Anthony Weiner Is a Shady No Goodnik

I'm ticked that  a shady congressman, Anthony Weiner, has been making noises about proposing legal action against Glenn Beck because Beck advocates holding gold.  I don't know about the particular firm that  Beck advertises, but however dishonest it is, its dishonesty pales next to the corruption of Anthony Weiner, his fellow crooks in Congress and their brainchild, the Federal Reserve Bank.  I wrote Anthony this brief letter:

Dear Tony:

Your attack on Glenn Beck is misguided. The biggest racketeers in the United States today are the Federal Reserve Bank and the US Congress. By creating three times the 2008 level of reserves the Fed has monetized every corrupt, incompetent practice of Wall Stret and the US Congress, including you.

I would add to it that the New York Times and the rest of the Democratic Party's PR organization, NPR, CNN and the rest, lied to the American public on behalf of their owners on Wall Street and told them to buy and hold stocks at inflated prices for years.

You might consider that the Democratic Party media has been engaged in fraud for the past three decades, and since the abolition of the gold standard the US economy has largely become a casino steeped in corruption.

But instead of advocating a gold standard and an end to Wall Street's corrupt domination of the American economy via the Fed, you choose to kick at Glenn Beck.

Tony, you are a low breed of human being. Count me out. I don't want to live in a country that calls scum like you "honorable."

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert

Glenn Beck and Conspiracy Theories

Contrairimairi sent me this link on the Grand Delusion blog concerning Glenn Beck. The writer makes several good points. He should have stopped at his discussion of the Fed. Claiming that 9/11 was a US government conspiracy is a path which angels ought fear to tread. The freedom movement fails to serve itself by advocating conspiracy theories. The writer states that a few people resigned from the 9/11 commission but that is insufficient to claim a conspiracy.

There have been true conspiracies in American history, such as the one involving the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. There is still debate whether the Kennedy assassination involved a conspiracy. Such debates are fine but ought not be the basis of a political platform. Any movement or group that makes such a debate part of its fundamental belief system or platform consigns itself to the margin. So Beck is right.

Which does not change the Grand Delusion writer's key point. By making himself seem a "mainstream" leader of the freedom movement Beck can do considerable damage to it.

As I have previously blogged, I do not watch television or listen to radio news. The clips I have seen of Beck do not seem to indicate that he has taken a forthright stand on the Fed. I would also be interested in knowing his position on the United Nations. The video below opens questions, unlike any other media source, but Beck himself does not take a position. There is no one on any major media outlet who questions US involvement with the UN, so Beck's position is unbalanced. Balanced does not mean balancing 100% with 0%. Taking a 50-50 position where coverage is 100-0 means that you are advocating 99.5 To 0.5.

The importance of the Federal Reserve Bank issue cannot be overstated. It is the chief issue of interest to the "military industrial complex" and to anyone who favors socialism. Without the Fed and its wealth redistribution mechanism neither big government nor Wall Street's current form of organization would be possible. There is no need for a conspiracy theory. Bald economic interest and straightforward, mechanical economic relationships are all that are required to identify why George Soros favors the Fed and opposes the Second Amendment. Any advocate of the closed society and for a privileged elite would find considerable virtue in Soros's positions.

Kingston/Rhinebeck Tea Party Meeting a Triumph

Tom Santopietro and his board of directors are doing an excellent job on the Kingston/Rhinebeck Tea Party. The group met for its regular monthly meeting on the second Monday of each month. About 50 people attended. The group is planning several protests and bus trips to Washington, including an April 15 tax day protest.

Don Wise for State Assembly

The highlight of the evening was a talk by a conservative Republican State Assembly candidate, Don Wise. Mr. Wise owns a successful construction firm, Apex Building. He says that he has seen the Ulster-and-Dutchess County economy crumble under the Democratic Party policies of Assemblyman Kevin Cahill. Mr. Cahill claims to have brought jobs to the county economy and someone shouted "Erie County!" I added "Broward County!"

According to a local Democratic Party newspaper, the Kingston Freeman, Wise ran for Town Supervisor in the Town of Ulster three years ago, for State Assembly in the 1980s, and for County legislature. Naturally, when the Democrats report on Republicans they look for ways to slander them, and the articles in the Freeman are no exception.

Mr. Wise is articulate, intelligent and thoughtful. He presents a positive image. Mr. Wise aims to freeze state spending and eliminate waste in fields like education. After the meeting I questioned him as to why he does not advocate cuts in state government. He says that he is still formulating his aims. Kevin Cahill, the incumbent, is in contrast a big government advocate.

A nurse at the meeting who works in a local hospital told me privately that about one half of Medicaid spending in New York is pure waste, and that the percentage of waste in New York's Medicaid system is greater than in other Democratic Party- dominated states. In 2006, according to this source, Medicaid amounted to 23% of spending in the average state budget. According to a 2005 New York Times article, Medicaid abuse in New York is in the billions. The Times does not discuss systemic waste such as the transfer of personal assets in order to obtain Medicaid funding for long term care. According to the Citizens' Budget Commission:

"New York has the highest Medicaid spending among the 50 states, accounting for 15 percent of the national total, although it covers only 8 percent of beneficiaries.

"By comparison, California accounts for 11 percent of national spending while covering 18 percent of the beneficiaries. New York’s cost per person enrolled in the program, program, $7,912 annually, is 75 percent higher than the national average of $4,484, and nearly three times the California average of $2,770."

That was written near the end of the Pataki (R-NY) administration in 2006. In other words, Pataki had held office for 12 years and those facts were true at the end of the 12 years. Has the two party system enabled the voters to choose?

In addition to Medicaid, there is massive waste in state operations. The Department of Social Services not only provides welfare, the Department is itself a welfare program for non-working state employees. All of the agencies massively overspend and over-employ.

We might rename New York "The Emperor Has No Clothes and It's All Waste" state. I wish Mr. Wise all success in his election bid, but with the Democratic Party's strong local propaganda-and-lying machine led by the Kingston Freeman, it will be an uphill battle.

Other Business

Tom Santopietro, the president of the Kingston/Rhinebeck Tea Party, defended Glenn Beck against unnamed attacks (I wonder who the attacker might be) but emphasized that the Tea Party is non-partisan. Tom mentioned that he objects to the GOP's use of the Tea Party name, which it has been doing unethically in some western states. Tom also mentioned that he was frustrated with Sarah Palin but still supports her to a degree.

I raised my hand at three different points and suggested that the Tea Party (a) focus exclusively on state and local candidates and issues (of course, as Chris Johansen mentioned in the car, big issues like Obamacare and cap and trade need to be included); (b) establish an ongoing state legislative bill monitoring process whereby Tea Party members might be alerted to bills about which to contact the state legislature; and (c) that I personally do not think that there is a single national politician, Republican or Democratic, who is fit to be president because they are all tainted by the same special interests that inspired the 2008 bailout. In other words, there is no small government candidate in either party.

Someone in the audience raised his hand and said angrily that he blogs for the American Thinker blog and that he does not trust any organization any more, including the Tea Party. He questioned Mr. Santopietro as to why there is no formal platform. I raised my hand and offered to help Mr. Santopietro put together a platform and offered to include the gentleman who raised the point on the platform committee. A similar proposal was discussed when I attended in January, I recall. No action has been taken.

Concluding Thoughts

The group is inexperienced but is making important progress. Tea Parties around the country need to support local candidates and avoid national ones. National politics is irrelevant at this point because the federal system is corrupt. It will need to be overturned as it has already failed. In place of the current system a more decentralized one with greater emphasis on states' rights (as in the Tenth Amendment) and reduced federal power would be better. Before the Constitution there were the Articles of Confederation. The nation needs to return to its roots. The fact is that about 30 states have a larger population than the entire nation did in 1783, approximately three million. The national population is too large to support a federal democracy. Powers currently granted the federal government, including constitutional interpretation, social security, medicare, labor law, most business regulation (except for unavoidable issues such as true interstate commerce) and monetary policy should be downloaded to regional or state governments. If New York favors massive inflation, for example, that should not force other states to subsist under inflation.

Repeated Betrayals by the Media, GOP Leadership

Members of the freedom movement will have to create their own leadership from scratch and must never trust media sources. Someone posted a complaint that I have unfairly questioned Glenn Beck. Actually, if anyone thinks that Glenn Beck is trustworthy or that he should not be questioned, rather than reading my blog please pick up a subscription to the New York Times, because trust is for suckers.

The freedom movement has no, I repeat no, representative on the national level. If you favor big government, then trust Mitt Romney and Sarah Pailin.

As far as Beck goes, when the chips were down, he favored the bailout. We will see if he continues to favor pro Wall Street candidates like Rick Perry or Mitt Romney. I have yet to hear of Beck proposing an alternative to the Federal Reserve system. This might include competitive money supplies, repeal of the legal tender law, or advocacy of the gold standard or other commodity basis for money. Unless government's and Wall Street's ability to expand the money supply at your expense is curtailed, government will continue to grow and you will continue to become poorer.

If you want to be loyal to a TV personality, pick someone with credibility, like Mickey Mouse or the Three Stooges. My favorite was always Curly. In news and politics, I have no reason to believe in anyone at this point in history. If you want a savior, go to church, don't watch TV news.

Glenn Beck on Global Warming

I seem to have been misinformed about Glenn Beck's position on global warming. These two videos suggest that World Net Daily's claim that Beck favors the global warming hypothesis may have been false. In the first video guest John Coleman calls global warming a scam. Coleman blames the "mainstream" (sic) press. In the second video Beck reports on the e-mails. So once again I have egg on my face concerning Beck, by way of World Net Daily this time.

Do I Have Egg on My Face?

Do I have egg on my face? Sort of. Half an omelet. Chris Johansen forwarded the above video after my diatribes about Beck over the past couple of days. Glenn Beck is a hero for talking about the 2008 expansion of the monetary base. He is one thousand percent ahead of virtually the entire news media, which has tap danced around the financial system's exploitation of the average American.

But Mr. Beck can do more. For example, he attributes the monetary expansion to the government, and that is only partially true. Ultimately, monetary expansion is attributable to the banking system, not to the government. As Beck himself pointed out elsewhere, the Federal Reserve Bank is privately owned. Hence, the value of the dollars in your bank account are determined by private interests, not by the government and not by an objective standard.

As well, Mr. Beck could be exploring how the monetary system has been used to exploit the poor and working class to the benefit of the wealthy, especially the financial system itself which Americans have permitted to control their money. I had referred Beck to several books that examine this, such as Murray Rothbard's Mystery of Banking.

The subject of money is simple. In the 19th century most Americans, including those with first grade educations, were aware of the issue and it was publicly debated. Today, television and newspaper reporters attribute some kind of mystical aura to it.

It's good to talk about the monetary expansion, but omitting the redistributive effects of pumping up the stock market and of causing real wages to stagnate leaves the story incomplete. How the money supply pumps up the stock market is evident. More money means lower interest rates. Lower rates means higher stock market. Higher stock market means more trading. Nothing complicated. More money means more inflation. More inflation means lower inflation adjusted wages. Nothing complicated.

Fancy talk about a new world order is unnecessary to tell this story. The Whigs advocated central banking going back to Hamilton and before. Hamilton based his ideas on the philosopher David Hume, who was incidentally a mercantilist economist who set forth the basic Keynesian concepts that are in use among Progressives today. "Progressives" are "Progressive" because they rely on 18th century ideas.

So, Mr. Beck, you're doing ok, but you could be doing better. B-. But "A" for courage.

CPAC in Three Weeks

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting is in three weeks. I will not attend for various practical reasons. Glenn Beck will be the keynote speaker and makes some useful comments in this video:



What CPAC ought to be asking of candidates is two things:

1. Did you support the Wall Street bailout? Will you support a future bailout?
2. What is your specific plan for overcoming bureaucratic resistance to cutting waste and incompetence?

Bankruptcy Court Should Appoint Glenn Beck Editor of LA Times

PO Box 130
West Shokan, NY 12494
December 9, 2009

Honorable Kevin J. Carey, Chief Judge
c/o David D. Berg, Clerk of Court
United States Bankruptcy Court
824 North Market Street 3rd Floor
Wilmington, Delaware 19801

Dear Judge Carey:

I urge you to consider requiring a shift in the editorial policy of the Los Angeles Times and other of the Tribune Co. newspapers, which I understand are currently being reorganized under chapter 11 in your court. Part of the reason for the Tribune Company’s bankruptcy is the LA Times’s one-sided ideological approach. Although a significant percentage of the Los Angeles population is Republican, the LA Times is extremely biased in a left-wing way, far to the left of the mainstream of the Democratic Party. This contributes to the circulation declines. To reverse that, a more even handed editorial policy is required. To accomplish the mainstream approach, Glenn Beck ought to be appointed editor-in-chief of the LA Times in place of Russ Stanton.

I took an interest in this subject this morning because I saw an article by one of the LA Times’s reporters, James Rainey. Mr. Rainey claims that a conservative talk show host, Glenn Beck, is unethical for advocating investment in gold while he owns gold. Yet, the LA Times may have advocated investment in stock, when its ill fated employee stock ownership plan held stock in trust for Mr. Rainey and the editorial staff. Likewise, an investigation may reveal that the LA Times has published columns recommending long term investment in stocks when its publisher, Sam Zell, owned stock. Thus, Mr. Rainey is so biased that he may have inadvertently accused his own firm and its former owner of unethical conduct.

Gaffes like this have become so common among the American newspapers that many conservatives, such as myself, have stopped reading them. Naturally, this contributes to their declining circulation and loss of advertising revenue. Perhaps if Mr. Rainey and his editor, Russ Stanton, acted as journalists rather than pamphleteers for the feudalistic left, the LA Times would have a circulation above one million.

I would suggest that to make the LA Times and the Tribune Company more competitive that you ask Glenn Beck to become editor in chief. You will notice that Fox News, which is not the New York Times in terms of content but is much fairer and does not aim to serve as pamphleteer for the left wing of the Democratic Party as do the LA Times and the New York Times, has been outselling the other networks and the entire newspaper industry. Why not call Mr. Beck and ask him to help?

Why allow badly educated reporters like Mr. Rainey to continue to abuse shareholders and investors?

Sincerely,


Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com

James Rainey and Glenn Beck

I just wrote this e-mail to Jim Rainey of the LA Times.

>Dear Mr. Rainey: I am curious if there has been a single conservative of whom you have had much that is positive to say? If so, please do tell who that person is. I will search your writing on him and post the history on my blog. Thanks, Mitchell Langbert.

Rainey accuses Glenn Beck of unethical conduct in advocating gold. This accusation misconstrues the reasoning behind prohibition of insider trading. Insider trading can exist only where there is a fiduciary duty to shareholders. It emanates from the duty insiders have to protect them. If insiders divulge information that artificially inflates the stock price temporarily, this can hurt the shareholders. Thus, insider trading is illegal.

But to say that an announcer should be prohibited from advocating an asset class, especially where he divulges publicly that he holds that asset, is ridiculous. This is what Mr. Rainey incompetently claims. There is no such thing as insider trading with respect to gold. There is no fiduciary duty to a metal.

The history of media attitudes toward gold has largely been one of lying and deception, in particular pandering to Wall Street, and Mr. Rainey appears to be no exception.

Wall Street dislikes gold for several reasons. First, Wall Street profits handily from the Federal Reserve paper money system. This is because the present value of expected dividends is increased by reductions in interest rates (increases in the money supply), a policy that the Fed has relentlessly pursued since the 1930s. Second, increases in the money supply are handed first to Wall Street via the money center banks. The subsequent circulation of money around the economy then increases prices. This transfers wealth from consumers to Wall Street, a policy that the New York Times has long advocated. Thus, academic and media sources, to include William Greider in his book Secrets of the Temple, advocate the central bank. But they do so by insisting that the paper money system helps the poor. As Karl Popper pointed out in Open Society and Its Enemies, lying about altruism has long been a tactic of collectivists. Thus, pro-Wall Street feudalistic "progressives" pretend to object to increases in income inequality and stagnant real wages, both of which are direct products of the monetary system that they advocate, including Mr. Rainey's LA Times.

Thus, in 1999 and 2000 Mr. Rainey's LA Times, the New York Times, Bloomberg Television and other Wall Street/Democratic Party inflationists were touting Internet and technology stocks, right before they fell by 80%. Do you want to take Mr. Rainey's advice given that his employer has been wrong almost every time?

Now, Mr. Rainey and his socialist-for-the-rich comrades attack gold. Rainey's article is rife with the kind of lying and double talk that has always characterized the Wall Street/Democratic Party media: the claim that there is such a thing as an "expert" in investing, for instance. Did this expert tell Mr. Rainey to invest in gold in 2001 and make him rich? Or did Mr. Rainey follow the LA Times's own repeatedly incompetent advice and invest in stocks in 1999 and 2008?

Rainey writes:

"When first confronted with the suggestion he might have a conflict of interest last week, Beck responded in characteristic fashion."

I am curious what that conflict of interest would be. Mr. Beck appears to say that he favors buying gold, and he has bought gold. He has announced this to the public. There is no conflict. He is doing what he says. If he were selling gold and telling people to buy it I would have questions. But is every single announcer on television who says that they think the stock market will go up and holds stocks unethical? Or is Mr. Rainey a biased, incompetent clown?

Hasan: Murderous Therapy for an Irate Muslim

My neighbor has been after me to watch Glenn Beck on Fox and I tried to watch yesterday for the first time. I had given up television news after the 2008 election coverage, which was the worst, most incompetent partisan exercise I could have imagined, and do not believe I have missed anything by limiting my news consumption to e-mails from friends and bloggers. Most, if not all of what's in television news is diversionary drivel. The main question for America is the St. Louis Fed's money supply statistic, and that is rarely if ever mentioned on television news. It should be mentioned and analyzed for a minimum of two prime-time hours per month on every television news station. Instead, one can rely on lots of partisan and pro-Wall Street propaganda and few if any important facts.

Sadly, Beck was not on yesterday despite my honest effort to watch because of the mass murder at Fort Hood. The story is tragic and the loss of 13 lives and wounding of 30 is a matter of great sorrow.

There are a number of interesting questions about this incident, not only involving what seems to have been the Army's incompetent response to Nidal Malik Hasan's increasing militancy and vocally traitorous reluctance to go to Iraq. If you were listening to the coverage on Fox yesterday, even Hasan's cousin said that he was openly saying that he would refuse to go. This is fine for a hippy in Phoenicia, New York, not acceptable for a Major in the US Army.

Several of his colleagues in Fort Hood described ongoing statements that to my mind were aggressively disloyal, possibly going back to his problems at Walter Reed Medical Center. One of the callers to Fox News who knows Hasan said that Hasan was openly saying that he did not think he should have to fight another Muslim and that his loyalty to Islam was greater than to the United States. The way this caller was describing various statements Hasan had been publicly making at Fort Hood suggests that the Army was remiss in not investigating and removing him much, much earlier. One must wonder if political correctness played a role.

I am a Jew. But the minute I say that my allegiance to Israel takes any kind of precedence to my loyalty to the United States, I should leave the country.

There appears to be no reason to believe at this point that there was a conspiracy. Rather, Hasan had joined the military right out of high school; the military paid for his extensive education, including medical school; Hasan was a practicing psychiatrist; and about six or seven years ago Hasan publicly announced that he was a traitor to his country, preferring to insist on his cultural attachments to Islam over his oath of loyalty to the United States, even given the massive material benefits he has taken. Just on a material level, the man was amoral scum long before he killed all those people. Of course, his lack of virtue and willingness to accept material benefits from a nation to which he was disloyal all along are small vices compared to his horrific willingness to murder.

Hasan was a psychiatrist entrusted with the job of helping returning veterans cope with stress and readjustment. Yet, Hasan handled stress in a way that goes beyond incompetence. A butcher. A mass murderer. Yet, he had the training of a psychiatrist.

Might we conclude that psychiatric therapy is garbage, a bullshit discipline whose practitioners have no more claim to helping people than their exemplar, Nidal Malik Hasan? If so, might it be time for the American government to scrap all federal subsidies to this quack profession?

I do not claim that medical psychiatry is junk or that the advances made with respect to psychiatric drugs are. Rather, therapeutic psychiatry has never worked, yet due to political pressure they have cornered large public sums to subsidize their incompetent work. It is time this charade stopped.

The guy giving psychiatric advice on how to handle stress turned out to be a mass murderer. Think about it. It's your dime, people.

Second, it appears that there were no organized groups behind Hasan. Rather, he arrived at his violent response simply from his understanding of Islam. It seems to me that this evidence of an embedded impulse toward violence in the Islamic faith. I do not claim that most Muslims are violent. Just the opposite. Most are peaceful. But it is a lie to say that this pattern has not repeated itself over and over.

CAIR took a good first step in condemning this violence. A good second step is to begin to ask what are the assumptions in the Koran and the Islamic faith that have led repeatedly to this kind of bizarre behavior and how do we correct it through public utterance and religious exhortation.