A Tariff Would, Too, Fix Our Trade Mess

Ian Fletcher 

Activist Post

I and my employer, the Coalition for a Prosperous America, are unabashed protectionists.  I have written previously about how, for example, a flat tariff on all U.S. imports may well be the key to solving the ongoing trade crisis that is depleting our national wealth and gutting our industries. 

We at CPA believe that a genuine national debate on trade issues will eventually draw public opinion our way.  So it is only fair to answer some of the reasonable-but-mistaken objections raised to our position.

One obvious objection is simply that a tariff is a tax increase. So it is. But it does not have to be a net tax increase if the revenue it generates is used to fund cuts in other taxes. So in order to obtain a “clean” policy debate, in which the tariff is debated purely on its merits as a trade policy, unmuddied by partisan opinions about the total level of taxation, any tariff proposal should be packaged with precisely compensating cuts in other taxes. 

A related concern is that a tariff is a tax on consumption. This is generally better than a tax on income because it rewards saving and avoids penalizing work. Unfortunately, consumption taxes also reduce the progressivity of the tax system because the poor consume, rather than save, a higher percentage of their incomes. So any tax rebate financed by the tariff should also be designed to leave the overall progressivity of the tax system unchanged. 

Rising food costs spur massive US theft of produce, meat

Dees Illustration

Ethan A. Huff
Natural News

Forget diamonds and cash. Rapid inflation and the tanking US economy have birthed a whole new wave of organized crime involving food. The New York Times (NYT) reports that a group of highly-sophisticated scam artists recently pulled off a massive food heist involving eight tractor-trailer loads full of produce and meat, all worth roughly $300,000.

The food theft was no ordinary theft, either. According to reports, the mystery thieves carefully planned the hijacking to coincide with high-priced tomatoes and other produce items that have seen heavy inflation in recent months. And instead of merely stealing the truckloads, the masterminds actually sent their own imposter trucks to pick up the loads, and pretended to deliver them to various intended destinations.

"I've never experienced people targeting produce loads before," said Shaun Leiker, an assistant manager at Allen Lund, a trucking broker from Florida who has seen numerous cargo thefts, to NYT. "It's a little different than selling TVs off the back of your truck."

Geithner hints at second term at Treasury

Timothy Geithner
© AFP/Getty Images/File Brendan Smialowski

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner hinted Sunday that he would be willing to stay on in his post should President Barack Obama win a second term in 2012.

After suffering harsh criticism for his handling of the economic crisis and calls for his resignation early in the administration's life, Geithner said he still enjoyed the job.

"I've got a lot on my plate still and we've got a lot of challenges ahead and I want to tell you, this is hard, but I believe in this work and I enjoy these challenges," he told ABC television.

"I'm going to keep at trying to fix what is broken here, make sure we're helping the economy grow and help deal with these long term challenges."

His comments, while stopping short of a outright pledge to stay, come in stark contrast to comments from other members of Obama's inner circle.

Bretton Woods II — The Final Enslavement of Mankind

“The rising powers must be present at the creation of this new system in order to ensure that they will be active supporters.” – George Soros

SARTRE, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Charges of a conspiracy theory are a convenient pretext to dismiss criticism when the global financial elites meet to shape the next evolution of centralized control of all economic activity. When Mayer Amschel Rothschild admitted,“Give me the power of the money and it will not matter anymore who is commanding”, he exposed the true nature of international finance. The new front man for the shadow masters of money is George Soros. His visibility is used to deflect attention away from the supra national circle of recluse manipulators, who set the agenda for globalism. The history of world politics is really the chronicle of money, debt and banking. Only by understanding this clash of titans, can one interpret the language of worldwide finance.

It is not often that you get to look into the window of the future before it takes place. The obsession with the political posturing of the torturous grinding process that produces a kosher sausage product causes acute indigestion. Banking is one such example and the INET, The Institute for New Economic Thinking, who sponsored the Bretton Woods II conference is the Neshama gourmet version of ground up animal flesh. Funneling the herd into the corral of a new world currency openly discussed, as the panacea for the coming collapse of international finance, is the height of totalitarian arrogance.

The People in Power are Certifiably Insane (Video)

Youtube

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Saudis Slash Oil Output; Say Market Oversupplied

OPEC Countries/Wikimedia image

CNBC/Reuters

Saudi Arabia's oil minister said on Sunday the kingdom had slashed output by 800,000 barrels per day in March due to oversupply, sending the strongest signal yet that OPEC will not act to quell soaring prices.

Consumers have urged the exporters' group to pump more crude to put a cap on oil, which surged to more than $127 a barrel this month, its highest level in 2 1/2 years amid unrest in North Africa and the Middle East.

Oil Ministers from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates echoed Saudi Arabia's Ali al-Naimi's concerns about oversupply and said rocketing crude prices were out of the hands of OPEC, which next meets in June.

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Atlas Shrugged: the Movie

Bob Aldemann
New American

Something is terribly wrong. The Dow has dropped below 4,000, gasoline (when available) costs $37.50 a gallon, the nation's infrastructure is deteriorating, businessmen are wearing sandwich boards asking for work. Government's response to the enervated economy is to impose even more regulations and forced wealth-redistribution on already-highly regulated business and industry. A gray palpable pall hangs over the land. Meanwhile, the nation's most productive citizens begin to disappear voluntarily, one by one. But why? The question is answered by another question as mysterious as the disappearances themselves: "Who is John Galt?"



The movie Atlas Shrugged: Part I, set in the year 2016 and adapted from Ayn Rand’s famous novel published in 1957, accomplishes much of what the author intended in her book: a beautiful, poignant, painful expression of the conflict between egalitarianism and the right to own private property. The story is well known, as the novel was noted recently by the Library of Congress “as the most influential book read in America,” right behind the Bible itself. Dagny Taggart (Taylor Schilling) owns a struggling railroad company that is being sabotaged by her brother; Hank Rearden (Grant Bowler) has developed a metal for railroad rails that is far superior to anything on the market; and their attempt to do business for their mutual benefit is being thwarted by all manner of government agencies and crony capitalists who see the threat to their own businesses if Dagny and Hank succeed.

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America's astonishing war against the cannibal giants

One of the greatest wars of all time can't be found in the history books: America's amazing war against the giants.

Terrence Aym
BeforeItsNews

One of the greatest wars of all time can't be found in the history books: America's amazing war against the giants.

Native Americans and the cannibal giants

The original "Indian Wars" were not between the U.S. Calvary and Native-American tribes but between the Indian settlers and the original Native Americans: the giant red-haired cannibals.

Thousands of years ago, giants roamed the West. Their crude camps and ferocious ways terrorized the early native settlers that had wandered across the land bridge into the North American continent and traveled south and westward into what later became the West and Great Southwest of the United States.

Tribes still speak of those ancient days when their ancestors fought desperate battles against the marauding, loping giants—some towering 12-feet tall or taller--that roamed the land viciously attacking settlements, brutally carrying off screaming women and wailing children for food.

The red-haired giants stood 12-feet tall

The Paiutes, a Native-American tribe indigenous to parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona, told early white settlers about their ancestors' battles with the ferocious race of white, red-haired giants. According to the Paiutes, the giants were already living in the area.

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Questions Raised on Purchases of Tokyo Electric Power Shares

“There’s somebody out there that holds a whale of a position, and structured the position in such a way that they don’t have to file” a mandatory disclosure.

TEPCO's Twin Tower power station in Yokohama
Wikimedia Commons image

Keith Bradsher
New York Times

TOKYO — Japanese regulators and executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Company are asking questions about a seemingly coordinated series of stock purchases two weeks ago that led to an undisclosed buyer or buyers acquiring a large bloc of the utility, which owns Japan’s dangerously damaged nuclear power plant.

Regulators want to know whether the trades, valued at up to $600 million and placed from Hong Kong during the week of April 3, were structured to circumvent Japanese securities laws, which require the owner of more than 5 percent of a publicly traded company to file disclosure papers identifying the shareholder.

Depending on the prices at which the buy orders were executed, they could add up to nearly 10 percent of Tepco’s shares.

The trading and the questions surrounding it were described by a senior executive in an interview here. The executive insisted on anonymity to protect business and government connections.

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Future farm: a sunless, rainless room indoors

PlantLab image

Arthur Max
Yahoo/AP

DEN BOSCH, Netherlands – Farming is moving indoors, where the sun never shines, where rainfall is irrelevant and where the climate is always right.

The perfect crop field could be inside a windowless building with meticulously controlled light, temperature, humidity, air quality and nutrition. It could be in a New York high-rise, a Siberian bunker, or a sprawling complex in the Saudi desert.

Advocates say this, or something like it, may be an answer to the world's food problems.

"In order to keep a planet that's worth living on, we have to change our methods," says Gertjan Meeuws, of PlantLab, a private research company.

The world already is having trouble feeding itself. Half the people on Earth live in cities, and nearly half of those — about 3 billion — are hungry or malnourished. Food prices, currently soaring, are buffeted by droughts, floods and the cost of energy required to plant, fertilize, harvest and transport it.

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RELATED ARTICLES:
4 Methods for Off-the-Grid Food Production
5 Easy Ways to Prepare for Food Inflation

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ACLU: A Conversation About Marijuana (Video)

Youtube

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Pakistan urges US to stop drone strikes

Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani asked
the US to end its use of drones in his country
© AFP Peter Parks

AFP

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani urged the United States Monday to end its drone strikes in Pakistan and said Washington should share intelligence better to allow Islamabad to wage its own war on terror.

Speaking in Pakistan's lower house, the National Assembly, after meeting US House Speaker John Boehner in Islamabad, Gilani said: "I told him that you will have to respect our political and military efforts if you want to succeed" in combating insurgents.

Boehner was leading a six-member congressional delegation on a two-day visit and also met Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and US Ambassador Cameron Munter.

Netanyahu thanks Obama for 'Dome' missile funding

An Israeli missile is launched from the
Iron Dome missile system
© AFP/File David Buimovitch

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked US President Barack Obama on Monday for helping fund a missile defense system protecting the Jewish state from Palestinian rockets, the White House said.

Netanyahu "expressed his deep appreciation for US funding for the 'Iron Dome' rocket and mortar defense system, which he noted has successfully intercepted several rockets aimed at Israeli communities," the White House said in a readout of the phone call.

Obama "congratulated the prime minister on this impressive Israeli technological achievement and expressed his pride that Israeli-American cooperation made it possible."

Mystery illnesses In Louisiana Linked To BP Oil Spill?

Michelle Jones
The Intel Hub

According to a recent RSOE report, there is an unidentified disease in the state of Louisiana.
When you take a closer look at this report you can see that of the large percent of people are suffering from this unidentified illness, the one thing these patients all have in common is who they are identifying as the culprit – BP and all the toxic chemicals used to “clean up” from the Gulf Coast spill.

Is it possible that BP’s irresponsible and hazardous use of millions of gallons of toxic dispersant is now catching up to them, as it seems signs of illness are starting to show in the workers BP hired to help clean up their catastrophic oil spill?

A quick rundown of three cases of BP workers and citizens in the area who seem to have been sickened by Corexit provides a clear picture.

Clayton Matherne, one of hundreds of sick BP workers has cried out for help yet BP continues to claim their clean up job is done.



Children seem to have also been sickened so badly that it outright ridiculous to downplay the toxicity of Corexit.

When I was invited to attend Project Gulf Impact’s conference at Seattle University I jumped at the opportunity. Not only was I able to finally meet PGI, I was able to speak to numerous fisherman who have literally had their lives destroyed by BP and their toxic dispersant.

This man's 10 year old child has most likely been sickened by Corexit while at the same time the corporate media has declared the disaster over. This is happening right here in America!

US seeking country to take in Kadhafi: report

© AFP/File Joseph Eid

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Barack Obama administration has launched an intense search for a country that could provide refuge to Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi, The New York Times reported Saturday.

But amid looming indictments against Kadhafi by the International Criminal Court in the Hague for the atrocities committed against his own people during the ongoing popular uprising and for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103, US officials only have a narrow list of potential host countries.

Three officials for President Barack Obama's administration told the Times they were considering finding a country that has not signed or ratified the Rome Statute, which requires countries to turn over anyone being indicted for trial by the ICC.

Obama moves forward with Internet ID plan

Declan McCullagh
CNET

The Obama administration said today that it’s moving ahead with a plan for broad adoption of Internet IDs despite concerns about identity centralization, and hopes to fund pilot projects next year.

At an event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., administration officials downplayed privacy and civil liberties concerns about their proposal, which they said would be led by the private sector and not be required for Americans who use the Internet.

There’s “no reliable way to verify identity online” at the moment, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said, citing the rising tide of security threats including malware and identity theft that have grown increasingly prevalent over the last few years. “Passwords just won’t cut it here.”

A 55-page document (PDF) released by the White House today adds a few more details to the proposal, which still remains mostly hazy and inchoate.

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Masters Of The World Meet To Play God With The Climate

"If we could experiment with the atmosphere and literally play God, it's very tempting to a scientist."

Dees Illustration

Michael Edwards
Activist Post

On a secluded estate in England, a small group from the elite UK think-tank, The Royal Society, are openly discussing control over the planet's weather.  The Orwellian nature of the discussion is stunning, as this select group seemingly wrings their hands over how to delegate the proper authority to research such godlike power.  They begin by asking a rhetorical question, "Who decides?"

In a candid AP story, the entire agenda is laid bare as we are treated to a session that is "generally off the record."  This is the grand rollout to be sure: from research to implementation, they announce much of what is already provably in the works, as well as the road toward a future of unthinkable control by an inner circle of ideologues with the task to "save the planet." 

History is full of these great "experts" who have taken on the burden of saving the rest of us.  Elites throughout the ages have insisted that the common man or woman is simply not up to the task . . . if left to our own devices, we might just destroy the place.  So, let's first recap how these elite thinkers have done so far based on the key indicators of human prosperity.

5 Proposals to Combat 'Global Warming' That Should Make Us All Cringe

Taxing the air we exhale, rationing human necessities, a global one-child policy, geoengineering (high-altitude chemical spraying), and now nuclear war have all been proposed to combat global warming.  Have climate theorists lost their marbles, or just their humanity?

Dees Illustration

Eric Blair
Activist Post

There has not been much middle ground found between global warming believers and the "it's a hoax" crowd. I started as a believer after watching An Inconvenient Truth.  I struggled to even look into the alternative view because the establishment had so successfully made the deniers seem insane.

However, having now done extensive research, I can attest that the "hoax" crowd has just as much, if not more, compelling evidence on their side as believers do. Furthermore, most global warming deniers won't disagree that the climate is changing or shifting in some noticeable way, only that man-made CO2 is not the primary cause.

This article is not intended to debate the questions surrounding the man-made global warming theory, but rather the proposed "solutions." Most believers genuinely care about the environment and view deniers as selfish "takers" who care not for mother nature. This is not the case at all.  In fact, I would argue that most deniers feel just as passionately about environmental issues as believers.  The difference seems to be that deniers focus their energy on tangible and measurable problems in the environment like water, air and soil pollution, GMO food, excessive pharmaceuticals, chemical spraying, and results from oil spills and gas fracking to name a few.

None of these very real threats to human and environmental health are addressed by the global warming crowd, save for possibly air pollution.  When one dissects the proposals to combat global warming, it seems clear that the environmental movement has been hijacked by CO2 propagandists for an ulterior motive.  Even though hardcore believers seem to have a healthy distrust for bankers, corporations, and their puppet politicians, they have a very difficult time challenging the establishment's science or solutions pertaining to global warming.  They seem too busy defending the theory to make the connection to what they're actually supporting -- which is a cabal of big banks, big oil, and big brother seeking further control of society by hyping unprovable environmental threats that they never actually intend to fix in the first place.

Why 'Self-Sufficiency' Should Replace 'Sustainability' in the Environmental Movement

Jeffrey Green
Activist Post

The environmental movement is in love with the word 'sustainable'. Admittedly, it's a wonderful word in the purest sense, meaning;  1. capable of being sustained, 2. capable of being continued with minimal long-term effect on the environment.

Who doesn't want those capabilities? Yet, 'sustainability', like everything else good and pure, has seemingly been hijacked by the ruling oligarchs as a way to impose more top-down control of society. Passionate environmentalists are beginning to realize that the only way to affect real change is by becoming sustainable individuals through self-sufficiency. This focus on individual empowerment will naturally lead to increased liberty, as it minimizes the tactics used by mega-cartels and government to control our core needs of food, electricity, or medicine.  Living in an environmentally and socially sustainable world should be an obvious goal, but it won't work if imposed at the barrel of a gun.