The Slumlord's Buddy

Is NOT the only major-party socialist presidential candidate running.

You Think We Live In A Free-Market Society...

Guess again.

Just Like The Great Depression

This current economic downturn is the fault of the state.

Regardless Of Who Wins Week After Next...

The likelihood is, we're still going to have the same neocon foreign policy.

Those Who Believe In Firearm Ownership Rights

Aren't gonna be thrilled with either establishment party candidate.

Pro Libertate: Fare Thee Well, and Get Ye Lost

Pro Libertate: Fare Thee Well, and Get Ye Lost

LONG LIVE THOMAS JEFFERSON!

LONG LIVE JEFFERSON DAVIS!

LONG LIVE JOHN WILKES BOOTH!

SECESSION NOW!

Tom DiLorenzo's Book On America's Original Neocon

I bought his book on Monday and it is an excellent read.

The Wall Street Bailout

Here is Karen Kwiatkowski's take on it and government.

No Matter Who Wins In Novemberf....

Chances are you will be electing a Hamiltonian socialist disguised as a "Republican" or "Democrat."

Pro Libertate: The Enforcement Arm of the Robber State

Pro Libertate: The Enforcement Arm of the Robber State

So, what else is news?

Imagine

If we had a society based on individual freedom and liberty instead of the force of the state.

Deflation and Liberty

Guido Hulsmann's take on it, with a link to it from a blog article by Lew Rockwell.

More Evidence......

That the New Deal simply HAD to fail.

In 1932, the marginal tax rate went up to 63 percent on top incomes. In 1935 Roosevelt pushed it up to 79 percent, and we started at five percent, and the exemption was lowered, so more people were paying taxes. But it starts at five percent and it goes up to 79 percent. Now, you could see why, right? All these programs had to have a payment. But here's something that is not explained. What about the work ethic of those people in those top brackets? In 1929, you were telling them, you get to keep three-fourths of whatever you make. Now you're telling them you give more than three-fourths to the government. What's your work ethic going to be with a 79 percent tax? Tax-exempt bonds, stamp collections-that was Roosevelt's personal exemption, he had a good stamp collection-coin collections, foreign investments, Swiss banks, anything to shelter that money. But do you see why the depression is prolonged? Who's going to invest to create the jobs to get us out when you're being taxed 79 percent? Do you think the revenue then is going to go up when the tax rate is 79 percent? Very good thinking, we have some supply-side thinking in the crowd. We raised in 1929 over $1 billion. It was almost $1.1 billion in income tax revenues. In 1935 when the tax rate was 79 percent, our take for the government on income tax was $527 million-less than one-half of what it was in 1929. Did you catch that? Twenty-four percent of something is something, and seventy-nine percent of nothing is nothing-because the high tax rates chased capital into tax-exempt investments.

Therefore in order to get money, Roosevelt had to tax poor people, so he instituted excise taxes-especially on whiskey and tobacco. Prohibition ceased to be law. He explicitly said I want that whiskey in there so we can tax it. Disproportionately middle-class and lower-class people drink. Roosevelt wanted their money. We therefore had a high excise tax on whiskey and tobacco. We instituted for the first time in our history a federal gasoline tax. See, the income tax hits the rich back in the twenties, now we are putting in excise taxes because we have to fund the New Deal. The money has to come from somewhere, and the rich people just sheltered their investments. We had other excise taxes on cars, taxes on tires, on telephone calls, telegrams, movie tickets, and bank checks. And they wanted to do it on soft drinks, but Coca-Cola was too strong a lobby, so they settled for grape concentrates. The revenue from excise taxes in this country went from $500 million in 1929 to $1.36 billion in 1935.

What I want you to see is these programs-WPA, AAA, and Silver-are funded by excise taxes on middle-class, lower-class people drinking, smoking, driving cars, going to movies. That is where much of the funding for the New Deal came from.

Now, with Roosevelt you say, "My gosh! How could he win elections?" Roosevelt went on the campaign trail in 1936 and said, "You poor people are doing your share, but the rich are avoiding the taxes. We should make them pay." And he recommended a tax to congress, on all income over one hundred thousand dollars. His recommendation in 1941 was for a 99.5 percent tax on all income over one hundred thousand dollars. And when the budget director said, "What!" Roosevelt's comment was, "Why not?"

When congress refused to pass that bill, Roosevelt was furious. Therefore he instituted a 100 percent income tax, by executive order, on all income $25,000 or more. I repeat, Roosevelt instituted an executive order on April 27, 1942 for a 100 percent income tax on all income over $25,000. How many of you knew about that? Oh good, somebody did. Actually, the Republicans won the next election and voted it out, and Roosevelt had to settle for 90 percent. He had to settle for a 90 percent marginal tax. Here's a quotation from Roosevelt, it was during World War II, "Discrepancies between low personal incomes and very high personal incomes should be lessened." Oh, and he used the war as a crisis, you see. "And I therefore believe that in this time of grave national danger, when all excess income should go to win the war, no American citizen ought to have a net income after he's paid his taxes of more than twenty-five thousand dollars."

It was simply designed- as with any other socialistic piece of male bovine excrement- to wind up an abysmal failure.

Hey, Would Be Latter-Day New Dealers

Before you continue your destruction of what's left of what passes for the free market, you better read this.

Pro Libertate: Slouching Toward Bedlam

Pro Libertate: Slouching Toward Bedlam

It has failed before and it would fare no better this time out.

Didn't Work For Herbert Hoover Or FDR Either

It will prove to be another case of John Maynard Keyenes and his followers being proven wrong. Another insightful observation from Ron Paul.

Why Fascism Instead Of Communism ?

Tom DiLorenzo posted this on the blog page of the Lew Rockwell site and it is very interesting:

"Private ownership of savings . . . can be socially controlled. The social abuses connected with savings are encountered mainly in the mechanics of investment and financial management by the large banks, savings institutions, and insurance companies which handle savings. It is a relatively easy matter for the State to preserve the present de facto rights and interests of small savers while completely nationalizing the financial institutions which now administer their savings."

This excerpt was from page 176 in the chapter entitled "Why Fascism Instead of Communism?" in the 1936 book The Coming American Fascism written by American pro-fascist author Lawrence Dennis.

Laissez-Faire Economy? WHAT Laissez-Faire Economy ?!

Just as was the case with the Great Depression, it was NOT free markets that have caused this economical meltdown.

Alexander Hamilton

His support of the corrupt British-style mercantilism, just like the folklore of Dishonest Abe, is the stuff of comic-book history.

Voting----An Act Of Treason????

Here is Thomas J. DiLorenzo's take.

Pro Libertate: What Rough Beast...

Pro Libertate: What Rough Beast...

Another excellent Will Grigg column.

Do I smell secession movements?

Remember, Boys and Girls....

The New Deal, in reality, started during the administration of so-called "free market" President Herbert Hoover, which, bad as it was, in turn, became mutant under Franklin Roosevelt.

Who, of course, is the Democratic Party's version of God.

I've got news for the Roosevelt and/or state worshipers.

The New Deal was an abysmal failure.

World War Two did not end the Great Depression.

It was NOT the free market that started the Great Depression. It was government intervention.

Another memo to the FDR worshipers.

God is dead. Has been since April 12, 1945.

What Did "W" Do?

According to Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Ca), President Bush theatened to impose martial law unless the bailout bill was passed.

The Current Financial Mess: Whose Fault Is It?

You might blame it on the man who may have been the founding father of crony "capitalism."

So Much For Liberty

Two days after the Senate had lone likewise, the House on Friday passed the revised (ha ha---more like clogged with pork) bailout bill. Some 57 congressmen who voted "no" on Monday changed their minds.

Here's Ron Paul's take.

UPDATE (10/06/2008): Here's the roll call of the House members who re-voted on the Bailout Bill.

Podcast Devoted To Dishonest Abe

Here's an appearance by author Thomas J. DiLorenzo on the Lew Rockwell Show.

Compassionate Abe

Mr. Lincoln sure had a big, BIIIIG, heart.

How and why tens of thousands of Northern men said "no" to Lincoln’s military invasion of his own country in the name of "national unity" is told in chapter and verse. Some men "deliberately enlisted in the Union forces in order to be carried South on to Confederate soil in order more easily to cross the lines and join the Confederates." In the border states about half of the men in the U.S. Army deserted. Many took advantage of sick leave and furloughs to leave the army for good. An entire Pennsylvania regiment simply refused to go to West Virginia when ordered. After being coerced onto a train, over 100 of them jumped off. Many Northern men refused to cross their state lines, seeing it as a violation of their enlistment agreements, and eventually deserted.

There were thousands of "bounty jumpers" who, because of "the large and numerous bounties given to volunteers," were induced "to desert for the purpose of reenlisting, or to enlist when the recruit knew that he had no intention of remaining in the field." Many of the bounty jumpers were from "the large Eastern cities" where many of the men in the Union Army were "raked in" by the Lincoln regime despite the fact that they were "criminals, bullies, pickpockets, and vagrants." A great many of them "enlisted under fictitious names, such as Abe Lincoln, Johhny Boker, or Jim Crow."

There were also secret organizations in the Northern states that discouraged enlistment (Lincolns abolition of free speech in the North required secrecy of all dissenters to the war). "The existence of disloyal organizations through the North is notorious," wrote Professor Lonn. The massive desertions by Union solders were "disgusting to the rebels themselves," wrote one Union soldier.

Although General McClellan had 180,000 men on his official roster prior to the Battle of Antietam (a.k.a., Sharpsburg), he had no more than 90,000 during the battle itself, Professor Lonn remarks. General Sherman reported 70,000 men missing during the Battle of Shiloh.

In June of 1862 General Buell reported from Tennessee that 14,000 officers and soldiers were "absent" from his command. When General Hooker took command of the Army of the Potomac in January of 1863, "desertions were occurring at the rate of several hundred a day." About 25 percent of his army was "absent" according to the Official Records. There was still massive desertion taking place as late as the spring of 1865.

"Tender-hearted" Lincoln oversaw a government in which "executions [of deserters] were taking place almost daily in the Army of the Potomac." General Halleck complained to Lincoln that "hundreds of officers were almost continually absent from their commands" and that about 200 more were absent without leave every month.

According to the Official Records there were 100,000 deserters from the Union Army in 1862 alone. When General Hooker took control of the army he found that 2,923 commissioned officers were missing along with 82,188 non-commissioned officers and privates. General Halleck computed that one-third of the entire army was "absent." The largest numbers of deserters were from New York, followed by Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Jersey.

Among the methods used by Union soldiers to desert were: taking advantage of the confusion of battle; purposeful capture by the Confederates; escaping while on the march; jumping from trains; riding off on their cavalry horses; deserting the picket line; hiding in suttler’s wagons; pretending to be teamsters; and posing as telegraph repairmen.

Yeah, sure. That was par for the course for Dishonest Abe.