MARXISM UNMASKED: FROM DELUSION TO DESTRUCTION

Marxism Unmasked:

From Delusion to Destruction

LUDWIG VON MISES

CONTENTS

BUY ME!

Acknowledgments

Introduction by Richard M. Ebeling

1ST LECTURE: Mind, Materialism, and the Fate of Man

2ND LECTURE: Class Conflict and Revolutionary Socialism

3RD LECTURE: Individualism and the Industrial Revolution

4TH LECTURE: Nationalism, Socialism, and Violent Revolution

5TH LECTURE: Marxism and the Manipulation of Man

6TH LECTURE: The Making of Modern Civilization: Savings, Investment, and Economic Calculation

7TH LECTURE: Money, Interest, and the Business Cycle

8TH LECTURE: Profit and Loss, Private Property, and the Achievements of Capitalism

9TH LECTURE: Foreign Investments and the Spirit of Capitalism

Index

THE ROOSEVELT NOBODY KNOWS: HOW GEORGE W. BUSH IS CARRYING ON FDR'S FASCIST LEGACY

The Roosevelt Nobody Knows By Christopher Westley Posted on 10/29/2001 [Subscribe or Tell Others]

The New Dealers' War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the War Within World War II. By Thomas Fleming. (Basic Books: April 2001) $24.50.

Imagine the following scenario:

The economy is in bad shape after years of poorly conceived policy interventions, and as a result, the general public holds the federal government in disrepute. Suddenly, an attack by foreign enemies on the U.S. galvanizes the nation in support of the political class, thus rejuvenating formerly demoralized public employees and altering the image of the president from a likable man, not known for his mental agility, to a wise statesman in calm control of the nation, a man so obviously dedicated to his responsibilities that he could unilaterally declare "an unlimited national emergency" and be trusted with the power.

The president is question is not George W. Bush but Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who knew the effect that Days of Infamy can have on the public's tolerance for statism at home. Historian Thomas Fleming's masterpiece, The New Dealers' War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the War Within World War II, explains how this-and more-happened sixty years ago, in an outstanding book that sadly became timelier following September 11, 2001.

Fleming's picture of FDR is a decidedly less-than-iconic portrait of our thirty-second president, when compared to the image that has been drummed into the national psyche in countless government-funded civics classes since his death in April 1945. Fleming's FDR is driven by a messianic complex and an intense hatred of German history, culture, and people.

To appreciate FDR's strong desire for war with Germany, which was so great that he sanctioned one with Japan in order to achieve it, it is important to understand the state of the economy in the years leading up to it. By the midpoint of FDR's second term, the failure of the New Deal policies was evident to all but the truly delusional. The unemployment rate again reached levels associated with the hated Hoover, while the public's tolerance of the pretentious New Dealers and their endless attempts to control the economy waned.

Especially humiliating were statistics that showed the United States lagging far behind foreign countries in recovering from the Depression. American national income in 1937 was 85.8 percent of the 1929 high-water mark, while England's was 124.3 percent. Chile, Sweden, and Australia had growth rates in the 20-percent range. The United States figure was a dismal -7.0 percent.

The New Deal was exposed as a bad one, and the president's image looked irrevocably tarnished. A disconsolate FDR would confide to his associates his frustrations resulting from his lost political dominance: "[It is] a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead-and finding no one there" (p. 67).

But Roosevelt's political capital was vastly superior to his mental capital (he would joke at times about earning "gentleman's C's" while at Harvard). He knew that the only way he could repair his place in history to fit his own self-image was to lead the country in an unpopular European war, thus necessitating an attempt for an unprecedented third term. Fleming argues, convincingly, that America's entry into the war was crucial for the revival of the New Deal.

If this scheme sounds crass six decades later, Fleming goes to great lengths to prove that Roosevelt's contemporary adversaries recognized it as the raison d'etre of Roosevelt's foreign policies following the recession of 1937-38. Journalist John Pritchard would note in the June 1941 issue of Coronet magazine (quoted by Fleming, p. 81):

The first stage [of the New Deal] had been a visionary attempt to reshape the American economy into a planned state. The second stage was an entirely new approach, "The New Deal of War." Unable to solve the problems of the American economy peacefully, Roosevelt was taking the nation to war in order to achieve full production-and state control of everything.

A group of Republican congressman would tell ex-President Hoover that "the administration was concerned with war not as war but as a method of destroying the present form of government in the United States" (p. 84), while Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio warned that "Entrance into the European War will be the next great New Deal experiment" (p. 87).

Several essays meant to rally disenchanted New Dealers fueled these ideas, such as the one written by the archetypal New Dealer Harry Hopkins with the brash title, "The New Deal of Mr. Roosevelt is the Designate and Invincible Adversary of the New Order of Hitler." There is only one way to defeat Hitler, Hopkins would write (p. 85): "By the new order of democracy, which is the New Deal universally extended and applied." Hopkins would (ominously) add that democracy "must wage total war against totalitarian war. It must exceed the Nazi in fury, ruthlessness and efficiency." Apparently, you have to be a totalitarian to beat a totalitarian. (Does the same logic apply for beating terrorism?)

But how to get into the war was another matter entirely, given widespread American opposition to such an action, which FDR was forced to acknowledge in order to win the election of 1940. This explains why Roosevelt confided to Harold Ickes, "I am not willing to fire the first shot. I am waiting to get pushed into the situation." FDR's attempts to get pushed make for fascinating reading. Fleming's description of the "strange mission of the Lanikai" (in which a Navy schooner was sent to tweak Japanese naval forces at Cam Ranh Bay off the coast of Indonesia) and the leaking of the Rainbow Five war plan (in which plans for total war with Germany were revealed to the press, most likely by Roosevelt himself) is captivating.

Once the U.S. finally enters the war, Roosevelt is depicted as having the time of his life. Why wouldn't he? Presidents assume near dictatorial powers during wars, and Roosevelt was able to manipulate this one to provide moral legitimacy to his domestic agenda. Later, economist Murray Rothbard would explain this symbiotic relationship between domestic and foreign policies to convey the interdependent relationship between the welfare and warfare states. With the war, Roosevelt could boast of eliminating unemployment at home while fighting evil abroad. Not a bad deal.

Of course, it was quite a bad deal if you lived in Dresden or Tokyo, or languished in a concentration camp in Poland when the war otherwise could have ended sooner. Fleming describes in heart-rending detail how Roosevelt squelched internal efforts by members of the German resistance to defeat Hitler, including those by Adm. Wilhelm Canaris and Gen. Erwin Rommel, fearing that a successful resistance movement in 1943 would hamper his election plans for 1944.

Indeed, polls predicted that if the war had ended before the election, even with FDR on the Democratic ticket, the GOP candidate would have won in a landslide. Fleming argues that this fueled a foolish unconditional surrender policy toward Germany, painting the German people into a corner and increasing their degree of desperation on the battlefield. The result was the entirely avoidable and costly extension of the war in Europe. Fleming notes: "If we add all the dead and wounded since 1943, when unconditional surrender was promulgated, destroying the German's resistance's hope of overthrowing Hitler," eight million more people died. "Unquestionably, this ultimatum was written in blood" (p. 467).

There is much, much more in this superb book, including Fleming's description of Henry Wallace-perhaps the weirdest man ever to achieve high office anywhere-and of Roosevelt's revealing devotion to the evil Stalin, resulting in the needless bestowing of Christian Eastern Europe to the Soviet Empire following the war.

At one point early in the book, Fleming writes of Harry Truman's opposition to a third term for Roosevelt because his study of history had convinced him no man should be considered indispensable in a republic. This sentiment complements that of Lord Acton, whose famous aphorism ("all power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely") warns against placing too much power in the hands of any individual. The bloody consequences of such concentrations of power were evident throughout the twentieth century.

Of course, the timeliness of The New Dealers' War increased following the events of September 11-the present generation's Day of Infamy. Since that date, a rejuvenated Congress has authorized many tens of billions to fight yet another enemy and to fund new layers of government control at home, with the near unanimous support of a shaken public. Meanwhile, the current president has identified the federal government's new role of ridding the world of evil. It would appear that support for the government is once again high, in marked contrast to the divided nation that was revealed during the 2000 election. It must be fun again to be in public service.

Thomas Fleming reminds us that we have gone down this road before. What we gained was an overweening state and what we lost were many of the liberties that should be the most treasured of all values. The wise among us will heed the lesson.

---

Christopher Westley is an assistant professor of economics at Jacksonville State University. See his Mises.org Articles Archive and send him MAIL.

You can receive the Mises Daily Article in your inbox. Go here to subscribe or unsubscribe.

OUTRIGHT LIBERTARIANS (video interview)

my interview with some radical gay libertarians at this year's s.f. pride. i ask them about michael moore, global warming, corporate monopolies, the presidential candidates...unfortunately, they got it wrong about ron paul. he voted *against* the federal defense of marriage act. but ron paul and libertarians generally part ways on immigration issues (if only they knew more about the north american union proposals). enjoy!

OUTRIGHT LIBERTARIANS

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C-NET: WHY THE FCC SHOULD DIE

the following article also explains why we shouldn't let the federal government touch the internet via misleading "net neutrality" type bills. more on that later.

Perspective: Why the FCC should die

CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh says it's high time to get rid of the Federal Communications Commission. But what to replace it with?

By Declan McCullagh

Published: June 7, 2004, 4:00 AM PDT

See all Perspectives

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It's time to abolish the Federal Communications Commission.

The reason is simple. The venerable FCC, created in 1934, is no longer necessary.

Its justification for existence was weak 70 years ago, but advances in technology since then have eliminated whatever arguments remained. Central planning didn't work for the Soviet Union, and it's not working for us. The FCC is now an agency that does more harm than good.

Consider some examples of bureaucratic malfeasance that the FCC, with the complicity of the U.S. Congress, has committed. The FCC rejected long-distance telephone service competition in 1968, banned Americans from buying their own non-Bell telephones in 1956, dragged its feet in the 1970s when considering whether video telephones would be allowed and did not grant modern cellular telephone licenses until 1981--about four decades after Bell Labs invented the technology. Along the way, the FCC has preserved monopolistic practices that would have otherwise been illegal under antitrust law.

These technologically backward decisions have cost Americans tens of billions of dollars.

More recently, the FCC has experienced a string of embarrassing losses, when its grand telecommunications plans were repeatedly vetoed by the courts. A majority of the commissioners want to force local phone companies to pay government-mandated rates when long-distance providers like AT&T and MCI use their phone lines. A federal appeals court recently shot down that scheme and gave the Bush administration until June 15 to appeal to the Supreme Court. There's already talk about higher telephone bills becoming a campaign issue this fall.

Meanwhile, the FCC is hard at work, trying to figure out how to muzzle Howard Stern and make a national example of Janet Jackson's right breast. Commissioners are planning how to order voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) companies to comply with arguably unlawful wiretapping requests from the FBI.

There's already talk about higher telephone bills becoming a campaign issue this fall.

In a sop to Hollywood, the FCC has decided that any device capable of receiving digital television signals must follow a complicated set of "broadcast flag" regulations. When those rules take effect in mid-2005, they will put some PC tuner card makers out of business.

These signs warn of an agency that is overreaching. If the FCC had been in charge of overseeing the Internet, we'd likely be waiting for the Mosaic Web browser to receive preliminary approval from the Wireline Competition Bureau. Instead, the Internet has transformed from a research curiosity into a mainstay of the world's economy--in less time than it took the FCC to approve the first cell phone licenses.

Even ardent supporters of the FCC should admit that there's less justification for its existence after the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which removed some barriers to competition. Local phone customers don't need to worry about the Bells' monopolistic practices, because they effectively aren't monopolies anymore. Cable customers don't need to worry much about monopolistic practices because of satellite TV. Eventually, fiber connections will transport every kind of data.

Historical justification
The original justification for existence of the FCC was to rein in an unruly marketplace. That thinking dates back to the 1920s, when Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, an engineer by training, was worried about the unregulated new industry of broadcasting. Hundreds of radio stations had been launched, and the only requirement was that they register with the Commerce Department.

Conflicts began to arise. The Navy complained of the "turbulent condition of radio communication." But courts were already undertaking the slow but careful common-law method of crafting a set of rules for the new medium. An Illinois state court decided in 1926, for instance, that Chicago broadcaster WGN had the right to a disputed slice of spectrum, because "priority of time creates a superiority in right."

But Hoover and Congress didn't give the courts a chance. The Radio Act of 1927, followed by the Communications Act of 1934, gave the FCC unlimited power to assign frequencies, approve broadcasters' power levels and revoke licenses on a whim. The FCC already enjoyed the power to regulate telephone lines and eventually would accumulate the authority to regulate cable as well.

Abolishing the FCC does not mean airwave anarchy.

If the FCC had been in charge of overseeing the Internet, we'd likely be waiting for the Mosaic Web browser to receive preliminary approval from the Wireline Competition Bureau.

What it means is returning to bottom-up law rather than the top-down process that has characterized telecommunications for the last 80 years.

How to do it...
In his excellent 1997 book "Law and Disorder in Cyberspace," Manhattan Institute fellow Peter Huber describes how the privatization process could work. Huber proposes that the government sell off standard units of spectrum--10kHz for AM radio, 6MHz for television, 25MHz for cellular, 40MHz for PCS--using existing geographical contours for each type of frequency.

"Once the standard parcels are defined, they can be sold to the highest bidders," Huber writes. "To keep for how long? Forever. Just like land." If just one UHF (ultrahigh frequency) television station in Los Angeles were permitted to transfer its spectrum to a third cellular provider, Huber estimates, "the overall public gain would be about $1 billion, or so the government itself estimated in 1992." Wireless technologies would be huge winners, if the spectrum were privatized.

What if disputes over spectrum arose? The answer is simple. Whoever owned the rights to that slice of virtual real estate would locate the illicit broadcaster, march into the local courthouse and get a restraining order to pull the plug on the transmitter. Trespass is hardly a new idea, and courts are well-equipped to deal with it.

One fear is that some predatory monopolist, a Microsoft of the airwaves, would end up owning all of the spectrum. That won't happen. First, the market value of the spectrum would approach $1 trillion, out of the reach of any individual corporation. Second, antitrust laws would remain on the books. The Department of Justice could wield the Sherman Antitrust Act to challenge unlawful conduct and block mergers.

Now is the perfect time to ask whether the FCC should continue to exist. Congress is considering revisions to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and some courageous politicians are wondering out loud whether the hundreds of pages of legalese are still necessary.

Abolishing the FCC does not mean airwave anarchy.

At a hearing last month, Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., asked whether "perhaps we should declare victory" and ditch the FCC. Beyond the economic cost of missed opportunities caused by regulation, it would also immediately save taxpayers $300 million a year.

It's true that imagining a telecommunications world without the FCC is not easy. But imagining a telecommunications world not dominated by Ma Bell was difficult two decades ago, and it was not easy for the Eastern European countries to imagine life without the Soviet Union.

Since then, those formerly communist nations have privatized resources formerly owned by their governments, with remarkable results. Estonia is Europe's new economic wonder: revenue from state-owned property is a smaller percentage of the economy than it is in the United States, and its economy is growing more than twice as fast as ours.

That should be a lesson. It's time for the FCC to go.

Biography

Declan McCullagh is CNET News.com's chief political correspondent. He spent more than a decade in Washington, D.C., chronicling the busy intersection between technology and politics. Previously, he was the Washington bureau chief for Wired News, and a reporter for Time.com, Time magazine and HotWired. McCullagh has taught journalism at American University and been an adjunct professor at Case Western University.

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SPIN: SURREAL EXPOSE OF MEDIA-CONSTRUCTED REALITY

Using the 1992 presidential election as his springboard, documentary filmmaker Brian Springer captures the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of politicians and newscasters in the early 1990s. Pat Robertson banters about "homos," Al Gore learns how to avoid abortion questions, George Bush talks to Larry King about halcyon -- all presuming they're off camera. Composed of 100% unauthorized satellite footage, Spin is a surreal expose of media-constructed reality.

SUVs ON JUPITER? (warming trend a solar-system phenomenon)

SUV's On Jupiter?
Are humans responsible for climate change on the outer reaches of the solar system, or is it the sun?

Kofi Annan today slammed global warming skeptics as being "out of step" and "out of time," but how will altering human activity halt climate change when the evidence clearly indicates that the sun itself and not SUV's is heating up the entire solar system?

"The U.N. chief lamented "a frightening lack of leadership" in fashioning next steps to reduce global emissions. "Let us start being more politically courageous," he urged the hundreds of delegates from some 180 member nations of the 1992 U.N. climate treaty," reports Forbes.

But how do we square the fact that almost every planet in our solar system is simultaneously undergoing temperature change and volatile weather patterns. Does this not suggest that global warming is a natural cycle as a result of the evolving nature of the sun? Can Al Gore fill me in on this one?

- Space.com: Global Warming on Pluto Puzzles Scientists
In what is largely a reversal of an August announcement, astronomers today said Pluto is undergoing global warming in its thin atmosphere even as it moves farther from the Sun on its long, odd-shaped orbit.

- Space.com: New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change
The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe.

- Current Science & Technology Center: Global Warming on Mars?
A study of the ice caps on Mars may show that the red planet is experiencing a warming trend. If both Mars and Earth are experiencing global warming, then perhaps there is a larger phenomenon going on in the Solar System that is causing their global climates to change.

- United Press International: NASA looks at a monster storm on Saturn
NASA says its Cassini spacecraft has found a hurricane-like storm at Saturn's South Pole, nearly 5,000 miles across -- or two-thirds Earth's diameter.

- Science Agogo: Global Warming Detected on Triton
There may not be much industrial pollution on Neptune's largest moon, but things are hotting up nonetheless. "At least since 1989, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming," confirms astronomer James Elliot, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Percentage-wise, it's a very large increase."

- Associated Press: Study says sun getting hotter
Solar radiation reaching the Earth is 0.036 percent warmer than it was in 1986, when the current solar cycle was beginning, a researcher reports in a study to be published Friday in the journal Science. The finding is based on an analysis of satellites that measure the temperature of sunlight.

- London Telegraph: The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame
Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.

The simple fact is that throughout the ages the earth has swung wildly between a warm, wet, stable climate, to a cold, dry and windy one - long before the first fossil fuel was burned. The changes we are now witnessing are a walk in the park compared to the battering that our planet has taken in the past.

This is not a defense of the oil cartels or the Neo-Con wreckers, who would have every motivation to ignore global warming whether it is man-made or not.

Nor is it a blanket denial of the fact that the earth is getting very gradually hotter, but how do we reconcile global warming taking place at the farthest reaches of the solar system with the contention that it is caused by human activity? Have our exhaust fumes left earth's atmosphere and slipped through a black hole to Triton?

The assertion that global warming is man made is so oppressively enforced upon popular opinion, especially in Europe, that expressing a scintilla of doubt is akin to holocaust denial in some cases. Such is the insipid brainwashing that has taken place via television, newspapers and exalted talking heads - global warming skeptics are forced to wear the metaphoric yellow star and only discuss their doubts in hushed tones and conciliatory frameworks, or be cat-called, harangued and jeered by an army of do-gooders who righteously believe they are rescuing mother earth by recycling a wine bottle or putting their paper in a separate trash can.

Fearmongering about an imminent climate doomsday also hogs news coverage and important environmental issues like GM food, mad scientist chimera cloning and the usurpation and abuse of corporations like Monsanto flies under the radar.

Global warming is cited as an excuse to meter out further control and surveillance over our daily lives, RFID chips on our trash cans, GPS satellite tacking and taxation by the mile, as well as a global tax at the gas pump.

The extremist wing of the environmentalist movement, characterized by people like Dr. Erik Pianka, advocate the mass culling of humanity via plagues and state sanctioned bio-terrorism, in order to "save" the earth from the disease of humanity. Nazi-like genocial population control measures and the environmental establishment have always held a close alliance.

The orthodox organized religion of global warming and its disastrous consequences for our freedom of speech, freedom of mobility and our right to remain outside of the system, needs to be questioned on the foundational basis that the phenomenon is solar-system wide and it is mainly caused by the natural evolution of the sun and not human activity.

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, November 16, 2006

ATTORNEY ACQUITTED FOR NOT FILING INCOME TAX RETURNS

Local attorney acquitted on federal income tax charges
Cryer stopped filing income taxes more than 10 years ago
July 13, 2007

A Shreveport attorney who has challenged the government for years on the legality of filing federal income taxes has been acquitted on charges he failed to file returns.

A federal jury unanimously found Tommy Cryer not guilty this week on two misdemeanor counts of failure to file.

And according to Cryer, the prosecution dismissed two felony charges of tax evasion prior to trial.

Attempts by The Times on Thursday to reach U.S. Attorney Donald Washington or Bill Flanagan, first assistant U.S. attorney, were not successful. Calls made to the two were not immediately returned.

"The court could not find a law that makes me liable or makes my revenues taxable," Cryer said. "The Supreme Court has ruled that the government cannot impose an income tax on anything but the profits and gains. When you work for someone you give your service and labor in exchange for money, so everything you make is not profit or gain. You put something into it."

Cryer was indicted last year on two counts of tax evasion. The indictment alleged he evaded payment of $73,000 in income tax to the Internal Revenue Service during 2000 and 2001.

Cryer created a trust listing himself as the trustee, and received payments of dividends, interest and stock income to that trust, according to the indictment. He also was accused of concealing his receipt of the sources of income from the IRS by failing to file a tax return on behalf of that trust.

"I determined that my personal earnings were not 100 percent profits, some were income," Cryer said. "I refuse to file, I refuse to pay unless they can show me I have a lawful reason to pay."

"What I earned was my own personal labor. I am giving something in exchange. I'm giving my property and I don't belong to anyone else."

Cryer says he stopped filing returns more than 10 years ago after he investigated claims that income tax was a sham. He contends the law doesn't actually tax personal earning.

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070713/NEWS03/707130321/1062/NEWS03

SOMEBODY'S WATCHING YOU (COP WATCH L.A.)

Somebody's Watching You

A convicted felon turns cameras on the cops, putting a balance of power, he says, back in the hands of the people.

By KEVIN SITES, TUE MAY 29, 1:42 PM PDT

"I raise my fist because I want that justice; don't get my freedom, gonna have to take my freedom." — Sherman Austin, from his song "Raise the Fist"

LOS ANGELES - On May Day, 2007, the Los Angeles police made front page news after clashing with protesters in a public park. Images of baton-wielding officers and cowering protesters, journalists among them, renewed an angry debate over police brutality in a city still scarred by the memory of the Rodney King beating.

Sherman Austin says his own run-ins with the police led him to start Cop Watch.

Citizen video has left an indelible mark on Los Angeles. The King video is the best-known example, but far from the only one. In 2002, a tourist filmed 16-year-old Donovan Jackson being punched and slammed against a police cruiser in Inglewood. Last year, a UCLA student taped an incident in which another student was hit by a stun gun at a school library. The video spread quickly across the Internet.

"This type of stuff happens every day in L.A.," says Sherman Austin, founder of Cop Watch LA, an activist group that was quick to post images and clips of the May Day incident. "It's just a coincidence sometimes there's a video camera around to videotape."

The LAPD disagrees, contending that the average person doesn't always consider the situation that led to the police confrontation in the first place. A spokesperson for the department says the LAPD averages 1.2 uses of force per 100 arrests, which he claims is one of the lowest in the country.

Tools of the trade
Cop Watch LA received wide attention last year when it posted a video of an alleged gang member being punched in the face by one LAPD officer while another officer knelt on his throat. The disturbing video has been viewed more than 100,000 times on YouTube and Cop Watch LA's site.

Ironically, Austin's tool of choice, the Internet, is the same one that landed him in jail several years ago. He was convicted of distributing information about explosives — he argues that all he did was link to a page that included text copied from Abbie Hoffman's anarchist manifesto, "Steal This Book" — and now, as part of his probation, he isn't allowed to touch a computer until August 2007.

He maintains the Cop Watch LA website through instructions to other members, writing out computer code on paper and napkins.

'We want justice'
Norma and Norbieto Martinez are supporters and frequent visitors to the Cop Watch LA office. They feel they have a personal stake in the work.

Their son Gonzalo was killed by Downey, Calif., police after a low-speed chase in 2002. Police fired over 30 rounds at him. The incident was captured on videotape by a freelance news photographer.

"My life has been a nightmare since they killed my son," says Norma Martinez. "The only thing we try to do now is help other people. You know, we felt so sorry for the people who go through this like we are going through. We don't have a life anymore. Even though I have two more sons, it's not the same."

She says they've been offered compensation by the city, but she wants the officers in jail.

"Justice," she says, "that's all we want. Justice."

Cop Watch LA members are often out at dawn to monitor police activity in downtown Los Angeles.

A presence on the street
Cop Watch LA is no longer relying on mere coincidence to capture images of police misbehavior. Dressed in black and red Cop Watch T shirts, the young members are motivated and vigilant — telling their own stories of victimization at the hands of police. When many young adults are often sleeping in during the weekends, they are often getting up before 7 a.m. to patrol downtown LA in an effort, Austin says, to keep police from harassing the homeless population.

I asked him if the police know about Cop Watch LA and who he is. Austin said they do, and that police told him recently, "'We know who you guys are. We know about you. We know you're out here. We're not scared of you guys.'"

But Austin said he thinks police do feel threatened when the cameras come out. The exchange, he said, "came off as kind of defensive: 'We're not [scared] of you guys.'"

"OK," he added, "we're not afraid of you either. That's why we're here."

-Producer: Robert Padavick
-Video editors: Tommy Morquecho and Jon Brick

basically, the idea is this: if and when the great oil producing countries in the world start selling their oil for euros instead of dollars (iran, for example, has already started doing so), all the central banks that have been buying off our debt will likely de-invest in the dollar (which has so far been *the* petrol currency, which is why we had to take out saddam because *he* started trading his oil for euros) and we will quickly be forced to pay off the debt ourselves, which means higher taxes, less spending, and an overall lower standard of living for all americans, if not a complete economic meltdown...if the federal reserve buys the debt, there will be an increase in inflation, because the federal reserve charges interest for its loans and that interest would result in a further increase in the money supply (with more money in circulation comes more demand and with more demand higher prices, or so the theory goes)...if the government, however, decided to "monetize" its debt it could do so without further inflation. in short: don't let the fed do it, or else not only will we be hit with higher taxes and less social services, our money will also become increasingly worthless, completing the vicious circle and making serfs of us all.

Spiraling US Federal Debt Triggers Decline of Dollar

A Non-Inflationary Solution to the Federal Debt Crisis
By Ellen Hodgson Brown

webofdebt.com

The U.S. federal debt has reached crisis proportions, approaching $9 trillion in 2007. U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker has warned that just the interest on the debt will soon be more than the taxpayers can afford to pay. He observed in 2003:

We cannot simply grow our way out of [the national debt]. . . . The ultimate alternatives to definitive and timely action are not only unattractive, they are arguably infeasible. Specifically, raising taxes to levels far in excess of what the American people have ever supported before, cutting total spending by unthinkable amounts, or further mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren to an extent that our economy, our competitive posture and the quality of life for Americans would be seriously threatened.¹

Nearly half the public portion of the federal debt is now owed to foreigners, and they are pulling out of dollars into other currencies as the dollar shrinks in value. Oil-producing countries are also moving to other currencies for their oil trades, removing a major incentive for foreign central banks to hold U.S. government bonds. In an April 2005 article in Counter Punch, Mike Whitney warned:

This is much more serious than a simple decline in the value of the dollar. If the major oil producers convert from the dollar to the euro, the American economy will sink almost overnight. If oil is traded in euros then central banks around the world would be compelled to follow and America will be required to pay off its enormous $8 trillion debt. That, of course, would be doomsday for the American economy. . . . If there's a quick fix, I have no idea what it might be.²

Today, the "quick fix" of the Federal Reserve and its affiliated banks is to quietly buy back the bonds with money created with accounting entries on their books. This is not actually a new practice. The fact that banks buy government bonds with money created out of thin air was confirmed as far back as 1935, when Federal Reserve Chairman Marriner Eccles testified before the U.S. House Banking and Currency Committee:

When the banks buy a billion dollars of Government bonds as they are offered . . . they actually create, by a bookkeeping entry, a billion dollars.³

In 2005, however, this scheme evidently went into high gear, when China and Japan, the two largest purchasers of U.S. federal debt, cut back on their purchases of U.S. securities. Market "bears" had long warned that when foreign creditors quit rolling over their U.S. bonds, the U.S. economy would collapse. They were therefore predicting the worst; but somehow, no disaster resulted. The bonds were still getting sold. The question was, to whom? The Fed identified the buyers as a mysterious new U.S. creditor group called "Caribbean banks." The financial press said they were offshore hedge funds. But Canadian analyst Rob Kirby, writing in March 2005, said that if they were hedge funds, they must have performed extremely poorly for their investors, raking in losses of 40 percent in January 2005 alone; and no such losses were reported by the hedge fund community. He wrote:

The foregoing suggests that hedge funds categorically did not buy these securities. The explanations being offered up as plausible by officialdom and fed to us by the main stream financial press are not consistent with empirical facts or market observations. There are no wide spread or significant losses being reported by the hedge fund community from ill gotten losses in the Treasury market. . . . [W]ho else in the world has pockets that deep, to buy 23 billion bucks worth of securities in a single month? One might surmise that a printing press would be required to come up with that kind of cash on such short notice.⁴

In September 2005, this bit of wizardry happened again, after Venezuela liquidated roughly $20 billion in U.S. Treasury securities following U.S. threats to that country. Again the anticipated response was a plunge in the dollar, and again no disaster ensued. Other buyers had stepped in to take up the slack, and chief among them were the mysterious "Caribbean banking centers." Rob Kirby wrote:

I wonder who really bought Venezuela's 20 or so billion they "pitched." Whoever it was, perhaps their last name ends with Snow [referring to then-Treasury Secretary John Snow] or Greenspan.⁵

Those incidents were apparently just dress rehearsals for bigger things to come. In late 2005, the Federal Reserve (or "Fed") announced that beginning in March 2006, it would no longer be publishing figures for M3 (the largest measure of the money supply). M3 has been the main staple of money supply measurement and transparent disclosure for the last half-century, the figure on which the world has relied in determining the soundness of the dollar. But the curtain was now to drop. What was it that we weren't supposed to know? March 2006 was also the month Iran announced it would begin selling oil in Euros. Some observers suspected that the Fed was gearing up to use newly-printed dollars to buy back a flood of U.S. securities dumped by foreign central banks. Another possibility was that the Fed had already been engaging in massive dollar printing to conceal a major derivatives default and was hiding the evidence.⁶

Whatever was going on, the question raised here is this: if the Fed can buy back the government's bonds with a flood of newly-printed dollars, leaving the government in debt to the Fed and the banks, why can't the government buy back the bonds with its own newly-printed dollars, debt-free? The inflation argument long used to block that solution simply won't hold up anymore. To the contrary, it can be argued that for the government to buy back the bonds and take them out of circulation would actually avoid the dangerous inflation that is occurring now. When the Federal Reserve and commercial banks buy government bonds with money created out of thin air, they don't void out the bonds. Two sets of securities – the bonds and the cash – are created where before there was only one. This inflationary duplication could be avoided by allowing the government to redeem the bonds itself and then removing them from the money supply.

Swapping Government Bonds for Cash
Would Not Drive Up Consumer Prices

The idea that the government could liquidate the federal debt by simply printing up dollars and buying back its own bonds with them is dismissed out of hand by economists and politicians on the ground that it would produce rampant runaway inflation. But would it? Inflation results when the money supply increases faster than goods and services, and replacing government securities with cash would not change the size of the money supply. Federal securities are already money. They have been money ever since Alexander Hamilton made them the basis of the national money supply in the late eighteenth century. Converting federal securities into government-issued U.S. Notes would not cause prices to shoot up because consumers would have no more money to spend than they had before.

A "security" is a type of transferable interest representing financial value. The federal securities composing the federal debt (bills, bonds and notes) are treated by the Federal Reserve and by the market itself just as if they were money. Federal securities are traded daily in enormous volume among banks and other financial institutions around the world just as if they were money.⁷ If the government were to buy back its own bonds with cash, these instruments of financial value would merely be converted from interest-bearing notes into non-interest-bearing legal tender. The funds would move from M3 into M1 (cash and checks), but the total money supply would remain the same.

Policy-makers track inflation by looking at the widest measure of the money supply, called "broad liquidity." According to Investopedia (an online investors' encyclopedia):

Broad Liquidity [is] a category of the money supply which includes: all funds in M3, individual holdings in accounts, savings bonds, T-bills [Treasury bills] with maturity of less than one year, commercial papers, and banker's acceptances.⁸

"Broad liquidity" thus includes most government securities. Longer-term securities are not technically included in this definition, but the principle still holds: cashing them out would not affect consumer prices, because the money supply would not increase and the bondholders would have no more spending money than they had before. Consider this hypothetical:

You have $20,000 that you want to save for a rainy day. You deposit the money in an account with your broker, who recommends putting $10,000 into the stock market and $10,000 into corporate bonds, and you agree. How much money do you have in the account? $20,000. A short time later, your broker notifies you that your bonds have been unexpectedly called, or turned into cash. You check your account on the Internet and see that where before it contained $10,000 in corporate bonds, it now contains $10,000 in cash. How much money do you have in the account? $20,000 (plus or minus some growth in interest and fluctuations in stock values). Paying off the bonds did not give you an additional $10,000, making you feel richer than before, prompting you to rush out to buy shoes or real estate you did not think you could afford before, increasing demand and driving up prices.

As foreign central banks reduce their reserves of U.S. securities, U.S. bonds will be coming back to U.S. shores whether we like it or not. The question for the U.S. government is simply who will take up the slack when the creditors quit rolling over U.S. debt. Again, when the Fed and commercial banks step in and buy U.S. securities with dollars created with bookkeeping entries, the result is highly inflationary. This result could be avoided by letting the government buy back its own bonds and taking them out of circulation.

In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt pronounced the country officially bankrupt, exercised his special emergency powers and, with a wave of the royal Presidential fiat, ordered the promise to pay in gold removed from the dollar bill. The dollar was instantly transformed from a promise to pay in legal tender into legal tender itself. Seventy years later, Congress could again acknowledge that the country was officially bankrupt, propose a plan of reorganization, and turn its debts into " legal tender." Alexander Hamilton showed two centuries ago that Congress could dispose of the federal debt by "monetizing" it, but Congress made the mistake of delegating that function to a private banking system. Congress needs to rectify its error and monetize the debt itself, by buying back its own bonds with newly-issued U.S.

Notes

1 National Press Club speech by David Walker in Washington on September 17, 2003.

2 Mike Whitney,"Coming Sooner Than You Think: The Economic Tsunami," www.counterpunch.com (April 8, 2005).

3 Quoted in Jerry Voorhis, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon (New York: S. Erikson Inc., 1972).

4 Rob Kirby, "Pirates of the Caribbean," www.financialsense.com (March 18, 2005).

5 Rob Kirby, "Currency Conundrums," www.financialsense.com (November 21, 2005).

6 Robert McHugh, "What's the Fed Up to with the Money Supply?", safehaven.com (December 23, 2005); Ed Haas, "Iran, Bourse and the U.S. Dollar," www.NewsWithViews.com (January 28, 2006); "The Dollar May Fall This March," Pravda (January 14, 2006); Martin Walker, "Iran's Really Big Weapon," www.globalresearch.ca (January 23, 2006); and see Chapter 32.

7 William Hummel, "Zeroing the National Debt," Money: What It Is, How It Works, http://wfhummel.net (March 3, 2002).

8 "Broad Liquidity," www.investopedia.com (2006).

Ellen Brown, J.D. developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust." She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Brown's eleven books include the bestselling Nature's Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, which has sold 285,000 copies.

CINDY SHEEHAN TALKS ABOUT MARTIAL LAW, DEMS AND RON PAUL

Sheehan: Distinct Chance Of Staged Attack, Martial Law Peace Mom warns of false flag terror as she prepares to take on sell-out Pelosi

Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet Thursday, July 12, 2007

Cindy Sheehan, the famous Peace Mom who recently expressed her intention to run against Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco, says there's a "distinct possibility" that America will be hit with another staged terror attack that will allow Bush to enact the martial law provisions he recently signed into law.

Sheehan spoke to The Alex Jones Show as she prepares to embark on a two week trek towards Washington to confront Pelosi.

Asked what she thought of numerous recent comments on behalf of politicians, military analysts and GOP kingpins that the Bush administration needs more terror to save a doomed foreign policy, along with recent legislation that establishes the framework for martial law in the event of an emergency, Sheehan was open to the plausibility that another false flag attack could be visited upon the American people.

(Article continues below)

"I definitely think that is a distinct possibility, that there will be some kind of attack whether it's manufactured or real....I think it's really possible that these people will do that - why would he [Bush] put in that presidential directive if he didn't need to use it - I think it's really really frightening," Sheehan told The Alex Jones Show.

"Does anybody think that [Bush's] recent presidential decision directive wasn't for declaring martial law and suspending elections - that's why they have to be stopped," added Sheehan.

Recently liberated from the straightjacket of partisan control, Sheehan attacked the Democrats for failing to achieve what they were voted in to do last November.

"The culture of corruption doesn't stop at the Republican party and people need to realize that Democrats are not our saviors," said Sheehan.

"Over 600 soldiers have died since the Democrats took over power and many thousands of Iraqis, the blood is on their hands, they have the power to stop it and support our troops, support the people of Iraq, save America from more threats from the Bush administration and get them out of power," added the anti-war activist.

Sheehan told Pelosi that if she didn't have impeachment on the table by July that she would run against her in San Francisco and the Peace Mom has now taken that course of action.

"I will run against you and I will give you a run for your money," challenged Sheehan.

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Sheehan slammed Pelosi as a warmongering elitist who lives in a mansion on a hill and is completely out of touch with her electorate, as well as a major supporter of AIPAC, a group which has expressed its explicit support for an attack on Iran.

"You can't have allegiance to two countries when you're a lawmaker in one of those countries," said Sheehan, adding that many politicians put America's best interests second behind Israel.

Asked why the candidacy of Ron Paul has become so popular, Sheehan commented "People are hungry for change, people are hungry for people to tell the truth, no matter what, people are hungry for those who act out of their integrity."

JEROME CORSI ON THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION

From: Punks 4 Ron Paul
Date: Jul 12, 2007 12:31 PM




In The Late Great USA, Corsi proves that the benignly-named "Security and Prosperity Partnership," created at a meeting between George W. Bush, Stephen Harper and Vincente Fox, is in fact the same kind of regional integration plan that led Europe to form the EU. According to Corsi, the elites in Europe who wanted to create a European nation knew that "it would be necessary to conceal from the peoples of Europe just what was being done in their name until the process was so far advanced that it had become irreversible." Could the same thing be happening here? Is American sovereignty doomed?

Using dozens of documents secured through the Freedom of Information Act and his trademark hard-hitting interviews, Jerome Corsi sets out a chilling view of America's possible "harmonized" future -- one being created covertly, without voter input or Congressional oversight. Could our government's unfathomable position on illegal immigration be tied to the prospect of an integrated North American Union?

From the Publisher:
Jerome Corsi received his Ph.D in political science from Harvard and is an expert on political violence and the U.S. anti-war movement. He's written many books, including co-authoring the #1 New York Times best-seller Unfit for Command. His most recent book is Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders.

ORDER HERE

GUESS WHO IS COMING TO MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA

I will post my personal footage of this as soon as I return from the event. I want to capture all the other important speakers as well.

Come Hear Presidential Candidate Ron Paul

Saturday, July 14th at 10:00am
Charleston Park
1665 Charleston Road, Mountain View, CA 94043

Come see Congressman Ron Paul speak at a rally of his Bay Area supporters! Dr. Paul will share his message of freedom, peace and prosperity at Charleston Park, right next door to Google headquarters and near Shoreline Park. The rally will start at 9:30am, and run till the early afternoon. Speakers will begin at 10:00am. Be sure to bring a lawn chair, shady hat, and plenty of water so you can enjoy the Congressman and the lovely California sun.

---

Congressman Ron Paul

Congressman Ron Paul is the leading advocate for freedom in our nation's capital. As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dr. Paul tirelessly works for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies. He is known among his congressional colleagues and his constituents for his consistent voting record. Dr. Paul never votes for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution.

Fundraiser

A fundraising luncheon for Dr. Paul's campaign will be held immediately following the rally at Michael's on Shoreline. There are 200 seats available for $100 each. Get your tickets while you still can!

Other Speakers

Justin Raimondo

We're pleased to announce that Justin Raimondo will also be speaking at the rally. Famed Libertarian writer and thinker, Justin is also the editorial director of AntiWar.com.

G. Edward Griffin

G. Edward Griffin, the author of "The Creature From Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve", will also be speaking and answering questions.

Joe Wheeler

Since Joe Wheeler's release from the Army, he has become a political activist working with Iraq Veterans Against the War. His efforts are designed to give a voice to the soldiers who are still in the military.

Joe Banister

Joe Banister confronted his superiors and top officials in the IRS about allegations of wrong-doing and his belief that taxpayer rights were being violated.

RON PAUL VS. FDA: YOUR HEALTH FREEDOM IS UNDER ATTACK!

FDA TYRANNY TO BECOME LAW

By Byron J. Richards, CCN

Go to Original

On Wednesday, July11, 2007 the House passed HR.2900 without allowing the Ron Paul (R-TX) amendments to protect dietary supplements. Representatives Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), John Dingell (D-MI), Henry Waxman (D-CA), and others falsely proclaimed that they were doing America a favor by passing this sweeping FDA-supported legislation that grants the rouge agency more power and money, and even transforms it into a quasi drug company.

Both the House and Senate (S.1082) have made the fatally flawed assumption that the reason for so many deaths and injuries from drugs was due to the FDA’s lack of resources. In reality, it is the INTENTION of FDA management that is the problem, combined with the simple fact that multiple drugs are extremely toxic and don’t work as advertised. Giving the FDA more power and money will only cause the agency to speed more drugs onto the market faster with even less safety testing – while abusing its power and actively stamping out competition to drugs.

FDA management is in bed with Big Pharma and this new legislation makes matters significantly worse through the creation of the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA. This new entity places the FDA in charge of drug design, drug patents, drug licenses, and the creation of new marketing entities/companies. Such a relationship with private industry is an unprecedented conflict of interest, totally at odds with drug safety. The current commissioner of the FDA, Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D. is little more than a Big Biotech sales rep with massive industry connections.

The House, like the Senate, will continue to allow direct to consumer advertising of new drugs with unknown risks – a flagrant safety risk that will cost many people their lives. Congressional leaders said they couldn’t prevent this advertisement for fear of violating the first amendment rights of drug companies. What a joke. The FDA routinely squashes the first amendment rights of American citizens to understand natural health options and the science that explains how they can prevent and treat disease. Thus, the first amendment argument is simply a matter of convenience. The FDA wants to actively suppress information that will help people, yet allow highly risky and misleading promotion of toxic substances often for untested uses. The FDA even wants to prevent citizens from suing drug companies when they are injured, thus protecting Big Pharma. FDA tyranny, based on this type of arbitrary and unrestrained exercise of power, is used to promote and protect the pharmaceutical industry while at the same time undermining the dietary supplement industry.

Both the House and Senate think it is completely fine that the drug industry pay the FDA fees so that the FDA can approve new drugs faster. Indeed, the FDA and Big Pharma met 112 times to work out their partnership before the FDA let Congress know what it wanted to see in HR.2900 and S.1082. This is like paying the mob for protection. A careful look at the history of the FDA shows it is little more than a bully that protects vested interests at the expense of human health. It is a pitiful agency. It is little wonder than the majority of Americans don’t trust the FDA.

Big Pharma owns the FDA and Congress. The drug industry sees FDA management and Congressional leaders as a training pool for future Big Pharma jobs – based on how well Big Pharma is supported. There will certainly be plenty of rewards to pass out after this legislation becomes law.

It is a sick situation that this new fake safety legislation provides the FDA with unprecedented new power to stamp out competition to drug companies as well as expose Americans to far greater safety risks than ever before. Provisions within the legislation that creates the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA will allow the FDA to remove any dietary supplement from the market based on its whim.

It is now only a matter of time and a formality before HR.2900 and S.1082 become law. There will be a little bit of haggling in the conference committee, as Big Pharma will takes its last chance at watering down any meaningful reform (of which there is very little). Big Pharma will whine that this legislation is too tough on them, which is a fallacy. This legislation is the Big Pharma dream come true. In a football analogy the only question is the final score. Will Big Pharma win by 28-7 or will it win by 42-7. Big Pharma has just cleaned the clock of Americans. We should not forget the gutless Congressional puppets that made it happen.

A new tone has been set. A new chart has been plotted. Congress has transformed the FDA into a quasi drug company with unprecedented new regulatory power to control all health options in America. How many deaths and injuries will it take for a comatose and medicinally-overdosed public to wake up?

Related Articles:

1. How the FDA is Becoming a Drug Company, Part 1, 6-14-07
2. FDA Collaboration with Big Pharma Raises Eyebrows 6-7-07
3. Understanding the Threat to Dietary Supplements, Part 1, 5-15-07
4. Senators Chose Big Pharma Over the Best Interests of U.S. Citizens 5-9-07

AIPAC: THE ISRAEL LOBBY IN AMERICA // NEOCONS AND ZIONISTS: THE WAR PARTY

COUNTERLIGHT



(--English version--) An episode of the Dutch documentary program "Tegenlicht" about the Israel lobby in the USA.

This new documentary (April 2007) was created as a result of the controversy created by Mearsheimer and Walt's "The Israel Lobby" article. Featuring interviews with Mearsheimer, geostrategist Lawrence Wikerson, Richard Perle, historian and critic Tony Judt, John Hagee, former Congressman Earl Hilliard, Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch, Michael Massing and Daniel Levy.

'Tegenlicht' ('Backlight') is a program from the Dutch VPRO public television.

"De Israel Lobby" (AIPAC)

English elucidation at the VPRO website: http://www.vpro.nl/programma/tegenlicht/dossiers/34338368/

Listen also to the revealing 2002 BBC radio reportage 'A lobby to deal with': http://www.supload.com/listen?s=S_ts9_fOUg1

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html

http://www.americanfreepress.net AFP - America's last real newspaper

| -- Related documentaries: --|

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3814835914745214809 Senator Findley Speaks about how Israel Lobby Started this War

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3252642434022358005 Republican Paul Findley Dares to Speak Out -- Again ! - AIPAC Exposed

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7267134620652018859 Loss of Liberty

THE WAR PARTY: ZIONISTS AND THE NEOCONSERVATIVES



A BBC documentary looking at how Zionists have both formulated, set in place & then shaped the USA's strategic policies in recent years, especially with regards to the Middle-East. It also highlights the control, power, and influence that this group wields at all levels in Washington.

BIG PHARMA VS. FDA: WHO IS WORSE?

This comes from one of my favorite self-proclaimed punk rock libertarian bloggers, "The Freedom Files". Click on the link below.

Who is Worse? Big Pharma or the FDA?
Category: News and Politics

Hello Freedomphiles! I promise I'll get off this "defang the FDA" kick soon, but I haven't yet gotten it all out of my system. A new study by the Manhattan Institute really breaks down what FDA delays cost us, as well as showing us exactly what kind of benefit we get from a relatively free market in medicine.

Frank R. Lichtenberg writes in the Washington Post today:

How have medical innovations affected American health? In a study the Manhattan Institute is releasing today -- "Why Has Life Expectancy Increased More in Some States Than in Others?" -- I explain that incremental medical innovations, particularly the use of newer drugs, have played a major role in increasing American longevity in recent years.

(...)

According to my econometric model, about two-thirds (63 percent) of the potential increase in longevity during this period -- the increase that would have occurred if obesity, income and other factors had not changed -- can be attributed to the use of newer drugs. In fact, for every year increase in average drug vintage there was an almost two-month gain in life expectancy.

Increasing access to newer drugs was not associated with above-average annual spending on health care; and the use of newer medicines seems to have increased labor productivity (output per employee) by about 1 percent per year, perhaps because of reduced absenteeism from chronic ailments. Overall, my findings contradicted the common assumption that advances in medical technology automatically result in increased health-care expenditures.

So, not only are we living longer because of these new drugs, but we don't seem to really be paying much more to do so. This doesn't surprise me, and I find it fascinating, but here is what I really wanted to show you - the crux of the bisquit, as it were - that one line: In fact, for every year increase in average drug vintage there was an almost two-month gain in life expectancy.

That is so telling. What that means is that while the FDA is frittering away and trying to be perfect, every year it takes them to approve a new drug takes two months from the life of the patient.

Let's look at beta-blockers:

The FDA held up approval of beta blockers for eight years because it believed they caused cancer. In the meantime, according to Dr. Louis Lasagna of the Tufts University Center for the Study of Drug Development, 119,000 people died who might have been helped by that medication.

So, that's 119,000 people dead because the FDA was dragging its feet. But with this new information, we also know that in eight years, every patient that could use them but didn't die lost 16 months off their lives. Because the FDA was protecting them. Bullshit, right?

But let's take that a step further. The American Heart Association says that beta-blockers "lengthen the lives of people at risk of sudden death due to irregular heart beats." I don't even know how to google for a total of people that would fit that criteria. So, let's say that the people who lived were exactly the same amount of people who died - which is going to be a low estimate, as far more people live through this sort of thing.

So, that's 119,000 people whose lives were shortened 16 months. That's 1,094,000 months of life robbed from Americans by beaureacracy. Or you can view it as 158667 years. Dead split in the center of those 8 years of delay was 1972, when the average American life-expectancy was 71.2 years.

Using that statistic, 2228.5 lifetimes were lost in that eight year period, taking the total to 121,228. And all because we don't trust people to make their own decisions with good information.

Disgusting.

Currently reading : Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited (P.S.) By Aldous Huxley Release date: By 05 July, 2005