Time to Hunker Down

Yesterday Standard & Poor's Ratings Services lowered its outlook on US government debt from “stable” to “negative. This should be no surprise to anyone who follows financial news. At least two of the largest bond buying investment firms, including Berkshire Hathaway, have already stopped buying US Bonds or divested themselves of US Bonds. In fact, for some months the US government has been printing cash and “borrowing” from itself because NOBODY with money will lend it to them. Printing and spending unlimited quantities of cash devalues all the other cash in circulation. It inevitably results in runaway inflation. We are already seeing massive inflation everywhere we look. Food, fuel, metals, wood, transportation, manufactured products, all are up almost 50% with no end in sight.

What does the US government plan to do about the collapse of the US economy. NOTHING!. The Obama wants to keep spending like there is no tomorrow. He says we should raise taxes on everyone who still have enough money to start a business or buy some bonds until they are as broke as the 47% who pay no taxes now. His proposed so-called “budget” plans to double the US debt in 10 years and then some other generation of politicians can figure out what to do. In current political rhetoric, The Obama advocates kicking the can down the road again.

Republicans are no better. Despite their much ballyhooed advocacy of cutting spending, the Republicans advocate borrowing $2 trillion more in only the next 18 months. Republicans say that their so-called “budget” won't become balanced for 40 years. Everybody knows that a politician making promises longer than 4 years is the same as “never.” A few “TEA PARTY” Republicans want to balance the budget and stop borrowing, but the senior Republican leadership sides with Democraps to out vote conservatives.

So there is no hope for government to save itself. It is rushing pell mell toward total financial collapse. That will precipitate a revolution or restructuring of government. The transition won't be fun. There will be famine, pestilence, war, shortages, disease, and death by the millions. By comparison the Great Depression will look like good times.

Some other nations are already having food riots and their governments are blaming the US for burning food as motor fuel. On Sunday I couldn't get their Bacon Burger because they were out of bacon. Later the same day I heard business news that there is a bacon shortage in the US. The US is now having a shortage of bacon, on business news and at one local hamburger joint. Our government is forcing conversion of corn to motor fuel instead of corn being fed to hogs. That is what the loony bins call “green.” In real terms it is another step to global famine.

I saw a news today from SCOTUS. Several states are trying to shut down electricity production to reduce CO2 in smoke. The electric industry argues that only the Federal Government EPA has authority to do that. EPA is slower to implement regulations but is working on it too despite refusal of Congress to authorize them to do so. The Obama doesn't need no F'ing Congress to destroy the national economy. My own state Legislature already outlawed our only coal fired electric generation plant. They were given a couple years to close down.

There is a reason that the world's highest buildings are in Kuala Lumpur. They encourage business. There is a reason that Kuwait is constructing massive housing for rich people and making huge profits doing so. Kuwait welcomes people with wealth. Meanwhile an anti-American communist US government is working hard to drive business and wealth out of the country as it destroys the United Sates we once knew.

How long will it last? When will it collapse. Have we reached the tipping point yet? What should you do now?

If you have portable assets you should already have moved to Kuala Lumpur, Kuwait, Hong Kong, South Korea, or some other nation that values economic wealth. If you are a member of the working poor you are stuck here and need to be prepared for the crash.

By now you should have stored a year of food, ammunition, and some trade goods. You cannot depend on the electric grid, gasoline supplies, or even running water for a while. Mobs of starving people or armies of the Communist loony bins may end up foraging through our homes to steal our stored food and take our guns. They likely will act much as the communist police state did in New Orleans after they caused the flood by stealing levy maintenance money. The same communists who caused the total collapse of our once great nation will try to blame everyone else while they rob us to survive. That's why you should have stockpiled ammunition. After the collapse you can join together with your neighbors for mutual protection, forming militias and armed defense groups. You can protect yourselves and your families against the marinading hordes of starving libtards who created the disaster.

The news is all bad. The tipping point is at hand. Lying media still whines about raising the government's debt limit long after they have passed the limits of lenders. Their FED prints money and calls it “monetizing the debt.” Runaway inflation has begun. This may be your last chance to stock up while you still can. Get ready to hunker down and defend your home for a year.

Understanding Money

If you attend a TEA Party meeting these days, or even some Republican Party caucuses, you are likely to find people advocating a return to “Hard Money” or “Commodity Based Money” or “The Gold Standard” for money. They are uneasy, or more likely afraid, that the US Dollar will collapse and render everyone's savings worthless. History is full of examples of nations where runaway inflation soon required a wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread. It is a very real concern considering the way our government has been spending money it doesn't have, borrowing Trillions of dollars for socialist programs, and “printing” money by bushel baskets and carloads. They worry about the Federal Reserve Bank, which they accurately point out is a commercial contractor to the government, not even part of the government. The Federal Reserve Bank is owned and run by individual business men, not by the people.

But their demand to return to some mythical good times when money was gold coins is not realistic and not going to solve the problem of runaway government spending. In fact, the demand for “commodity based” money shows so little understanding of basic economics that it makes the advocates appear to be silly and ignorant. It calls into question the rest of their proposals, some of which have a lot of merit.

To understand the problem better we first need to understand money and the history of money. What money is, and what money is not. From Dictionary dot com we have, “Mon-ey, noun, 1. any circulating medium of exchange, including coins, paper money, and demand deposits.” Remember that definition because we will get back to it. First I'll digress into the history of the Dollar and how we got to where we are today.

Back before the American Revolution, the British Colonists used English Pounds when available. There was also a lot of Spanish Doubloons and Pieces of Eight in circulation, especially in the more southern colonies. The silver Pieces of Eight were often cut into as many as 8 pieces or “bits.” Even today a US quarter dollar is still sometimes called “two bits.” The money system was mostly chaos. Farmers often bartered produce for blacksmith goods. Merchants and small shops took whatever they could get in payment. Buckskins or beaver pelts were sometimes used on the frontier. Two bucks might buy you a jug of whiskey. If you distilled whiskey like George Washington you might trade 5 gallons for a piece of furniture. Gold or silver was good if you could get it, but it was hard to come by in many parts of rural America.

The US Government began in debt. The Continental Congress borrowed most of the money that financed the Revolutionary War. They wrote bonds or notes to purchase materials, arms, and food for Washington's army, or to pay soldiers. When the new Constitutional government was created it took over the debts of the Revolution. Washington and Congress adopted a tax on whiskey to raise money to pay off the debt, but many distillers had no money. They bought stuff with jugs of whiskey, not money. There was a “Whiskey Rebellion.” President Washington had to call out the Militia to stop angry farmers who distilled whiskey from taking over the new government.

The word “Dollar” comes originally from Low German. In 1519 a Bohemian silver mine near the town of Joachimstal minted silver coins. The coins came to be called “Joachimstallers,” or Tallers” for short. Tallers from Joachimstal and later from other places were widely circulated in what is now Germany and much of northern Europe, New York was originally founded by Dutch and called New Amsterdam until it was captured by the English and renamed New York. There were German Tallers in circulation in New York and among immigrants from places such as Denmark or Germany. English colonists began using the term “Taller” or now “Dollar” to refer other silver coins such as Spanish pieces of eight. During the American Revolution there was a lot of public sentiment to divorce as much of America from England as possible. One way that division was created was to abandon English money and create American money. Continental Congress adopted “dollar” when it set up U.S. Currency in July 6, 1785. The decision was based on the suggestion of Thomas Jefferson and others, because the term was widely known but not British. No American dollars were actually used until 1794.

Money and commerce in the US was still chaotic from the beginning until the early 20th century. The authors of the US Constitution gave the new Congress the authority to coin money and to regulate interstate commerce, but it took a long time to develop methods to accomplish a uniform system of money that could be used. As mentioned earlier, farmers who used whiskey for trade goods revolted in the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790s because they had no money to pay President Washington's new tax. The first minting of Dollars began in response to that and other critical needs for money to lubricate business in the new America.

We need to stop for a moment in our history discussion to remember that what we call “money” any circulating medium of exchange. Money can be thought of as a kind of oil or even fuel that allows commerce to work. Money has no intrinsic value unto itself but only represents various goods or services that can be exchanged. Hold this thought. We will come back to it.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, many commercial banks were started by enterprising men in just about every town across America. As anyone who has ever borrowed money knows, when you go to a bank to borrow money they don't hand you a pile of gold. They write a “draft,” “note,” or “cashier's check,” and hand you a piece of paper with their promise to pay written on it. During the 19th century banks all across America printed bank notes or the bank's promise to pay and gave them to people who borrowed “money” from the bank or who made deposits of gold or silver for the bank to hold. For any larger purchase a bank draft is much easier to handle than a strong box full of gold. By the middle of the 19th century the majority of buying and selling in the US was done with bank notes issued by thousands of small town banks. Over 90% of the people were family farmers who did all their business with the local merchant, but the chaos of money was an ongoing problem.

With thousands of banks issuing their own notes or “money” to be used in local business nobody more than a few miles away from the small town knew if the notes were any good or not. How could a merchant in Atlanta buy wheat from Ohio if he had to pay in bank notes on a bank that neither the buyer or the seller had ever heard of? How could a beef merchant in Chicago or New York City pay for cows from Texas? And the new railroads had to allow people in every city and village to buy tickets or pay for freight shipments. There were frequent local and some national panics caused by a loss of confidence in bank notes. There were frequent “runs” on banks where people would lose confidence and start taking all the notes to the bank demanding gold. None of the banks kept enough gold to pay all their notes. The bank's assets were in loans to other people, a note or mortgage from some farmer or merchant, not gold. The chaos of a thousand bank notes and frequent panics became worse and worse as people and commerce left the farms and moved to cities. By the last part of the 19th century frequent panics had become common. Business and manufacturing was getting to be impossible. Something better had to be found.

Using “money” made of gold, silver, or copper is a lot like speculating in the commodity markets. The value or price of metals goes up and down according to supply, demand, and speculation. Almost 30 years ago a guy I worked with invested most of his saving to buy gold at about $800 per ounce. A few weeks later the market price of gold dropped to less than $400 per ounce. His investment in gold “hard money” was a loss until only the past couple of years the price of gold went back up. Buying gold, silver, oil, or potatoes is a little like going to a casino and rolling some dice. It does not make a stable basis that large and small businesses can count on to make payroll week after week.

The solution the government came up with was to contract with a major, government chartered bank to print and issue government notes that would be known and used in every state. The government notes originally said “Pay to the Bearer One Dollar in Silver,” then they said “Pay to the Bearer One Dollar.” Now they don't even say "pay," they just say "Federal Reserve Note, One Dollar." When coins quit being made of silver the paper dollar, bank notes, couldn't promise a dollar in silver because a dollar coin was made of copper or some other alloy. We know the bank as the Federal Reserve Bank and they have several regional branches. We now have only one commercial bank printing bank drafts or bills that we all know. Or do we? Lets look at “money” again.

At the TEA Party, the Republican local caucus, and other places people worry out loud about the government “printing” money to pay its bills. Go back to “hard” money or gold coins, some say. But how does "printing money" actually work in the lives of most Americans?

Green back dollars, the Federal Reserve Notes we are all familiar with, are only about 1% of the money in regular commerce in the US. When the government “prints” money are they rolling the presses to print more greenback dollars? Nope. Lets look deeper into “printing money.”

Often when I go to my local Buy Mart store to get a basket full of stuff I don't have a pocket full of notes from the Federal Reserve Bank to pay for the food, tools, beer, and other stuff. I might whip out my “check” book and write a bank draft or “check” to pay Buy Mart for the stuff. At the end of the month I get a small pile of bills for cable TV, utilities, rent, loan payments, etc. I whip out my check book and write some bank drafts or “checks” to pay them. I have printed money to pay my bills and buy stuff. My “check” is a bank draft, a promise to pay the bearer. It represents a lot MORE MONEY than the Federal Reserve Notes I have in my pocket. Exactly like the thousands of commercial bank notes circulating in the 19th century, I have printed money and spent it. Is it real money? Of course it it. I can spend it to buy stuff. My check is paper money, a medium of exchange regularly accepted in commerce. Every time you or me write a check and spends it, the total of all money in circulation in the US goes up by the amount of money we just “printed.” Your personal check also has the same problem that small town bank notes had in the 19th century. If you go to Atlanta, or Chicago, they don't know who you or your bank are, so they don't want to take your out of town bank draft.

If you look closely at the greenback dollars, the Federal Reserve Notes, they are very much like your personal check. They are promises to pay, a “note” drawn on a commercial bank. The Federal Reserve Note has the bank's name, the Federal Reserve System, and your check has your bank's name. Both have the amount to pay. Both have the signature of the person or entity responsible to pay. The greenback dollar is signed by the Treasurer of the United States, and the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. Even though the Federal Reserve System is actually a commercial bank, the government's note is the same kind of “money” as your own bank note or “check.”

If the TEA Party and Republican Caucus proposal is adopted and we return to “hard money,” you or I would have to take a box of gold, count out appropriate amounts and take it around to all the merchants to pay our monthly bills instead of sending them a bank draft, a check. We would have to get a shipping box from the post office, put in some gold, and mail it to out of town businesses. There would be lots of chance for theft, miscounting, and other problems, to say nothing about the inconvenience to us. We would still have to write out paperwork documenting how much gold we thought we had put in the box. Assuming that there is enough gold (which there isn't) just handling physical stuff is problematic. Its much easier just to write a check (money) and pop it in an envelope. The check becomes our record in case of future question about the amount paid. With a stack of gold we don't have a record. Having to use gold instead of writing checks would be a big problem for every one of us every day.

All the commercial banks in the US print money every day too. When you go to a bank to get a loan for a home or car do they hand you a strong box full of gold? Nope. Do they hand you a suitcase full of greenback dollars? Nope. They print out a bank draft, their check, the same kind of paper money that you can write. The bank hands you a bank draft, their promise to pay, money. Or do they. If we look deeper even the bank checks are only a fraction of money in the US.

The last time I went to a commercial bank to get a loan for a car, they actually did not hand me a check, a cashier's check, or a bank draft. The loan officer pounded a few keys on his computer and caused the bank's computer to show several thousand dollars more in my account. He handed me a deposit receipt for the money, his promise to pay me that amount which I can assign to someone else by writing a check. There are no greenback dollars that I can fold and stuff in my pocket. The bank had just created several thousand dollars, but all of it existed only as numbers, or organized electrons, in the bank's computer. Is it real money? Of course its real money. I can go to any store and spend it. I can go to a car dealer and buy a car with it. I can go to a land seller and by real property with it. I can go on-line to Wal-Mart dot com, type in my numbers, and they will send me a new 47 inch HD TV made in Asia. If it isn't real money I couldn't spend it at Wal Mart.

It turns out that over 90% of ALL THE MONEY in the US exists ONLY as organized electrons or magnetic fields representing a binary code of 1s and 0s in someone's computer.

The "hard" money argument says that the government could not spend money it doesn't have if it could only spend gold or silver money. That is true, but neither could any of us 360 million American people. Our economy could not function without the demand deposits, checks, and organized electrons lubricating business and shopping. Shoe stores and grocery stores, farms and factories could not function. Even if we wanted to hand gold back and forth instead swiping a card or shopping on-line, there just isn't enough gold for a world population of 6 billion to do business. Most of us don't want to give up shopping on-line either.

Many of us don't even write checks very often any more because they are slow and tedious compared to swiping a card or typing in our account numbers. We call it “plastic money” because the card that holds the computer code strip is plastic. Is it “real” money? Can you buy stuff with it? Of course you can. Would you rather have to count out gold and ship it to the Amazon to buy a book rather than entering your VISA card numbers? No, you would not. Requiring “hard money” instead of data code money would just close down most of the businesses and jobs in the US. In the 19th century people often didn't have “money” to buy meat and potatoes because they had no gold. It was chaos. We do not want to bring that dysfunctional chaos back.

Arguing for a return to “hard” gold money or “commodity based” money would do away with almost all the real money that is used today to facilitate computerized business. Many of the checkout clerks at grocery and dry goods stores are now called “scanners” because their job has become one of data entry into computers. They scan the products sold, and scan the magnetic coded strip on the customer's card. They are still able to accept greenback notes, but they don't like to. I don't spend the greenback dollars, the Federal Reserve Notes any more except at yard sales and hamburger joints.

The Congress wisely has authority under the Constitution to "coin" money and promote or regulate interstate commerce. Technology and population have moved our "money" from gold and silver coins to binary computer codes, but it is still "coining" money. And a nation wide system is still necessary to regulate interstate commerce.

When the TEA Party or Republican caucus argues for a return to “commodity based” or gold standard money, they display a real ignorance of the meaning and use of money. This advocacy shows a lack of economic good sense so sever that it discredits their general understanding of economics in other areas. Obviously socialists are economic nincompoops, but “hard money” conservatives have no claim to economic sense either.

There are real reasons to fear for the economy today considering the abysmal mismanagement going on in the Obama regime. Massive deficit spending is done by selling bonds at auction and writing government checks with no money in an account. It may, in fact, destroy confidence in US Dollars to the point where they become effectively worthless. But its not done by “printing” greenbacks. It is done, mostly, by entering revised data in bank computers. Lets get real, and go after the real problems.

The FemiNazi Hate War Heats Up

According to a recent study commissioned by Women in Journalism found that boys are almost always shown in journalism as being bad. When anything positive is said about a boy it is because he is dead. At the same time, a survey of nearly 1,000 teenage boys found 85 per cent believed newspapers portray them in a bad light.

March 15, 2009, Miami, FL: A man barged into a birthday party early Sunday, shot his adulterous “cougar” wife, her latest young "boy toy" fuck, her grown whore daughter, and her feminazi mother. Then went home, set his truck and house on fire and killed himself, police said. News story here

March 12, 2009, Samson, AL: U.S. authorities are trying to deflect understanding of why a man killed 10 feminists in the worst attack in Alabama's history. The misandrist political liars focused on the grudges that he supposedly bore. Michael McLendon finally had enough. He killed his abusive mother, his matriarchal grandmother, his aunt, two cousins and five others including the wife and daughter of the pig who lived across the street from his matriarchal grandmother. His attack on Tuesday had the hallmarks of a planned attack against the feminist dominated society. News story here News story here

March 11, 2009 Germany: Investigators now say a 17-year-old gunman who killed 15 people, mostly females, in and near his former high school in Germany took his own life. They first said the blue gun thugs shot and killed the man during a firefight. Blue gun thugs also reduced the death toll by one to 15, saying a report that a student had died in the hospital was incorrect. Lying gun thugs say the gunman entered the school and opened fire, shooting at random. What investigators are lying about is that the shootings were not random. The attack targeted abusive female teachers, female students, and females outside the school. They say he killed nine students, three teachers and a passer-by outside the building, but won't report the counter attack by a man against abusive dominant females. News story here

As the femiNazi hate war on boys and men gets worse and worse, we will see more and more counter attacks against the evil in men's lives. Some of the men will become become suicide attackers. Some will be killed by the blue gun thugs. At first a few will survive to be sent to some hellhole prisons. As the counter attacks become more common there will be more and more courageous men who wage the war against feminist destruction and live to fight again another day. Many good men will die fighting the femiNazi, as did Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. But their names and their courage will live on.

May they all be blessed with courage and conviction. And may all good men hoist a glass to the martyrs who die fighting against the very violent and destructive femiNazi anti-men hate war.

Nothing Ever Changes.

Someone asked recently why so few voters bother with state and local elections in the USA. That is a good question. Most states had local elections this week on Tuesday, and again as usual, less than half of the eligible voters showed up to vote. In addition to candidates for Mayor, City Council, County Council, and Judges, there were votes for many tax increase proposals and amendments to state constitutions or local city charters. But few people voted. Doesn't our vote matter? Doesn't every vote count? No, despite what the talking head pundits always say, it really doesn't matter who we vote for most of the time. Most of us know that.

Bob has been observing elections for about half a century, and has read widely about government theory and performance. The first principle of government is the ratchet effect. Legislative bodies always pass more laws. They never erase old laws. They always enact new programs, establish new agencies and bureaus, and levy more taxes to pay for the new tentacles of the bureaucracy. It is very rare that any agency or bureau is deleted. Like a ratchet wrench tightening the screws on the people, it only “clicks” one direction. Every “click” it tightens the screws. Every time you wiggle the wrench back and forth it clicks ever tighter. The same effect happens in government. Every time the voters wiggle the government it goes click! Every time it tightens the screws on what once was a free people.

The second principle of government is incompetence. A private business that fails to meet its budget or fails to satisfy a real need of the public soon finds itself bankrupt and goes out of business. You see few companies making buggy whips any more. Private business makes a profit and satisfies the public or it goes away. The government by contrast never has to make a profit, and never has to satisfy anyone at all. Government managers salaries are legally set by the size of the budgets they administer. If a manager of a bureau or agency can figure out how to spend twice as much money doing the same job, government law says he should be paid more, not less. The effect of such insane laws push every government manager to constantly work to spend more and more and more money. None of them ever tries to spend less, because getting the job done for less would, by law, no longer justify their salary. Government is about spending money, our money. It's not about doing a job or satisfying the customers.

The third principle of government is control and domination, power. People who go into government are looking for power. The power motivation applies to all government workers from the blue gun thug inductee to the elected congresscunt or mayor. They use their power to extract “favors” and “donations” from citizens and businesses. Power corrupts, and elected power is every bit as corrupt as hereditary power. In some ways, hereditary power has more freedom not to be corrupt. A hereditary King is often born rich, is secure in office, and doesn't have to make a pile of cash quickly by corruption and extortion like most elected officials.

So why should we the people bother to vote? Lets look at the city council races. We see yard signs that say something like “SNODGRASS -- Position 3.” What does that tell us about Snodgrass as compared to the other candidates? It tells us nothing at all about what Snodgrass will do to make a difference in the government. All that it really tells us is that voting for Snodgrass will ensure the continued existence of “Position 3” Then we see another sign saying “Dirks – Position 3.” Now we have a choice. We can ensure the continued existence of “Position 3” by voting either for Dirks or Snodgrass. Neither candidates promises to make any difference in anything else in our lives. Neither will half our local taxes, Neither will stop the highway robbery of travelers. Neither will take out the parking meters. Neither will even slow down the ratchet effect of local government. Whomever we vote for, Position 3 will continue, the city government will continue, and NOTHING WILL EVER CHANGE!

Neither does voting on the “issues” have any significant results. In Seattle, for example, the voters have approved tax increases for an elevated rail transit line from downtown to the West Seattle area more than 10 times over the past quarter century. Every time the politicians lied to the people and promised to improve life for a portion of the people if the taxes were approved. Every time the taxes went up, the corrupt politicians pocketed large sums of the people's money, and to date they have never turned the first shovel of dirt constructing the elevated commuter rail line. This past Tuesday the voters in Seattle were again asked to approve a tax increase for another corruption “transit” program. This time the voters turned it down. I guess we found out how many times the same voters will believe the same lies. But it doesn't really matter, the corruption in Seattle government will go on and on regardless. This year again in Washington State the voters were asked to change the state constitution to allow tax increases for schools with only a simple majority vote instead of the constitutionally required 60% approval. The same issue has been voted on and rejected every few years all my life, about half a century now. But voting it down does not have any effect. The corrupt politicians just recycle it. There plan is to rely on the ratchet effect. If they keep wiggling the ratchet it will one day go click and the public will be screwed again. In half a century we have elected dozens of new legislators, new governors, new councilmen, but the same old tax increase levy proposal goes on and on. It has made no difference at all which candidate got elected over 50 years. NOTHING WILL EVER CHANGE!

And judge positions are even worse. In most US States it is even illegal for judicial candidates to say anything at all about making improvements in the corruption of the court system. We are supposed to vote for them blindly, and that doesn't matter either because the agents of Satan in black robes of hell are all the same. NOTHING WILL EVER CHANGE!

It is the same for national offices too, from the President to the congresscunts. Year after year, decade after decade, century after century, the ratchet effect of big government tightens the screws down and down. False promises to “lower taxes” only mean that the rate of increase in taxes will be slowed for a while. The people have been DEMANDING that our borders be controlled for decades. Regan promised to control the borders if we accepted an amnesty program – just this once. He may have meant it at the time, but whether or not he had good intentions didn't matter at all. The result was exactly the same. The government has ignored the people and continued on and on with its corruption and failure. Bush, Clinton, Bush, the border problem only gets worse and worse. The Christian coalition falsely believed that electing Republicans would make a difference. They mobilized millions of voters and overturned the Democratic Congress. But in the long run, nothing mattered. The Republican Congress kept right on doing all the things that corruption and politicians do. They ignored the needs of the people, taking for granted the constituency that had extended themselves to make changes in Congress. The Christians forgot the fourth principle of government, NOTHING WILL EVER CHANGE!

The majority of voters in the US have leaned that our vote really doesn't matter. The government will do what it does regardless of how we vote. And, in fact they won't allow an election to stand if it is only decided by 1 vote. Since you, and I, are only 1 vote, they won't allow your vote or mine to decide an election. Our vote, your vote, my vote, will never decide an election and will never change the government. Our vote doesn't really matter. NOTHING WILL EVER CHANGE!

Every year the politicians and talking heads blame the people for not voting. They spew the usual whine that a citizen who doesn't vote has no right to gripe that the government is bad. But like all government lies that is just another lie. The truth is that voting doesn't make any difference. The problems in the government are the same and will be the same whether you or I voted or not. One theory is that the only function of the elections is to placate the people, to keep us from rioting in the streets and beheading all the corrupt liars, bullies, and robbers who take our money to destroy our families. Elections do not have a function of making changes in the government. Elections are completely ineffective doing that, and your vote won't have that result. Your vote only serves to show your approval of the continuation of “Position 3” in a very corrupt and very over bloated government.

There is one faint ray of hope in all this. One political theory says that over centuries ratchet government eventually becomes so bloated and eats so much of the people's resources that the people can't take it any more. According to the theory the people eventually rise up against the government and throw them all out, erase all the tangled web of laws, eliminate the bureaucracy, and start over. The theory says that it takes a government about 200 years to become so corrupt and so bloated that it fails completely and must be replaced. The United States is now over 200 years old.

Talk Radio host and now CNN host Glenn Beck lives in New York City where he produces his CNN program. Last week he spoke of getting out of NYC and visiting Texas. He observed that many of the people he met in Texas are wondering when and how the people can “take back our country.” According to Beck, the Texans weren't wondering about voting the rascals out of office, because that obviously is no solution and never was a solution. The Texans are talking about tossing out the whole government and starting over. It's been over 200 years.

"It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part." Benjamin Franklin. Old Ben was a very wise man who understood the need to overthrow a tyrannical government.

Bob never advocates any treason, insurrection, revolution, or any other popular uprising. Bob is only a cyber libertarian, philosopher, and observer of politics, history, and political theories.