The Sunset Amendment
Section 1: No federal department, agency, or bureau may henceforth be
established by law except with an automatic termination date not to
exceed twenty years from the time of such establishment. Continuance of such
a department, agency or bureau for another twenty year maximum term shall
require a two-thirds vote of all members of both houses of congress, held in the year of its termination, and signature of the authorizing law by the
President of the United States. Override of a Presidential veto of such an authorizing law shall require a vote of three-fourths of the members of both
houses of congress.
Section 2: All federal departments (such as the Department of Education,
the Department of Housing and Urban Development, et al.), agencies, and/or
bureaus currently in existence which have been established by law since the
establishment of the seven original cabinet departments shall, within six
months of the adoption of this amendment, be randomly assigned an automatic termination date between five and twenty years from that time. Continuance of such department, bureau or agency shall have the same requirements specified in section 1.
Section 3: Upon termination of a department, bureau, or agency, its assets are to be sold by auction to private parties, and the revenue from those sales, minus the cost of selling the assets, shall be rebated to taxpayers in proportion to their individual taxes paid in the previous year. In the following year federal taxes and the budget are to be reduced by an amount equal to the budget of that department, bureau or agency in the last year of its operation.
Section 4: No original cabinet department shall establish a bureau or
agency within itself designed to perform any function outside the legal function and powers granted to that cabinet department in its original congressional authorization, nor may congress expand the powers of such cabinet agencies beyond their original legal authorization.
Congress, or any other branch of government shall not borrow or lend money or gold for money, this includes purchasing on credit. To request a further amendment beyond this to replace this Amendment or alter it in anyway is Treason, history having shown that borrowing money or creating money with nothing backing but debt it has crashed the economy of countless nations and societies and led to corruption and the breaking down of the political systems of the past.
The management of this website does not support this proposed amendment because of the treason clause. Such a limitation would be disregarded if passed, and would likely be omitted if voting ever should take place on such a proposal.
Banks and Money Section 1.
Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of banks.
Section 2.
Congress shall make no law regarding the amount of gold that any arbitrary denomination shall be, or preventing the use of given weight and metal name as the name of the coin.
Section 3.
Congress shall make no law regarding what shall be legal tender.
Other proposed amendments.
HUMOR: Jump to jokes
JOKES:
Whenever I hear Hillary make a speech, I do't hear scratching on the black board. I think "TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE!"
Peter Namtvedt, May 4, 2008
And Hillary Too
Bloomberg reports that over 200 economists reject proposals by presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain to offer a summertime gas-tax holiday.
Mrs. Clinton: Let's Do Without Experts Reuters reports on Hillary Clinton's weird defense of her "gas tax holiday" gimmick (also endorsed by John McCain): "I'm not going to put my lot in with economists," [Mrs.] Clinton said when asked to name an economist who backed her proposal.
"We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans," said Clinton, a former first lady who would be the first woman president.
So she categorically rejects the views of economists on economic matters? She is acting as anti-intellectual as Democrats claim Republicans are.
For her full discussion, go to Reuters
John McCain's Economic Nonsense
In January John McCain said, while stumping in Orlando, FL, "We are paying a price for violating one of the fundamental principles of economics: Don't lend money to people who can't pay it back."
McCain suggested cracking down on predatory lenders and mortgage brokers that "deceived people" as well as rating agencies "that gave high ratings based on nothing I know of." He also talked about making the mortgage process easier to understand and more transparent. "Why shouldn't (a mortgage document) be one page, and at the bottom say I understand this document?" McCain also said he doesn't "know when this whole thing is going to resolve itself." St.
Petersburg Times
McCain knows full well that the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, beefed up in more recent years, practically forced lenders to home-buyers and small business in poor neighborhoods, to loosen requirements and to be almost too creative. They had to enter this risky area, and dealt with the risk by selling the mostly sub-prime loans, and then they were bundled, sliced and diced, and finally insured with Credit Default Swaps. These derivatives sucked much of the financial community into losing positions as the borrowers found their homes worth less than what they owed, walked out and defaulted.
He has not changed his tune on that topic except to offer hand-outs to borrowers. His message on his economic program otherwise consists of summer gas-tax moratoriums worth a piddly thirty dollars to an average driver, and tax cuts.
We do not get a consistent message from McCain. In 1999, McCain was in New Hampshire, campaigning for the GOP nomination as a moderate. He proclaimed himself a pro-life candidate, but told reporters that "in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade." He explained that overturning Roe would force "women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations." In 2006, campaigning for the GOP nomination as a conservative, McCain said the opposite.
Knowing full well that tying his campaign to staying in Iraq and the "success" of the "surge" (quick, McCain, explain what that means!) and that the majority of Americans just aren't willing to buy it, McCain executes a perfect "cut and run" from his earlier statement of staying in Iraq for 100 years.
"By the way, that reminds me of that '100 year thing'. My friends, the war will be over soon. The war, for all intents and purposes, although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years. But it will be handled by the Iraqis, not by us."
So much for making sense and sticking to one script.
Connecting the Money Dots
Central planning, command and control, government is wreaking havoc on our economy. Major financial events or trends have been in the news lately which seem to be regarded as completely independent of each other:
- The falling dollar
- The take-downs of select commodities: gold and silver
- The collapse of the housing bubble
- Foreclosures or defaults on mortgages
- The rising cost of living (food, energy, etc), with reportedly low inflation
- The cost of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts
- The difficulty of getting loans
- Bank failures
- The reported falling price of U.S. Treasury bonds
- Falling consumer confidence
This paper takes the position that these evens or trends are not at all independent of each other. They are not only slightly connected or related in pairs or triads.
They are all inter-connected.
First, consider the value of the dollar.
Are you prepared for the coming debacle? Are you prepared for the coming failure of the "full faith and credit of the United States"?
Behind the scenes, while most Americans continue to trust the paper dollar, some leaders have persisted over a hundred years to kill the gold money standard we once had.
What is the paper dollar? What is gold money? Why would some people prefer paper to gold?
Paper money must be abolished, except in the form of warehouse receipts for gold or silver. Paper should be permitted to serve to report the transactions and the running balance of your gold account. Our paper monetary system is too easy a way of allowing the government to create inflation.
The government does not simply print more dollars it "injects liquidity" into the market by several methods. It uses the Federal Reserve, which buys U. S. Treasury Bonds, Bills and Notes, to do the dirty work. The Fed writes a check to the government, which spends it. Most of the check amounts wind up in banks, at least temporarily.
The banks loan out 90 dollars of every 100 dollars deposited. The loaned out 90 dollars are spent. A large part of that ends up in bank deposits, of which 81 dollars are loaned out. Keeping that up leads to an estimated seven times as much as what the Treasury initially "injected." This means, by the experience of people as well as the theories of all economic scholars, inflation. How does the U. S. government keep fooling us with reports of modestly low inflation?
The "official" measure of inflation, the Consumer Price Index or CPI, published by the National Labor Relations Board, is a 2-fold fiction. First, it (core inflation) excludes food and energy, which seemed too volatile to the NLRB, but in fact, due to the large effect they would have on the index, would reveal too much how real and how strong inflation is. Second, since the 1990s, the CPI formula has been modified to become more of an index of survival, replacing items which rise in price, such as steak, with similar, cheaper "substitutes," such as hamburger.
Rising prices and low inflation?
The truth is that the cost of living, or inflation has risen when the prices of any of those things have risen, oil, gasoline, bread, steaks or hamburger.
The root problem is that, while gold should be used fore money, we are forbidden from doing so and are forced to use the dollar. The dollar is legal tender, but maintains its value based only on our trust in the U. S. government and on the quantity of money. The proper measure of the quantity of money is the total amount all of us are able to spend, whether it is checks or savings drafts or cash. It is not just the cash in your purse. It also includes the credit limit on your credit cards. It includes even more. See the definitions of the several levels of the "money supply" at Wikipedia.
The trust we place in the U. S. government is almost too fuzzy to discuss, but first, note the clear almost physical facts about the money supply and what it means.
The supply of money, meaning what we all have available to spend, has increased enormously since 1913, when the Federal Reserve Bank was established. The value of one dollar has fallen from a full $1.00 or 100 cents to just $.04 or four cents!
It is still falling. It was eight cents ($.08) in 1913 dollars in the year 2000. Some insist on denying this, asserting that the lowering of interest rates and "injections of liquidity" by the Federal Reserve are not causing inflation. Read the facts about this written by Gary North. But the fact of inflation is clearly visible in every retail outlet, gas stations, groceries, the paint shop, harwares, clothiers and variety stores.
The more dollars available (real cash and all forms of credit) the less valuable each dollar is.
The value of each ounce of god ought to be more valuable. However that is, oddly not what we see. Almost everytime the price of gold rises, some massive selling drives the price down. Selling gold, you see, props up the value of the dollar. This is done to mask inflation and make the balance of trade look better.
The housing bubbleThe Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), intended to get banks to loan money to poor people, succeeded beyond their dreams. Thousands of people who were unable to get loans before were suddenly able to get the loans they wanted to start businesses and mortgages to buy homes. Further government pressure on financial institutions and massive tax cuts enticed people who were not really credit-worthy to take risks which the banks were willing due to the CRA also to take risks. Massive lending of a low grade resulted.
Buying pressure pushed home prices up and up. Everything that goes up must come down. The bigger they are, the bigger they fall.
Falling consumer confidence and the sources of loans drying up
Is there any wonder that consumers are becoming afraid or less confident in the economy? Real income seems to be falling. Each dollar earned does not reach as far as it did ten years ago. Everything costs more. Those who did not extract equity out of their homes when the housing market was hot now cannot refinance or get the additional home equity loan.
A rising number of home-owners are finding it smart to default on their mortgages. The "resets" of their mortgage interest rates is making their mortgages unaffordable. Banks and mortgage investors are facing a big drop in the value of the paper they hold. Conclusion
The U. S. government continually increases the money supply. This causes the value of the dollar to fall, which means inflation of the price of everything we buy. The government forces money-lenders to lend to many who cannot afford to repay the loans. It "injects liquidity" into the market. It drops interest rates too far at times and raises them too high at other times. It creates booms and busts. Stock market bubbles (2000) and housing bubbles (2007) burst and the cycle repeats. Banks fail, the government uses tax money or deficit spending to make them whole, uses crises to pass dangerous laws and manipulates the markets to achieve more power,
P.S. I would like to see Hillary and her entourage (as well as other politicians) riding in hybrid cars instead of Cadillacs and SUVs.
Weekly libertarian magazine promoting thinking for oneself, thus helping to create a free, benevolent society:
Some of my postings:
Why Governments?
Words and Referents
Bank Socialism
Saints in the Lobby
Troubling clauses
The Burden of gov't
Libertatis Æquilibritas
Market Anarchism
