THE SHEARING IS NEARING
PART 1 of 2

 

 

 

Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.
February 14, 2007
NewsWithViews.com

One reason why patriotic Americans are accomplishing precious little in reasserting control over their country, while the Establishment steadily advances its agenda on almost all fronts, is that patriots are not taking advantage of their overwhelming numerical superiority in the places where they can best bring it to bear. Instead of joining together for effective�indeed, potentially unstoppable�political, and particularly legislative, action in favorable venues at the State and Local levels, all too many of them are sitting out the contest as mere spectators.

This is because most Americans are not rabid political animals with ravenous appetites to dominate, oppress, and exploit others, but instead are basically decent people who want only to be left alone to lead their own lives, as they see fit, in peace and quiet. They may be aware of some of the schemes the Establishment�s political Pinocchios are hatching in the Disgrace of Columbia and various State capitals. Yet they hope that the worst of these complots will not come to fruition during their lifetimes, or that in any event they personally can avoid trouble, remain well employed, and continue to enjoy reasonably good incomes, live in respectable homes, and eventually enjoy comfortable retirement. But why do they hope and imagine that such a scenario is possible?

The notion that a placid and prosperous life for most Americans can continue indefinitely is unrealistic. There will be trouble. Big trouble. And sooner rather than later.

An article entitled �Is the United States Bankrupt?,� in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review of July/August 2006 (page 235), provides rather disturbing evidence supporting this prediction. The author shows that the difference between the General Government�s future expenditures and its future receipts over a economically realistic period�the so-called �fiscal gap��is some $65.9 trillion (page 239). Yes, TRILLION. Estimates of this astronomical magnitude can be confirmed elsewhere. See, e.g., the data collected by John Williams, Shadow Government Statistics, [Read]. And even the Comptroller General of the United States (in a letter attached to the 2006 Financial Report of the United States) has calculated that the government�s negative net worth as of 2006�which he acknowledges to be about $53 trillion�amounts to an hypothecated burden of debt of some $170,000 on every single American. This is no �conspiracy theory,� but a set of undeniable financial facts. It is also no smokey prognostication about an uncertain future, but a fully documented description of harsh reality right here and now.

This situation raises two questions that every adult American must answer: (i) Is he ready to assume for himself that huge share of the General Government�s negative net worth, and multiples of it for his family? (ii) If so, how could he possibly pay it?

Why, though, should average Americans accept and assume responsibility for the gargantuan profligacy represented by the predicted $65.9 trillion shortfall in the fiscal gap? After all, much�perhaps even most�of this amount has been and will be incurred for unconstitutional programs and expenditures. Therefore, no matter its source in supposed statutes of Congress, implemented by the President and approved by the Judiciary, and no matter how large it may be, that unconstitutional increment is not a legitimate obligation of the United States at all, and cannot legally be imposed by the General Government, or its supposed creditors, on We the People. As the Constitution states, �[n]o Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.� Article I, Section 9, Clause 7. And no �Appropriations� can be �made by Law� if the statutes supposedly authorizing them violate the Constitution. Article VI, Clause 2. So, the parties liable in justice to make good on these unconstitutional obligations are: first, the thieves�that is, the politicians, bureaucrats, and judges who originally arranged for or permitted the funds to be stolen; and, second, the receivers of the stolen goods�that is, the special-interest groups that have gorged on these payoffs in the recent past and will continue to do so in the near future.

The politicians, bureaucrats, and judges are in an especially difficult position, because the Constitution�which provides the sole basis for their authority�also supplies the primary and conclusive evidence against them. Simply laying the terms of the various programs and expenditures against the text of the Constitution will prove who is at fault.

To be sure, elected officials will claim that they are innocent of any wrongdoing, because the voters have authorized or ratified their actions by electing and re-electing them. The flaw in this �we were just following orders� argument, however, is that the voters cannot authorize, ratify, or in any other way approve the least violation of the Constitution. Even if, during an election-campaign, politicians ran explicitly on the platform that once in office they would engage in specifically delineated unconstitutional actions, and were elected on that very basis, their subsequent behavior in fulfillment of such pledges would nevertheless be legally void. For, as soon as they took office, they would be required to take an �Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.� Article VI, Clause 3. Their �Oath or Affirmation� would not be to fulfill thieves� bargains they may have negotiated with voters (or, more realistically, with the special-interest groups that deceive and manipulate the voters), but to follow �this Constitution,� no matter what contrary promises they might have made to anyone. As the Constitution recites, public officials �shall be bound by [their] Oath or Affirmation.� They are not �bound� by their campaign promises, let alone absolved from their �Oath or Affirmation� by those promises. Quite obviously as well, �bound� means that public officials can be held legally responsible and accountable, in their own persons, for violating their �Oath or Affirmation.� And where that violation involves illegal expenditures of undoubted public moneys and the illegal amassment of supposed �public debt,� the perpetrators of those illegalities�not their victims and dupes among the general public�are liable, and should be made to pay damages to the fullest extent of their estates and abilities.

Every American can be sure, however, that these miscreants will never willingly accept responsibility for their fiscal wrongdoing, let alone bear its financial burden when the bill comes due. Even though they know perfectly well who is at fault, and why, they will bend their best efforts to impose all of the costs of their criminal careers on YOU.

The article �Is the United States Bankrupt?� suggests that, in an attempt to wash away the red ink with which they have filled the General Government�s books, the politicos in the Disgrace of Columbia will perpetrate the further mega-crime of hyperinflation: the Federal Reserve System�s massive �monetization� of new debts emitted by the General Government (see pages 241-242). Obviously, the author of that article was not indulging in a �conspiracy theory,� but was making an informed prediction of how the Money Power, operating through the Federal Reserve System and the Department of the Treasury, will endeavor to save itself, its political marionettes, and its special-interest clients at every other American�s actual expense.

And actual expense it will be! All debts are always paid�if not by the debtors, then by the creditors, or by some third parties. Hyperinflation will fill the fiscal gap through a vast redistribution of wealth from society as a whole. And not simply a redistribution of wealth, but also a confiscation of wealth, because the transfer will be imposed under color and especially by force of law (the �legal-tender law,� 31 U.S.C. � 5103, coming foremost to mind). And not simply a confiscation of wealth, but a surreptitious confiscation, because most Americans will have no idea what is going on, and who is benefiting from it�any more than sheep at the shearers, or the slaughterhouse, have any idea of who benefits from the marketing of their wool or their meat.

True, the politicos will benefit from hyperinflation, because tens of millions of minnows in the General Government�s sea of creditors will lose the real value of their claims by being forced to receive worthless currency in payment. But, precisely because it is so promiscuously destructive, hyperinflation will not serve the interests of the sharks: the General Government�s most politically influential domestic creditors, and especially its foreign creditors who can make trouble in international arenas. Anyone compelled to accept a rapidly rotting currency in payment of a debt can expect some, and probably a significant, real financial loss on the transaction. So a �conspiracy theorist� (that is, a monetary and political realist) must anticipate that the big-money boys, both here and overseas, will design a financial escape hatch through which they and their cronies can wriggle when the ship of state sinks in an hyperinflationary tsunami. After all, who can imagine that the porcine special-interest groups that pull the politicians� strings would ever permit their marionettes to force them to settle their claims against the General Government for hyperinflated currency the purchasing power of which is many orders of magnitude less than its nominal value?!

Besides, even if the General Government arranges to pay off the $65.9 trillion fiscal gap through the Federal Reserve System�s �monetization� of that amount of new �public debt,� the Treasury�s books will then show a $65.9 trillion liability to the banks and other holders of the new Treasury paper. How will that mountain of principal (and the interest owed on it) be paid when they come due? Through the Treasury�s direct issuance of $65.9 trillion of �greenback� irredeemable, legal-tender fiat currency, in another round of hyperinflation that wipes out the banking system and the powerful special interests that control it? Will the bankers and their allies sit still for that?

No, whatever the sequence of events in the coming financial meltdown, the small but powerful set of knowledgeable, skillful, and above all ruthless parasites that fatten off the General Government will demand�and through their political Pinocchios will attempt somehow to arrange to receive�REAL wealth, measured and delivered in REAL things, the value of which cannot be hyperinflated away by politicians�, bankers,� and governmental bean-counters� accounting tricks and printing presses. And that necessarily will entail taking�by main force, if necessary, where deception fails�real things from the real people who now have them.

Of course, the special interests will not loot themselves, their families, their friends, their political cronies and clients, and their other partisans. No, indeed. What sense would robbing Peter to pay Peter make? Rather, they will arrange to loot YOU, demanding that the General Government confiscate YOUR valuable things in order to pay the part of the $65.9 trillion shortfall that you, as a member of �the public,� supposedly owe to them. And steeped in the confidence that derives from having successfully corralled the sheeple in the pens of political apathy, sloth, and impotence these many years, they will throw all moderation to the winds, and attempt to shear common Americans to their very skins.

So, as larger and larger installments of the $65.9 trillion bill come due, in addition to hyperinflation Americans might well expect public officials in the General Government to initiate programs of �taxation in kind� through direct physical confiscation: that is, seizures of real and personal property�such as common Americans� businesses, houses, land, securities, gold and silver, or such �luxuries� as one�s second automobile�that will simply be taken outright and then turned over to the government�s favored domestic and foreign creditors to pony up the $170,000 or more that each American allegedly owes as his share of the General Government�s negative net worth. Or, invoking �eminent domain,� officials might well �condemn� common Americans� property, and then transfer it directly to favored creditors, with the original owners being paid off in currency hyperinflating at such a rate that, just weeks or days later, they ended up with paper notes or bank balances of so little of real value that for all intents and purposes they had been �taxed in kind,� too.

In the face of these possibilities�which the fiscal gap of $65.9 trillion makes strong likelihoods�what do YOU intend to do? Will you persist in imagining that fiscal push will never come to financial shove? Will you insist on assuming that the crisis�about which even the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review warns this country�will never impact you, personally? Will you desist from making any defensive preparations, in the belief that, should all Hell break loose, it will nonetheless be more prudent to be taken for a sheep than a goat, and quietly to endure your and your family�s shearing? Or will you resist, in every constitutionally permissible manner?

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Rest assured that what you decide today you will be required to live with tomorrow. For the fiscal gap is a national trap that is inexorably closing. Once the financial swallows come home to the Disgrace of Columbia, there will be no going back�only �forward,� into the New World Disorder of economic dislocation and deprivation enforced by a thoroughgoing police state.

So, what can and should be done? That question Part Two addresses. For part 2 click below.

Click here for part -----> 2,

� 2007 Edwin Vieira, Jr. - All Rights Reserved