[Image credit: The Profits of War, Brown University Watson Institute Costs of War project]
It’s a crisp Spring Saturday, and I just saw this headline flash across the interwebs in various forms:
House approves $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan
Including: ABC, NYT, AP et so many al… Extended excerpts of the aforementioned (3) included below.
While most of America is busily dusting off the winter doldrums, there are people in positions of power, authority, leadership, and influence, far removed from the rest of us, and completely out of touch with reality, making decisions which adversely effect us all, financially and otherwise. If we didn’t already know it; America is off the rails… Why do I feel like history is rhyming…?
“What no one seemed to notice,” said a colleague of mine, a philologist, “was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.”
Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955) Ch. 13: But Then It Was Too Late
Perhaps I can only speak for myself, I guess… but, I am outraged… I could point to any number of metrics that clearly indicate most Americans are increasingly experiencing hardship these days, particularly in the post-9/11 era. As American industry has been gutted and offshored (‘globalization’) and we continue to hear about the threats of AI (‘automation’) replacing American jobs → workers, one has not to look far to find people struggling. The State of the Union is not what it once was, nor what it ought to be. But, why…?
Lately on RWR I’ve been discussing Richard M. Weaver’s 1948 book, Ideas Have Consequences, and the primary subject matter with which it deals: the harmful effects of nominalism. We are being systematically broken apart, individually and collectively, into a thousand pieces… Without integrity, we are easily manipulated, subjugated. For a visual representation of what I mean, see my COVID-19: Full Circle post featuring an image of a representation of man as a fragmented marionette, as depicted in Biderman and Zimmer’s The Manipulation of Human Behavior (1961).
The Main Thing
First thing’s first; the main thing is always the main thing. And, the main thing is perhaps best represented in the question:
- Who’s in charge; Who decides…?
This sounds simple and straightforward – and, it should be. But, upon closer examination, it proves otherwise. For instance, Based on a Marxist interpretation (“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”) of Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35 people like Raphael Warnock erroneously believe “the early Church was a socialist church.” The distinction is in the question: Who’s in charge; Who decides…? The great socialist philosophers all agree; the State is the ultimate compelling force, ‘God’s will,’ even to be worshipped – what Mises called ‘etatism’ or ‘statolatry’.
“The State has taken the place of God; that is why, seen from this angle, the socialist dictatorships are religions and State slavery is a form of worship…”
Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self (2006)
In contrast, as every Christian knows, in the book of Acts it is (the outpouring of) the Holy Spirit impressing upon people’s hearts, compelling them to act as they did, as confirmed in Acts 5:1-11 when Peter confronts Ananias and Sapphira:
Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”
Acts 5:4 NASB95
Now, consider the aforementioned headline. Doesn’t Congress represent ‘The People’…? I find it incomprehensible to believe most Americans would endorse such a thing. But, more importantly, our Constitution does not sanction such a thing – even if we wanted it to. So, by who’s urging, and by what authority has Congress done this thing…? The majority of Congress appears to be acting on an impetus beyond its constituency, and even the Constitution.
Article VI, Clause 3.1.1 – the Oath of Office Requirement – of the Constitution states:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution…
The U.S. House and Senate Oath of Office states:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
As noted in the Constitution Annotated series at Congress.gov:
Commenting in the Federalist Papers on the requirement that state officers, as well as members of the state legislatures, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton wrote: Thus the legislatures, courts, and magistrates, of the respective members, will be incorporated into the operations of the national government as far as its just and constitutional authority extends; and it will be rendered auxiliary to the enforcement of its laws.
Several of the articles in question mentioned the “$8B in aid to the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan.” So… if we ‘follow the money’… to the “Indo-Pacific region”… then, I guess we prove:
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U.S. House Representatives are completely out of touch with their constituents – and the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land, which they’ve sworn to support, defend, and bear true faith and allegiance to the same – and what it means to be an American, not a subversive traitor / economic terrorist…
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Henry Kissinger was correct back on September 10, 2010:
“The center of gravity of world affairs has left the Atlantic and moved to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.”
If I didn’t know better, I’d say the shift was built on the back of America[ns]. There is a concept, named after Alexander Fraser Tytler, known as the “Tytler Cycle” or the “Fatal Sequence,” which is typically accompanied by the following disputed quote attributed to Tytler:
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.
In his 1796 Farewell Address, George Washington eloquently cautioned against such endeavors:
Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?
More recently, Walter E. Williams spelled out quite clearly why, in the modern Administrative Fourth Branch Era, Congress does not abide by the Constitution:
[Transcript excerpt:]
What Politicians Reflect
Any politician who would rigorously live up to his oath of office to uphold and defend the United States Constitution – he just would not get elected to office by the American people. Because, what politicians reflect; they reflect the values and views of the American people, that is, those who will elect them to office. Now, some people might say, “Well, gee Williams,that’s a little bit strong.” Well, look, we just might ask ourselves; what would happen to politicians who had the vision of, let’s say, James Madison – the acknowledge father of the United States Constitution – and in 1794, Congress appropriated $15,000 to help some French refugees, and James Madison stood on the floor of the House irate, and he said – and I’m virtually quoting him – he says:
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article in the Constitution that authorizes Congress to spend the money of their constituents for the purposes of benevolence.
Now, if you look at the federal budget; two-thirds to three-quarters of it is for ‘the purposes of benevolence’. Now, just ask yourself; what would the American people do to a politician, or to anybody running for office, who would make a statement like Madison did? Or, make another statement – Madison also said that charity is not a legitimate function of government. Now, can you imagine what the American people would do to a politician who said that? And so, what I’m saying is that, politicians are reflecting the values and views of the people who elect them to office. And, unfortunately, the values and views of most Americans are distinct from those of the Founders of our nation.
… And, keep in mind that you know if you look at the Founders of our nation, they wanted very very limited government. If you read in Madison’s, in Federalist paper, I think it’s 45 or 48, and when he was trying to describe to the citizens of New York what was in the Constitution – to kind of get the citizens of New York to ratify the Constitution – he said that the powers that we delegated to the federal government are few and well-defined and restricted mostly to external affairs; those left with the people and the states are indefinite and numerous. Now, if you turn that upside down, you’d have what we have today – that is; the powers of the federal government are indefinite and numerous, and those are the people in the state are limited and well defined.
Of, By, For The People
History is unequivocal; if (when) we abdicate our responsibility, we suffer the fate of the proverbial vacuum being filled by pathological narcissistic opportunists. In today’s America, this has become a self-evident truth. What most people fail to realize – and what every sociologist and serial opportunist, not to mention God Almighty knows – is that, man is wired this way, predisposed by nature you might say, to shirk his responsibility and accountability. The quintessential example in Exodus 20 springs to mind, juxtaposed with the concept of Biblical accountability:
And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.
Exodus 20:19 KJV
So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.
Romans 14:12 KJV
Incidentally, the Islamic context of ‘shirk’ is provocative in this regard.
Multiple allocations, several billion, “for the purchase of weapons” including “replenish[ing] U.S. weapons” are included in the $95B. The U.S. so-called “defense” budget – not including black budget – is already nearly $1T annually. In his 1935 book War Is A Racket, Smedley Butler summed it up best:
WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
Since 2010, the Brown University Watson Institute Costs of War (CoW) project has been tracking “the ongoing consequences of the United States post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere; the costs of the U.S. global military footprint; and the domestic effects of U.S. military spending.” And the costs… are staggering… Here are some CoW statistics that don’t make the hawkish headlines:
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Costs of the 20-year war on terror: $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths
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Human and Budgetary Costs to Date of the U.S. War in Afghanistan, 2001-2022
Since invading Afghanistan in 2001, the United States has spent $2.313 trillion on the war, which includes operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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U.S. Budgetary Costs of Post-9/11 Wars Through FY2022: $8 Trillion
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How Death Outlives War: The Reverberating Impact of the Post-9/11 Wars on Human Health
This report reviews the latest research to examine the causal pathways that have led to an estimated 3.6-3.8 million indirect deaths in post-9/11 war zones, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. The total death toll in these war zones could be at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting, though the precise mortality figure remains unknown.
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The Profits of War | Costs of War
Pentagon spending has totaled over $14 trillion since the start of the war in Afghanistan, with one-third to one-half of the total going to military contractors.
A large portion of these contracts – one-quarter to one-third of all Pentagon contracts in recent years – have gone to just five major corporations: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman. The $75 billion in Pentagon contracts received by Lockheed Martin in fiscal year 2020 is well over one and one-half times the entire budget for the State Department and Agency for International Development for that year, which totaled $44 billion.
Weapons makers have spent $2.5 billion on lobbying over the past two decades, employing, on average, over 700 lobbyists per year over the past five years. That is more than one for every member of Congress.
Numerous companies took advantage of wartime conditions—which require speed of delivery and often involve less rigorous oversight—to overcharge the government or engage in outright fraud. In 2011, the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan estimated that waste, fraud and abuse had totaled between $31 billion and $60 billion.
As the U.S. reduces the size of its military footprint in Iraq and Afghanistan, exaggerated estimates of the military challenges posed by China have become the new rationale of choice in arguments for keeping the Pentagon budget at historically high levels. Military contractors will continue to profit from this inflated spending.
Patriots Or Terrorists…?
One man’s war is another’s conquest… Cuz there are, Pirates and Emperors, but they’re really the same thing… From Wikipedia:
Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World is a 1986 book by Noam Chomsky, titled after an observation by St. Augustine in City of God, proposing that what governments coin as “terrorism” in the small simply reflects what governments utilize as “warfare” in the large. Yet, governments coerce their populations to denounce the former while embracing the latter. In the City of God, St. Augustine tells the story
Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What do you mean by seizing the whole earth; because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor”.
‘Otherizing’ is always a pretext to eliminationism. We’ve been conned into believing in the fallacy of the ‘just war’. But, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wisely observed in The Gulag Archipelago (1973):
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
In 2007, four-star U.S. Army general, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO (1997-2000) and Rhodes Scholar, Wesley Clark put to rest any notion of a ‘just war’ when discussing what he called America’s Foreign Policy “Coup”. First, during a Feb 27, 2007 interview with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman which aired Mar 2, 2007 and again in Oct, 2007 at The Commonwealth Club, he further detailed a visit to the Pentagon during which he was apprised of a pre-existing plan to “attack and destroy the governments” of seven countries – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran – in five years…
…what happened in 9/11 is we didn’t have a strategy, we didn’t have bipartisan agreement, we didn’t have American understanding of it, and we had instead a policy coup in this country, a coup, a policy coup. Some hard-nosed people took over the direction of American policy and they never bothered to inform the rest of us.
I went through the Pentagon ten days after 9/11. … I went back there to see Don Rumsfeld, I had worked for him as a White House fellow in the 1970s, … and he said, I just want to tell you he said, nobody is going to tell us where or when we can bomb, nobody. … And I went downstairs, I was leaving the Pentagon and an officer from the Joint Staff called me into his office and said, I would want you to know, he said, sir, we are going to attack Iraq.
… And then I came back to the Pentagon about six weeks later, I saw the same officer, I said why why haven’t we attacked Iraq? We are sill going to attack Iraq, he said, oh sir he says, its worse than that. He said he pulled up a piece of paper of his desk, he said, I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office, it says we are going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years. We are going to start with Iraq and then we are going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran – seven countries in five years. I said, is that a classified memo? He said, yes sir. I said; well don’t show it to me… because I want to talk about it. And I sat on this information for a long time, for about six or eight months, I was so stunned by this, I couldn’t begin to talk about it. And I couldn’t believe it would really be true, but that’s actually what happened.
These people took control of the policy in the United States and I realized then it came back to me, a 1991 meeting I had with Paul Wolfowitz you know, in 2001 he was Deputy Secretary of Defense, but in 1991 he was the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, it’s the number three position of the Pentagon. And I had gone to see him when I was a one star general, I was commanding the National Training Centre, I had met him one time, he said, if you ever get to Washington, come with me up there, I always say that. Well, I was there in Washington, it was a Friday afternoon, I had visited Colin Powell, he gave me five minutes of his precious time and set me on my way and I was bored in the Pentagon and and I thought I will just go who could I see. I think I will see Wolfowitz.
So I called and up there he was available, Scooter Libby came to the door, I met Scooter for the first time and he brought me in and I said to Paul and this is 1991, I said Mr. Secretary you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm. And he said, well yeah, he said but but not really, he said because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and we didn’t. And this was just after the Shia uprising in March of 91’ which we had provoked and then we kept our troops on the side lines and didn’t intervene.
And he said, but one thing we did learn, he said, we learned that we can use our military in the region in the Middle East and the Soviets wont stop us. He said, and we have got about five or ten years to clean up those all Soviet client regimes; Syria, Iran, Iraq, – before the next great super power comes on to challenge us. And it was like you know I am coming out the Mohave desert, I have been training troops, I haven’t been thinking geo strategy for some time and suddenly a guy just sort of shoves this nugget it well you will remember it it was a pretty stunning thing – you mean, the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments, its not to sort of deter a conflict? We are going to have invade countries? And, you know, my mind was spinning. And I put that aside. It was like a nugget that you hold on to.
This country was taken over by a group of people with a policy coup, Wolfowitz and Cheney and Rumsfeld and you could name a half dozen other collaborators from the Project for a New American Century. They wanted at us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control. It went back to those comments in 1991. Now did anybody tell you that, was there a national dialogue on this? Did senators and congressman stand up and denounce this plan? Was there a full fledged American debate on it? Absolutely not; and there are still isn’t!
In Hour 1 of The Ultimate History Lesson (2011) Richard Grove’s priceless 5-hour video interview series with John Taylor Gatto, a national treasure, Gatto alludes to the absurdity of what passes off for ‘war’ these days:
The Ultimate History Lesson Hours 1-5 (Official Playlist) | [Full Sourced Transcript] | [Hr 1 transcript excerpt:]
We have evolved an economy that depends upon constant warfare and even though it was stretching it in Iraq and Afghanistan, when those are over we must have another conflict. We’re going to have to stretch it even further-maybe attack small islands, Fiji maybe-because ‘they represent a menace’. Being a child of World War II, the idea of calling something a war where the enemy has no army, navy, air force, intelligence service and they blow up their feet and their underwear, it just stretches the bounds of the ridiculous to call it a war.
It bears mentioning – speaking of ‘Who’s in charge; who decides…?’ – that according to the Constitution, only Congress has the power and authority to declare war – which hasn’t happened since 1942 – 82 years ago…
For the United States, Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution says “Congress shall have power to … declare War.” …
The last time the United States formally declared war, using specific terminology, on any nation was in 1942, when war was declared against Axis-allied Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, because President Franklin Roosevelt thought it was improper to engage in hostilities against a country without a formal declaration of war. Since then, every American president has used military force without a declaration of war.
So, what do you call it when Congress spends money unauthorized by the Constitution, and the White House declares war conflict theater stability operations nation building freedom and democracy…? Alan Watt reminded us many times over the years – it’s called: ‘lawlessness’…
And it was a criminal invasion. It even came out in the inquiry where Bush says, well, I never said, you know, that Hussein had anything to do with 9/11. He says, he’s just a bad guy and the world is better off without him. Well, can you imagine that kind of power from a psychopath? I don’t like that one. Go and bump them off too? That’s law? Is it? That’s lawlessness.
Alan Watt, “Cutting Through The Matrix” May 3rd, 2012 (#1079) LIVE on RBN
As a final point of note concerning the blatant disregard for our Constitution; ArtI.S8.C5.1 grants the ‘money powers’ exclusively to Congress:
[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; . . .
But, did you know… the ‘Federal Reserve’ is not federal, nor reserve…?
The Federal Reserve Banks are not a part of the federal government…
Who Owns the Federal Reserve Banks | In Plain English | St. Louis Fed
Incidentally, the counterfeit currency Federal Reserve Note sanctioned by Congress ca. 1913 known as the dollar, has zero value, which even the Federal Reserve states. The so-called FED says the FRN has “purchasing power” – but, no value. How can this be…? Suffice it to say; we’ve been swindled… Much has been written on this subject, and following are some additional resources. Investopedia has an excellent, mind-blowing 90-second video that explains very simply how ‘fractional reserve banking’ works – money is simply made up: rinse and repeat…
“The process by which money is created is so simple that the mind is repelled.”
John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1976)
…paper is poverty, … it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Carrington (May 27, 1788)
This is not an issue of credit rating. The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, NBC’s Meet The Press (Aug 7, 2011)
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.
Alan Greenspan, Gold and Economic Freedom (1966)
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become ‘profiteers,’ who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.
Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) Chapter VI, pp. 235-236
The paper system being founded on public confidence and having of itself no intrinsic value, it is liable to great and sudden fluctuations, thereby rendering property insecure and the wages of labor unsteady and uncertain. The corporations which create the paper money can not be relied upon to keep the circulating medium uniform in amount. In times of prosperity, when confidence is high, they are tempted by the prospect of gain or by the influence of those who hope to profit by it to extend their issues of paper beyond the bounds of discretion and the reasonable demands of business; and when these issues have been pushed on from day to day, until public confidence is at length shaken, then a reaction takes place, and they immediately withdraw the credits they have given, suddenly curtail their issues, and produce an unexpected and ruinous contraction of the circulating medium, which is felt by the whole community. The banks by this means save themselves, and the mischievous consequences of their imprudence or cupidity are visited upon the public. Nor does the evil stop here. … It is not by encouraging this spirit that we shall best preserve public virtue and promote the true interests of our country; but if your currency continues as exclusively paper as it now is, it will foster this eager desire to amass wealth without labor; it will multiply the number of dependents on bank accommodations and bank favors; the temptation to obtain money at any sacrifice will become stronger and stronger, and inevitably lead to corruption, which will find its way into your public councils and destroy at no distant day the purity of your Government.
The distress and sufferings inflicted on the people by the bank are some of the fruits of that system of policy which is continually striving to enlarge the authority of the Federal Government beyond the limits fixed by the Constitution. The powers enumerated in that instrument do not confer on Congress the right to establish such a corporation as the Bank of the United States, and the evil consequences which followed may warn us of the danger of departing from the true rule of construction and of permitting temporary circumstances or the hope of better promoting the public welfare to influence in any degree our decisions upon the extent of the authority of the General Government. Let us abide by the Constitution as it is written, or amend it in the constitutional mode if it is found to be defective.
The severe lessons of experience will, I doubt not, be sufficient to prevent Congress from again chartering such a monopoly, even if the Constitution did not present an insuperable objection to it. But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.
The mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges which they have succeeded in obtaining in the different States, and which are employed altogether for their benefit; and unless you become more watchful in your States and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you will in the end find that the most important powers of Government have been given or bartered away, and the control over your dearest interests has passed into the hands of these corporations.
The paper-money system and its natural associates–monopoly and exclusive privileges–have already struck their roots deep in the soil, and it will require all your efforts to check its further growth and to eradicate the evil.
Andrew Jackson, vetoed the 2nd Central Bank Charter renewal and survived two failed assassination attempts, 7th President of the United States (1829-1837) Farewell Address (March 04, 1837)
We could use the $95B here in US – not to mention the $14T over the past 20 years since the start of the so-called “war” in Afghanistan… As Walter E. Williams elucidated, citing Founding Father, James Madison, Congress has no Constitutional authority ‘for the purposes of benevolence’. Therefore, the $95B – along with the $14T – should remain with ‘We The People’… But, since we are detached from reality, we will likely continue to pay for our indolence… in grift… and, in blood…
House approves $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan
Apr 20, 2024 | Lauren Peller, Alexandra Hutzler, Nadine El-Bawab | ABC News
The House of Representatives on Saturday passed a series of foreign aid bills that include $60.8 billion in aid to Ukraine, $26.38 billion in aid to Israel, $8 billion in aid to the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan, and a foreign aid bill that includes a TikTok ban provision.
The four bills will now be sent to the Senate as a package.
Democrats briefly waved Ukrainian flags during the vote, an action that prompted House Speaker Mike Johnson to remind them it was a violation for members to wave flags on the floor.
What’s in the $95 billion foreign-aid package just passed by the House
Apr 20, 2024 | Associated Press
A look at what’s in the $95 billion package passed by the House on Saturday that will provide military aid to Ukraine and Israel, replenish U.S. weapons systems and give humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.
Senate passage is expected this coming week. President Joe Biden has promised to sign the package as soon as he gets it.
The broad spending breakdown:
—about $61 billion for Ukraine and replenishing U.S. weapons stockpiles. The overall amount provided to Ukraine for the purchase of weapons would be $13.8 billion. Ukraine would receive more than $9 billion of economic assistance in the form of “forgivable loans.”
—about $26 billion for supporting Israel and providing humanitarian relief for people in Gaza. About $4 billion of that would be dedicated to replenishing Israel’s missile defense systems. More than $9 billion of the total would go toward humanitarian assistance in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war.
—about $8 billion for helping U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific region and countering China. More than $3.3 billion would go toward submarine infrastructure and development, with an additional $1.9 billion to replenish U.S. weapons provided to Taiwan and other regional allies.
House Approves $95 Billion Aid Bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan
Apr 20, 2024 | Catie Edmondson | The New York Times
The House voted resoundingly on Saturday to approve $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as Speaker Mike Johnson put his job on the line to advance the long-stalled aid package by marshaling support from mainstream Republicans and Democrats.
In four back-to-back votes, overwhelming bipartisan coalitions of lawmakers approved fresh rounds of funding for the three U.S. allies, as well as another bill meant to sweeten the deal for conservatives that could result in a nationwide ban of TikTok.
The scene on the House floor reflected both the broad support in Congress for continuing to help the Ukrainian military beat back Russia, and the extraordinary political risk taken by Mr. Johnson to defy the anti-interventionist wing of his party who had sought to thwart the measure. Minutes before the vote on assistance for Kyiv, Democrats began to wave small Ukrainian flags on the House floor, as hard-right Republicans jeered.
The legislation includes $60 billion for Kyiv; $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza; and $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific region.
It also contained a measure to help pave the way to selling off frozen Russian sovereign assets to help fund the Ukrainian war effort, and a new round of sanctions on Iran.
“Our adversaries are working together to undermine our Western values and demean our democracy,” Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said Saturday as the House debated the measure. “We cannot be afraid at this moment. We have to do what’s right. Evil is on the march. History is calling and now is the time to act.”
“History will judge us by our actions here today,” he continued. “As we deliberate on this vote, you have to ask yourself this question: ‘Am I Chamberlain or Churchill?’”
Outside the Capitol, a jubilant crowd waved Ukrainian flags and chanted, “Thank you U.S.A.” as exiting lawmakers gave them a thumbs-up and waved smaller flags of their own.
Much of the funding for Ukraine is earmarked to replenish U.S. stockpiles after shipping supplies to Kyiv.
Since Russia’s invasion in 2022, Congress has appropriated $113 billion in funding to support Ukraine’s war effort. $75 billion was directly allocated to the country for humanitarian, financial and military support, and another $38 billion in security assistance-related funding was spent largely in the United States, according to the Institute for Study of War, a Washington-based research group.
“If Ukraine does not receive this support that it requires to defeat Russia’s outrageous assault on its sovereign territory, the legacy of this Congress will be the appeasement of a dictator, the destruction of an allied nation and a fractured Europe,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. “Gone will be our credibility, in the eyes of our allies and of our adversaries. And gone will be the America that promised to stand up for freedom, democracy, and human rights, wherever they are threatened or wherever they are under attack.”
Thirty-seven liberal Democrats opposed the $26 billion aid package for Israel because the legislation placed no conditions on how Israel could use American funding, amid scores of civilian casualties and an imminent famine in Gaza. That showed a notable dent in the longstanding ironclad bipartisan backing for Israel in Congress, but was a relatively small bloc of opposition given that left-wing lawmakers had pressed for a large “no” vote on the bill to send a message to Mr. Biden about the depth of opposition within his political coalition to his backing for Israel’s tactics in the war.
“Sending more weapons to the Netanyahu government will make the U.S. even more responsible for atrocities and the horrific humanitarian crisis in Gaza which is now in a season of famine,” said Representative Jonathan L. Jackson, Democrat of Illinois.