era, but everybody still has the opportunity to make his own success. There are plenty of jobs and businesses just waiting to be created. The government isn't going to create them. In fact, the government has gone out of its way to give the big corporations license and incentives to create them elsewhere, rather than here. But people can still create jobs, and they must create them – both their own and jobs for others. And they can! – if they will only once again realize their own individual potential.

For years they've been telling us that globalization and international interdependence would be, and is, the greatest thing since sliced white bread. We're one big happy family – On World – one big, happy, Global Village.

But, alas! Now that we're one happy global family, look how it's working out! The world is a total financial mess. The United States, as the world's "richest" and most militarily powerful nation, is the very eye of the storm – a storm it has worked overtime to create. Since our far-sighted leaders saw fit to de-industrialize the nation and make it dependent on others elsewhere for the wherewithal to power and drive the global economic engines, not even our Federal Reserve, with it's global money monopoly, can save us from the inevitability of some sort of global financial collapse.

Thank the globalists and their global financial brain trusts. Most of all, thank the Washington brain trust which has willy-nilly led the world astray while cutting the legs out from under what was only a few decades ago the world's greatest, most prosperous industrial dynamo! And thank the Washington-based interventionists and warmongers who have put the icing on the cake which is poisoning us.

Thank our "special relationship" with Israel, along with our supposed need for Middle East petroleum resources, for making our battle-grounds (in the fight for "freedom and democracy") the entire Middle East, and now North Africa – wars that are by no means in our best interests either in the short or long term.

Perpetual war is by no means beneficial to any nation or empire. It historically foreshadows ultimate collapse. With a perpetually collapsing social, moral, and cultural standards – not to mention educational standards – in parallel with an almost unbelievable rise in corruption in our core governmental and financial institutions, not even a "righteous war" against an invading power could be sustained for very long.

Don't blame China, or Israel, for our swift national fall from grace. Blame Washington and its paymasters. Blame overriding avarice in high places. Blame the various think-tanks that have been doing all the thinking for our Washington policy-makers! Blame New York, London, and other international banking institutions, and the gigantic and all-pervasive transnational corporate machinery that has grown up around them. Blame both the do-gooders and the do-badders of both the left and the right. They have all worked in unison to bring us to our present impasse.

The Washington brain trust has gone to great lengths to scuttle every real advantage that this once great nation possessed – excepting it's military prowess and weapons of mass destruction, of course. Those are the only things we have that are still preeminent – our only remaining clear-cut national advantages – and that is a very frightening advantage to have in our present economic and moral circumstance.

There are no longer any easy solutions, and if there were, we can bet that our Washington brain trust wouldn't consider them. The cards are on the table, and they are all jokers.

We hear a lot from the president and Congress wanting to create jobs these days. They wring their hands and fret over putting increasingly restive Americans back to work. But presidents and congresses don't know how to create the kinds of jobs we need. They can only create more administrative, bureaucratic, military, police, prison, and special agent jobs – the kind of jobs that ordinary working taxpayers have to pay for. Of course, they can also create beneficial public works jobs, too – but these must also be paid for by the taxpayers at a time when the tax base is shrinking. Obviously, public sector jobs cannot generate enough tax revenue to pay for themselves.

Over a period of less than fifty years we have gone from a nation with a broad-based, productive and prosperous middle class, to a nation dependent on government hand-outs and foreign credit. The richest 5% of the population (which is obviously overpaid and under-taxed), now pay more taxes than the bottom 90%, which is generally under-paid, underemployed, and (if working) over-taxed. Still, there's not enough money to support our top-heavy government and it's reckless spending, so it has to depend on foreign creditors to bridge the widening gap.

The wisest thing, of course – the only sane thing – would have been to have supported and preserved the industries and jobs we once had – the ones that actually produced wealth and paid the freight both for themselves and the public sector – but our presidents and successive congresses have vigorously been doing just the opposite for at least four decades.

Now that the nation is in a state of economic extremis, they supposedly want to reverse course and create private sector jobs for American workers, but so far they are mumbling about some kind of exotic new kinds of jobs that require all Americans workers to be college graduates. What kind of jobs would that be? That is the sixty-five billion dollar question – and it's highly questionable how they would benefit the American people and the American economy. They think throwing more and more money at education will create lots of private sector jobs. But it hasn't done it yet, in spite of billions spent over several decades. The only noticeable result has been a marked decline in educational standards since the federal government moved into the field.

What we need are manufacturing job that can employ millions of people doing simple production jobs. We need jobs that will employ the "working classes" without college degrees – jobs that uneducated millions of Mexicans, Chinese, and Third World workers are now doing for us today. In other words, we have to go back to earning our own way in the world again, rather than depending on others elsewhere to produce for us. That's only common sense.

It's too late to get those jobs back easily. The methods of getting them back would require abandonment of all of the globalists' fondest dreams of total international interdependence and globe-straddling dependence on distant producers, distant markets, and corporate bridges, supply-lines, and corporate mega-systems. It would require a return to trade protectionism and tariffs, and that would be like returning to the bad old days – when America was indisputably the world's greatest industrial dynamo.

Hello? The New World Order isn't working, and it will never work! Mega-systems merely lead to mega-problems, and ultimately mega-disasters. And some of those mega-problems have already begun to manifest themselves in a big way, and more is obviously in the offing.

In spite to Americas unparalleled successes of the past, we are desperate for jobs. Americans need to be gainfully employed again. What to do? Chances are, the Washington brain trust will resort to what it did in the case of Japan. Back in the 60s and 70s, out Washington brain trust opened our markets to the Japanese. Japan was selling us a lot of cars, and, for some strange reason, those annoying Japanese refused to buy like numbers of American cars. To alleviate this automotive trade imbalance, and put some unemployed American autoworkers back to work, Japanese automakers were invited to open factories in the United States.

Japan had gained a huge portion of our automobile market, and just about all of our consumer electronics markets. And they continue to maintain much more than their rightful share of those markets. The Chinese are in the same position today, but in a huge array of manufactured goods from all nature of basic consumer goods of every type, to machine tools, and heavy industries, including the building of huge container cranes for our sea ports.

Yet things are significantly different with China. China is many times larger than Japan, and at least four times larger than the United States in terms of population and thus productive capacity.

Like Japan, China was invited to invaded American market, and it has literally been putting American out of work. Now, like Japan, it has both the capital and the ability to replicate what "Japan did for American workers" and do it in spades. All that is lacking is the invitation to start setting up shop in America in a big way as it continues to develop its' own home markets in China to buy and consume more of its production.

Jobs in Chinese owned factories on American soil would be most welcome for the unemployed. The Chinese could create jobs here – real jobs – in great abundance, and those jobs would be snapped up gratefully by unemployed Americans.

This is most likely to be the solution our trusty leaders will eventually stumble upon. The only problem with this is that in the fullness of time, de facto ownership of much of the American industrial plant and the American markets will remain in the hands of foreign corporations and (in the Case of China), a foreign government. Yet this is the only logical way that China can recoup most of the value of its present investments in U.S. Treasury bonds – the money that it has loaned this country. This will be a de facto foreclosure, since the bulk of the profits of foreign-owned industries will naturally accrue to the competition.

It would be a sell-out of America, of course, but, given the sort of mentality we've had in Washington for half a century, it's likely the only way we'll get any of our jobs back. American multinational corporations would continue to exploit the Chinese markets by operating joint ventures in China, and Chinese multinational corporations would be able to make deep inroads into the American homeland, exploiting ours.

The new industrialized America, if it evolves, will be very different from the industrialized nation we once had. Organized labor will be excluded, or its power and influence much diminished in the new re-industrialization process, and the industrial wage, and living standards, will be downsized from what it once was before American de-industrialization began.

Sell-out is about our only hope for rebuilding a real productive economy in America, because Americans have already, long ago, been sold out by their own government policy-makers. Our politicians are likely to think of this solution soon. And, to be perfectly truthful, it would be better than the situation we find our nation in today.

The sell-out of America isn't limited to industrial infrastructure and commercial properties. Corporate and foreign interests are busily buying up American farmlands too. Our agricultural lands are arguably our most valuable national asset, and, like a lot of other things, they are increasingly being sold to speculators and the foreign competition. Agricultural lands are attractive alternative investments for those presently being scared out of the increasingly flaky stock market. This isn't good for American farmers. Investors and speculators are driving up farmland prices, and making it difficult or impossible for American farmers to buy or even hold their present lands.

Sadly, the nation we once had is gone. It's history. That has become crystal-clear by now. It will probably never be resurrected or restored to it's former independent state with freedom and liberty for all. We've had our grand opportunity but our politicians have blown it by joining the opposition. Our national genes have been irrevocably altered, and there is no going back. America has become another GMO product. The culture has been overturned and our moral standards debased, and the Constitutional Republic effectively abolished. There can be no American version of an "Arab Spring" here. The Spirit of 1776 lives on only in a miniscule and scattered minority which doesn't have a chance. The nation has already been taken over by forces hostile to everything America once stood for.

Just yesterday the military's "Don't ask, don't tell" officially bit the dust. This is a major turning point for both the military and the broader national culture. Apparently it will now be acceptable to both ask and tell without any repercussions – the subjects being sexual preferences. The effects will not be known for some time. But, given the present generally downward trajectory of the nation, it will likely be of very little real consequence in the end.

In the fullness of time, catastrophe will probably intervene and totally change the game and all of the rules. Natural catastrophes may play a significant role, but natural catastrophes are in the hands of God. Man-made ones are already playing the major roles now, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future – and wars will change the nature of all of the games presently being played out. At some point there may be a wholesale return to the laws of the jungle. Unimaginable carnage could possibly ensue, and massive amounts of blood will likely flow. "Corrections" will certainly be made over time, and, in time, civilization, or some facsimile thereof, will likely be reborn. But it will not be the one we had.

How will America fair? Probably not so well. It has already become a fractured nation of multiple competing cultures, races, and religions. It no longer has a unifying national culture beyond that of conspicuous consumption. Most European nations will do no better. But China will still be China. Japan will still be Japan, and India will still be India. Mexico will still be Mexico. But the United States will likely be splintered and transformed beyond recognition because it has repudiated everything that once made it a great, cohesive, and focused nation.

It's pretty incredible that even after forty years of experience in how not to grow or even maintain the real economy, our president and most of our so-called representatives (and the experts they employ to do their thinking for them), are still repeating the same tired old "jobs" line that envisions a nation of "knowledge workers" – doctors, lawyers, high-rise architects, rocket scientists, computer whizzes, financial gurus, hedge-fund managers, and super-entrepreneurs of every exotic brand. Everybody a chief and no Indians.

All it takes, they tell us, is more education – a lot more money for education. Just make sure all Americans complete high school and are able to go on to college and our economic problems will be solved.

Education is a good thing, of course, but the cold truth is that no matter how much educational opportunities are made available, most people are geared by nature to be some sort of manual laborer or lowly functionary rather than thinker, scholar, innovator, organizer, entrepreneur, and leader. There's only so much room at the top, and the rest are usually satisfied to serve as drones as long as they can make a decent living and enjoy a enough leisure to make life worth living.

Only so many can be merchants and store managers, and the rest have to be clerks, cashiers, and customers. Only so many can be corporate CEOs and executives, and the rest have to be be in support roles or consumers of the corporate products. Only a relative few can be elected officials, or serve in top civil service roles, and the rest have to be clerks, secretaries, sweepers, and just plain voters. Each doctor requires numerous patients to support his practice, and the same with lawyers and insurance executives. It only takes one warden to run a prison, and the rest have to be minor administrators, maintenance personnel, guards, and prisoners. An Army of all generals and colonels couldn't function any better than a Navy of all Admirals and Captains. The crew outnumbers officers on every ship, and the workers always outnumber the bosses in every business, factory, or corporate organization.

Doers – movers and shakers – are born, and they generally tend to get the education they need, hell or high water. They educate themselves if need be, and succeed through determination and effort. They generally don't need help – they help themselves. They find their own places and make their own opportunities. The same goes for artists, poets, writers, and even entertainers.

There are natural reasons why most people don't even aspire to either high office or high endeavor. Human nature is what it is, and it hasn't changed significantly since long before the dawn of civilization. Strength, talent, and personal fortitude tend to rise to the top, and the overwhelming majority is satisfied to populate the lower ranks.

There are more potential opportunities today than ever before, but only a relative few will be at the top of their field or in the upper income groups.

The jobs that we need today are the very same ones that we had during the 1950s. We need real work jobs – in mines, steel mills, factories, heavy and light industries that once abounded in this country. Those jobs didn't require a college education nor even a high school diploma or GED certificate. They only required people who were willing and eager to put in a day's work for a day's pay.

We still have such people in great abundance. There are millions of willing hands and bodies eager for the kind of jobs that their fathers and grandfathers had – the working men and women who once knew job security and the highest living standards any laboring middle class ever had.

The crying shame is that all of those jobs haven't simply disappeared, they aren't passé, they're still out there. Down there, or over there. They are being filled by Mexicans and Asian workers rather than American workers. Our politicians have simply sent their industries, factories, and once abundant employment opportunities to Mexico and Asia! And they are working at sending more American jobs overseas all the time.

This job drain could be stopped, and those jobs could be recalled to our shores – but there's hardly a single voice in Congress or anywhere else making anything like a realistic proposal to do it. We are still hearing what we've been hearing at least since the Reagan administration – that we just need to educate our young to become chiefs and CEOs, or some special sort of "knowledge worker."

We've been hearing that since it became public policy to ship our good jobs overseas or south of the border by the tens and scores of thousands. From the very beginning of this "new international economic order" transforming the world, Americans were supposedly slated to become the world's "knowledge workers." Others elsewhere would do all the production work and heavy lifting and we'd do the brain work.

All that was needed was for workers and would-be workers to be retrained to take on all of the new knowledge work coming on line – especially in all the new high tech service industries that computers and telecommunications were opening up. So where are all those jobs that were supposed to employ displaced and downsized American Workers?

They've gone to places like India, the Philippines and an ever-expanding array of other "over-there" type countries. Unfortunately, it became very easy to outsource all of those jobs. The lower-level knowledge work jobs were the easiest jobs of all to export. And the technology itself was easier to export yet!

There are relatively few jobs for knowledge workers in America today. Indians and Filipinos speak English well and will work for American companies in their own countries for a tenth of what an American worker could survive on. And American workers today increasingly have to compete with imported high tech labor from countries like India. Yet we continue to hear that we just have to graduate more college students in order to grow our economy!

At what cost? Most American college graduates go out into the job market some hundred thousand dollars in debt for the cost of their education. Foreign workers often get their education at home or in the United States paid for by their own country or through special U.S. government assistance programs. Many newly graduated American college students attempt to enter the job market only to find that their entry level positions pay little better than minimum wage, because the good jobs are being filled by imported foreign "knowledge workers," to whom slightly better than minimum wage is a perfectly acceptable starting wage for their promising careers.

Anti-labor forces in both industry and the political establishment blame unions for forcing jobs out of the country. American workers – particularly union members – they claim, have been spoiled and are grossly over-compensated. They were spoiled because they had attained the middle class dream that all Americans could once reasonably aspired to – a rightful share of the fruits of their productive labor in the form of American wages and benefit packages that had developed over our long period of industrial growth and national prosperity.

Those who complain about the union wages are generally high-pay, high-benefit, politicians who are non-producing consumers who live off of the taxpaying public – or they are corporate interests eager to slip their yoke off of American labor and grossly increase their own share of the spoils by moving to a near-slave labor nations. Or they are self-indulgent, generally well-healed, environmentalists who were happy to see all of our "dirty industries" move to Mexico, China, and elsewhere (not in their back yard!).

But labor didn't export any jobs or cause their export. Their employers did with the active encouragement and funding from our Washington brain trust. They did it because our trusty mis-representatives in Congress voted that free trade and globalization would be good for Wall Street. So they encouraged corporate America run rampant and rough-shod in the world, taking advantage of international wage differentials, lower taxes, and lax environmental regulations and labor protections.

This has not only been a tragedy for American workers, it has been a mega-tragedy to the entire nation itself, and we're finally beginning to feel the effects of it now. America – the once, and still alleged, richest nation on the face of the earth – can no longer earn its own way in the world. And that could, and probably will, prove to be absolutely catastrophic! That's what the budget deficit and trade deficit tell us. Both have nowhere to go but up, as everything else goes down but prices. Even the GDP has become fraudulent because of the perversion of our economy and how it's "health" is measured.

Our politicians have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. That goose was American industrial labor. American agriculture too, of course, but it too has been subverted and perverted, and requires a whole different post. American labor had produced the wealth that our politicians felt compelled to squander until we've been awakened (dare I call it that?), between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to run.

Besides getting trained for new non-existent jobs, our politicians continue to tell us that we have to work harder and smarter (for less) to produce more for export. That's not the answer either. American export industries must sell their production into lower wage countries. To do that, American labor has to produce and sell for less. It's a formula to begin to begin turning America into a Third World nation. The rich can't sell to the poor unless they can produce for less that the poor countries can produce the same products for themselves.

The time has passed when poor countries had to buy heavy machinery and other high-end manufactured goods from advanced western nations. They can now buy them from China at half the price – as we do.

We're effectively at a dead end, unless Washington wakes up. But Washington shows nary a sign of waking up. It continues to sell us down the river at increasingly astronomical costs to this generation and to generations of Americans to come.

There are relatively simple answers, of course, but nobody in Washington is interested in them. At the top of the list would be to return to something that once worked very well for us – like reestablishing a Constitutional Republic and protecting our own borders and markets. But our politicians are as busy burning bridges behind us as they are at aiming our ship of state at giant icebergs.

NILES’ REGISTER – JULY 6, 1822—NATIONAL POLICY. 293-295

NATIONAL POLICY. The following is an extract of a letter addressed to the editor, by a distinguished gentleman of one of the middle states. It may do some good to insert it, (though not designed for publication), accompanied with some remarks.

“Your exertions to lead our general government into the adoption of home manufacturers and commerce are beyond all praise; – the idea of free trade, &c. is but a mere catch-word: we shall not effect it, nor is it desirable; we have an empire at home, and why not keep our money and exchange it for the encouragement and supply of our own growers and manufacturers, instead of sending it to Liverpool for salt and crockery, and to China for silks and nankins, and all the rest of our mischievous and wasting trade!

“If our government want revenue, let them protect and encourage our people in their industry, and then they will not be frightened with direct taxes; after all, not so deceptive and unequal as the indirect. But thirty years of an unnatural state of the world, has swept not only the currency of the country into commercial cities and foreign dealings, but has created a host of creatures whose only creed and interest lie in the circles of banks, stocks and ships. Banks, bankers, stock-jobbers, shippers, merchant, salary-men, and lastly, the deluded agriculturalists, have all put their forces together to rivet on us this baneful and shameful policy. That, however, which a wise and provident and honest policy could have averted, without and violent or unnatural measure, I mean “dire necessity,” will at last resuscitate our country; but experience is a dear school. Had the double duties only have been continued in 1815, our country now would have exhibited a scene of universal activity and prosperity; and the revenue or the sources of revenue, have suffered no diminution. When will our merchants, bankers and shippers, find out that their true interest lies in carrying on the exchanges of the country, produced by its unrestricted industry—I mean restrictions by foreign competition. If our faculties had been fairly dealt with, we now should, besides supplying our own wants and being independent, have occupied the commerce of the South American republics with our manufactures—surplus manufactures, which always combine in them the growers and producers, &c. of the raw materials—I mean the planters and farmers. But I write and think always on this subject with too much feeling to be quite rational; I beg you, however, to go on and reason, until even cotton-growers, and China-merchants, and stock jobbers, and lastly, our deceived farmers and even professional men, may be converted.”

Contributed by Y amaguchy

Times have changed, of course, but the same letter could be written today. Exertions to lead our general government into the adoption of home manufacturers and commerce are beyond all praise, but the ideal of free trade is but a deceptive catch-word to promote destructive national economic policy.

Our government has adopted a commercial so-called free trade policy that favors unregulated trade for globalized corporations and relegates and regulates American manufacturers and American workers to oblivion. Thanks to our government's policy of not protecting American industry and American workers, we send our money to China, and elsewhere, for all of the things that American companies and American workers once produced for their own market.

We're taxed in our wages and in our consumption for lack of tariff and duty revenues – the traders, who might just as well be called traitors, are not taxed, or escape taxation by simply moving their production offshore. And, as the result of this, the nation has fallen into such a catastrophic trade deficit position that it has to borrow huge sums of money from China, Japan, and other foreign nations, not only to afford their production, but conduct our own wars and other public spending policies.

Because of a willful de-industrialization policy, our middle-class tax base has continued to evaporate along with our national ability to earn our own way in the globalized world our politicians have willfully created.

The Washington brain trust tells us that American workers simply need to become more productive, and produce more so that we can export more, to remedy the trade imbalance – while continuing to purchase almost everything American consumers and businesses need from others elsewhere!! That's shear madness!

Export should never be the goal of domestic production! That's to miss the point, and certain to help lower our living standards while making us debt slaves to the world, as most export-based Third World nations have always been. American production must first and foremost be for the American market. Only when the American market is stocked with American-made goods should we engage in the luxury of exporting our "excess" production abroad. In a nation capable of producing its own goods, international trade should be regarded as a luxury.

In a well-endowed nation such as ours, international trade should be merely the tail the dog wags, not the tail that wags the dog. Our present economic and fiscal problems are the direct result of free trade and globalization. It has resulted in the de-industrialization of the greatest, most prosperous, nation in the history of mankind – and a broad-based prosperity that once raised the American consumer/worker class into an envious position unparalleled in history.

Today, our politicians are wringing their hands wondering what went wrong. The cry that "we need a jobs bill!" while they continue to call for "more free trade! More globalization!" – more of the same poisons that have sickened the nation to the point that we are at the point of death.

What has gone wrong is painfully obvious. We have a problem because Congress and our presidential administrations have been selling the American people out for over forty years!

This isn't just a trade problem, of course. It's much more than that, and it's even more fundamental. When we contracted to provide the world with its primary reserve currency (as the result of the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944, which also spawned GATT [the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade]) we effectively lost control of our national monetary policy, and thus our economic destiny.

The internationalized dollar became the rope with which we would effectively eventually be forced to dangle. The only means by which to provide the developing world with the monetary liquidity that it would require, was a commensurate amount of debt, for our dollar is a credit dollar, a debt-based affair, rather than a unit of positive value. From the get-go (post World War Two), free trade and globalization was built into our monetary system. Now, 67 years later, we are suffering from the inevitable results. And our trusty leaders wring their hands, wondering what has gone wrong.

General Jackson to Dr. Colman.
Washington City,
April 26th, 1824.

Sir: I have had the honor this day to receive your letter of the 21st instant, and with candor shall reply to it. My name has been brought before the nation by the people themselves without any agency of mine: for I wish it not to be forgotten that I have never solicited office, nor when called upon by the constituted authorities have ever declined where I conceived my services would be beneficial to my country. But as my name has been brought before the nation for the first office in the gift of the people, it is incumbent on me, when asked, frankly to declare my opinion upon any political or national question pending before and about which the country feels an interest.

You ask me my opinion on the Tariff. I answer, that I am in favor of a judicious examination and revision of it; and so far as the Tariff before us embraces the design of fostering, protecting, and preserving within ourselves the means of national defense and independence, particularly in a state of war, I would advocate and support it. The experience of the late war ought to teach us a lesson; and one never to be forgotten. If our liberty and republican form of government, procured for us by our revolutionary fathers, are worth the blood and treasure at which they were obtained, it surely is our duty to protect and defend them. Can there be an American patriot, who saw the privations, dangers, and difficulties experienced for the want of a proper means of defense during the last war, who would be willing again to hazard the safety of our country if embroiled; or rest it for defense on the precarious means of national resources to be derived from commerce, in a state of war with a maritime power which might destroy that commerce to prevent our obtaining the means of defense, and thereby subdue us ? I hope there is not; and if there is, I am sure he does not deserve to enjoy the blessing of freedom.

Heaven smiled upon, and gave us liberty and independence. That same providence has blessed us with the means of national independence and national defense. If we omit or refuse to use the gifts which He has extended to us, we deserve not the continuation of His blessings. He has filled our mountains and our plains with minerals -- with lead, iron, and copper, and given us a climate and soil for the growing of hemp and wool. These being the grand materials of our national defense, they ought to have extended to them adequate and fair protection, that our own manufactories and laborers may be placed on a fair competition with those of Europe; and that we may have within our own country a supply of those leading and important articles so essential to war. Beyond this, I look at the Tariff with an eye to the proper distribution of labor and revenue; and with a view to discharge our national debt. I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country.

This Tariff -- I mean a judicious one -- possesses more fanciful than real dangers. I will ask what is the real situation of the agriculturalist? Where has the American farmer a market for his surplus products? Except for cotton he has neither a foreign nor a home market. Does not this clearly prove, when there is no market either at home or abroad, that there is too much labor employed in agriculture? and that the channels of labor should be multiplied? Common sense points out at once the remedy. Draw from agriculture the superabundant labor, employ it in mechanism and manufactures, thereby creating a home market for your breadstuffs, and distributing labor to a most profitable account, and benefits to the country will result. Take from agriculture in the United States six hundred thousand men, women, and children, and you at once give a home market for more breadstuffs than all Europe now furnishes us. In short, sir, we have been too long subject to the policy of the British merchants. It is time we should become a little more Americanized, and instead of feeding the paupers and laborers of Europe, feed our own, or else in a short time, by continuing our present policy, we shall all be paupers ourselves.

It is, therefore, my opinion that a careful Tariff is much wanted to pay our national debt, and afford us the means of that defense within ourselves on which the safety and liberty of our country depend; and last, though not least, give a proper distribution to our labor, which must prove beneficial to the happiness, independence, and wealth of the community.

This is a short outline of my opinions, generally, on the subject of your inquiry, and believing them correct and calculated to further the prosperity and happiness of my country, I declare to you I would not barter them for any office or situation of a temporal character that could be given me.

I have presented you my opinions freely, because I am without concealment, and should indeed despise myself if I could believe myself capable of acquiring the confidence of any by means so ignoble.

I am, sir, very respectfully your obedient servant,

Andrew Jackson.

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Men of common sense don't waste time on non-issues. But people purporting to be serious scholars (both religious and scientifically minded ones), continue to ask that question and waste a lot of time an energy at it. And, among other things, they postulate one way or another as to weather Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical person. Some want it one way and some want it the other. But, at bottom, the entire debate is nothing more than an extension of a broad-based attack, not only on simple faith – particularly, the Christian faith – but the very bedrock of our national culture. That "bedrock" is not the the ancient stories but the universal principles and moral doctrines that are the message and reality of Christianity.

Significantly, and very tellingly, almost no scholars at all spend any time attacking other faith-based religions – only the Christian religion – the religion of Christendom (which also just happens to be the fatherlands of the Anglo-saxon, Celtic, and Teutonic races). And there can only be one credible reason for this – which Pridger will get into momentarily.

Or take Bill Maher, formerly of TV program of "Politically Incorrect." Bill, somewhere around the ripe old age of 55, decided that the biblical stories he'd believed all his life were just myths and fairy tales. What an insight! TV comedian, and political pundit, Bill Maher had suddenly, somehow, become enlightened! He became something of an anti-religious scholar! He went directly from being a born again Christian, or some facsimile thereof, to an anti-Christian.

Unfortunately, that seems to be the story of most Christians who stumble and fall from their faith. They cease being Christians and become anti-Christians. So Mr. Maher has become an expert on religion who writes books to finally set the record straight – and he goes around the world with evangelical zeal dispelling all biblical stories he admittedly once believed in.

Such ex-Christians tend to join the opposition which is intent on destroying not only their own religious faith but their own culture and, more often than not, the moral compass of their very civilization. And this country, as well as the rest of Christendom, seems to be suffering from the results of their considerable successes.

In this process we have gone from being a nation with an acknowledged Christian identity and ideology to another "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" "Never forget, never forgive" nation.

It wasn't Genesis, nor the story of Adam and Eve (or anything in the Old Testament), which gave Christianity its moral authority. It's the simple ideology and fundamental moral code that comes to us from the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the scriptures of the New Testament that does that. And that "message" is of infinite value whether or not the scriptures are otherwise relevant or true – or even if it can never be scientifically proven that Jesus never actually spoke. In fact, it would be the same even if the scientific community somehow manages to "prove" that Jesus of Nazareth never walked the earth at all.

Getting the message is the important thing – and for the fundamentalist Christian, faith is the great facilitator to that end. Generally speaking, the masses require a faith-based religion, organized churches, a priesthood, and a great volume of holy text in order to "believe" and consider the laws valid and binding. Why attempt to destroy these things if they result in at least the pretense of adhering to righteousness as the ideal in life? It's the message that is important. Though the message is often lost even within the churches, to destroy the churches (and thus broad-based faith among the broader public), would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Those are the essential teachings of Jesus, stripped of all the superfluous verbiage and faith-based humbuggery central to most religious fundamentalism. Jesus rejected the "Old Laws" of the Hebrews which were, race and tribal based, and always exclusive and unforgiving – claiming their One "God" as their own "exclusive" God, and all other peoples as enemies to be shunned or subjected to the sword.

The Christian religion was perhaps the world's first that was Universal. God was (Is) the universal Supreme Being – architect and creator of the Universe itself, and the Father of all creation and, of course, of all men. Nobody was excluded. The Christian God had no earthly enemies – though the tribes and nations of Christendom itself often managed to miss the point and go out of their way to impose their narrow and self-centered views upon its own as well as other peoples.

So, why do so many of scientifically oriented "scholars" seek to destroy that faith? Apparently most of academia is not only lacking in any religious faith at all, they are still actually under the influence of alien religions – whether they be Jewish, Moslem, or under the generalized influence of modern western "Secular Humanism" which seeks to destroy all faith-based religion.

The most influential anti-Christians in all nations of former Christendom are indisputably the Jews. Not the religious Jews so much as the secular Jews who, regardless of their lack of any religious faith, almost never ever become anti-Jewish. Though they may not believe in their religion, they never renounce their own faith-based Jewishness. In contrast, fallen Christians routinely renounce their Christian identity and effectively throw their lot in with the Jews who are working to de-Christianize America and the West.

Secular Jews don't go around claiming to be "God's Chosen People," of course. Rather, they go around excelling at just about everything they are involved with – and they are involved in an awful lot. There is little doubt with regard to their prominence and influence in academia, the sciences, the medical and legal professions, banking, Wall Street, publishing, the mass media, entertainment, Hollywood, and government – not to mention a host of prominent and powerful non-governmental organizations and powerful lobbying groups. Their prominence is out of all proportion to their numbers.

This is both the incongruity and mystique of the Jews. They are both the most valuable and most dangerous of peoples. In spite of their small numbers, they are effectively becoming our leaders in this and several other former nations of Christendom – always, of course, in the role of benefactor and our "conscience."

The rest of us are not supposed to notice these things. To do so is to risk being labeled an "anti-Semite" – and there's no label in all Christendom more damning than that!

Arguably this nation has been in a state of perpetual war since World War Two. But every war we've had, from the War of 1812 and the early Indian wars, had planted the seeds and nurtured the growth of our modern-day militarism. The Mexican War was our first war with a continental power of European genesis, and the military-industrial complex came into first full fruition during the tragic and fratricidal Civil War. The Reconstruction period, and the mopping up of the "Indian problems" in the west, kept the military-industrial complex going until our first aggressive foreign war against a European colonial power in the Spanish-American War, which was the beginning of the end of our so-called isolationist period – the result of which was that we too became a colonial power. Then came the First World War, and we became a recognized world power, on a par with the major European powers.

But we, as yet, did not have perpetual war, nor go onto a permanent wartime economy, until World War Two – which naturally triggered the Cold War, and the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, and so many other "lesser wars" that many of them hardly even register any more, since they are so over-shadowed by our multiple recent and present wars – Iraq I, Kosovo-Serbia-Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq II, Pakistan, Yemen, Lybia, etc..

So, what has this meant to the overall welfare of the nation? Appearances are that it has cost us a great deal of our freedom and liberty, and a great deal of money – so much that we would now be bankrupt if we didn't at least nominally control the bank of global issue (the Federal Reserve), that manufactures the world's dominate reserve currency with which we are now effectively defrauding ourselves as well as the rest of the world.

Perhaps we should revisit what George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison (1st, 3rd, and 4th presidents) said about foreign entanglements, standing armies, and war. The following is a quote from James Madison, from his 1795 pamphlet, "Political Observations."

Even more disastrous to our economic well being over the last several decades has been our free trade and globalization policies. But when an economy becomes dependent on foreign trade rather than home production for the home market, as ours has, vested corporate interests become the drivers of the economic destiny of the nation.

Agribusiness is our largest industry and largest export industry, and is thus extraordinarily vested in promoting free trade. At present, it is lobbying Congress for quick passage of three new free trade agreements, with Korea, Panama, and Columbia. For example, here's a message from Ohio agribusiness interests:

Here we see the big con repeating itself. "95% of the world's consumers are outside of the U.S. borders..." But those are not necessarily our markets, nor should they be. It is not in the best interests of that 95% of the global market to become dependent on American farmers for their food production. Nor is in our best interests as a nation to be dependent on foreign markets for our agricultural producers. Free trade in agricultural products always destroys local production and local food self-reliance – just as free trade in consumer and other industrial products has destroyed our own ability to produce for, and rely upon, ourselves. In either case, it is a formula for future disaster.

In fact, it's already too obvious that the disaster is already here for America. Overall, we have been on the losing end of all of our major free trade agreements, and it has, and will continue to, cost us dearly. Both our deplorable balance of trade deficit and a great deal of our national debt are the direct result of free trade. 17 million good American jobs have been lost due to our free trade policies and agreements since the 1970s.

This cut the heart out of not only our middle class tax-base, but has destroyed our ability to earn our way in the world as a nation.

Agriculture appears to be the exception, as we are doing very well with our agricultural exports continuing to flood more and more foreign foreign markets. We still have a positive balance of trade in agricultural products. But the full story is not reflecting in these rosy statistic, as there are some economic and agricultural fundamentals that are not being mentioned.

First of all, when a high wage, high living standard, nation exports its production into a lower-wage, lower living-standard world, the prices must be low enough facilitate the required profits the trade must produce in order to thrive. So, naturally, somebody, or something, has to be short-changed.

In the case of U.S. agricultural production, the American farmer himself was the first one to fall victim to globalization. The USDA's mid-nineteenth century message to farmers was "Get big or get out!" The largely self-reliant family farm system of diversified and sustainable production was methodically destroyed, and the number of farmers declined from about 30% of the population to more like 1% today. Through the twin "economies" of applying corporate collectivization to agricultural production, and the big mechanization and chemicalization of the means of production, it has become possible to flood world markets with "food for peace" and to "feed the world."

Our current agricultural practices are not sustainable, since they literally mine the agricultural lands of their top soils of natural nutrients, while all the while replacing them with toxic chemicals which perpetuates massive toxic runoff into the streams and rivers. This system has been coaxing larger and larger crops out of our agricultural lands, but at great costs which make more of the same necessary to sustain production. Meanwhile, by being able to export our products at low global prices, we've helped to destroy millions of farmers in the Third World along with a lot of the old sustainable agricultural systems that made them capable of feeding themselves.

We're continuing to do this, thinking we are gaining by it. But we are being very short sighted. We have learned to depend on corporate mega-systems, and those corporate mega-systems are subject to catastrophic failure. Such failures will produce mega-problems, the likes of which the world has never known before.

Hezekaih Nile founded the Nile's Register in 1811 and it was published continuously until 1849.

The Register was a news magazine for the politically savvy of the day, covering major American and world events. The following, dated of November 17th, 1832, was transcribed from a graphic of page 181 of the Register "Miscellaneous" category archive, which was forwarded to us compliments of Yamaguchy.com.

Circa 1832, the United States was a protectionist nation, as it essentially had been since its founding, and remained until the onset of the present era of "globalization" after World War Two. As the above states, "Free trade is a desirable thing;" – at least between more or less equitable trade partners – but...

Let us rewrite the article, putting it into today's globalization and free trade context policies right here in present day America:

In other words, our trusty mis-representatives in Washington, under the enlightened direction of their legions of think-tanks, under the wonderfully enticing guise of "free trade," have taken a pearl and made a sow's ear out of it. They've taken the goose that laid golden eggs and made it into a mud duck that lines it's nest with debt obligations to the world. They've taken the world's greatest, most prosperous, and most successful nation, and (in a period of only half a century), made an effective economic basket case out of it. Trillions of our dollars fuel the awakened Goliath, China, and trillions more have been transferred from the people to a covey of supposedly too big to fail banks, both foreign and domestic. The chickens of folly are finally coming home to roost in a big way.

The massive transfer of taxpayer money to domestic and foreign banks is the very epitome of "taxation without representation" – which was one of the predominate grievances that brought on the Revolutionary War and American independence.

This is the collapse of the American Republic and the American dream. What else could be said of a nation (which still passes for the "richest" nation in the world), that is bankrupt and no longer capable of supporting itself – in spite of its continued great wealth in land and natural and human resources?

We continue to "prosper" and mega-consume only on stored social capital and the good will of the Chinese and other self-seeking creditors who fully intend collect on their loans. We are respected as a nation (so far as that is the case) only because of our past history and continued military might – and our strange and uncanny ability to consume and wage war without worrying about the receiverships coming due. Blow-back is inevitable – it's here and it's obvious! – but our leaders don't seem to discern the obvious causes.

Though we are on the brink of catastrophe, we are able to claw on only because we happen to be the producer and repository of the world's dominate reserve currency – a happy circumstance that threatens to turn very sour in the fullness of time.

In half a century this has happened to the United States of America. And during the same period of time, once backward, impoverished, China has advanced to become the provider of damn near everything we need as consumers! It has become our provider, and our lifeline to economic survival. It's our largest creditor, providing us with the wherewithal to purchase its products and continue to run tremendous budgetary and trade deficits. Wonderful planning Washington!!! You are SO far-sighted!

China is taking advantage of everything we once knew, but have since forgotten. Not only that, they have had the advantage of building their industry and economy on American capital and technology. They didn't even have to buy it. We thrust it on them so we could buy everything we need cheaply from them. Now China continues to invest in itself and expand – on profits that we continue to provide them! We're hooked and ripe for the picking, along with foreclosure and rehab – under new management and ownership! Damn! Are we smart!!!!

Don't mention isolationism, tariffs, or protectionism. We grew and prospered under those arcane policies but we deny, and have totally repudiated, those causes for our national success. Today we continue to wallow in dependence and mega-conspicuous consumption, while foreign workers do the work and continue to support us. They can't be depended on to do that much longer. When the Yankee dollar collapses, and is no longer worthy of being an international reserve currency, receivership will be our great reward.

To listen to Washington, it's armies of think tanks, and the establishment media, however, free trade and globalization are still the only way to go. And we're going – we're already just about gone!

Of course there has to be a plan that we don't know about. We conspiracy buffs know of a lot of their plans, but perhaps not all of them! Could there be some rhyme behind all the apparent suicidal lack of common sense? Perhaps so, but it is highly doubtful that there will be anything good for the ordinary people of the world. At this particular juncture it appears to be more and bigger wars (that appears to be what we can still do best), and that, by definition, can never be good. All we can do is stay tuned, and watch in amazed wonder.

TO CONTINUE FEDERAL SPENDING AT ANYTHING LIKE PRESENT LEVELS IS CERTAIN ECONOMIC SUICIDE.

TO MASSIVELY CUT THE FEDERAL BUDGET IS TO KILL MASSIVE NUMBERS OF GOOD FEDERAL JOBS AND FEDERALLY GENERATED JOBS. THE FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS ARE BY FAR THE NATION'S LARGEST EMPLOYERS. ALL THE PAYROLLS AND FRINGE BENEFITS ARE MET BY THE TAXPAYING PUBLIC AND/OR INCREASED DEBT.

TO CUT THE BUDGET IS TO CUT JOBS OR ENTITLEMENTS TO WHICH BOTH PRODUCERS AND NON-PRODUCERS HAVE COME TO DEPEND ON.

TO RAISE TAXES, IN A FUTILE ATTEMPT TO FUND IT ALL, IS CONSIDERED POLITICAL SUICIDE.

IN OTHER WORDS, WE'RE IN THE CLASSIC DAMNED IF WE DO, AND DAMNED IF WE DON'T SITUATION.

TO TAX THE POOR WORKING MAN, HOWEVER, IS CONSIDERED A NECESSITY, BUT TO INCREASE TAXES ON MULTI-MILLIONAIRES AND MULTI-BILLIONAIRES IS CONSIDERED UNTHINKABLE.

TO INCREASE TAXES ON MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR CORPORATIONS IS CONSIDERED TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION (CORPORATION STILL DON'T HAVE A VOTE – BUT THEY CERTAINLY HAVE THE MONEY TO BUY OFF CONGRESS!).

MOST OF AMERICA'S ACTUAL WEALTH-CREATING JOBS ARE GONE (SOME 17 MILLION OF THEM SINCE THE 1970s) – TO MEXICO, CHINA, INDIA, AND DOZENS OF OTHER COUNTRIES. GOOD PLANNING "WASHINGTON"!!!! THANKS A LOT!

THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT CREATE PRIVATE SECTOR JOBS – CERTAINLY WITHOUT SPENDING MORE MONEY AND DEFEATING ITS PURPOSE. BUT THAT'S WHAT GOVERNMENT DOES BEST THESE DAYS – DEFEAT ITS PURPOSE.

PRODUCTIVE JOBS IN AMERICA? THEY'LL BE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN. TOO MUCH MICRO-REGULATION AND RED TAPE. AND, BESIDES, MEXICAN AND ASIAN LABOR STILL WORK MUCH CHEAPER THAN AMERICANS. THE RED TAPE IS MADE TO ORDER FOR LARGE CORPORATIONS, AND LARGE CORPORATIONS PREFER LABOR THAT IS MUCH CHEAPER THAN AMERICAN LABOR.

IT ISN'T EASY FOR ENERGETIC AMERICANS TO CREATE THEIR OWN JOBS AS THEY ONCE DID. IT IS PRACTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO DO THIS WITHOUT GETTING BOGGED DOWN IN FEDERAL AND STATE RED TAPE, OR RUNNING AFOUL OF ZONING OR ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS.

THE RUNAWAY FLAG CORPORATION – MOVING OR OUTSOURCING JOBS TO MEXICO AND ASIA – IS THE PRODUCT OF "DEREGULATION," GLOBALIZATION, FREE TRADE, AND ONE WORLD (GLOBAL VILLAGE) UTOPIANISM. (IT TOOK BOTH THE REPUBS AND DEMOS TO DO IT FOLKS!)

BUT DEREGULATION WAS NOT TO GET GOVERNMENT OFF THE BACKS OF THE COMMON MAN. ONLY THE BIG BOYS WERE DEREGULATED. THE REST OF US CONTINUE TO LABOR UNDER INCREASING REGULATORY BURDENS.

AMERICA, AS WE ONCE KNEW IT ONLY A FEW SHORT DECADES AGO, IS GONE. AMERICA AS WE KNOW IT TODAY APPEARS TO BE DOOMED.

THE BIGGEST THING HAPPENING IN AMERICA TODAY IS THE LEGITIMIZATION OF HOMOSEXUALITY AS A MAINLINE LIFESTYLE, PROFANING THE ONCE SACROSANCT INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE. THIS IS A STRIKE FOR POPULATION CONTROL AND A STEP TOWARD THE ABOLITION OF NOT ONLY THE TRADITIONAL NUCLEAR FAMILY, BUT RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS OF ALL KINDS.

OH WELL, MOST OF US ARE MARRIED TO OUR COMPUTERS ANYWAY, AND THINK IT PERFECTLY NATURAL. THERE'S NOTHING STRANGER THAN THAT! BUT THEY DON'T SELL LICENSES FOR IT YET. THE KEY WORD IS "YET."

THE WORD IS THAT WE CANNOT GO BACK TO WHAT WORKED. THAT WOULD BE REACTIONARY. WE DON'T WANT RETROGRESSION – WE WANT PROGRESS. SO WE HAVE TO FORGE AHEAD, FULL SPEED AHEAD, WITH ALL OF THE THINGS THAT HAVE OBVIOUSLY BEEN DESTROYING US!

AMERICA'S INITIAL TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD SYSTEM WAS BUILT USING FOREIGN CAPITAL AND COOLIE LABOR IMPORTED FROM CHINA. CHINA IS NOW BUILDING ITSELF WITH ITS OWN LABOR ON ITS OWN EARNINGS.

PERHAPS WE SHOULD TAKE A LESSON FROM THE CHINESE. THE CHINESE MUST HAVE LEARNED A FEW THINGS FROM HENRY FORD. AMERICAN ECONOMISTS DON'T STUDY HENRY FORD.

THERE IS AN ABUNDANCE OF METHOD TO CHINA'S MADNESS. AND THERE IS NOTHING BUT MADNESS IN AMERICA'S PRESENT METHODS.

CHINA CHEATING? WELL, WE INVENTED THE GAME, MADE THE RULES, PROMOTED IT, DEALT THE CARDS, HELD ALL THE ACES, AND ARE NOW REDUCED TO BANKING ON A HIGH STAKES BLUFF, WITH CHINA HOLDING ALL THE ACES. GO FIGURE.

IS CHINA "MANIPULATING" ITS CURRENCY FOR ITS OWN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE? NO, WE SIGNED ONTO OUR TRADE AGREEMENTS WITH CHINA AT THE FIXED CURRENCY RATES THAT EXISTED WHEN WE THOUGHT IT WAS TO OUR ADVANTAGE TO GET CHEAP IMPORTS. NOW THAT WE SEE THE EFFECTS OF OUR INCREDIBLE FOLLY, WE WANT TO CHANGE THE RULES. WE WANT CHINA TO UNDERMINE ITS OWN INTERESTS, JUST BECAUSE WE AGGRESSIVELY UNDERMINED OUR OWN! (ONLY A FOOL WOULD DO THAT.)

CHINA CHEATED BY PROVIDING AMERICAN CORPORATIONS WITH THE CHEAP LABOR AND CHEAP IMPORTS THEY THEY BARGAINED FOR? THAT'S A LAUGH. ACTUALLY, CHINA DIDN'T CHEAT. WE CHEATED OURSELVES AND THE POT IS NOW CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK.

DON'T LOOK TO PEKING FOR BLAME – LOOK NO FURTHER THAN WASHINGTON D.C., AND IT'S ARMIES OF THINK TANKS AND ECONOMIC EXPERTS.

CHINA WAS AN IMPOVERISHED, BACKWARDS, THIRD WORLD COUNTRY UNTIL OUR TRUSTY LEADERS GAVE AWAY OUR MARKETS TO THEM.

THE CHINESE COULDN'T HAVE DONE THIS ON THEIR OWN IN A THOUSAND YEARS. IT TOOK OUR OWN POLITICIANS TO PULL IT OFF.

CHINA'S LEADERSHIP TAKES THE LONG VIEW AND OUR POLITICIANS WORK IN FOUR YEAR TIME-FRAMES.

AMERICAN CORPORATE INTERESTS WANTED BOTH THE AMERICA MARKET AND THE CHINESE MARKET. WHILE AMERICAN CORPORATIONS AND BRAND NAMES ARE DOING VERY WELL IN CHINA, CHINA HAS OUR MARKET AS WELL AS THE TREMENDOUS POTENTIAL OF ITS OWN. CHINA AND ITS MARKETS WILL REMAIN CHINESE-OWNED WHEREAS AMERICA, HAVING GIVEN UP ITS OWN MARKETS, WILL GRADUALLY BE BOUGHT OUT.

OUR POLITICIANS FIGHT OVER RUN-AWAY DEFICITS AND HOW MUCH TO RAISE THE DEBT CEILING. MEANWHILE, CHINA EXPANDS ITS INDUSTRIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE ON PROFITS, SPENDS HALF OF ITS RESIDUAL INCOME ON GAINING INTERNATIONAL ASSETS, AND LOANS US THE OTHER HALF TO US SO WE CAN CONTINUE TO BUY THEIR PRODUCTION.

AMERICA'S PRIMARY WEAKNESSES TODAY ARE IN BEING MUSCLE-BOUND, OBESE, SHORT-SIGHTED, BELLIGERENT, BELLICOSE, TERMINALLY IN DEBT, AND DOWNRIGHT STUPID.

OUR STRENGTHS ARE MEASURED IN BOMBS, MISSILES, AIRCRAFT CARRIERS, AND PREDATOR DRONES. AND ONE MORE THING – OUR ABILITY TO TAKE A GOOD GLASS OF LEMONADE AND MAKE A SOUR ARTIFICIAL LIMON OUT OF IT.

The Civil War was a major calamity. The Spanish-American War was a calamity. World War One was a calamity. World War Two was the greatest calamity of all. The Korean War was a calamity. The Vietnam War was a calamity.

Yet, in spite of all of these national and international calamities, America survived and thrived. But after the Vietnam War – the first major war America had engaged in and had to accept defeat – America's fortunes began to falter badly. In spite of the de facto bankruptcy of the nation, resulting in the collapse of the Breton Woods system and the collapse of the dollar's last ties to gold, there was still an abundance of hope.

Though the United States had squandered so many lives and huge amounts of treasure, it was still the world's greatest and most productive industrial dynamo. In spite of the great loss of prestige of the dollar and the puncturing of America image of invincibility, it retained all of the essentials required to remain the world's greatest and most prosperous nation for the foreseeable future. It retained all of its essential national advantages.

By the late 1970s, however, things were reaching a great economic tipping point. The '60s had brought the welfare state and many other expensive federal social programs that the nation could not afford in the fullness of time, and it was done at a time when Cold War spending was increasing and the Vietnam War was putting an additional major strain on the federal budget. Our growing dependence on petroleum – increasingly imported petroleum – soon tipped the U.S. balance of trade from the positive to the negative side.

The handwriting was on the wall. America was in trouble. But it wasn't too late to fix America's problems. However, our politicians were apparently blind to the problems. Congress had become expert at two things – deficit spending and raising the debt ceiling. They've been doing it relentlessly for over half a century. They are doing it today.

Congress and the various presidential administrations have been very good at something else too – doing exactly the wrong things. During the last forty years they have willy-nilly managed to throw away our every national advantage! Our own government has been suiciding the national economy – and doing it blatantly and steadily most especially since the Reagan administration.

We couldn't pay our bills, so they de-industrialized the nation – killing the geese that laid the golden eggs – killing the tax base. They are still doing it. More free trade agreements are being eagerly sought and/or pushed through at every opportunity.

They blithely continue to tell us, "Free trade and globalization are good. Isolationism and protectionism, bad, bad, bad!" So, since we no long protect ourselves or take our physical or economic borders seriously, and we are suffering the obvious consequences. The competition is cashing in on America's continuing conspicuous consumption.

Rather than a highly productive industrial economy, we have transcended into a service and casino economy. And here we are, on the losing end of history, with our president and Congress, once again, fighting over whether or not to cut spending and raise the debt ceiling. As in the past, they'll do just what they have been doing. They will continue spending and they will raise the debt ceiling. Our bubble has already burst, but we're attempting to keep it inflated anyway.

While this silly game is being played out in Washington, the War on Terror is another calamity, the war in Afghanistan is a calamity, the Iraq War is a calamity, our War on Colonel Gaddafi is a calamity, and these suicidally expensive things are spreading like wild-fire. We're protecting global corporate interests – making the world safe for democracy – when our own house is rotting down and our own democracy a shambles.

These wars are not only calamities and crimes against foreign peoples, but crimes against reason and common sense. We rail against those crazy Islamic suicide bombers. But we are the biggest suicide bomber of all.

China is developing at break-neck speed, accomplishing in 30 years what it took us two centuries to accomplish, using our own labor and resources. The Chinese have the advantage of using our resources too. Since Americans can no longer grow their own economy, they are growing China's economy instead, thanks to the far-sightedness of American policy-makers. Not only can China invest in itself, it can also invest in America, and provide the credit wherewithal for American consumers to buy more and more Chinese products.

This has been going on in plain view for thirty years and more! American consumers and taxpayers are providing the money for the China miracle – our once and future enemy.

But we are unlikely to ever go to war with China as we once did with our colonial masters in England. We are already far to dependent on China for that. Cut off the China trade and America grinds to a stop – and no doubt the Defense Department will grind to a stop too, for lack of critical Chinese components.

Whoops! Sometimes Pridger gets Independence Day mixed up with Memorial Day – the day we honor our fallen dead. We still celebrate Independence Day, but our nation is no longer independent. At best, we can only celebrate the birth of the free and independent republic we once had, and pray that it will someday, somehow, be resurrected.

Few Americans acknowledge, or fully realize this. Nor do they have a clue as to how long ago it was, and to what degree, we lost that Independence. Truth be told, in real terms we are less independent today than the thirteen British-American colonies were prior to the Declaration of July 4th, 1776. While the colonists were subjects of the British Crown and beholden to the mother country for trade and credit, they were, in reality, largely both self-ruling and self-reliant at the most fundamental levels. The Crown and British mercantilists skimmed some of the profits, of course, but at least the American Colonies and their respective peoples were productive enough to provide them with profits and themselves with an enviable degree of prosperity for that day and time.

Today we depend on China and a host of other nations to both extend needed credit and manufacture our goods. Arguably, we're already much more dependent on China alone than the British North American Colonies were on the mother country. A nation that does not produce what it consumes, and must borrow the wherewithal with which to purchase them from foreign creditors, is not independent by any stretch of the imagination.

Still, this was at least a nominally sovereign and independent nation for it's first two hundred years of existence. That came to an end when our own government brain-trust decided that international interdependence was better than independence, and that so-called "free trade" was better than minding and protecting our own owner-operated store. It was globalism and the hope for a One World (commercial) Utopia that did us in.

Today we have the appearance of a "Walking Dead Nation" – still walking, and armed to the teeth as never before – as we continue to attempt to police the great corporate commercial Empire, once fancied to be The New World Order. Our brain trust (who we should never have trusted), has effectively committed national suicide for us. Over a period of a few short decades the American miracle was willfully brought to an end. And too few Americans have figured it out yet.

Once again an Anglo-American alliance is in evidence – with NATO providing a false sense of security. But we can no longer depend on the mother country whose empire we helped destroy in two great twentieth century world wars. After destroying the British Empire (by helping them out), in the fullness of time we have effectively brought the entire Western World to its knees. We can't depend on England or Europe to save us, and we can no longer stand on our own feet.

The American Declaration of Independence of 1976 was unique in the annals of nation states, as was our Constitution (adopted in 1787, and Bill of Rights added 1791). The successful conclusion of the Revolutionary War resulted in a new sovereign nation, or Confederacy, but it only briefly severed financial and commercial ties to the mother country. They resumed after the war through both necessity and self-serving skullduggery on the part of some prominent Americans who were not all that committed to the idea of an independent republic.

At certain fundamental levels, we never fully realized the full degree of independence that the revolutionaries fought so gallantly for. Financial fetters were almost immediately reestablished to the Mother Country soon after the revolutionary gun smoke had cleared the air. Not long after the dust settled over the new republic, a private national bank was chartered, with British capital embedded at its core.

Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasurer under President George Washington was one of our most influential founding fathers and played a major role in formulating how the new government actually worked. He was a Federalist and a royalist rather than a Republican or Democrat, and was responsible for increasing the role and influence of bankers in our national affairs. Among other things, he felt that it was important for the new nation to establish national credit, and thus considered a national debt a primary necessity. He was behind the establishment of the nation's first private central bank – the First Bank of the United States (established, February 25, 1791).

The Baring bank was not the only British Banking firm that invested in the "future of the New Republic," but it is one where we apparently have exact official numbers, if this source is reliable. The First and Second Bank of the United States were at least semi-successfully fought off by presidents Jefferson, Jackson, and others, but the Hydra only went into temporary hiding within the state banking system – carefully maintaining its influence over political affairs. By 1841, after both banks had been "defeated," the Rothschild banking house was also known to be heavily invested in the new republic. (They had probably been there from the very beginning, right alongside Barings.) And by the time the Civil War rolled around, the nation was ripe, and the English bankers and their American surrogates poised and well prepared to reap heady profits off of both that conflict of the moment and the nation's future.

Lincoln's greenback initiative gets considerable favorable press in alternative monetarist and conspiracy circles. While the greenback idea held a lot of promise (and perhaps still does), the bankers were uniquely positioned from the get-go, to pervert the issue and turn the initiative to their own considerable profit, while posturing as enemies of the greenback. Lincoln's companion National Banking initiatives usually get little coverage, but the greenback, and "Legal Tender" laws, and the National Banking Acts were coups for banking interests, consolidating private banking's role in providing our "National Currency" which eventually metastasized into the Federal Reserve Act passed in 1913.

World War Two was the big game changer, and a major turning point in the history of American Independence. In the euphoria of the great victory over the Axis powers, the American republic became ripe for dismemberment of it's independent political institutions. The Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944 made the "gold-backed" dollar (and the new Federal Reserve Note "National Currency"), the world's reserve currency – a blunder of phenomenal proportions which we mistook for the ultimate feather in our national cap! From that time forward, the United States (de facto ruler of the "Free World"), would progressively lose it's ability to be master of its own economic destiny.

One thing we accomplished in World War Two was to vastly enlarge and empower the Soviet Union, and pave it's way to super-power status. It provided us with a credible global enemy for the next several decades, during which our military industrial complex mushroomed into a permanent and ever-growing component of our "peace-time" economy.

Our post-war job, in both peace and war, became to make the world safe for democracy. When the Soviet Union finally collapsed, and real prospects for global peace threatened, we hastened to defeat them – to keep our defense industries and armed forces gainfully employed. (Jefferson told us why a large standing army would be about as dangerous to the republic as bankers!)

Among other things, our globe-straddling war machinery provides the world with a great deal of monetary liquidity that wouldn't be possible otherwise. Along with bombs, bullets, and missiles, it provides a kind of helicopter money. Being an American ally is profitable business. And being soundly defeated is usually pretty profitable too!

It was inevitable that providing the entire world with monetary liquidity, first with gold back dollars and then debt-based fiat dollars, our nation would eventually be sucked dry. First gold would begin to flee the nation, and after the gold window was slammed shut, debt would pile up until the Great Republic is – well, just like it is today! Swimming in un-payable debt. Un-payable debts, of course, lead to bankruptcy and foreclosure.

But that wasn't enough! A New World Order had long been planned, and the United States (or rather, the movers and shakers behind the curtains), thought it possessed all the aces in the hole to make it a utopian reality under their guidance and control. The United Nations and NATO were born of World War Two also, and globalism and international interdependence, rather than continued independence, became the national goal. American Independence was thus doomed even as global empire seemed to become the new American province.

The ultimate coup against our free republic was when, as a necessary result of the international dollar, and our insane ideas of international "free trade" in a misbegotten quest for "interdependence," our Washington brain trust embarked on the willful and intentional de-industrialization of America! Our politicians made deals with the Devil (with many of them), in order to accomplish this! (Accomplish what? National economic suicide!) So, while the national debt increased exponentially, our nation inevitably lost its ability to earn its own way in the world! We can neither pay our debts nor earn our own keep as a nation!

Yet, this once isolationist, protectionist, and spectacularly prosperous, nation stands in repudiation of all it once stood for. It is warring at great expense, and with great abandon, against and array of non-enemy states in quest of enemies, and against a rag-tag bunch of terrorists who we've managed to inflame over a matter of decades, while at the same time empowering the next great superpower positioned to challenge America's global military hegemony. We can't blame anybody in Beijing – blame our own Washington brain trust and the mis-representatives who have infested our capital long enough to bring a great nation down to its present impasse. Yet the powers that be are vigorously continuing to sell us this clearly disastrous bill of goods known as globalization!

Of course Independence Day is a wonderful time to re-read the Declaration of Independence – perhaps with a view as to how our national circumstances stack up today. How do the usurpations of King of Great Britain circa 1776 compare with the updated unholy array of usurpations we contend with today under our federal government, allied, as it is, with the Anglo-American world of finance in the age of corporate globalization?

The Declaration, like the Constitution that eventually evolved from it, is as great as ever. But can we ever hope recapture what those great documents promised? Things don't look very hopeful through Pridger's mud-splattered lenses.

Transcript of The Declaration of Independence

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are 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 effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Georgia:
   Button Gwinnett
   Lyman Hall
   George Walton
North Carolina:
   William Hooper
   Joseph Hewes
   John Penn
South Carolina:
   Edward Rutledge
   Thomas Heyward, Jr.
   Thomas Lynch, Jr.
   Arthur Middleton
Massachusetts:
   John Hancock
Maryland:
   Samuel Chase
   William Paca
   Thomas Stone
   Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
   George Wythe
   Richard Henry Lee
   Thomas Jefferson

Virginia (Cont'd):
   Benjamin Harrison
   Thomas Nelson, Jr.
   Francis Lightfoot Lee
   Carter Braxton
Pennsylvania:
   Robert Morris
   Benjamin Rush
   Benjamin Franklin
   John Morton
   George Clymer
   James Smith
   George Taylor
   James Wilson
   George Ross
Delaware:
   Caesar Rodney
   George Read
   Thomas McKean
New York:
   William Floyd
   Philip Livingston
   Francis Lewis
   Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
   Richard Stockton
   John Witherspoon
   Francis Hopkinson
   John Hart
   Abraham Clark
New Hampshire:
   Josiah Bartlett
   William Whipple
Massachusetts:
   Samuel Adams
   John Adams
   Robert Treat Paine
   Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
   Stephen Hopkins
   William Ellery
Connecticut:
   Roger Sherman
   Samuel Huntington
   William Williams
   Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
   Matthew Thornton

With Good Friday and Easter at hand, perhaps it would seem high time for a little good news for a change. Unfortunately, Pridger can't think of any – thus the dearth of blog posts recently. Pridger is tired of all the doom and gloom of the past three years and has been vigorously scratching his head looking for at least a suggestive sliver of a silver lining in the darkening clouds of our collective prospects. There seem to be none, though most of the hair on Pridger's head has already been scratched off.

About all we can do is rejoice that the radiation wafting over from Japan continues to be modest compared with that in the vicinity of the Fukushima Power plants. To be quite frank, our prospects appear to have dimmed somewhat with the magnitude of the present calamity upon calamity, though our suffering is nothing compared to that of the Japanese who were, and are, subjected to the full nightmarish consequences and aftermath of the multi-pronged disaster.

The multitude of diverse and cumulative problems facing us as a nation, and the entire world, seem to be increasing exponentially. Only a year ago we were in the midst of the greatest ecological disaster in American history. The BP Gulf oil spill was filling our cup over with it's abundance of doom and gloom – and the train of consequences from that booboo are far from over. Now it is the Japanese nuclear calamity filling our cup, and promising, in the fullness of time, to make the Gulf oil spill seem like Sunday at the park.

All of this is against the background of our far from resolved wars and the international economic and financial crises that our leaders and their favorite oligarchs have favored us with. It seems the world is descending into a real "Mess Soup" with the forces of nature adding to the mix with storms, tornados, floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

Our trusty leader thought this a good time to start another war. So now we have Libya in addition to Iraq and Afghanistan and general turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa to help keep our mind off of other serious things.

The best that can be said is that in spite of the multiple train wrecks in progress, most people outside the hot spots are still able to carry on as if nothing is untoward is going on. Life largely goes on as usual here in the land of the free and home of the brave in spite of everything that is happening. What's happening?

It isn't just America that is threatened with collapse, of course. Thanks to globalization, we're taking a lot of equally hapless people down with us. The mega-systems are beginning to break down and the grassroots "real economies" – sustainable, self-supporting local economies – have long ago been uprooted.

Perhaps it's time to take a second look at something President Eisenhower warned us about only a short half a century ago in his Farewell Address – his famous warning about the "military-industrial complex." It wasn't just the military-industrial complex that he warned of, but the military-industrial-(scientific) complex. The word "scientific" was omitted from the speech as delivered, but in more than just implied in the full context of his address. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since Eisenhower spoke. His warnings were ignored and his hopes could not have been more completely ignored and the nation betrayed. Lamentably, his words of warning became more than just prophetic.

Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation
January 17, 1961

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5407.htm

EMPHASIS ADDED

Good evening, my fellow Americans: First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunity they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.

Three days from now, after a half century of service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on questions of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation.

My own relations with Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation well rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So my official relationship with Congress ends in a feeling on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, such basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations.

To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people.

Any failure traceable to arrogance or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us a grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle – with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in the newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research – these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in light of a broader consideration; the need to maintain balance in and among national programs – balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages – balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between the actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well in the face of threat and stress.

But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise.

Of these, I mention two only.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

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.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

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. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

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.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

So – in this my last good night to you as your President – I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I – my fellow citizens – need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations' great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.

Thank you, and good night.

The March 11th earthquakes, tsunami, and ongoing nuclear catastrophe in Japan remind us just how frail and vulnerable we are in the face of the forces of nature as well as forces of our own making. This, once again, provides a major learning experience that we should not forget as quickly as we tend to forget the more mundane lessons of history.

The bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima introduced Japan and the world to the destructive potentials of nuclear energy. Perhaps the genie should have been put back into the bottle immediately after that terrible demonstration. But that power was too great to either bury or forget. "Atoms for peace" as well as atoms for war have reshaped the human prospect since 1945. And it appears that Atoms for Peace could ultimately take a higher toll on mankind than the growing atomic weapons arsenals of the nuclear powers.

It's tragically ironic that after repudiating militarism, war, and nuclear weapons after World War Two, Japan has once again become a major victim of the nuclear genie. But this time the nuclear event was self-inflicted – because the power plants were there at the time of a major earthquake and tsunami disaster.

Nuclear power would supposedly save the industrialized world from dirty coal-based power plants – but at what ultimate cost! The present catastrophe will impact the entire world and degrade the global environment. To what degree, we can only speculate at this point.

Of course the specter of nuclear war remains and ever-present threat to humanity, which could very quickly surpass the depredations extracted through the various "Atoms for Peace" projects now threatening us. Nuclear weaponry engender the specter of "quick death" for tens of millions, whereas Atoms for Peace threaten the death of a thousand cuts – invisible cuts – for hundreds of millions over long periods of time.

There is no such thing as safe nuclear power at this point. It is only safe as long as there is no accident, miscalculation, or failure. And even then it isn't safe, because the spent fuel itself remains a huge problem which has not yet been addressed. This, because THERE IS NO SAFE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM.

Ad to these as subtle growing "2012 End Of Time" hysteria. A perfect storm brewing? At the very least, Pridger believes this generation is destined to continue to live in interesting times.

HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST
The War of the Worlds

Paul Craig Roberts has published a collection of some of his best columns, and they should be required reading for anybody who cares about this country. As Pridger has been saying for years, our politicians and the financial capitalists that pull their stings have figured out the formula to bring this great nation down – and they have been implementing policy to that end for several decades.

AMAZON REVIEW

An education for the inquiring conservative

I like to read Paul Craig Roberts's columns, because he is a true conservative, not a "Republican." Since the Republican party has been taken over by certain notions that have led us astray in recent decades, there is nothing better than being able to stay on course with Roberts' informed opinions. I put Pat Buchanan and Kevin Phillips and maybe Ron Paul into the same category.

The fact that this book is mainly a collection of columns published elsewhere by Roberts in recent years, is both the strength and the weakness of this volume. Roberts' columns are so full of information that the average person would not have access to otherwise, that it is great they have been preserved between the covers of a book. On the other hand, since the author follows certain themes in his work, the reader is faced with a lot of repetition, rather than an argument where one chapter builds upon the last. However, this could be a good thing, as it reinforces in the reader's mind the view he holds about the global economy, so-called "free trade," the prospects of the middle class under these politicians and bureaucrats who have hi-jacked our economy, and related matters that affect our lives every day.

Roberts also has well-defended dissenting views on the foreign policy of our nation, similar to those held by Buchanan, Phillips, and Ron Paul. I have learned to regard the mainstream news through the lens of these writers' opinions, and I think this volume of Paul Craig Roberts' collected columns is well worth buying. It is great for showing to friends to clarify where we stand, and why. It is also great for quick reference purposes. Definitely a good title to own.

Read more reviews or buy the book here: HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST

Protectionism is considered heresy today, but look where free trade and globalism have gotten us so far! We're literally up a creek without a paddle – or, more accurately, down the river! Our nation – the richest nation in the world – is no longer able to pay its own way in the world! Rather, we have to beg credit from our competitors – even resent enemies who were once sworn to effect our destruction, and remain ideological foes. Everybody knows we have a serious problem, but nobody is looking at the source of the problem. No politician or news commentator has the guts to state the obvious.

What is obvious is that our national marketplace has been given away. The national marketplace is synonymous with the national economy, and if the management does not protect that market in the interests of the owner-operators – if it allows others to invade and take over that marketplace – profits will no longer accrue to the rightful owners. Unemployment sill soar. This is what is happening, and it is why the once most productive nation in the world is no longer productive enough to supply its own basic necessities, and must borrow to finance it's consumption and living standards.

These are the fruits of free trade – which is neither free nor cheap – and it's not as if nobody ever told us. Here's a political speech from over a century ago, and it needs to be given in the halls of Congress once again!

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
ON PROTECTION, FREE TRADE, AND LABOR
Circa 1896

Robert G. Ingersoll - 1833-1899

GIVE US PROTECTION AND PROSPERITY!

Give us Protection and Prosperity!

Do not cheat us with free trade dreams!

Do not deceive us with debased coin!

...Then there is another question – the question of the tariff. I admit that there are a great many arguments in favor of free trade, but I assert that all the facts are the other way. I want American people as far as possible to manufacture everything that Americans use.

The more industries we have the more we will develop the American brain, and the best crop you can raise in every country is a crop of good men and good women – of intelligent people. ...I want to keep this market for ourselves.

A nation that sells raw material will grow ignorant and poor; a nation that manufactures will grow intelligent and rich. It only takes muscle to dig ore. It takes mind to manufacture a locomotive, and only that labor is profitable that is mixed with thought. Muscle must be in partnership with brain.

I am in favor of keeping this market for ourselves, and yet some people say: "Give us the market of the world." Well, why don't you take it? There is no export duty on anything. You can get things out of this country cheaper than from any other country in the world. Iron is as cheap here in the ground, so are coal and stone, as any place on earth. The timber is as cheap in the forest.

Why don't you make things and sell them in Central Africa, in China and Japan? Why don't you do it?

I will tell you why. It is because (American) labor is too high; that is all. Almost the entire value is labor. You make a ton of steel rails worth twenty-five dollars; the ore in the ground is worth only a few cents, the coal in the earth only a few cents, the lime in the cliff only a few cents – altogether not one dollar and fifty cents; but the ton is worth twenty-five dollars; twenty-three dollars and fifty cents labor! That is the trouble. The steamship is worth five hundred thousand dollars, but the raw material is not worth ten thousand dollars. The rest is labor.

Why is labor higher here than in Europe? Protection. And why do these gentlemen ask for the trade of the world? Why do they ask for free trade? Because they want cheaper labor. That is all; cheaper labor. The markets of the world! We want our own markets. I would rather have the market of Illinois than all of China with her four hundred millions.

I would rather have the market of one good county in New York than all of Mexico.. What do they want in Mexico? A little red calico, a few sombreros and some spurs. They make their own liquor and they live on red pepper and beans. What do you want of their markets? We want to keep our own. In other words, we want to pursue the policy that has given us prosperity in the past.

We tried a little bit of free trade in 1892 when we were all prosperous. I said then: "If Grover Cleveland is elected it will cost the people five hundred million dollars." I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet, nor a profitable son, but I placed the figure too low. His election has cost a thousand million dollars. There is an old song, "You Put the Wrong Man off at Buffalo;" we took the wrong man on at Buffalo. We tried just a little of it, not much. We tried the Wilson bill – a bill, according to Mr. Cleveland, born of perfidy and dishonor – a bill that he was not quite foolish enough to sign and not brave enough to veto. We tried it and we are tired of it, and if experience is a teacher the American people know a little more than they did.

We want to do our own work, and we want to mingle our thought with our labor. We are the most inventive of all the peoples. We sustain the same relation to invention that the ancient Greeks did to sculpture. We want to develop the brain; we want to cultivate the imagination, and we want to cover our land with happy homes...

And another thing we want is to produce great men and great women here in our own country; then again we want business. Talk about charity, talk about the few dollars that fall unconsciously from the hand of wealth, talk about your poorhouses and your sewing societies and your poor little efforts in the missionary line in the worst part of your town! Ah, there is no charity like business. Business gives work to labor's countless hands; business wipes the tears from the eyes of widows and orphans; business dimples with joy the cheek of sorrow; business puts a roof above the heads of the homeless; business covers the land with happy homes.

...Let all the wheels whirl; let all the shuttles fly. Fill the air with the echoes of hammer and saw. Fill the furnace with flame; the molds with liquid iron. Let them glow.

...Plow the fields, reap the waving grain. Create all things that man can use. Business will feed the hungry, clothe the naked, educate the ignorant, enrich the world with art – fill the air with song.

Give us Protection and Prosperity. Do not cheat us with free trade dreams. Do not deceive us with debased coin. Give us good money – the life blood of business – and let it flow through the veins and arteries of commerce.

And let me tell you to-night the smoke arising from the factories great plants forms the only cloud on which has ever been seen the glittering bow of American promise. We want work, and I tell you to-night that my sympathies are with the men who work, with the women who weep. I know that labor is the Atlas on whose shoulders rests the great superstructure of civilization and the great dome of science adorned with all there is of art. Labor is the great oak, labor is the great column, and labor, with its deft and cunning hands, has created the countless things of art and beauty.

I want to see labor paid. I want to see capital civilized until it will be willing to give labor its share, and I want labor intelligent enough to settle all these questions in the high court of reason. And let me tell the workingman to-night: You will never help your self by destroying your employer. You have work to sell. Somebody has to buy it, if it is bought, and somebody has to buy it that has the money. Who is going to manufacture something that will not sell? Nobody is going into the manufacturing business through philanthropy, and unless your employer makes a profit, the mill will be shut down and you will be out of work. The interest of the employer and the employed should be one. Whenever the employers of the continent are successful, then the workingman is better paid, and you know it. I have some hope in the future for the working- man...

Something has been done for labor. Only a few years ago a man worked fifteen or sixteen hours a day, but the hours have been reduced to at least ten and are on the way to still further reduction. And while the hours have been decreased the wages have as certainly been increased. In forty years -- in less -- the wages of American workingmen have doubled. A little while ago you received an average of two hundred and eighty-five dollars a year; now you receive an average of more than four hundred and ninety dollars; there is the difference. So it seems to me that the star of hope is still in the sky for every workingman. Then there is another thing: every workingman in this country can take his little boy on his knee and say, "John, all the avenues to distinction, wealth, and glory are open to you. There is the free school; take your chances with I the rest." And it seems to me that that thought ought to sweeten every drop of sweat that trickles down the honest brow of toil.

So let us have protection! How much? Enough, so that our income at least will equal our outgo. That is a good way to keep house. I am tired of depression and deficit. I do not like to see a President pawning bonds to raise money to pay his own salary. I do not like to see the great Republic at the mercy of anybody, so let us stand by protection.

*Ingersoll was a hard money man (gold standard), against the Populist free-silver movement championed by the Democratic challenger to McKinley, William Jennings Bryan.

All quotations and excerpts are based on non-profit "fair use" in the greater public interest consistent with the understanding of laws noted at http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html.

PRIDGER, on The Wonderful New World

John Q. Pridger's
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Politics, economics, and social issues, as seen through Pridger's mud-splattered lenses.
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WANT AMERICAN JOBS?
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http://www.americansworking.com/

TRADE MATTERS - Ohio is 7th Largest Exporting State

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
ON PROTECTION, FREE TRADE, AND LABOR
Circa 1896

GIVE US PROTECTION AND PROSPERITY!

PRIDGER, on The Wonderful New World

John Q. Pridger's COMMENTS ON NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Politics, economics, and social issues, as seen through Pridger's mud-splattered lenses. Why Pridger writes this Blog

A REAL JOBS PROGRAM

WANT AMERICAN JOBS? BUY AMERICAN MADE PRODUCTS!

AMERICANS WORKING http://www.americansworking.com/

TRADE MATTERS - Ohio is 7th Largest Exporting State

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL ON PROTECTION, FREE TRADE, AND LABOR Circa 1896

GIVE US PROTECTION AND PROSPERITY!

John Q. Pridger's
COMMENTS ON NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Politics, economics, and social issues, as seen through Pridger's mud-splattered lenses.
Why Pridger writes this Blog

WANT AMERICAN JOBS?
BUY AMERICAN MADE PRODUCTS!

AMERICANS WORKING
http://www.americansworking.com/

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
ON PROTECTION, FREE TRADE, AND LABOR
Circa 1896