TRR: Surprise! Liberals Discover the Constitution Authorizes Instant Unlimited Debt

James S. Robbins July 28, 2011

Out-of-control national debt threatens the economy, and now is menacing the Constitution as well. There is a growing chorus of left-wing voices urging President Obama to sidestep the Congress and raise the debt ceiling with the stroke of a pen. Senators Barbara Boxer of California and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Representatives James Clyburn of South Carolina and John Larson of Connecticut, all claim to have discovered a “failsafe” mechanism in Section 4 of the 14th Amendment that “the validity of the public debt of the United States…shall not be questioned.” This passage, they imagine, gives Mr. Obama the authority to pile on debt by executive order without having to bother consulting Congress. “I urge everybody to get their little Constitution and read it,” Senator Boxer said. Well maybe the senator needs to read her copy a little more closely.

Liberals like to think of the Constitution as an evolving, elastic or flexible document, but in this case they are simply making it up. The president has no authority unilaterally to saddle the country with more debt. Article I Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power “to borrow money on the credit of the United States.” This is a specific, enumerated power given to Congress alone. The debt provision of the 14th Amendment was originally intended simply to ensure Federal debts accrued during the Civil War and deny any claims for compensation on debt entered into by the Confederate States. It was not a sweeping and unprecedented grant of executive power that has lain dormant for a century and a half. And the part of the Section 4 that liberals like to edit out is the passage that states debt must be “authorized by law,” not by executive diktat. And if this does not convince them, Section 5 states clearly that “the Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” In fact the debt provision of the 14th Amendment means the exact opposite of what leftists are trying to torture out of the text.

But simple logic and common sense never stop the left when it comes to forcing strange new meanings into the Constitution. They understand what the Framers and their successors intended, they simply don’t care. For them the debt ceiling crisis is an opportunity for the executive branch to claim vast new powers that would fatally subvert the Constitution’s design. A president who could unilaterally and without check burden the people of the United States with debt would have no incentive not to pile it on. And the liberal spendthrifts in Congress would never have to worry about funds being available to underwrite their various redistributive schemes and shovel-ready projects. Apart from destroying the economy and breaking the bonds of Constitutional rule it is the perfect solution. But it would be better for America if members of Congress stopped fantasizing about magic-wand solutions to the country’s problems and instead just did their job. And leave interpreting the Constitution to people who read all the words, not just the few scraps they like.

This Article First Published by The Robbins Report

GAO: Fed Issued $US16 Trillion During 2008 Crisis!

Edwin Vieira, Jr. on the Fed's Transfer of Wealth

Stop

The Daily Bell

Tuesday, July 26, 2011 – by Staff Report

"As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," Sanders said in a statement. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else." – Washington Post 

Dominant Social Theme: Simply a glitch. The US$16 trillion was issued in good faith by the stewards of the democracy. They were saving the "system." What, you didn't get any of it? Maybe next time ... 

Free-Market Analysis: With nary a ripple in the mainstream press, the US Government Accountability Office has released an "audit" of the Federal Reserve loan program in 2008 that, according to the Washington Post (see above excerpt) highlights possible conflicts of interest in the issuance of some US$16 trillion. We would bet it's more than that.

The GAO found two things wrong with the "bailout." First of all there were conflicts of interest; second, in making the determination that an emergency bailout was called for, the Fed's leaders imputed powers that probably were not really there. They acted like an entirely private enterprise even though they clearly are not.  

The GAO made recommendations that the Fed's top men are vowing to take seriously. But this is a joke. An institution that has in the past several years printed some US$20 trillion or more (including QE 1 and 2) – and no one really knows how much higher it is – is not going to voluntarily limit itself or its actions based on bureaucratic recommendations.

In fact, without the agitation of people like libertarian-conservative Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), there would have been no audit to begin with. It wasn't something the Fed sought. Even so, the US mainstream press is not exactly providing aggressive coverage. It's not of great import, apparently. That's certainly the dominant social theme.

The meme is being conjured in numerous ways. One way the mainstream press is handling this is by focusing on the conflict-of-interest rather than the impossible numbers involved. Another way is by simply ignoring the issue. We searched Google News for cites and found only 72 articles. This news has received general coverage since perhaps Friday; at the same singer Amy Winehouse's death has received some 6,000 cites.

A search of the general Google queue (not just Google news) turns up nearly 500,000 cites. This is an absurdly skewed ratio. What it means in our view is that the Internet alternative news services (which Google refuses to allow in into its news algorithm) are covering the release while the mainstream is not.

Google, by the way, is continually fiddling with its news presentation and reducing in scope and size the presentation of alternative news. Even five years ago, Google made available a queue of articles from a variety of sources. But today, Google's front page news queue carefully presents mainstream sources first and makes alternative news sources difficult to find. This obfuscation is carried out within the guise of readership service and technology upgrades.

Back to the Fed. The elites are terrified about these numbers. We can tell by the way the dissemination is being downplayed, and we have written about this many times before.

Because of the Internet, the scope of the bailout cannot be concealed. Many people in the US and the Western world are quite aware that while they lost their homes and jobs, central banks were handing out TRILLIONS to the very entities that helped create the financial crisis. You can read an editorial about it here: Anthony Wile – The Morality of Gold.

This is the era of the Internet Reformation. Bankers are being nailed to the wall like Martin Luther's theses. The great, grasping mechanism of mercantilist central banking has been exposed for all to see. The bottom line issue is one of fairness. Comity and civil society are at risk when people feel they are being taken advantage of at a fundamental level.

This excerpt, above, lies at the heart of the unspoken dialogue that has taken place. People continue to do what they need to do survive but the moral construction of the Western economic system has collapsed. It wasn't meant to be this way, but that's how it turned out.

The elites counted on their control of mainstream media to cover-up the reality of the money system (that a handful of people can print as much money as they want whenever they want). But in the 21st century, thanks to the Internet Reformation, they have lost control.

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Broke! 10 Facts About The Financial Condition Of American Families That Will Blow Your Mind

The crumbling U.S. economy is putting an extraordinary amount of financial stress on American families.  For many Americans, "flat broke" has become a permanent condition.  Today, over half of all American families live paycheck to paycheck.  Unemployment is rampant and those that do actually have jobs are finding that their wages are rising much more slowly than prices are.  The financial condition of average American families continues to decline and this is showing up in all of the recent surveys.  For example, according to a new Gallup poll, "lack of money/low wages" is the number one financial concern for American families.  To make ends meet, many American families are going into even more debt and more American families than ever are turning to government assistance.  Right now, more Americans than at any other point since World War II are flat broke and have lost hope.  Until this changes, the frustration level in this country is going to continue to grow.

The following are 10 facts about the financial condition of American families that will blow your mind.....

#1 Only 58 percent of Americans have a job right now.

#2 Only 56 percent of Americans are currently covered by employer-provided health insurance.

#3 The median yearly wage in the United States is $26,261.

#4 The average American household is carrying $75,600 in debt.

#5 Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

#6 At this point, American families are approximately 7.7 trillion dollars poorer than they were back in early 2007.

#7 The poorest 50% of all Americans now own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

#8 According to one study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2010.

#9 Today, there are more than 44 million Americans on food stamps, and nearly half of them are children.

#10 According to Newsweek, close to 20 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 54 do not have a job at the moment.

So what is causing all of this?

Where in the world did all of the good jobs go?

Well, the truth is that millions of them have been shipped overseas.

Our politicians promised us that merging our economy with the economies of other nations where it is legal to pay slave labor wages to workers would not create more unemployment inside America.

They were dead wrong.

Now we are being told that we just need to accept a lower standard of living.

For example, billionaire Howard Marks says that it is time for all of us to just accept that the standard of living of American workers is inevitably going to decline to the level of the rest of the world....

"In addition to balancing the budget and growing the economy, I think we have to accept that the coming decades are likely to see U.S. standards of living decline relative to the rest of the world. Unless our goods offer a better cost/benefit bargain, there’s no reason why American workers should continue to enjoy the same lifestyle advantage over workers in other countries. I just don’t expect to hear many politicians own up to this reality on the stump."

Are you willing to accept that?

Well, most Americans appear to be willing to accept this "new reality" because they keep sending most of the exact same bozos back to Washington D.C.

Meanwhile, the job losses continue to get worse.  As I wrote about the other day, as the U.S. economy has started to slow down again we are starting to see another huge wave of layoffs all over America.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out where all of our jobs are going.  But unfortunately, most Americans don't understand what is happening because neither the mainstream media nor our politicians are telling them the truth.

For much more on how millions of our good jobs are being shipped out of the country, please see another article I recently published entitled "How Globalism Has Destroyed Our Jobs, Businesses And National Wealth In 10 Easy Steps".

But it is not just the globalization of the economy that is destroying our jobs.

The federal government bureaucracy has become so oppressive that it is amazing that anyone is still willing to hire workers in this day and age.

Hiring workers has become so complicated and so expensive that many small business owners want to avoid it at all cost.

For example, a small business owner identified as "007" recently left the following comment on one of my recent articles....

Speaking as a small employer, I would rather have a root canal than another employee. Let’s see. You first have to hire someone you trust without some labor lawyer suing you for some type of discrimination. Then you have OSHA to make sure your work place is safe. Then you have workmans compensation insurance, unemployment taxes, health insurance, liability insurance, now Obamacare. Oh be careful not to be deemed to have a “hostile work environment”. Then you have to negotiate the labor laws. The Department of Labor is constantly cranking out regulation.

Then you get the pleasure of paying payroll taxes both state and federal along with the required filing of a multitude of payroll forms. Miss filing or paying these taxes and you will be crushed with interest and penalties.

Of course, you are competing with businesses that can hire at a fraction of the cost of American Labor and with very little regulations. In this economy, no one in their right mind is hiring into this unstable and declining economy.

If business turns down all you have to worry about is laying off workers. Of course your unemployment insurance tax will go up 200% for years. Then you only have to then worry about a wrongful termination law suit.

The entire system is stacked against American workers.

If you are a blue collar worker, you should give up hope that things are going to get better.  The system has failed you.

You can stop waiting for the "good jobs" to come back.

They aren't coming back.

That is one reason why I try to encourage everyone to become more independent of the system.

As our economic system continues to degenerate, Americans are going to become increasingly desperate.

Sadly, desperate people do desperate things.  Already we are starting to see signs that the fabric of American society is starting to be ripped to shreds.

So what is going to happen if the economy gets even worse?

There is a limit to how many people we can actually put in prison.  The reality is that the number of Americans in prison has nearly tripled since 1987.

Our prisons are already dangerously overcrowded.  As society falls apart, many communities will simply not be able to shove more people behind bars.

Even with our prisons stuffed to the gills, many of our largest cities continue to be transformed into absolute hellholes.

Detroit is now the 3rd most dangerous city on the entire planet and New Orleans is now the 9th most dangerous city on the entire planet[emphasis added].

So what are our leaders doing about all of this?

Well, they appear to be too busy fighting with each other and cheating on their wives to do much about our problems.

According to Politico, U.S. Representative David Wu is the latest member of Congress to be accused of a sex scandal....

Rep. David Wu has been accused of an “unwanted sexual encounter” with the teenage daughter of a longtime friend, the latest scandal to engulf the troubled Oregon Democrat.

This country is a complete and total mess.  Tens of millions of American families are flat broke and are about to slip into poverty.  Meanwhile, our politicians continue to prove that they are some of the most corrupt on the planet.

There are many out there that still believe that America has a bright future ahead.

It is getting really hard to see why anyone could possibly believe that.

Source: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/broke-10-facts-about-the-financial-condition-of-american-families-that-will-blow-your-mind