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Re: Gold...........Which way its going?
It's very easy to blame ALL of this on the Republicans, but it's simply not true. I'm re-posting this response I gave on another forum addressing this very same subject:
You sound like a very angry man, Steve, and considering the present mess our country finds itself in you have good reason to be angry. And the Republicans of this present day deserve much [if not most] of the scorn heaped upon them. Yet it helps to remember, as Churchill once said,
” The truth is so important that she is usually surrounded by a bodyguard of lies”.
There is nothing “new” or “conservative” about the NeoCons. They are the “Boat-People” of the McGovern Revolution, which took over the Democratic Party from 1969 – 1972. They fled the hard-left lurch within their own party to the Republican Party of that day, which was Nixonian and certainly not conservative in the traditional sense, and they carried their Wilsonian Utopianism with them (“We must fight to make the world safe for democracy”, Woodrow Wilson, 1917; does this ring any bells?). Such views of the world are naive beyond belief, and, if made into the foreign policy of the United States (as George W. Dumbass did) they will bleed and bankrupt our nation. As an example, IF, as “W” said, we will not allow dictators to threaten us, and after he found no nuclear weapons in Iraq, justified the invasion because “freedom is on the march”, then we should immediately plan an invasion of Mainland China so we could free the greatest number of captives from tyranny! Sounds insane, doesn’t it? That’s because it IS insane. And it was the intellectual elite within the Democratic Party that gave birth to this idea, though not for cynical reasons like Bush. (Woodrow Wilson was one of only two Democrats elected President over a period of seventy-two years, and before taking office in 1913 he had been the President of Princeton University). Now to be fair there was also a “Progressive” movement within the Republican Party led by Teddy Roosevelt that would have sympathized with this utopian nonsense (although in a more calculated fashion), so we must be careful not to assign all of the blame to the Democrats. Neither party has a monopoly on fools.
Now to the problem of inflation.The men who founded this republic knew full well the fraud of paper fiat money and prohibited such in Article I, section 8. No less than Oliver Wendell Holmes insisted that the language must be taken literally, that “coin money” meant to strike of metallic coins, and that the whole of the Constitution’s monetary provision was clearly intended to exclude everything from use as a circulating medium of exchange except gold and silver. So did James Madison (The Federalist #44, 1788.) So the present system of TOTALLY fiat money is clearly unconstitutional to any reasonable jurist, except for the likes of Stephen Breyer, the wonderful Clinton appointee who wrote the opinion expanding Eminent Domain to seize private property for NON-public use!
It was the Republican Party in the late 1800s that defended the gold standard from over twenty years of near continuous assault by the “Free Silver” group in the Democratic Party led by William Jennings Bryan. The Federal Reserve was established during the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) and the confiscation of gold and the abandonment of the US Gold Standard was done by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Democrat). It was Lyndon Baines Johnson (“Daddy Bird” – the biggest spender of all Democrats) who fired the opening salvo against the pseudo-convertibility of Bretton Woods in 1968, when he stopped the redemption of gold bullion for US Dollars held by individual foreign nationals through the issuance of SDRs. Nixon administered the coup-de-grace in 1971 when he ended ALL convertibility, denying even foreign central banks (most notably the French) the right to convert to US gold bullion. He defaulted on the Dollar, but the deed was already accomplished before he took office. Nixon refused to reappoint William McChesney Martin – the best central banker of them all – when his term expired in 1970. Although Martin was a Democrat, he stood up to political pressure from LBJ and refused to debase the Dollar. (He was one of the finest public servants this nation ever had – read about him!). The self-serving Nixon blamed him for his loss in 1960 against JFK and appointed Arthur Burns instead, arguably the worst Fed Chairman ever, until Greenspan and Bernanke.
Thus began the colossal mess, which we now find ourselves in, the deed having already been accomplished before Barack Obama took office.
(I wonder if now having surveyed the situation Obama is tempted to ask for a recount!)
We have only had two conservative Presidents since Coolidge: Eisenhower and Reagan. Both of them placed the national interests of the United States FIRST, and through a prudent foreign policy knew when to hold ‘em and when to fold’em.
Both of them actually read the Federalist Papers as well as Washington’s Farewell Address and had the prudence and good sense to know that wars bring about the death of republics, and that this is what our country was meant to be – not an empire.
The tax cuts passed by the Democratic Congress during Reagan’s first year in office were not the cause of all of our problems. Tax receipts to the US Treasury almost doubled from 1981 to 1988 (up 88%). It was out-of-control spending by the House of Representatives under “Tip” O’Neil, Jim Wright, and Tom Foley that drove the deficits to such high levels. There was a large military build-up during those years, and I supported it then and make no apology for that now. Johnson and Nixon had squandered a whole decade of military procurement in Vietnam. The Soviet Union was a mortal threat to the United States and was at its peak of military power, even as its economy was in terminal decline. With men like Brehznev, Chernenko, and Andropov running their government it was a very dangerous period indeed. But, even with the military build-up, there was no excuse for the Congress to far more than double Federal spending during those eight years. In fairness, the Republicans controlled the Senate for six of those eight years and did little to hold down Federal outlays.
As a people we have always been willing to listen to “vote buyers” running for congress who love to promise us things that the government (read: “someone else”) will pay for. As Walt Kelly said through his famous cartoon character, Pogo Possum, “We have met the enemy, and they is us”.
There is plenty of guilt to go around, and I NEVER voted for either of the Bushes. The only answer from the government side would likely come from Ron Paul or someone else just like him, in terms of economic and foreign policy. I am far too conservative in the real sense of the word to be a Republican. But looking for fiscal responsibility from the Democrats is a pipe dream.
Originally posted by c1ue
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You sound like a very angry man, Steve, and considering the present mess our country finds itself in you have good reason to be angry. And the Republicans of this present day deserve much [if not most] of the scorn heaped upon them. Yet it helps to remember, as Churchill once said,
” The truth is so important that she is usually surrounded by a bodyguard of lies”.
There is nothing “new” or “conservative” about the NeoCons. They are the “Boat-People” of the McGovern Revolution, which took over the Democratic Party from 1969 – 1972. They fled the hard-left lurch within their own party to the Republican Party of that day, which was Nixonian and certainly not conservative in the traditional sense, and they carried their Wilsonian Utopianism with them (“We must fight to make the world safe for democracy”, Woodrow Wilson, 1917; does this ring any bells?). Such views of the world are naive beyond belief, and, if made into the foreign policy of the United States (as George W. Dumbass did) they will bleed and bankrupt our nation. As an example, IF, as “W” said, we will not allow dictators to threaten us, and after he found no nuclear weapons in Iraq, justified the invasion because “freedom is on the march”, then we should immediately plan an invasion of Mainland China so we could free the greatest number of captives from tyranny! Sounds insane, doesn’t it? That’s because it IS insane. And it was the intellectual elite within the Democratic Party that gave birth to this idea, though not for cynical reasons like Bush. (Woodrow Wilson was one of only two Democrats elected President over a period of seventy-two years, and before taking office in 1913 he had been the President of Princeton University). Now to be fair there was also a “Progressive” movement within the Republican Party led by Teddy Roosevelt that would have sympathized with this utopian nonsense (although in a more calculated fashion), so we must be careful not to assign all of the blame to the Democrats. Neither party has a monopoly on fools.
Now to the problem of inflation.The men who founded this republic knew full well the fraud of paper fiat money and prohibited such in Article I, section 8. No less than Oliver Wendell Holmes insisted that the language must be taken literally, that “coin money” meant to strike of metallic coins, and that the whole of the Constitution’s monetary provision was clearly intended to exclude everything from use as a circulating medium of exchange except gold and silver. So did James Madison (The Federalist #44, 1788.) So the present system of TOTALLY fiat money is clearly unconstitutional to any reasonable jurist, except for the likes of Stephen Breyer, the wonderful Clinton appointee who wrote the opinion expanding Eminent Domain to seize private property for NON-public use!
It was the Republican Party in the late 1800s that defended the gold standard from over twenty years of near continuous assault by the “Free Silver” group in the Democratic Party led by William Jennings Bryan. The Federal Reserve was established during the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) and the confiscation of gold and the abandonment of the US Gold Standard was done by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Democrat). It was Lyndon Baines Johnson (“Daddy Bird” – the biggest spender of all Democrats) who fired the opening salvo against the pseudo-convertibility of Bretton Woods in 1968, when he stopped the redemption of gold bullion for US Dollars held by individual foreign nationals through the issuance of SDRs. Nixon administered the coup-de-grace in 1971 when he ended ALL convertibility, denying even foreign central banks (most notably the French) the right to convert to US gold bullion. He defaulted on the Dollar, but the deed was already accomplished before he took office. Nixon refused to reappoint William McChesney Martin – the best central banker of them all – when his term expired in 1970. Although Martin was a Democrat, he stood up to political pressure from LBJ and refused to debase the Dollar. (He was one of the finest public servants this nation ever had – read about him!). The self-serving Nixon blamed him for his loss in 1960 against JFK and appointed Arthur Burns instead, arguably the worst Fed Chairman ever, until Greenspan and Bernanke.
Thus began the colossal mess, which we now find ourselves in, the deed having already been accomplished before Barack Obama took office.
(I wonder if now having surveyed the situation Obama is tempted to ask for a recount!)
We have only had two conservative Presidents since Coolidge: Eisenhower and Reagan. Both of them placed the national interests of the United States FIRST, and through a prudent foreign policy knew when to hold ‘em and when to fold’em.
Both of them actually read the Federalist Papers as well as Washington’s Farewell Address and had the prudence and good sense to know that wars bring about the death of republics, and that this is what our country was meant to be – not an empire.
The tax cuts passed by the Democratic Congress during Reagan’s first year in office were not the cause of all of our problems. Tax receipts to the US Treasury almost doubled from 1981 to 1988 (up 88%). It was out-of-control spending by the House of Representatives under “Tip” O’Neil, Jim Wright, and Tom Foley that drove the deficits to such high levels. There was a large military build-up during those years, and I supported it then and make no apology for that now. Johnson and Nixon had squandered a whole decade of military procurement in Vietnam. The Soviet Union was a mortal threat to the United States and was at its peak of military power, even as its economy was in terminal decline. With men like Brehznev, Chernenko, and Andropov running their government it was a very dangerous period indeed. But, even with the military build-up, there was no excuse for the Congress to far more than double Federal spending during those eight years. In fairness, the Republicans controlled the Senate for six of those eight years and did little to hold down Federal outlays.
As a people we have always been willing to listen to “vote buyers” running for congress who love to promise us things that the government (read: “someone else”) will pay for. As Walt Kelly said through his famous cartoon character, Pogo Possum, “We have met the enemy, and they is us”.
There is plenty of guilt to go around, and I NEVER voted for either of the Bushes. The only answer from the government side would likely come from Ron Paul or someone else just like him, in terms of economic and foreign policy. I am far too conservative in the real sense of the word to be a Republican. But looking for fiscal responsibility from the Democrats is a pipe dream.
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