Andrew Cuomo's Totalitarianism

(H/t Carl Paladino.)  Establishing an ideological litmus test for citizenship is an element of totalitarianism, and New Yorkers might consider whether, under Cuomo, their form of government has deteriorated into a totalitarian form.  I have considered leaving the state all my life, and I chiefly remain here because of my late parents, my sister, and my wife's health problems.  Nevertheless, hearing an extremist remark like Cuomo's marks a new low.What is the difference between Cuomo and a dictator who tells the public which beliefs are acceptable?

Shining Light on the Shadows of Power: An Interview with James Perloff

I just submitted this piece to The Lincoln Eagle in Kingston, NY. 

Shining Light on the Shadows of Power: An Interview with James Perlofff

 Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

James Perloff has written four books on the elite governing America, on Darwinism, and on the relationships among institutions that dominate American politics from behind the scenes. In The Shadows of Power Perloff traces the history of the Council on Foreign Relations. In his most recent book, Truth Is a Lonely Warrior, Perloff analyzes how history and current events are leading us toward a world government dictatorship. Perloff’s website is http://jamesperloff.com/. The Lincoln Eagle (TLE) interviewed Perloff by email.

TLE: In your work you refer to the Establishment. What does that mean? Who controls America?

Perloff: In America’s Sixty Families Ferdinand Lundberg wrote: “The United States is owned and dominated by a hierarchy of its sixty richest families…” He was talking about names like the Rockefellers, Morgans, Mellons, Vanderbilts, Du Ponts, Astors and Warburgs, and he showed their control was such that they preselected the presidential candidates before the nominating conventions took place. Things haven’t changed today. Voting gives us the illusion that power belongs to the people, but it really belongs to the rich and the few.

TLE: The media contributes to that process. Whose views does the media reflect?
 
Perloff: That of the media’s ownership. Lundberg documented in 1937 that a plutocracy owned nearly all of the major media organs. We have diverse outlets but not diverse ownership. Today, Time Warner owns CNN, AOL, Time magazine, People, Money, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, New Line Cinema – the list goes on and on. Similar with News Corp. You have maybe a dozen giant multinationals owning all the major media.

TLE: How can Americans obtain information about current events given that their media, such as ABC, MSNBC, The New York Times, and Time are controlled by banking-and-corporate interests?

Perloff: People should investigate alternative media: magazines like The New American, radio shows like Deanna Spingola’s, websites like henrymakow.com, and books like my own Truth Is a Lonely Warrior, published in Kindle and paperbound last year.

TLE: What is the biggest problem facing Americans today?

Perloff: Of course the problems are innumerable: political, economic, and social. If they were boiled down to one, I would say it is a self-serving shadow government that runs the country from behind the scenes of our democratic trappings.

TLE: A related issue is that of education, which works in tandem with the media to indoctrinate rather than inform or educate. How can parents eliminate indoctrination from their children’s education?

Perloff: The best alternative is home schooling; if not home schooling, private religious schooling; where these alternatives are not possible, give them information resources as an antidote to media indoctrination. Truth is more powerful than lies.

TLE: Why is there a trend toward increasing centralization and government authority?

Perloff: That is a means of consolidating power. The Founding Fathers understood that centralized power leads to tyranny, which is why they gave us limited government with numerous checks and balances.

TLE: What is the link between the Federal Reserve Bank and the money center banking interests, the Rockefellers, Morgans, and Warburgs, and more recently Henry Paulson, Goldman Sachs, George Soros, and other bailout beneficiaries?

Perloff: The Rockefeller, Morgan and Warburg interests were all represented at the secret 1910 meeting on Jekyll Island where the Fed was planned. Paul Warburg was the Fed’s first vice chairman. Henry Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs immediately before he became treasury secretary and then oversaw, with Bernanke, the 2008 $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, which included billions for Goldman Sachs. The Fed is a golden goose for the private banks.

TLE: What has been the role of the Council on Foreign Relations with respect to the relationships in the prior question?

Perloff: The role of the Council is to formulate foreign policy, but that policy is cohesive with the wishes of bankers and the Fed. The Council was founded by the very same people who founded the Fed; the Council’s first president was J. P. Morgan’s personal attorney; David Rockefeller was the Council’s chairman for many years.

TLE: What has been the link between the Council and the presidents?

Perloff: The Council dominates the cabinets of presidents whether Democratic or Republican. When my book went to press last year, the count was 21 Secretaries of Defense, 19 Treasury Secretaries, 18 Secretaries of State, and 16 CIA directors have been members of the Council. This is why foreign policy changes very little, if at all, from one president to the next. In the meantime, how many Americans have even heard of the Council?

TLE: Do the Council and the Establishment favor one-world government? Why?

Perloff: The Council on Foreign Relations was founded in 1921 for the express purpose of creating a one-world government. In the immediate context, it was founded as a reaction to the U.S. Senate’s rejection of the 1919 Versailles Treaty, which would have entangled us with the League of Nations. The plans for the UN were drawn up by Council members. The EU and NAFTA are regional stepping stones. World government would be the consolidation of all power on the planet and thus invoke tyranny on a global scale. This is predicted in the Bible, by the way, in the book of Revelation.

TLE: What is the link, if any, among Agenda 21 and the trends that you describe in your books?

Perloff: Environmentalism, as expressed in Agenda 21 and other programs, is a pretext for controlling people. Up until the 1960s, war was considered the best means of controlling populations, but with the advent of nuclear weapons, the Establishment was concerned that war might no longer be a viable option, so the environment was chosen to succeed war as the new primary threat to survival. Global warming and other false scares have been dreamed up and promoted in order give government the excuse to micro-regulate our lives. Now they’re even talking about giving the government remote control of home thermostats. 

TLE: What has been the role of the US government in financing its own enemies, including Stalin, Mao, al Qaeda, and the Ayatollah Khomeini?

Perloff: It is well documented that Stalin’s predecessors, Lenin and Trotsky, were financed by the Rothschilds and US banking firms like Kuhn, Loeb. During World War II, When Stalin was threatened with destruction by the Axis powers, he was rescued with billions of dollars’ worth of American Lend-Lease. Mao would not have risen to power without the help of the U.S. State Department: Google my article “China Betrayed.” Regarding the Ayatollah, google my article “Iran and the Shah: What Really Happened.” Of course, there’s quite a bit on the Internet on al Qaeda being a creation of Western intelligence services.

TLE: Will the future bring a one-world government with a violent dictator at its head?

Perloff: From the Bible, from Orwell, from the trend of events and from the internal documents of the plutocracy we are talking about, that appears to be the case, but for the sake of righteousness, which is obedience to God, we should resolutely oppose it.

Thank you, Mr. Perloff. I hope that readers will buy your books and wean themselves from the mass media.

John McCain's War Powers Act of 2014

H/t Constitutional Clayton and Mike Marnell

Dear Senator McCain:

Although I don't live in Arizona, I contributed $500 to your 2008 presidential campaign. I was surprised to hear you propose a revision to the War Powers Resolution, the War Powers Act of 2014.

Giving the authority to declare war to the executive branch is unconstitutional; it is also a mistake from a political standpoint. Presidents have been  stupid about declaring unnecessary wars.  Some examples are the the Vietnam War and the War in Iraq. The errors have been declaring too many wars, not declaring an insufficient number of wars.

American foreign policy since 1918, when the Council on Foreign Relations began, has been badly conducted.  Quacks dominate foreign policy to an even greater degree than they dominate economics.  Experts who might counsel a president to conduct a  war are likely to be specialists in the arrogation of power; it is unlikely that they know more about foreign policy than the average American. Foreign affairs is a junk science, a field without findings, laws, general rules, or knowledge beyond the common sense accessible to anyone schooled in nations' cultures and political systems.

 I oppose the War Powers Act, and I can no longer support you or a Republican Party that produces a scam like this.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

The Twilight of Cable Television

Cable television has existed since the 1950s, and it is one of the more regulated, expensive, and left-wing media.  Shows like The Newsroom and Bill Mahr outnumber shows with alternative views. Libertarian views are mostly unknown, with one or two exceptions like Reason TV and John Stossel.

The unregulated Internet has a greater diversity of views, and not surprisingly, innovation has occurred at a faster rate on the unregulated Internet than on regulated cable television.  In my rural township, Olive, New York, there is only one cable provider that can come to my home, Time Warner, and its prices are high.  The high prices may not be surprising because of my area's sparse population, but in the more competitive Internet field prices are not so high, even where I live. Government regulation harms rather than helps consumers.

Websites like Amazon.com and Netflix are increasingly offering  online video that works better than cable, at least in my area, and Netflix makes new programs.  Amazon has a collection that is available for free to its Prime subscribers.  The last time I looked Prime cost $79 per year or so while my cable subscription, which includes a premium package and some purchases of on-demand videos, costs over $300 per month or $3,600 per year.  ISP subscriptions run $29 per month or so, and Netflix costs $16 per month.  If you add $7 per month for Amazon Prime (which includes free shipping on Amazon-based sales, so the real cost is much less and most likely zero), $16 for Netflix, plus $29 for an ISP service, the cost of home entertainment only needs to be $52, rather than the astronomical $300 cable bill I pay each month.  My cable bill is almost enough to lease a new Lexus ES 350.

Netflix series like Lilyhammer with The Sopranos' Steven van Zandt (Silvio) and a cameo appearance by Tony Sirico (Pauli Gualtieri) and House of Cards with Kevin Spacey are as good as the HBO and Showtime series.

I don't mean to detract from the excellent TV on cable, both on prime time television and on the premium channels, but cable television's business model doesn't work. It is a financial drain on the consumer, and it takes advantage of a regulated market that prevents entry and competition--with the result of exploiting consumers.  My brother-in-law has discarded both his land line and his cable subscription, so he relies on a cell phone and the Internet.  He's a professor of physics, a smart guy, and I think he has the right idea.