I would even mull over these theories in my head on my drives to and from work and over lunch. I have shared a few that I thought interesting on this blog.

The common denominator in most of these is that some powerful, unseen force is working against us, to enslave us in a new fiefdom called “The New World Order” or some other fearful moniker. Is there any truth to this? Perhaps. Who really knows?

What is the “silver bullet” to slay this beast, if it does exist? Why, action, of course.

Let’s look at a couple of these theories of note:
1. 9-11 was an inside job, and was perpetrated on the American people to wrest power from them via the “Patriot Act” and to conceal the fact that the Pentagon, only the previous day had been pinged for “misplacing” 2.3 trillion dollars.

Well, chances are this was, in fact, a power grab. I can’t think of the Patriot Act without getting severely pissed off. This is the anti-Bill of Rights, and was over and done quickly and painlessly because the people were scared. Whether it was purposely perpetuated by someone or just an opportunity, the fact is our government took advantage of our fear. And why did we not right this after we wised up? It was as if as a collective we said, “Aw shucks, you got us this time…” You know what they say: you can’t be fooled again.

The fact that 2.3 trillion dollars was misplaced is mind-boggling. There is only about $625 billion in circulation, or a little over 1/2 of a trillion dollars, which means most of this was theoretical money. I can’t blame people for being suspicious about such bad accounting practices, since we would be up-in-arms if a company did it, right?

Obviously not, which brings us to #2.
2. A large international banking cartel and/or large multi-national corporations have taken over control of most of the world.

Maybe, maybe not. The attention that the Bildeberg Group has gotten in the past few years is intriguing, especially that it never makes public news, only conspiracy journals. How can these “heavy hitters” meet and it not be news?

All of the problems on Wall Street have been ridiculous. We SHOULD NOT EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER bail out a company…no matter what. Most of the large companies that are “too large to fail” are not…but that perception enslaves us. Why? Because the current mindset of these companies is to “socialize losses and privatize profits.” Did you get a check back from GM, or get any stock certificates in the mail? No? How about the large banks that got payouts last year? Probably not.

I tend to come back a lot to Ron Paul’s books “The Revolution: A Manifesto” and “End The Fed, as the solutions he offers make sense when looking at the big picture.

1. End the Federal Reserve Bank. Most people do not understand the significance and the evil of our economic system. It is basic supply and demand: the more of something in supply, the less it is demand (the less valuable it is.) The 2.3 trillion lost by the Pentagon and all of the money given to bail out GM, Ford, Chrysler, and the banks is created by ledger entries by the Federal Reserve Bank, or Fed. There is no oversight by the population (Congressional or other) into the Fed, as the Fed claims it works as an independent organization, and oversight would stifle their ability to remain neutral. Are they neutral? So, how about all of the people without houses and shitty credit? It only works as an instrument to favor the rich. Basically, with the time value of money, those who get the money first (ahem, *BANKS*) get to enjoy it before it gets very far into circulation. By the time we get it, inflation has set in. Our money is based on squat. It used to be on the “Gold Standard.” Want to see something shocking? The supply of gold has remained almost constant since 1973, but look what money has done against it. (Basically, I am implying that since the supply of gold is constant, then money has lost value in comparison.) The fact that the Fed claims to be independent but keeps giving money to people and businesses without accountability or public oversight is incredible. If most people understood how this worked, the Fed would have already been abolished.

2. Return to a gold standard. If money is backed by something, rather than just by its reputation, people will really start to care where their monies go. FDR and Nixon each had their parts in destroying our gold standard. The people let it happen and now we see our money being used against us by fancy economics that most people do not understand.

3. Be active politically! One of the things lacking with most of these conspiracy theories is an impetus to action. (Of course, Zeitgeist has this nebulous “Let’s create a resource-based economy” action, but isn’t very realistic.) Our political system is flawed by being composed of fallible humans. Most people behave when they feel they are being watched. Make sure you check up on your public servants. At a minimum, keep an eye on how they vote. Ideally, email or call them and tell them how to vote! Make them do your bidding!

3. Never vote to bail out businesses! A free-market economy can not co-exist with the Keynesian capitalism crapola! Oligopolies and monopolies pay for special interest favor to keep competition down. Like in a forest, when the taller trees die or fall, it gives opportunities (sunlight) to the smaller trees and allows them to flourish. The more opportunity in a market, the more innovation in the market, usually while having to stay competitive on price. Instead, we get these industrial behemoths that have no real competition and still look for price-cutting and innovation via off-shoring and acquisition. Allow these large businesses to fail!

I could probably go on for at least another hour about this. Be an active constituent! Find a site, such as Campaign for Liberty or one to your liking and get involved! Find out who is holding the strings to your puppets and hold them accountable!

However, some things are a little trickier due to the pure apathy of the United States Department of Agriculture and the Food & Drug Administration. As with all government, these two entities are large and ineffectual, with the USDA employing 105,778 (2007) and a budget of $95 billion (2009) and the FDA employing 9,300 (2008) and a budget of $2.3 billion (2008). What I mean by apathy is that I cannot, with any confidence, go into the store and arbitrarily buy quality meat. These companies do less and less to manage the quality of what we eat. Nowadays, most meat is raised in large factories owned by 3 or 4 companies and slaughtered in 3 or 4 large processing plants. Words like “Prime” and “Natural” are allowed to be put on labels when they don’t really mean anything. About the only label you can trust is “USDA Certified Organic.” Most of these cows stand knee-deep in a collective pool of their own waste and get fed corn to fatten them up quickly (though cows don’t naturally eat corn.) Most of these techniques were used for supplying to fast-food restaurants, but now includes the stuff you buy at the supermarket and the stuff you buy at restaurants.

Couple all of this with the fact that the food pyramid is bullshit, and you start seeing statistics like “it is estimated that with children born after 2000, 1 in 3 will have Type II Diabetes before adulthood.”

Previously, I could get acceptable beef and chicken at the supermarket at which I shop…until yesterday. The beef I normally bought that was “grass-fed, hormone- and antibiotic-free” was gone. I asked and they said I could buy it but it was as expensive now as the “prime aged” and the “Kobe” varieties of meat and I had to pre-order it on Monday to get it the following Monday. What? Just a week prior it was $1 more a pound than the “Natural” stuff they were offering now. How did the demand drop so fast? What the f*** is going on here?

I thought we as a society had made progress in this area. People demand and stores carry a variety of organic fruits, vegetables and meats. Besides, the store I go to is a little ritzier than most, comparable to a Harris Teeter or similar.

I am going to try to make it to a local farmer’s market this weekend and see what they have to offer. I hope it isn’t as expensive as what the supermarket offers…even if so, I will buy it…just to send a message to the supermarket. I hope to take a couple of you with me. Who’s in?

When we finally get our own house again, should mine sell this time, I am going to get a deep freezer and “cowpool.” This term means you go in with some family/friends and buy a share of a steer. You get a much better deal on the meat, and you usually get it from the place that raised the cow.

Here is some information that may be useful:
Mark’s Daily Apple and Eat Wild

Just remember, you are what you eat. Also remember that you, in effect, vote when you make your food purchases by affecting the demand of said products. If you don’t buy the crap, then eventually these businesses that produce crap will either have to offer quality or risk going broke.

For you activists, or if you need a little convincing, rent “Food, Inc” and watch it.

Because our daughter, Sophia, cannot have milk, we have to read the labels of everything we buy. Again, for clarification, it is not because she is lactose-intolerant, but rather she is “allergic” to the protein in milk called Casein.

There are many things that I don’t buy, even if I like them, because of their questionable content. Add to that list mystery meat…I only buy organic meat for reasons that are too numerous to divulge here. I was flipping through the documentaries on Netflix, and decided to watch “Food, Inc” last night. Most of the information was not new to me, but the stuff that was just reinforced what I already suspected or knew about food. Some of this information was unfair labor practices and unsanitary conditions which are far more compelling when you see it for real. The makers of the film also have a site out on tha’ interwebs. At that site, you can learn more about current affairs and help take action on forcing our government to do the right thing.

Ever since the birth of our daughter, Sophia, almost 4 years ago, we have had a challenging time getting sleep. Her coming home on an apnea/bradycardia monitor was unsettling to the point where we had her co-sleep with us. Fast forward three years when our son Julian was born, and we were making the same mistake, although without a definitive reason.

Throw in an increasing demand on my time with school and our emerging roles with the children, Antonella and I were faced with the fact that I was tired and she was exhausted.

So, I decided that it was time for Julian to try to sleep in the crib by himself this past Friday. The result was he woke up twice on Friday night and had to be soothed. The next night, nada. Zip. He slept nine continuous hours. Last night, even more. I think he appreciates the idea of sleeping alone far more than we could ever imagine.

School is done for the semester. I did poorly, but it is still salvageable: I will have an extra semester to finish now. The good news is I think I can keep my sanity.

I would much rather see subsidization or tax incentives for establishment of renewable energy sources than cap ‘n’ trade. Either way, it would be through taxing the middle class, however, lessening the tax burden of these companies would be a better approach, since it wouldn’t affect the end user’s cost as well (double taxation, anyone?) And who gets the money paid out under-the-cap?

Do we get a tax break? Don’t think so.

I remember reading about the proposition of Cap & Trade (or cap and regulate, or whatever it has been called in year’s past) in Al Gore’s pile o’ propaganda called “An Inconvenient Truth.” Of course he also suggested carbon credits as a viable option, and we all know about that racket.

Bottom line: This is a special interest scam…you will pay more for energy, brokers for carbon offsets will make a metric ass-tonne of money, and the environment will not get better (in fact, it will most assuredly worsen .) Energy companies will not bear any of the cost of enforcing this law…they will pass it down to the consumer. It is a distraction to legitimate environmental legislation, and should not be passed!

1. The global attraction to ‘American Idol.’
2. Grown people (other than family members and very close friends) that get upset when you forget or don’t get them something for their birthday.
3. Tipping more than 20%.
4. People who think government social programs are a good idea.
5. People who think giving away liberty in the name of personal security is a good idea.
6. Passive-aggressive driving.
7. The popularity of Sudoku.
8. SharePoint.
9. VBA
10. People who buy carbon offsets.
11. People who don’t like to travel.
12. The fascination with NASCAR.

More to come…

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why we allow our government to keep large businesses from failing. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are examples of this…there is government oversight of these two corporations…yes, that’s right…corporations: they have shareholders. Government intervention in these “important” businesses seems to be a direct tie-in to bailout funds. For what? So they can pay their shareholders? As a taxpayer, why should I care? I don’t. You shouldn’t either.

This mismanagement and the “Great Auto & Bank Bailout of 2009″ make me want to vomit. Seriously. When did it become acceptable for large business to socialize losses and privatize gains? As a taxpayer, I am supposed to care when companies fail to achieve their goals, but when they turn a profit, I don’t see a dime? What’s in it for me? Where’s my dividend check? What’s more, what is the motivation for these large corporations to even balance their budgets if they know they can just crying to their Uncle Sam for a hand-out? Our current welfare state…handouts to the rich and greedy.

So why should you care about bailouts? Basic supply and demand. There is a considerable shortfall between income taxes levied and what the government spends on bailouts and programs (you’ve heard the terms “deficit” and “deficit spending,” right?) This year, the deficit is forecast to be $1.5 trillion dollars. The shorthand form is a little misleading (which is why they use it.) Let’s look at it in longhand. $1,500,000,000,000. That is the budget deficit for one year…that means this is how much more we’re spending than levying in taxes. So, where does this money come from? The Federal Reserve Bank creates it out of thin air, then sells treasury bonds to foreign investors to cover the debt (the premium is then paid first out of the budget before anything else is paid…which means that the deficit will continue).

Now, the supply and demand part is simple. Say I have an apple. A very delicious apple. You want the apple, and since there are no other apples around, you are willing to pay say $2 for that apple. Now suppose there are apples everywhere…you will want to pay less for the apple because you have options (competition.) Now, the value of the apple, barring any apple variation (specialization) has gone down and you can enjoy a much cheaper apple. The specialization could change things…if all of the apples were Granny Smiths, and I pulled out one Pink Lady and it was the only one around, I could probably charge more for the Pink Lady, since there are no others to be had.

Now, in the money example, there is no variation. We, as Americans, don’t accept much wampum or barter, so cash money is pretty much it. Gold, which used to be our standard for valuation of our currency, is also a coveted exchange medium, but it is no longer legal tender. In fact, if you look at the price of gold over the last five years, it has gone from around $400/ounce to over $1200/ounce. And the supply of gold stays pretty steady, which means that the value of our dollar compared to gold, has decreased threefold in 5 years.

What does this mean? It means that the increase in the money supply means has created significant inflation. In other terms, the sharp increase in the money supply has devalued your money significantly. This would be fine if your pay raises kept up with inflation. I don’t know of many people that get raises significant enough to keep up with this rampant inflation…I sure as hell don’t. So, quite simply, this degrades your quality of life. When the Federal Reserve Bank creates money to cover these businesses’ shortfalls, you pay by making less money…it is like an additional tax. It is across the board, though, right? Wrong. The time-value of money is significant in that the people who get the money first (bailouts, banks, insurance companies, etc.) have the money when it is worth more…over time, the value goes down as the market reacts a little slower than electronic transfers. So the people receiving the money first are getting preferential treatment even though they are the ones that are screwing things up because of their risky investments.

What is also interesting to note is these banks, through the practice of fractional reserve banking (too complicated for me to explain here, but it is some seriously insidious shit) can and do create their own money…so again the bailout money is mainly to cover shortfalls from their risky investments to be able to provide their investors a return.

So, if you are not a big investor (upper class) or receiving aid from some of the government programs (lower class) then you are paying for all of this (middle class).

So, who gets the money first in these transactions? No one knows…outside of the Federal Reserve. That is why Ron Paul and others want transparency in the Fed’s dealings (in a Fed audit.) Optimally, this country would abolish the central bank (Fed) return back to a gold standard, but the people who receive this preferential treatment want to keep getting this preferential treatment…and they have money to spread around to their politicians (Senator Dodd, et. al.)

So ultimately, we are doomed until our government gives up on preventing big business from failing by subsidizing their losses. F*** you, Freddie Mac. God bless our welfare state.

Most of the propaganda that they delivered to support their theories–debasing religion, government, and multinational (global) corporations–were used in the same way that they tried to justify the need for this radical shift in ideology.

I don’t think this will work, as I think man’s own ethical limitations will destroy it before it has a chance of succeeding. Don’t get me wrong: I think that the idea is nice, but utopian societies are about as plausible as perpetual motion machines. You can draw it out on paper all you want, but it will just never work.

Granted, I believe the Federal Reserve Bank needs to be done away with, for the same reason that Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and countless others have cited: that the debt generated by this fractional reserve system will eventually impose a binary social class: the haves and have-nots, the lords and the serfs, the rich and the poor, the eventual dissolution of the middle class and then ever-increasing poverty.

Of course, no single person can be blamed for our woes. We are relentlessly inundated with all sorts of propaganda and dis-information to the point where it all becomes shit and barring our possession of scatological prowess, we are wont for the ability to filter it.

I think a pretty good estimation of our current situation is that there may be 5 or 6 National politicians with their hearts in the right place, and the rest receive money for their votes. Are there enough people in this country that could be put in their place, that they could not be bought for the right price to push some special interest agenda? It is doubtful. The people that wouldn’t want the money or power would already have to be rich and/or powerful from some other source, which probably would be someone who was already a beneficiary of special interest favor during their non-public careers.

Don’t get me wrong: I haven’t lost faith in our country or humanity. I believe that a great deal of misinformed people do what they think is right, and for the right reasons, but they don’t know what they are doing, just what they are told or convinced they believe is right. I have heard them called “sheeple,” (or sheep people), herd-folk that don’t deviate from the status quo or what they are told to believe by whatever group they identify with, whether it be some religious organization or fraternity or whatever.

Special interest favor is rampant and quite insidious, as it is wrongfully valued the same way congressional constituency is valued: that if a company has considerable resources (money) then it clearly has influence and its voice should be heard by by being able to contribute to the campaign funds of those who listen. So, basically, after you elect these people, they make decisions either based on what would be good for its constituency (who pay them nothing) or special interest (who pay them money). Not hard to see who they would go with. There has been a law passed that allows you to see who pays whom what, but you seldom see this information as the mainstream media really has no motivation to show it. In the last couple of elections, it was used as fodder to discredit someone politically by their competition.

Quite honestly, the more favors these companies solicit enables greater and greater control, and ensures that the contributions will be more and more plentiful.

The largest of these are insurance companies and banks. Insurance companies reap enormous profits by collecting money to cover health issues and make money by denying coverage. Either refusing procedures or discounting what they pay doctors. This wrangling with insurance makes it less lucrative for the doctors, who have to raise the price of their procedures so that they can receive a little larger amount to keep up with inflation. This further justifies insurance premium increases, etc.

Banks, on the other hand, directly benefit from money given them by the Federal Reserve Bank, which through fractional banking, allows them to create their own money out of thin air. They like this arrangement, and they can create their own money to pay for votes. Great arrangement.

I agree wholeheartedly that the Fed needs to go. It was bought and paid for by bankers for bankers and it does nothing to help the American people. Unfortunately, they have a stranglehold on our government and they have shit upon our Constitution. By the people, for the people…right, if they are bankers.

So, how can we get rid of it? We have to elect people that are independent thinkers, unpopular people that want to do good for the betterment of their country without asking for anything in return. People that are willing to put up one hell of a fight…to subject themselves to the slander of the media (that is owned by powerful people who already have special interest favor) and don’t mind suffering threats and their lives made public: uncorrupted and moral people. People who are in very short supply in this day and age.

Which means we are probably doomed to endure the current system (or something progressively worse) indefinitely…