Forget buying a ton of gifts. A week before Thanksgiving, the holidays are shaping up as a season of no frills.

And for some, the joy of family time and gift-giving has been replaced this year by a quest for basic necessities as more jobs are lost and unemployment benefits start to expire.

Michigan, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation at 14.8 percent in September, has a food crisis going into the holiday season.

“We have people coming to the food bank who said they were donating to us last year, but who are now out of work and in need themselves,” said Alison Bono, who coordinates marketing for the Mid-Michigan Food Bank in Lansing.

She said that close to 1,000 people stand in line for produce handouts each week as they seek to supplement food stamps with fresh fruits and vegetables.

A little more than week before Thanksgiving, food bank supplies that used to be enough to last for six to eight weeks are now down to 10 days, said Ms. Bono, who calls the current seasonal needs

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By Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D. November 22, 2009

NewsWithViews.com

As most of my readers know, I have long advocated the use of alternative currencies, consisting of silver and gold, in order to return America to constitutional and sound money. There are three means by which such alternative currencies could be introduced into the economy: (i) through an act of Congress; (ii) by State legislation, one State at a time; and (iii) by the private action of individuals. At the present time, option (i) is likely impossible; and option (ii) will require a fair amount of political organizing and “grass-roots” lobbying in suitable “target” States before the first such statute can be enacted. For the time being, then, that leaves option (iii) as the only way to move ahead immediately. Of course, purely private action alone cannot reform even one State’s monetary system.

But, besides protecting those individuals who learn how to use alternative currencies in their own financial transactions, private action can help to educate other members of the general public about this issue, so that they can be mobilized for political action. In some situations (such as this offer), where the value of silver and gold are rapidly fluctuating in the marketplace as against paper currency, where the monetary value of the transaction is relatively small, and where the likely number of such transactions occurring over a lengthy period of time may be large, “gold clauses” may prove to be too cumbersome to use. But in many other situations, particularly when a significant length of time may occur before the payment for some good or service is finally made, they can provide a major degree of protection against loss in the real value of a contract that would otherwise occur were some paper currency employed as the medium of exchange and legal tender for the transaction.

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By Paul Proctor November 18, 2009 NewsWithViews.com

Giving others the glory that is due God

One of the more popular tactics of modern-day marketing is the use or should I say misuse of celebrities. They’re everywhere these days peddling this, endorsing that – posing as “experts” with a special knowledge or wisdom into whatever the public at large assumes they have simply because their face and/or voice is recognizable and trusted due to some past or present and often irrelevant career, affiliation, endeavor or event that gained them a degree of notoriety.

It is human nature for people to trust the familiar more than the strange; and marketers know this all too well. Consequently, many of us will instinctively treat the advice a celebrity gives as the counsel of an astute, discerning and well-informed friend – especially if they’ve played a memorable role, hosted a top-rated show, held an influential office or position, written a best-selling book, made a lot of money, sang a hit song or broken some record in the field of sports that impressed or moved us in some way.

Under their exploited influence, our envy and infatuation often bypasses logic, reason and sound judgment, persuading us to listen and follow their lead even though they don’t know us and we don’t know them beyond the manufactured and well-guarded image we see and hear in the media.

This is the mysterious power of celebrity – a seductive and intoxicating force that too many covet and too few fear – a form of inebriation and delusion, and at times, insanity that incites brazen and bizarre behavior from those who fawn at the feet of fame, making them say and do things they would not otherwise.

The next time you happen to be anywhere near a celebrity, don’t watch them – watch the people around them and you’ll better understand what I’m talking about. Hopefully, what you see and hear will be offensive enough to keep you from being brought under the celebrity’s spell.

Although the power of stardom is quite common, I find it amazingly hard to explain. Maybe it’s a stress-related chemical released into the human body that renders fans shamelessly foolish and irrational – a combination of adrenaline and dopamine being dumped into one’s bloodstream causing them act goofy and say dumb and embarrassing things. Or could it be a demonic spirit in or around certain celebrities that adversely affects those in their presence?

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By Cliff Kincaid November 17, 2009 NewsWithViews.com

Robert W. McChesney, the socialist professor whose Free Press organization is leading the charge for the $50 billion “progressive” transformation of the media, hosts a one-sided, tax-supported radio program sponsored by the University of Illinois that could serve as a model for the “New Public Media” the group has envisioned for America.

As Accuracy in media was the first to disclose, McChesney recently introduced Obama’s anti-American pastor Jeremiah Wright at a celebration of the socialist publication Monthly Review. Wright praised Marxism and called America “land of the greed and home of the slave.”

As AIM has documented, McChesney’s organization, Free Press, has led the campaign for what it calls “New Public Media.” McChesney’s “Media Matters” show on WILL radio AM 580 in Urbana, Illinois, may be the model for what Free Press has in mind. The Sunday show is an examination of politics and media issues from a hard-left perspective and serves as a personal propaganda vehicle for McChesney’s favorite political causes and candidates.

In response to an inquiry from Accuracy in Media, McChesney couldn’t name one conservative who has been on his show since it was launched in 2002.

“There is no shortage of ‘conservative’ talk available to listeners in our community,” he told us, presumably referring to other stations. “There are precious few programs anywhere on the dial that feature many of the guests we have.”

This may indeed be true. A review of the archives of the McChesney radio show finds interviews with a steady stream of left-wing activists, many of them from the “media reform” movement that McChesney has dedicated much of his academic life to creating and nurturing. These include John Nichols, Ben Scott, Josh Silver, Derek Turner, and Craig Aaron from Free Press, which McChesney co-founded in 2002. (He still serves on its board.) Interestingly, Scott was one of McChesney’s students and helped produce his radio show before going to work for then-Rep. Bernie Sanders, a self-declared socialist, and then becoming director of policy for Free Press.

McChesney has provided a platform for representatives of the left-wing media watchdog organization that also calls itself Media Matters. Topics have included “How hate talk radicalized the American right,” “How the press rolled over for Bush,” and “What liberal media?” The entire thrust of the program is that the media are too conservative and too “capitalist.”

McChesney has also interviewed FCC commissioner Michael Copps a number of times on his show. Copps appeared at the 2008 Free Press conference and used the Obama campaign slogan, “Yes, we can,” as he urged the thousands of “progressives” in the audience to elect Barack Obama and bring “change” to Washington, D.C.

No Fairness or Balance Here

The one-sided nature of the show is ironic since Free Press regularly attacks Fox News for not being truly “fair and balanced.” Indeed, when one of its former board members, Van Jones, was being exposed on Fox News for his communist views and background, Free Press said this “visionary and principled” leader was the target of a “smear campaign.” Later, after Jones was ousted from his White House job, Craig Aaron of Free Press said that Glenn Beck, who had been exposing Jones, was an agent of “fear and misinformation,” without explaining what facts about Jones had been misrepresented.

WILL Radio AM 580, affiliated with National Public Radio and sponsored by the University of Illinois, received $1.2 million from the University of Illinois and almost $1.6 million in federal grants, including from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), in 2008.

Under the law, 47 U.S. Code, Section 396(g)(1)(A), programs funded by the CPB are supposed to be objective and balanced. But McChesney openly flouts the law and does not even seem to be familiar with the legal obligations that are supposed to apply to his show and others.

McChesney told AIM that his program “is very popular in our community” and that “The free market has spoken.” But his show is not dependent on the free market. Rather, it is supported by tax dollars and on-air fundraisers hosted by McChesney and guests such as Noam Chomsky of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a Communist Party spin-off.

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By Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D. November 4, 2009

NewsWithViews.com

[The following is the full text of a somewhat shortened address presented to the Committee for Monetary Research and Education on 15 October 2009…]

The more things change, the more they remain the same. In 1814, in an address to the House of Representatives, Daniel Webster observed that

public credit, the last reliance of government, * * * does not exist. This is a state of things calling for the soberest counsels, and yet it seems to meet only the wildest speculations. Nothing is talked of but banks, and a circulating paper medium, and exchequer notes, and the thousand other contrivances which ingenuity, vexed and goaded by the direst necessity, can devise, with the vain hope of giving value to mere paper. All these things are not revenue, nor do they produce it. * * * [N]or is there a device more shallow or more mischievous, than to pour forth new floods of paper without credit as a remedy for the evils which paper without credit has already created.[1]

Even earlier, Thomas Jefferson had predicted the reason for such a sorry state of affairs:

From the conclusion of the [W]ar [of Independence] we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights.[2]

Jefferson was all too prescient. Ever since his day, the political class has looked elsewhere than to the American people for support—and always found it from the financial class.

The financial class has arrayed itself on the side of the political class, and the political class has arrayed itself on the side of the financial class—not just in an incestuous coupling, but in the veritable fusion of a political-cum-financial hermaphrodite: the full integration and consolidation of bank and state.

This unholy alliance has always centered around a mechanism by means of which the financial class can create ersatz “money” out of nothing tangible—through a monopolistic national bank (the First and Second Banks of the United States), then a national banking conglomerate (the National Banks of the Civil War), and finally a fully corporative-state banking apparatus (the modern Federal Reserve System), all operating on the basis of “reserves” so increasingly fractional that they have now become essentially fictional. Through the General Government, the political class has guaranteed the continuance of this scheme, in one form or another, for more than two hundred years. By so doing, the political class has always been able to count on the support of the financial class—but only at the cost of enabling the financial class to exercise exorbitant influence over the General Government, and through the General Government over the American people themselves.

The true name of this system is financial fascism.

As with all fascistic arrangements, it involves an axis of coöperation between big private special-interest groups and rogue public officials—in this case, the Axis of Financial Fraud that runs from Lower Manhattan in New York City to Washington, in the Disgrace of Columbia.

Whenever and wherever a scheme of this type has been put into operation, it has rested upon a threefold fraud:

First, the falsehood that the purpose of “money” is to serve some disembodied entity—“the economy”; or some institution—“the government”; or some self-selected élite—“the financial community”, rather than the people as a whole.

Second, the falsehood that “money” should be created and managed by self-styled “experts” who are politically independent of the people.

Third, and most important, Full Article

By Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D. November 17, 2009

NewsWithViews.com

[The following is the full text of an address presented to the National Heritage Center for Constitutional Studies at its 2009 Constitution Day conference.]

The Tenth-Amendment Resolutions from State Legislatures, the Tea Parties, the Town Hall Meetings, and other manifestations of WE THE PEOPLE’S feedupidness with monkey-business as usual in the Disgrace of Columbia—even the massive congregation on the Mall last September—are some of the most enlightening, encouraging, and energizing developments that American patriots have witnessed in a long time. For these events are all premised on the idea: “We don’t want you!”—that WE THE PEOPLE do not want any more, indeed they demand a great deal less, interference in their lives from rogue public officials in the General Government.

These events notwithstanding, the problem remains that too many among WE THE PEOPLE will start but then stop right there, with “We don’t want you!” That is not enough.

The complaint “We don’t want you!” needs to go further, to the resolve, “We won’t have you!” — that WE THE PEOPLE intend to rid themselves of the General Government’s interference.

And to make this resolve effective, WE THE PEOPLE need to design and put into effect remedial action, so that they can say with finality: “We don’t need you!”

The sequence must be—

(i) We don’t NEED you!” which makes it realistic to say:

(ii) We don’t WANT you!” which combined with the ability to make WE THE PEOPLE’S wants effective will lead to the necessary and sufficient action:

(iii) We won’t HAVE you!” and finally will yield the desired result:

(iv) We are RID of you!”

If WE THE PEOPLE have the ability they can give “teeth” to the desire, take the necessary action, and thereby accomplish their goal.

But what will all of this require?

• WE THE PEOPLE need to create actual workable institutions that take advantage of the political and legal position THE PEOPLE hold—i.e., as the ultimate sovereigns.

• WE THE PEOPLE need to create actual workable institutions that take advantage of the economic resources THE PEOPLE command—that THE PEOPLE are the true source of all real wealth in this country, and are in actual physical possession of most of it.

True enough, the Establishment holds bundles of paper claims to wealth, many (if not most) of them generated through the unconstitutional Federal Reserve System. But the insuperable problem for the Establishment will be how to collect on those claims if WE THE PEOPLE simply refuse to honor them. Anyone in the paper-currency racket who doubts that these claims can be declared unenforceable should read the Supreme Court’s decision in Craig v. Missouri, 29 U.S. (4 Peters) 410 (1830).

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By Chuck Baldwin November 20, 2009 NewsWithViews.com

By now, virtually everyone has read and reread the copious news accounts of the terrible shooting a few weeks ago at Fort Hood, Texas. This column will not attempt to add new details to what is already a highly scrutinized tragedy. However, I do want to pose three basic questions that, to me, are extremely glaring and, for the most part, absent from the discussion.

Question 1: Why were the soldiers not armed?

After all, this is a military base; more than that, it is an Army base that emphasizes the training and equipping of frontline, combat-ready soldiers. For the most part, these were not clerks or cooks; these were combat troops. Fort Hood is home to the 1st Cavalry Division (the largest Division in the Army). Troops stationed at Fort Hood have engaged the enemy in virtually every hot theater of war to which American forces have been deployed. In recent conflicts that means Somalia, Bosnia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Without a doubt, these are among America’s bravest and best.

So, how is it that these intensely trained, disciplined, rugged, highly qualified warriors are not allowed to carry their own weapons on base? This makes about as much sense as the policy forbidding airline pilots from carrying their own handguns on board commercial airliners, or teachers not being allowed to carry their own handguns in the classroom. After all, judges are granted the authority to carry their own firearms into the courtroom. If we can trust lawyers, we should be able to trust soldiers, airline pilots, and teachers.

Question 2: If the federal government–including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, etc., with billions of dollars worth of technology; tens of thousands of snoops, spooks, and intelligence gatherers; and myriad Patriot Act-type laws–could not protect US soldiers on one of the most tightly secured and heavily guarded military installations in America, how can anyone in the country possibly not break out in cacophonous laughter when politicians tell us we need to surrender more liberties so that they might pass more laws to protect us crummy little peons? Or is it that, because Hasan was a Muslim, the politically correct nincompoops in charge gave him a pass?

Consider: we have learned that the shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, had attempted to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda; that numerous classmates of Hasan had reported his anti-American views, which, according to a column written by Dennis Prager, “included his giving a presentation that justified suicide bombing and telling classmates that Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution”; and that Hasan had a long history of pro-Islamic, anti-American activity. All of which begs an answer to the question, How could such an individual not only be allowed in the US military, but also be allowed to advance to the rank of Major

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According to a report in World Net Daily, “Troops in the United States’ USNORTHCOM ranks appear to have adopted a shoulder patch showing a North American continental design, with an emphasis on United Nations colors, giving evidence of the strength to integrate North America.

“The patch reveals the continent of North America in the orange and blue colors typical to the U.N.

“It also carries the image of a mosque to designate the unit’s service in North Africa in World War II.”

The report also states, “The design of the patch with the U.S. eagle image superimposed seems to imply a hierarchy in which the U.S. 5th Army exerts its military command under the authority of USNORTHCOM, with its domain defined as all North America, including the U.S., Mexico and Canada, for the United Nations, as implied in the orange and blue motif.”

See the report here.

As most of my faithful readers know, USNORTHCOM is a combatant command “created to respond to national emergencies in North America.” Readers should also be aware that the US and Canada signed an agreement earlier this year allowing the armed forces from one country to assist the armed forces of the other country during a “domestic civil emergency, EVEN ONE THAT DOES NOT INVOLVE A CROSS-BORDER CRISIS.” (Emphasis added.)

Creation of a North American Union has long been the goal of the elitists at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and sister organizations. This objective is so far along now that anyone who would question it simply isn’t paying attention–or has an ulterior motive for denying it.

In fact, I have chronicled much pertinent information relative to this burgeoning North American Union on my web site. I encourage readers to review (and share) the information I have accumulated on this page. See it here.

Readers will recall that former President George W. Bush, then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, and then-Mexican President Vicente Fox signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) on March 23, 2005, in Waco, Texas. The SPP was based upon the CFR’s Task Force report entitled “Creating a North American Community,” which was issued just prior to the Waco gathering. Remember, too, that the SPP was signed without any knowledge, oversight, or consent of the US Congress–or any Canadian or Mexican legislative body either, for that matter.

As the WND report states, “The unannounced goal of the SPP was to create a North American Union by advancing the trade integration realized in NAFTA into continental political integration through the creation of some 20 trilateral bureaucratic working groups and the North American Competitiveness Council, or NACC, composed of 30 North American business executives–10 each hand-picked by the chambers of commerce in the three countries.”

In this regard, it makes absolutely no difference whether a Republican or Democratic President sits in the Oval Office. President Barack Obama is pushing forward with the same internationalist policies as did his predecessors, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George Herbert Walker Bush. (And, no, Martha, nothing would have changed had John McCain been elected last year.)

For the most part, the leaders of both major parties in Washington, D.C., are globalists. With few exceptions, they have all bought into the CFR’s philosophy of internationalism. The fact that we even have such a military command as USNORTHCOM–and even more, that the unit is wearing insignia with UN colors and a three-nation, North American patch–without the slightest protest from virtually any US congressman or senator, demonstrates the apathy of Washington elitists regarding America’s merger into a multinational governing structure.

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Taken from http://www.federalobserver.com

As I explained in my last segment, the Philadelphia Convention was, more often than not, nothing more than a heated argument over the size, scope, and structure of the proposed federal government.

Although the delegates were not unanimous in their approval, they did manage to come up with the Constitution as it exists today. Yet it Full Article

Taken From http://www.federalobserver.com

April 28, 2009 - The year was 1787, the city, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The event was a convention to revise the Articles of Confederation, although for the most part, the delegates attending this monumental meeting of minds realized that a mere revision of the existing Articles would not suffice. The consensus among many was that aFull Article

April 24, 2009 - As I mentioned in my last installment, the proposals to draft a Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation were made within days of each other. The war for independence was still in its early stages and the fight would continue for years.

It speaks volumes about the mindset of the […]

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April 20, 2009 - Just as the first chapter in the Book of Genesis says, “In the beginning…” I suppose any discussion of the Constitution should start at the beginning as well. The question then arises, when exactly was the beginning? Was the beginning when the Constitution was drafted, or when it was agreed upon by the delegates? Possibly it was when it was ratified by the states, or maybe it was when George Washington was sworn in as our first President? I would venture to guess that most people assume the beginning means when it was ratified by the states. Unfortunately, they would be wrong. The beginning goes back eleven years prior to the time the words ‘We the people…’ were ever written upon a piece of parchment. The true beginning occurred just about the same time the Declaration of Independence was written.

I say that because to understand the Constitution, you must not only understand it’s meaning, but why it was written as well. The Constitution was written to replace the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.

The Articles of Confederation was an attempt by the states to set up some system of government that bonded the states together into one single entity, yet still leave the states as free and independent sovereignties. They also set guidelines as to how the states would deal with each other, as well as how they would work together to defend the whole, newly named, United States.

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Taken from http://www.federalobserver.com

Patriot’s Day: April 19, 2009 - The Constitution for the United States of America is an amazing document. In its entirety it is only four pages long, hand written on parchment, measuring 28 3/4 by 23 5/8 inches, having a grand total of 4,543 words, if you include the signatures of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

Yet in under 5000 words, the drafters of this document outlined an entire system of government. If you ask me, that is a pretty incredible accomplishment for a document that contains so few words. Compare that to the very first Harry Potter book, which contains 76,944 words.

It’s a shame so few people have taken the time to read it. It is sadly ironic that people will take the time to read their morning newspaper, which contains far more words, yet ignore the document that breathed life into their government.

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A recent column co-authored by John Eidsmoe and Ben DuPré struck me. They titled their column, “What makes a ‘great’ president?”

The basic thrust of the column was to examine the qualities that make one a “great” President. They start by examining the Presidency of our 11th President, James K. Polk. They note that Polk is commonly regarded as being one of America’s top 12 greatest Presidents. To use their words, “between eighth and 12th among our greatest presidents.”

Eidsmoe and Dupré note that Polk was undoubtedly a man of outstanding Christian character and faith. They say that Polk was “the only president who kept and fulfilled every one of his campaign promises.” They observe him to be a man “with a Puritan work ethic, [who] literally worked himself to death as president, retired from office in broken health and died 103 days later.”

But Polk also greatly expanded the power of the Presidency. “In 1846, President Polk sent American troops into disputed territory where they were almost certain to become embroiled in hostilities, and then demanded that Congress recognize that a state of war already existed. Increasingly with Polk’s presidency and thereafter, the president set national policy and the Congress rubber-stamped the president’s decisions.”

Eidsmoe and Dupré note that the people who are charged with rating our Presidents are commonly academicians, “and as such they tend to be left of center. They believe in centralized power, and they therefore admire presidents who increased federal power and concentrated it in the presidency.”

In this regard, Eidsmoe and Dupré are 100% correct. Look at the heroes of liberal historians and who do you find? Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt. Not by accident, these same historians will extol the virtues of Hammurabi, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon. All these men have one thing in common: Full Article

There has been a lot of talk in Washington recently about senior citizens, mostly about how various healthcare reform models would help or hurt them. But there is another critical issue that has quietly devastated seniors financially over the last few decades. It concerns how the cost of living is calculated. How does the administration justify not giving a cost of living increase to Social Security recipients this year?

According to the official Consumer Price Index calculation, life has gotten cheaper for the first time in decades. If the government can show statistically that the cost of living has gone down, not up, then they can make the case for not giving a cost of living increase to social security recipients. But does this match reality? Using older calculations of CPI, the cost of living has actually increased – by roughly 5 percent!

The CPI (Consumer Price Index) is a calculation based on the average price of a fixed basket of goods that was initially designed to help businesses adjust for inflation. The government eventually started using it to determine cost of living adjustments for entitlement programs. Couple that with politicians’ discovery that they could raid the social security trust fund to pay for new spending programs, and you have a perfect storm to deny seniors what they were promised, while hiding the true size of the deficit. For politicians, it is a win-win.

For seniors, it is a different story. Economist John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics has estimated that if the original methodology of CPI had not changed, Social Security checks would be nearly double what they are today. This represents a lot of money that politicians have been able to literally steal from seniors, to spend on their own wasteful programs. One example of how they do this is to substitute hamburger for steak, which lowers the average price of that basket of goods. But living on hamburger, or maybe dog food, instead of steak does not represent a constant standard of living. This renders the measurement virtually meaningless, even though politically it comes in very handy.

I have introduced legislation to keep politicians in Washington from ever raiding the Social Security trust fund again. HR 219 The Social Security Preservation Act would assure that all monies collected by the Social Security Trust Fund would only be used in payments to beneficiaries, or be placed in interest bearing certificates of deposit. This would at least stop the bleeding of the fund, and take away some incentive to tease and torture the numbers in order to give seniors the minimal amount. This would also cut off a source of funding for government growth, so

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