LewRockwell » Murray Sabrin

Government Violence

Murray Sabrin — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 06:00:00 +0000

Before I sat
down to write this essay I checked, as I always do every morning,
LewRockwell.com to see
what some of the best columnists on the web had to say about national
and world events. Today, their analysis of the reactions of the
political class and the pundits on talk radio and cable television
to the shootings in Tucson did not disappoint.

Not surprisingly,
law professor Butler
Shafer expressed my sentiments 100%. There is no need to dissect
the events in Tucson, except to say, the killing of any human being
is a horrific tragedy.

From the murderous
street mugger to the violent carjacker and armed robber, killing
another human being is the highest immoral act an individual can
commit. However, the real evil in the world is the violence perpetrated
by governments around the world, including our own.

As a son of
Holocaust survivors whose parents were the only ones to have lived
through the horror of government-sanctioned mass murder, we as a
people should be more outraged about the thousands of innocent people
in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan who have been killed by our military
as “collateral damage” in the juiced up global war on
terror. In addition, where is the outrage by our political
leaders, the pundits and others about our government invading a
country – Iraq – that made no hostile acts against the
American people?

The Middle
East wars have taken a huge toll. Hundreds of thousands of deaths,
maiming of young American men and women in uniform as well as the
destruction of civilian homes and lives throughout the region and
the borrowing by the federal government of trillions of dollars
to fight wars, are the legacy of our bipartisan foreign policy.

In short, while
we pray for the speedy recovery of the wounded in Tucson and mourn
the deaths of more innocent people gunned down by another delusional
individual, the attacks on public officials is no excuse to shred
the Constitution and take away more of the people’s First and
Second Amendment rights. That is the direction we are headed given
the reaction by both members of the left and right on the political
spectrum.

The violence
of government is all around us, 24/7. From taxation to regulations
to military adventurism, the federal government has become a role
model for individuals prone to violence. If the government can use
violence to achieve its goals, then violence becomes acceptable
in the minds of the unstable. If the government can perpetuate Ponzi
schemes, then some in the financial community will try to create
their own fraudulent investment programs to enrich themselves at
the expense of their fellow citizens.

The role model
for violence is not heated political rhetoric, but the actions
of government officials who assert they are doing “good”
by taxing, spending, regulating, borrowing, debasing the currency
and invading other nations. This is not to condone violence against
any government official. On the contrary, we should criticize
unequivocally their use of violence against the people, while
we work toward reestablishing liberty as the highest social good.

January
12, 2011

Murray
Sabrin, Ph.D. [send him mail],
is professor of finance in the Anisfield School of Business, Ramapo
College of New Jersey.
He is the author of Tax
Free 2000: The Rebirth of American Liberty. Sabrin is a contributing
columnist for www.politickernj.com
and blogs at www.MurraySabrin.com.

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Bernanke’s Malevolent Money Machine

Murray Sabrin — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 05:00:00 +0000

On October 15th Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave a speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston outlining his views on the economy and asserted that the FED will pursue its dual mandate vigorously: maximum employment and price stability.

Dr. Bernanke (he has a Ph.D. in economics) was a Princeton University professor before President Bush appointed him to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 2002. In 2005, Bernanke became Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors until 2006, when President Bush nominated him to a 14-year term on the Federal Reserve Board and to a four-year term as its chairman. President Obama reappointed Bernanke to another term as chairman this year.

As an economist, Bernanke is supposed to be an expert on the Great Depression. In his writings, he asserts the Federal Reserve allowed the money supply to decline in the early 1930s, causing the economic contraction that began in 1929 to spiral into a deflationary depression. Thus, Bernanke believes the FED made the greatest of all monetary errors, allowing the money supply to shrink, and has vowed in speeches and both popular essays and scholarly articles that the FED should never allow deflation to occur. As chairman of the FED, Bernanke has been true to his word; the FED has flooded the economy with money to prop up the banking system and has forced short-term interest rates to virtually zero to “stimulate” the economy.

Contrast Bernanke’s economic analysis of the Great Depression with that of Murray Rothbard and other economists of the Austrian School of Economics, who blame the Great Depression on the easy money policies of the FED during the 1920s that ignited an unsustainable boom that burst in 1929. Once the bubble burst and the banks were failing because they too were overextended, the federal government first under President Hoover and then under President Roosevelt intervened massively with higher federal spending, higher taxes, unprecedented regulation of the economy, and more cheap money to prop up the economy. The federal government’s welfare state and inflationist policies turned what would have been a deep and short downturn into a Great Depression. (See the extensive bibliography on the Great Depression and the Great Recession of 2008—2009 from an Austrian School perspective.)

Despite the pseudo scientific rhetoric of Chairman Bernanke’s recent speech, his views can be summed up briefly: We at the FED, make no mistake about it, are central planners who have the tools to create prosperity by manipulating short-term interest rates. We will do what it is necessary to increase employment but now that inflation is too low, we will increase the inflation rate. We will create more dollars to give the economy another shot in the arm! In addition, free markets cannot “deliver the goods” — price stability and sustainable prosperity — and therefore, we have the “best and brightest” people monitoring the economy, so we will act accordingly to achieve our dual mandate.

After reading Chairman Bernanke’s speech, I wondered if anyone at the FED reviewed his remarks. On the one hand, Bernanke says price stability is our goal but now that we have achieved it, the FED needs to create some inflation! So which is it Ben: price stability — low inflation of around one percent as measured by some price indexes — or two percent inflation?

If creating dollars can “stimulate the economy,” why doesn’t the FED send each man, women and child in America say $1,000 every few months? If the goal of the economic policy is to have the American people spend more money, why not do it the old fashioned way — send the people newly created dollars directly?

What Bernanke fails to mention in his speech is that slowly failing prices is normal in a free market economy, as the benefits of greater productivity spread to the general population in the form of lower prices. In short, gradual deflation is normal in a free market. Just think of the prices of cell phones, DVD players, computers, etc., and how they have fallen over the years; they have fallen because in the free market greater productivity causes prices to fall even as the FED floods the economy with money.

In his concluding remarks, Chairman Bernanke stated: “the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) is prepared to provide additional accommodation if needed to support the economic recovery and to return inflation over time to levels consistent with our mandate. Of course, in considering possible further actions, the FOMC will take account of the potential costs and risks of nonconventional policies, and, as always, the Committee’s actions are contingent on incoming information about the economic outlook and financial conditions.”

Those nonconventional policies are purchases of long-term Treasury bonds, that is, another way of saying the FED will “monetize” the federal deficit. With the recent announcement that the federal budget deficit was $1.3 trillion for the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2010, the FED is about to embark on another bout of massive money creation. In other words, Chairman Bernanke is about to become the Rudolf Havenstein of the 21st century. Havenstein was president of the Reichsbank (the German central bank) during the hyperinflation of 1921—1923.

Murray Sabrin, Ph.D. [send him mail], is professor of finance in the Anisfield School of Business, Ramapo College of New Jersey. He is the author of Tax Free 2000: The Rebirth of American Liberty. Sabrin is a contributing columnist for www.politickernj.com and blogs at www.MurraySabrin.com.

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Shill for the Corporate State

Murray Sabrin — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Paul Krugman wears many hats — Princeton University professor, New York Times columnist, Nobel Laureate in Economics (2008), prolific author of scholarly books and journal articles, and now president of the Eastern Economic Association. The EEA is a regional scholarly group which publishes a journal and holds an annual academic conference in New York City every other year. The EEA is housed in the Anisfield School of Business at Ramapo College, where I have taught Corporate Finance and Financial Markets and Institutions for the past 25 years.

On September 29th there was a brief ceremony dedicating the Anisfield School of Business as the new home for the EEA. Prior to the dedication, there was ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the official opening of the Global Financial Trading Lab, which was made possible by a generous gift from Mr. and Mrs. Anisfield. After these two events, Krugman delivered a 40-minute address on the "liquidity trap" and its "discontents," followed by a lively Q&A session.

Krugman is an engaging speaker, droll at times, very serious occasionally, and frustrated as hell because the Obama administration is not taking his advice to spend like no other time in history because there is "insufficient demand" in the economy to close the "output gap." According to Krugman, the economy is operating below its "full potential," and therefore it is the federal government’s duty to take up the slack, because individuals and the business sector are "holding back."

Krugman’s thesis has been repeated over and over in his Times columns which he articulated in his lecture — policymakers are too timid to really turn on the spending spigot because of their "failure to understand" the liquidity trap. According to Krugman, although the Federal Reserve’s zero-interest policy has flooded the nation’s banks with newly printed dollars, lack of spending by the private sector is causing companies to lay off workers, which in turn causes aggregate demand to decline and thus the downward spiral is never ending or causing a tepid recovery at best, unless the federal government steps up to the plate to boost aggregate demand. That in a nutshell is Krugman’s view of the state of the economy,

Many years ago I either read an article by Murray Rothbard or heard him speak at a conference discussing economic policy. He pointed out that any explanation of economic events that does not include the importance of prices as a market clearing mechanism is a useless exercise. In his lecture, Krugman did not mention how market prices would balance the output throughout the structure of production with the demand of market participants. There was no recognition on his part that the housing bubble bid up prices in virtually all sectors of the economy and the only way to return to sustainable prosperity is for all markets to clear. That means, of course, real and nominal wages falling, housing prices dropping, and goods and service prices adjusting to reflect real demand — not juiced up demand — in the economy.

In short, a period of adjustment is necessary to eliminate the distortions in all markets caused by the Fed’s easy money policy. Krugman had no explanation of why the bubble occurred other than to say it happened. He apparently has no understanding of the Austrian School insight about the cause and effects of monetary and credit inflation.

The only time Krugman mentioned prices in his lecture was to point out that price inflation is very low now and does not pose a "threat" because there is so much "slack" in the economy. The Commodity Research Bureau index has been rising steadily since the Fed turned on the monetary spigot full blast two years ago, and the prices of precious metals are signaling either inflation is coming back, or the dollar will plunge further in value, or there will be a deflationary depression and investors want a "reliable store of value." No matter how you slice it, the Fed’s unprecedented monetary inflation, the trillion-dollars-plus deficits as far as the eye can see and the bloated federal budget are causing concerns around the world about the health of the U.S. economy.

Although economists tend to "get it right" at the micro level, demonstrating how prices clear markets to avoid both shortages and surpluses, they tend to go into another universe when it comes to analyzing the macro economy. This was clearly evident throughout Krugman’s talk. He "hung his hat" on the "Paradox of Thrift" as an explanation of the economy’s weak recovery, namely, that savings by an individual may be good for him, but if everybody saves, that is bad for the economy because there will be less aggregate demand, claiming this is an example of the fallacy of composition. In short, Krugman asserts, what was a good for an individual may not be good for "society." (See Robert Murphy’s critique of the "Paradox.")

Moreover, economist Robert Higgs has written a definitive critique of what he calls "vulgar Keynesianism" — the proposition that the economy is comprised of "lumps" of output that can be manipulated by the federal government to obtain the "right level" of national income and employment. Krugman is the most vocal proponent of VK, namely, that the technocrats in the White House and the federal bureaucracy have the skills and the knowledge to direct the economy toward full employment.

Krugman totally ignores the role of entrepreneurs in the economy. Uncertainty is plaguing the business community because public policy has become so…uncertain! The battle over tax rates in Congress, Fed policy, currency exchange rates, trade issues, regulatory changes and other factors are making it more and more difficult for businesses to undertake any reliable strategic planning. None of these were mentioned by Krugman as to why the economy is sluggish at best.

Another weakness of Krugman’s economic paradigm is his lack of appreciation of the role of savings and investment that is necessary before consumption can take place. As Ludwig von Mises observed: "The most ingenious technological inventions would be practically useless if the capital goods required for their utilization had not been accumulated by saving." But for Krugman it is demand and only demand that drives the economy. But as Austrian School economists have explained for more than 100 years, an economy "grows" when entrepreneurs save — refrain from consumption today — in order to invest in different stages of the structure of production so the supply of consumer goods will steadily increase over time at lower prices, thereby spreading the benefits of a free market economy to all (who work). Even the unemployed and disabled receive the benefits of the free market as "deflation" spread throughout the economy.

Thus, it is the free market that causes more prosperity, not government spending which is based on expropriating the income and wealth of the public. Government spending can never cause a sustainable rise in real incomes, because governments do not invest in the "right" lines of production that will satisfy real consumer demand. Moreover, government depends on coercion to obtain its revenue; therefore its actions do not reflect the optimal choices of the people.

As Murray Rothbard pointed out in The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar:

The market economy and the modern world’s system of division of labor operate as follows: a producer supplies a good or a service, selling it for money; he then uses the money to buy other goods or services that he needs. Let us then consider a hypothetical world of pure laissez faire, where the market functions freely and government has not infringed at all upon the monetary sphere. This system of selling goods for money would then be the only way by which an individual could acquire the money that he needed to obtain goods and services. The process would be: production→"purchase" of money→ "sale" of money for goods.

The elegant and insightful presentation by Murray Rothbard of how an economy works should disabuse Krugman and others that government spending is a tonic for what ails the economy. What ails the economy is an old story: interventionism — massive government spending and money printing.

The US economy is currently undergoing a massive readjustment to the easy money policies of the Federal Reserve, a fact dismissed by Krugman as an irrelevant causal factor of the bubble and the "Great Recession." However, Krugman said we knew how to end inflations in the past: raise interest rates to nip the price spiral. Now, he asserted, monetary policy is ineffective and the federal spending must accelerate to lower unemployment and put other factors of production back to work.

During the Q&A I asked Krugman about Keynes’ foreword to the German edition of The General Theory, where he wrote: "The theory of aggregated production, which is the point of the following book, nevertheless can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state [eines totalen Staates] than the theory of production and distribution of a given production put forth under conditions of free competition and a large degree of laissez-faire. This is one of the reasons that justify the fact that I call my theory a general theory…" Krugman dismissed the idea that Keynesianism was best suited for totalitarianism and he ignored my inquiry that the mess we are in is precisely because the US government has pursued Keynesian policies for the past eight decades.

At the dinner following his lecture I asked him directly that the US — under both Republicans and Democrats — has been following the Keynesian model for eight decades and he said Clinton did not, because he raised taxes in 1993. I said a deal was hatched between the Clinton administration and the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan — the Fed chairman at the time — would goose the money supply if taxes were raised to cut the deficit. He shrugged. I also told him that Reagan gave us "military Keynesianism" in the 1980s.

Krugman is a smart fellow but obsessed with government spending as a means to create prosperity. His focus that demand drives an economy is a naïve view of how an economy works. This makes make me wonder what they teach in the MIT economics department, where Krugman earned his Ph.D.

Murray Sabrin, Ph.D. [send him mail], is professor of finance in the Anisfield School of Business, Ramapo College of New Jersey. He is the author of Tax Free 2000: The Rebirth of American Liberty. Sabrin is a contributing columnist for www.politickernj.com and blogs at www.MurraySabrin.com.

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Frank Rich vs. Ron Paul

Murray Sabrin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:00:00 +0000

In his Sunday New York Times column, Frank Rich tries to belittle and defames Congressman Ron Paul, because Dr. Paul wants to shrink the size and scope of the federal government. By lumping the former 2008 GOP presidential candidate with the pro-war 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, and militaristic talking head Glenn Beck, who delivered a sharp rebuke of the GOP in his CPAC speech more than a week ago, Rich reveals his true colors: an unapologetic supporter of the welfare-warfare state.

Ron Paul should not be linked to either of these big government conservatives, nor to extremists like Joe Stack, who recently flew a plane into an office building housing the I.R.S. in Austin, Texas, or Timothy McVeigh who bombed a government office building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Frank Rich tries to paint Ron Paul and his supporters as violent, “obsessed and deranged,” and therefore a lunatic fringe that should be ignored as critics of the federal government’s policies, which Rich apparently supports: mass killing overseas, and legal plunder and currency debasement at home. Instead, Frank Rich implies that any criticism of the welfare-warfare state is due to a psychological disorder and therefore “these’ people are really “enemies of the state” and should be monitored very carefully.

Ron Paul has been one of America’s articulate advocates of a constitutional republic in the United State Congress. Dr. Paul supports abolishing the Federal Reserve and ending the income tax. He also favors replacing the entitlement programs with charities, and creating real, sustainable prosperity built on a foundation of savings and investments. Dr. Paul also opposes preemptive war and military adventurism overseas, a policy that fans the flames of hatred for America. In short, Dr. Paul is America’s most outspoken critic of the Empire that is responsible for tens of thousands of innocent deaths overseas and the financial bleeding of our economy.

Frank Rich approvingly cites the dismissive attitude of neoconservatives William Kristol and William Bennett toward Ron Paul and his presidential straw poll win at the CPAC conference. If Mitt Romney had won, their tune would have been a lot different: Romney is the 2012 GOP presidential front-runner. Frank Rich’s “intellectual” soul mates, Kristol and Bennett, join him in battling Ron Paul and the liberty movement for the soul of America.

The clock is ticking on the welfare-warfare state, frightening the likes of Frank Rich and other apologists in the media. So instead of debating the merits of the welfare-warfare state, Rich and his ilk engage in unrelenting character assassination of a decent and patriotic American, congressman Ron Paul of Texas.

There is apparently no insult that Frank Rich and the neoconservative’s pals will not use to undermine the reestablishment of a limited government republic in America. They would prefer to genuflect before the altar of power and gain fame and fortune from the welfare-warfare state apparatus than have the American people live in a free society.

This is reprinted from MurraySabrin.com.

Murray Sabrin, Ph.D. [send him mail], is professor of finance in the Anisfield School of Business, Ramapo College of New Jersey. He is the author of Tax Free 2000: The Rebirth of American Liberty. Sabrin is a contributing columnist for www.politickernj.com and blogs at www.jerseyconservative.com.

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In the Footsteps of Herbert Hoover

Murray Sabrin — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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If America were a laissez faire economy, it would be impossible to create the financial bubble we have just experienced.

Critics of President Bush as well as some pundits in the media claim that deregulation and our "laissez faire" economy have been responsible for the financial markets’ meltdown. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Here’s what President Bush recently told a visiting group of journalists in the Oval Office about the recent $700 billion bailout package:

"We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put it into action."

You may be wondering how our grammatically challenged president came up with such an articulate response to a question about his administration’s reaction to the financial crisis.

Well, the above was not uttered by Bush but by another president who has been vilified by historians and others as a "do nothing" president, Herbert Hoover. Hoover accepted the Republican nomination for president in 1932 to seek another term in the midst of the financial meltdown that engulfed the United States more than 75 years ago; he made the above remarks in accepting his party’s presidential nomination.

The historical record is clear, according to the late economist and historian Murray Rothbard in his classic America’s Great Depression. Hoover intervened massively in the economy from the time of the stock market crash in October 1929 up until he left office in March 1933.

Easy money policies

As Rothbard documents in his 1963 study, the financial bubble of the 1920s was caused by the Federal Reserve’s easy money policy that pumped up real estate and stock market prices. When the bubble burst in 1929, Hoover did all he could to prop up prices in the name of stability and recovery.

All his efforts failed.

The economy continued to spiral downward. Hoover’s legacy was sealed.

However, court historians and mainstream economists have been blaming Hoover’s "inaction" for nearly eight decades instead of his big government policies that turned a much needed correction into a full-scale panic and massive depression.

If America were a laissez faire economy (and limited government society), it would be impossible to create the financial bubble we have just experienced. For example, in a laissez faire economy, the federal government would not be able to subsidize housing for families who could not afford mortgages.

In addition, there would be no government-created entities like Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac that could buy subprime mortgages from banks. And banks would not be forced by laws such as the Community Reinvestment Act to lower lending standards for low-income families, many of whom are now defaulting on their mortgages.

So history is repeating itself in terms of the cause and effects of another Federal Reserve-created bubble. How do we end once and for all the booms and busts that have characterized the American economy for decades?

First, a laissez faire economy would end the moral hazard of the financial system and the mortgage market. In a laissez faire economy, banks would not be able to borrow short and lend long, creating a huge amount of leverage in the banking system. There would be no FDIC, which means depositors would have to be vigilant about how their banks are lending their money.

Banks therefore would extend credit only to the lowest-risk borrowers so depositors would have confidence in uninsured banks, knowing that depositors would not tolerate lax lending practices.

Second, in a laissez faire economy there would be no barriers for entrepreneurs to enter the banking business as there are today. More competition would mean stronger banks. Wal-Mart or other enterprises could enter the banking business and compete against the entrenched subsidized financial elites.

No central banks

Third, in a laissez faire economy, there would be no central bank like the Federal Reserve that could print money out of thin air and manipulate interest rates to ridiculously low levels. Instead, interest rates would be set by savers and borrowers, not by the actions of a few unelected members of the Fed’s open market committee.

In a laissez faire economy, inflation would be abolished because the dollar would once again be as "good as gold." All dollars therefore would be convertible into real money.

With both McCain and Obama voting for the bailout bill, there is indeed virtually no difference between the GOP and Democratic presidential standard bearers. They are both subservient to the financial elites who influence the federal government’s policy agenda.

Make no mistake, we still have one-party rule in D.C., the Washington Party, an observation I made in 1971, when another Republican president, Richard Nixon, turned his back on limited government principles and imposed wage-and-price controls and severed the last link between the dollar and gold.

This article originally appeared in the North Jersey Record.

Murray Sabrin Archives

Is Ron Paul Pro-Life?

Murray Sabrin — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 06:00:00 +0000

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Thank you, Bush and Cheney

Murray Sabrin — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 06:00:00 +0000

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On behalf of The Ron Paul Revolution I would like to thank you from the bottom of our collective hearts for the policies you have enacted since you assumed power in January 2001. Since 2001 your administration has demonstrated unequivocally the moral and financial bankruptcy of the welfare-warfare state. The welfare-warfare state which, of course, you did not create, has expanded beyond our wildest dreams or more accurately has become our worst nightmare.

In short, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President you are America’s latest libertarian heroes, because no one in the past several years could have accomplished what you have achieved in just seven years; ignite a nationwide revolution for liberty, limited government, sound money and a noninterventionist foreign policy.

I cannot tell you how grateful we are that you have brought people together from all regions of the country, ethnic and religious groups, ages, incomes, and across the political spectrum to enlist in The Ron Paul Revolution.

The Ron Paul Revolution could not have been made possible without your administration’s unrelenting pursuit of unrestrained federal power, your incessant trampling of the American people’s rights guaranteed under our magnificent Bill of Rights, your continuous shading of the truth to the American people to justify invading a country that was not a threat to our national security, your unconscionable expansion of the welfare state with the prescription drug plans for seniors, and your reckless fiscal polices that have exploded the federal budget. In addition, your administration has been in office while the U.S. dollar is collapsing in foreign exchange markets.

And we now know that Iran is not now nor has ever been a threat to our national security. Continuing to threaten a nation with a preemptive nuclear strike reveals the utter contempt your administration has for international law. All the GOP presidential candidates except Ron Paul support a preemptive strike against Iran, so if you are going to bomb Iran, you know you will be handing him the nomination on a silver platter.

Many of us have been waiting for nearly four decades since "we became of age" when the welfare-warfare state was in its formative years during the Johnson Administration to rally around a candidate for president of the United States who is a passionate supporter of liberty, limited government, sound money and a noninterventionist foreign policy. I know I keep repeating myself Mr. President and Mr. Vice President, but I cannot help it. We are so excited that a Ron Paul administration will have the opportunity to begin dismantling the welfare-warfare state in 2009.

I and millions, no…make that tens of millions, of Americans, want to see the Ron Paul Revolution succeed. You have done your job magnificently. Your policies have exposed the utter immorality of the bi-partisan American Empire. With the American Empire on its last legs we need to replace the welfare-warfare state as soon as possible, but not with a Hillary or Obama or Edwards version of the welfare state.

The American people want and need an administration that will abide by the U.S. Constitution and not engage in nation building like you promised, Mr. President in your 2000 campaign for the presidency. I was thrilled back then that we would finally have a president who understood the proper role of America in the world: diplomacy, trade and peaceful relations.

Dr. Paul is the right man and this is the right time for him to lead the American people to the Promised Land of freedom, peace and prosperity. He has crisscrossed our great nation with a message the Founding Fathers articulated more than 225 years ago, liberty and noninterference in other nations’ affairs would secure peace and prosperity for the American people.

Again, on behalf of The Ron Paul Revolution thank you and thank you Mr. President and Mr. Vice President for giving the freedom movement the greatest boost in my lifetime. It sure looks like we will have freedom in our lifetime and not have to wait another few decades to restore the U.S. Constitution.

We all look forward to seeing you at Ron Paul’s inauguration.

Sincerely,
Murray Sabrin

Paul-Napolitano

Murray Sabrin — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 05:00:00 +0000

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Several months ago speculation was reaching a fever pitch on the Yahoo! Ron Paul Group as to who would be Ron Paul’s running mate. I thought it was not only way premature to talk about Rep. Paul’s vice presidential running mate but silly and a waste of time. Last summer, the only thing that mattered most was for Ron’s supporters to fill the campaign coffers with as much cash as possible. And they came through magnificently.

The campaign raised more than $5 million in the third quarter, more than double $2.4 million in the second quarter. On October 17th Paul campaign officials revealed that Ron is a top-tier candidate, because his net cash on hand is only a million dollars less than Fred Thompson and six million dollars behind the Giuliani campaign. The other candidates have little cash on hand or have substantial deficits.

Ron has become a "legitimate" candidate in the eyes of the mainstream media. All you have to do is to google Ron Paul on www.googlenews.com, and see how many articles have been appearing in local and national newspapers. In addition, Ron is getting treated much better by interviewers on cable shows, and finally receiving the respect he deserves by online and print journalists.

In short, the "Ron Paul Revolution" is growing by leaps and bounds, and Ron has become a "hot political commodity." His appearance on The Tonight Show Tuesday, October 30 could be the "tipping point." He easily could pick up another 100,000 contributors, and millions of supporters.

In spite of what I said earlier about the silliness and inappropriateness of speculating about a Paul presidential ticket, I believe it is now time to create the greatest sensation of the presidential campaign. Next Tuesday on The Tonight Show Ron could announce that if he is honored to be the GOP nominee he will have the opportunity to win the presidency and restore the principles of limited government. Ron could say he will need a partner who is as passionate as he is about liberty, individual rights and free enterprise. That one person would have to know the constitution inside out and be an uncompromising champion of the Bill of Rights. His name came up in August on one of the Ron Paul Yahoo group posts.

There is one person who fits that criteria, Andrew Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, who is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel, and the author of The Constitution in Exile, Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws, and the forthcoming A Nation of Sheep.

Andrew would be a superb vice presidential candidate. He is smart, articulate, with a great sense of humor. He would be the first Italian-American male on a national presidential ticket. In 1984 Democrat presidential candidate picked the relatively unknown New York representative Geraldine Ferraro to be his running mate.

A Ron Paul/Andrew Napolitano ticket would have geographic balance, ethnic and religious diversity as well as having the greatest spokesmen for liberty campaigning for president and vice president in our nation’s history.

A Paul/Napolitano ticket would energize the Italian-American community as never before in American politics

A Ron Paul/Andrew Napolitano ticket would galvanize traditional conservatives, libertarians, fiscal conservatives, civil libertarians, pro-lifers, gun owners, entrepreneurs, hard money advocates, noninterventionists, and any one else who wants to end the Imperial Presidency and create a free America.

A Paul/Napolitano ticket would crush Hillary or Obama or Edwards or Richardson.

In short, the presidential dream ticket of Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano would be…(fill in the blank). I am at a loss for words.

I Took Matching Funds

Murray Sabrin — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 05:00:00 +0000

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THIS

I was the New
Jersey Libertarian Party candidate for governor in 1997. The primary
goal of the campaign was to raise $210,000 by the September 2 deadline
to qualify for matching funds and get a spot in three televised
debates. One of the "strings" in accepting the matching
funds was to participate in three televised debates with Governor
Whitman and the Democrat challenger, Jim McGreevey, who was a state
senator and mayor of Woodbridge at the time.

Those were
the rules. Raise the money, apply for the matching funds, and get
the funds. The funds were used by us to spread the message of limited
government, free enterprise and personal responsibility throughout
the Garden State and expose millions of New Jerseyans to libertarian
ideas.

Mission accomplished.
We were all over television and radio and before newspaper editorial
boards. On Election Day, we received nearly 5% of the vote or about
113,000 votes. Whitman won by about 21,000 votes, receiving less
than 50% of the vote, thus ending any chance she had for national
office. (She still hates my appearance in the debates, because I
showed the world she was and still is a big government Republican.)

If we had not
raised the minimum amount to qualify for the matching funds, I would
not have been in the three debates, and we would have received much
less than 1% of the vote. And the libertarian message would have
been silenced in this campaign, for all intents and purposes. Because
of the exposure I received during the 1997 campaign, I have become
the unofficial spokesperson for libertarianism in the State of New
Jersey.

Keep in mind,
the New Jersey election commission (ELEC) denied our original application,
because of a slight technical issue regarding an interpretation
of the rules. We then had a hearing with an administrative law judge
who ruled in our favor. The election commission subsequently approved
our application on September 19, more than two weeks after our application
was first filed, and about six weeks before the November election.
In just six weeks, we created a buzz in the state, because we played
by the rules. We reached millions of New Jerseyans and Americans
because one of the debates was televised on C-SPAN, and we had the
funds to pay for radio and television ads.

Ron Paul has
been in nearly a dozen debates and forums. Yet, there are tens of
millions of American who do not know who he is. Only exposure in
the MSM will change that. One way would be to obtain the federal
matching funds to get his message out to the general public, not
just GOP primary voters. Independent voters could play a major role
in some of the early primaries. Whatever the rules are they cannot
be very onerous or come with many strings attached.

The
Ron Paul campaign should accept the matching funds with a clear
conscience, because Dr. Paul would be playing by the rules of the
game. After all, he accepts a taxpayer funded congressional salary
and taxpayer funds to run his congressional offices. If Ron Paul
supporters do not want him to obtain matching funds because they
are “tainted,” they should also demand he depend on voluntary contributions
to pay for all the expenses, including salaries, of his DC and Texas
offices. Clearly, that would be an unrealistic application of libertarian
principles.

It seems if
libertarians or traditional conservatives play by the rules of the
game, the MSM call them hypocrites, and if we want to reduce or
abolish the welfare-warfare state, we are called extremists. In
short, we can never “win” or “please” the media elites and the pundit
class. So let Ron be Ron.

Finally,
if the campaign will not accept matching funds, then all the Ron
Paul supporters in America will have to step up to the plate more
than they have already. During the past week, Paul supporters have
shown they can rise to the occasion when they are called upon. I
estimate that if the Paul campaign raises $30 million in the fourth
quarter ending December 31, he will definitely win the GOP
presidential nomination.

October
2, 2007

The Perfect Storm

Murray Sabrin — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 05:00:00 +0000

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What a week!
The stock market took a dive to just over 13,000 on the Dow Jones
Industrial Average from an all-time high of 14,000 less than a month
ago. The world’s major central banks flooded the financial
system with tens of billions of dollars to prop up the banks and
the mortgage market.

Meanwhile,
the unending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to drain the
U.S. military; the bills for the Bush-Cheney invasion of two nations
that did not attack us or threaten to attack us are rocketing to
the one trillion dollar mark.

In other words,
we are witnessing the unfolding of the collapse of the welfare–warfare–fiat-money
complex that has ruled America since 1913, the year the Federal
Reserve was created and the Sixteenth Amendment was added to the
U.S. Constitution allowing the federal government to impose an income
tax on the American people.

Of all the
GOP and Democrat presidential candidates, only Representative Ron
Paul of Texas has been diagnosing correctly the shortcomings of
the welfare–warfare–fiat-money state. In fact, last Friday
on Larry
Kudlow’s CNBC show Dr. Paul demonstrated once again why
he is the only presidential candidate who understands how the Federal
Reserve creates financial bubbles that always end in pain and suffering,
especially for low and middle income Americans.

Economist Murray
Rothbard identified
the losers in the inflation race:

Inflation…redistributes
the wealth in favor of the first-comers and at the expense of
the laggards in the race. And inflation is, in effect, a race
– to see who can get the new money earliest. The latecomers
– the ones stuck with the loss – are often called the
"fixed income groups." Ministers, teachers, people on
salaries, lag notoriously behind other groups in acquiring the
new money. Particular sufferers will be those depending on fixed
money contracts – contracts made in the days before the inflationary
rise in prices. Life insurance beneficiaries and annuitants, retired
persons living off pensions, landlords with long term leases,
bondholders and other creditors, those holding cash, all will
bear the brunt of the inflation. They will be the ones who are
"taxed."

And who are
the winners? Wall Street banks, real estate speculators and others
who are the initial recipients of easy money.

So, if we want
to end the boom and bust cycle we need to restore sound money –
gold and silver as the foundation of our monetary system, as prescribed
the U.S. Constitution. At the very least, the FED should stop creating
money out of thin air. But stopping the inflating of the nation’s
currency would not sit well with the Wall Street crowd, because
they are the prime beneficiaries of easy money. In other words,
halting inflation would drop real estate prices in the Hamptons,
Aspen and other locations where the beneficiaries of inflation have
bid up the price of houses and condos. And forget about those end-of-year
bonuses. Under a sound monetary system, speculating in currency
and other markets would be greatly diminished.

As a student
of the Austrian School of Economics, Dr. Paul is familiar with the
contributions of Ludwig von Mises,
Murray Rothbard, Henry Hazlitt and dozens of others who advocated
free markets and sound money. Professor Mises spent his long academic
career warning about the dangers of inflation, the printing of money
by central bankers.

Professor Mises
long ago showed the relationship between war and inflation, a point
Rep. Paul has reiterated throughout his campaign for the GOP presidential
nomination.

“Inflationism,
however, is not an isolated phenomenon. It is only one piece in
the total framework of politico-economic and socio-philosophical
ideas of our time. Just as the sound money policy of gold standard
advocates went hand in hand with liberalism, free trade, capitalism
and peace, so is inflationism part and parcel of imperialism,
militarism, protectionism, statism and socialism.”

Mises used
liberalism in its original meaning: limited government, low taxes,
and free trade. The term has been hijacked in the 20th century by
the proponents of big government.

War, credit
bubbles, runaway government spending, a bankrupt entitlement system,
are the result of big government liberalism and neo-conservatism.

Last Saturday,
Rep.
Paul clearly and passionately spoke the truth about these issues
at the Iowa Straw poll conference center. Coming in fifth place
with just under 10 percent of the vote is a great
achievement in his long-shot campaign for the GOP presidential
nomination.

Once
GOP voters realize where inflation and war are taking the country,
they will rally around Ron Paul, the only candidate for peace, freedom
and prosperity.

August
14, 2007

Can Ron Paul Win?

Murray Sabrin — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 05:00:00 +0000

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On Monday morning
March 12, Dr. Ron Paul, member of the House of Representatives from
Texas, and no stranger to readers of this website, announced on
C-SPAN that he will seek the Republican nomination for President.
Now that he has moved from an "exploratory" candidacy
to being a bona fide candidate, what are Rep. Paul's chances of
winning the GOP nomination?

I have known
Ron for about 25 years. The last time I saw him was in mid-2004
when he spoke at a fundraiser for Rep. Scott Garrett in New Jersey.
Scott was elected to Congress in 2002 and is a member of Ron's Liberty
Study Committee. During the question and answer period I stated
that a Paul-Garrett ticket in 2008 would energize conservative Republicans
and libertarians. Ron smiled and said, if I remember correctly,
that a presidential run would be very unlikely. Well, here we are
in 2007, and a Ron Paul presidential candidacy is a reality.

Ron and I first
met at a 1982 monetary conference in Washington, DC. Two years later
he invited me with other newsletter writers to tour the Federal
Reserve, the U.S. Treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In a Paul presidency, the downsizing of government would begin in
earnest, two of the three institutions we toured nearly a quarter
of century ago would be abolished, and the U.S. Treasury would probably
be responsible for maintaining the integrity of a gold-backed dollar.
In short, in a Paul presidency, Washington, DC would be less populated,
the budget would shrink substantially, taxes would decline markedly,
the dollar would be stronger and no American troops would be policing
the world.

Soon after
Ron announced his candidacy on C-SPAN, Republican Senator Chuck
Hagel held a new conference in his home state of Nebraska to inform
the press that he will not be a candidate for president at
this time. In another development over the weekend, Fred Thompson,
former U.S. senator from Tennessee and television actor, announced
that he may seek the GOP nomination for president. On Monday
evening I had the opportunity to view some of the news programs,
and the political segments were about the possible candidacies
of both Hagel and Thompson, while Ron Paul's candidacy was
ignored. Moreover, on Fox News Morton Kondracke commented on Senator
Hagel's announcement and said there is no anti-war candidate
in the GOP field.

Clearly, the
establishment media's virtually blackout of Ron Paul's candidacy
is a magnificent case study in: media incompetence? bias? laziness?
All of the above?

No matter how
the media treat Ron in the months ahead, by this time next year
both the Republican and Democrat presidential nominees should be
all but selected, because so many primaries will be held next February
and March. Thus, whoever raises substantial funds soon and has a
message that resonates with voters for the next 12 months will be
the overwhelming favorites to win their respective party's nomination.

As of now,
Dr. Paul has much in common with another (physician) presidential
candidate, Howard Dean, who used the Internet so effectively in
2004 that the Democratic establishment sandbagged his campaign,
because the Democrat bosses did not want to have, in their view,
another McGovern (anti-war) candidacy. Ironically, Dean is one of
the country's leading hawks, when it comes to Iran.

Currently,
the Internet is abuzz about Ron Paul. As the year unfolds, if more
and more young Republicans people gravitate toward the Paul campaign
just as young Democrats did for Dean in 2004, the GOP establishment
will be apoplectic.

For Ron to
become one of the "top tier" GOP candidates he has to
have one quality that he does not have now — a media-anointed
celebrity status. Currently, the top tier candidates are "celebrities"
— Rudy, McCain, Romney, and Newt (even though he has not announced
his candidacy). Ron can become a top tier candidate and a
serious contender for the nomination if he can raise more funds
than his own advisors, I suspect, think is possible by December
31, 2007.

According to
many pundits, each of the leading candidates in both parties could
raise as much as $100 million by the time the primaries are over.
So, for the media to characterize anyone a top tier candidate throughout
the year, he or she should be on track to raise at least $50 million
or more. Could any of the presidential candidates that are currently
in the back of the pack raise anywhere near that daunting amount?

If $50 million
is the minimum that a candidate will have to raise to be taken seriously
by the media, then every lesser-known candidate needs 50,000 individuals
to make an average contribution of $1,000 to give him a $50 million
war chest. (The maximum individual contribution is $2,300 per primary
and general election.)

Ron's political
base is fiscal conservatives, anti-tax citizens, anti-war Republicans,
Democrats and Independents, constitutionalists, hard-money advocates,
small business owners, civil libertarians, anti-universal healthcare
physicians, pro-lifers, parents who home school, and anyone else
who considers himself a real patriot. In other words, if Ron's substantial
base provides him with volunteers, contributions and votes, he would
be a very competitive candidate.

In
the final analysis, about 50,000 to 100.000 Americans could determine
the next presidential nominees of both parties. In the GOP presidential
primary, if Ron Paul, Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, Tommy Thompson,
or any other lesser known candidate excites GOP voters for the next
12 months, then Rudy, McCain and Romney will prove that in a marathon
it is not who leads the pack that counts but who is the turtle in
the race.

March
14, 2007

The Impact of the Iraq War

Murray Sabrin — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 05:00:00 +0000

This talk
was delivered to the Retired Professionals and Executives at the
Jewish Community Center, Tenafly New Jersey, June 27, 2006.

Before I begin
I would like to remind you that my remarks today are solely my own
and do not reflect in any way the views of Ramapo College, the Anisfield
School of Business, the Center for Business and Public Policy, or
for that matter the State of New Jersey. I think I covered all the
entities I am affiliated with. In addition, I certainly do not speak
for the Bush administration.

Nearly two
years ago you were kind enough to invite me to make a presentation
entitled, "The Coming Collapse of the Welfare State."
In March I spoke at Bergen Community College and my topic was "The
Coming Collapse of the Welfare Warfare State (WWS)." Needless
to say, no one knows when American's experiment in big government
at home and abroad will end, or how it will end. What we can state
unequivocally is that the welfare warfare state is financially unsustainable,
socially untenable and morally indefensible — and doomed to the
dustbin of history. In the short time we have today, I will focus
on the warfare component of the WWS as exemplified by the American
invasion of Iraq and the substantial harm the Bush administration's
policies are doing to our economy.

As an academic
and private citizen my role is simple: To explain why the welfare-warfare
state was created and to inform as many people as possible that
there is a better road for America to travel on — a road that would
give us sustainable prosperity at home and peaceful relations abroad.
However, if we believe that partisan politics will solve our problems,
we must remember the insight of Albert Einstein who said something
to the effect that when you do the same thing over and over again
and expect a different result, that is insanity. Electing Democrats
or Republicans will not change the road to financial ruin we are
currently traveling. Both political parties are part of the problem,
not part of the solution.

The $64,000
questions we will address today are why does America fight wars?
Were the wars that the Americans have fought just? And what are
the short-term and long-term economic consequences of the Iraqi
war?

War and
Just War

Economist and
historian Murray Rothbard wrote that America has had only two just
wars in its history. They occurred in 1776 and 1861. He wrote, "A
just war exits when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive
domination by another people, or to overthrow an already existing
domination. A war is unjust, on the other hand, when a people try
to impose domination on another people, or try to retain an already
existing coercive rule over them."

Thus, the American
Revolution and the South's desire to secede from the Union, according
to Professor Rothbard, were just acts because in both cases the
goal was to become independent from an overbearing and dominating
central government. In other words, the right of political secession
is one of the highest political "rights" human beings
have.

I could spend
at least an hour explaining the rationale for endorsing the actions
of the American colonists and the southerners who wanted to leave
the union voluntarily just as they had joined the union voluntarily
several decades earlier. In no way does my support of the South's
actions endorse slavery or government sanctioned discrimination
and bigotry. On the contrary, slavery and government-sanctioned
bigotry are polar opposites of everything I believe in.

If you're interested
in reading about the rationale for secession, I refer you to the
works of Thomas DiLorenzo (The
Real Lincoln), Charles Adams (When
in the Course of Human Events) and others who have explored
the events leading up to the Civil War, or as it is known in the
South, the War for Southern Independence, or the War Between the
States. Both authors show how America's high tariff policy protected
the economic interests of the North at the expense of southerner
consumers. Slavery was the rallying cry, not the cause of
the Civil War. Even President Lincoln acknowledged that could not
abolish slavery. Moreover, in a letter to Horace Greeley, the editor
of the New York Tribune, dated August 22, 1862, Lincoln said:

My paramount
object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either
to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing
all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing
some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about
slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to
save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe
it would help to save the Union.

President Lincoln
wanted to maintain the status quo — northern domination of the South
and refused to allow the south to secede. His actions caused to
the death of 620,000 Americans, the destruction of the South's economy
and the beginning of the journey that has led to the creation of
the welfare-warfare state in the 20th century. Despite
the iconic place Lincoln has enjoyed in American history, his record
belies his lofty status as an American martyr and hero.

The Cause
of War

As far as other
American wars since the 1860s are concerned, the collection of essays
in The Costs of War published by the Ludwig
Von Mises Institute reveal how several American administrations
"maneuvered" America into conflicts which were unjustified
based upon just war principles. The authors also argue that war
is never, ever in the best interests of the common man. On the contrary,
"war is the health of the state," as Randolph Bourne asserted
in his trenchant critique of U.S. entry in World War I. (His essay
is posted on Antiwar.com)
In addition, Professor Rothbard makes the following observation
about the Progressive Era and World War I:

I regard
progressivism as basically a movement on behalf of Big Government
in all walks of the economy and society, in a fusion or coalition
between various groups of big businessmen, led by the House of Morgan,
and rising groups of technocratic and statist intellectuals. In
this fusion, the values and interests of both groups would be pursued
through government. Big business would be able to use the government
to cartelize the economy, restrict competition, and regulate production
and prices, and also to be able to wield a militaristic and imperialist
foreign policy to force open markets abroad and apply the sword
of the State to protect foreign investments. Intellectuals would
be able to use the government to restrict entry into their professions
and to assume jobs in Big Government to apologize for, and to help
plan and staff, government operations. Both groups also believed
that, in this fusion, the Big State could be used to harmonize and
interpret the “national interest” and thereby provide a “middle
way” between the extremes of “dog eat dog” laissez faire and the
bitter conflicts of proletarian Marxism.

In other words,
a coalition of interests wanted to use government to transform America
from a limited government Republic to a powerful centralized state
where the federal government would control virtually every walk
of life, in its pursuit of creating a "Kingdom of God"
on earth. In their zeal to stamp out sin, the prohibition of alcohol
was embraced by Progressive politicians who eventually pushed through
the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning the
manufacture and sale of alcohol. The "Nobel Experiment"
cemented organized crime in our country and increased political
corruption to unprecedented levels. As far as America's entry into
World War I in1917, Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo
(Wilson's son-in-law) wrote to the president after Wilson asked
the Congress for a declaration of war against Germany, “You have
done a great thing nobly! I firmly believe that it is God’s will
that America should do this transcendent service for humanity throughout
the world and that you are His chosen instrument.”

In his 2002
State
of the Union address, President Bush implied he wants to fulfill
Woodrow Wilson’s vision to make the world safe for democracy.

Bush stated:
“All fathers and mothers, in all societies, want their children
to be educated, and live free from poverty and violence. No people
on Earth yearn to be oppressed, or aspire to servitude, or eagerly
await the midnight knock of the secret police…America will lead
by defending liberty and justice because they are right and
true and unchanging for all people everywhere." (Emphasis added)

He continued
with the following: “No nation owns these aspirations, and no nation
is exempt from them. We have no intention of imposing our culture.
But America will always stand firm for the non-negotiable demands
of human dignity: the rule of law; limits on the power of the
state; respect for women; private property; free speech; equal justice;
and religious tolerance." (Emphasis added)

In addition,
President Bush warned, “America will take the side of brave
men and women who advocate these values around the world, including
the Islamic world, because we have a greater objective than eliminating
threats and containing resentment. We seek a just and peaceful world
beyond the war on terror” (Emphasis added).

President Bush
has invoked the rhetoric of freedom, justice, peace and other values
the American people identify with to launch an invasion of a nation
that did not attack us nor was capable of attacking us. According
to several printed reports, whether they are true or not history
will have to judge, Bush purportedly told Arab leaders that God
told him to attack Al-Qaeda and invade Iraq.

Presidential
Lies and Blunders
In the 1916 presidential campaign, President Wilson promised to
keep us out of Europe's war. In 1940 President Roosevelt campaigned
on the promise that American boys would not fight in another European
war. And in 1964 President Johnson stated unequivocally that American
boys will not be sent to die in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Soon
after all three presidents were reelected, American troops were
fighting overseas in spite of the campaign promises made by Wilson,
Roosevelt and Johnson.

Jim Powell
author of Wilson's
War: How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin
& World War II, recently wrote an
essay posted on the Internet, "What We Can Learn From Woodrow
Wilson's Great Blunder: The Case for Staying Out of Other People's
War." Powell states:

Woodrow
Wilson's decision to enter World War I had serious consequences
in Iraq, too. Because the British and French were on the winning
side of the war, the League of Nations awarded “mandates” to Britain
and France in the region. If the United States had stayed out of
World War I, there probably would have been a negotiated settlement,
and the Ottoman Empire would have survived for a while. The Middle
East wouldn't have been carved up by Britain and France. But as
things turned out, authorized by League of Nations “mandates,” British
Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill was determined to secure the
British Navy's access to Persian oil at the least possible cost
by installing puppet regimes in the region.

In Mesopotamia,
Churchill bolted together the territories of Mosul, Baghdad and
Basra to make Iraq. Although Kurds wanted an independent homeland,
their territory was to be part of Iraq. Churchill decided that the
best bet for Britain would be a Hashemite ruler. For king, Churchill
picked Feisal, eldest son of Sherif Hussein of Mecca. Feisal was
an Arabian prince who lived for years in Ottoman Constantinople,
then established himself as king of Syria but was expelled by the
French government that had the League of Nations “mandate” there.
The British arranged a plebiscite purporting to show Iraqi support
for Faisal. A majority of people in Iraq were Shiite Muslims, but
Feisal was a Sunni Muslim, and this conflict was to become a huge
problem. The Ottomans were Sunni, too, which meant British policy
prolonged the era of Sunni dominance over Shiites as they became
more resentful. During the 37 years of the Iraqi monarchy, there
were 58 changes of parliamentary governments, indicating chronic
political instability. All Iraqi rulers since Feisal, including
Saddam Hussein, were Sunnis. That Iraq was ruled for three decades
by a sadistic murderer like Saddam made clear how the map-drawing
game was vastly more complicated than Wilson had imagined.

In other words,
the "peace" after World War I, according to Jim Powell,
has led to horrific consequences in the Middle East. Also, American
entry into World War I helped precipitate the Soviet Revolution
and the installation of the most brutal regime in the history of
the world in Russia. Powell argues the humiliation of Germany after
World War I eventually elevated Adolf Hitler to power and paved
the way for the Holocaust. With the rise of the Soviet Union after
World War II the foundation of the Cold War was laid. The Cold War
saw the United Sates intervene in Korea and Vietnam with disastrous
consequences — tens of thousand of American dead, hundreds of thousands
of Americans wounded, millions of dead in Korea and Southeast Asia,
enormous military expenditures to counter the Soviet Union, debasement
of the dollar, skyrocketing debt and substantial growth of the federal
government. And, the people's civil liberties have been under constant
attack by administration after administration since the end of World
War II.

One of the
reasons the Bush administration intervened in Iraq may have been
to prevent the “Russian Bear” from having more influence in that
part of the world.

This has been
the long-standing policy of the United States, since geographer
Harold Mackinder posited the following geo-political view of the
world.

“Who rules
East Europe commands the Heartland;
Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
Who rules the World Island commands the world.”

Get out your
atlas and you will see where our massive military interventions,
including Bosnia, have occurred. U.S. foreign policy has had one
primary goal — to prevent the Russians from gaining a foothold and
influence outside their country. No less an insider than former
national security advisor under President Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski,
articulated this position in his 1997 book The
Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives.
Brzezinski's book reveals how totally obsessed U.S. policymakers
have been with the Russian nation-state.

The Military
Industrial Congressional Consultancy Complex

More recently,
John Perkins in his New York Times bestseller, Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man, exposes the relationship between
the United States government, economic consulting agencies, and
the military-industrial complex.

This is what
Perkins writes in his prologue: " …we build a global empire.
We are an elite group of men and women who utilize international
financial organizations to foment conditions that make other nations
subservient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations,
our government, and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia
EHM's provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure
— electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial
parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction
companies from our own country must build all these projects. In
essence most of the money never leaves the United States; it is
simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering
offices in New York, Houston, or San Francisco.

"Despite
the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations
that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient
country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest.
If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that
the debtor is forced to default on its payment after a few years.
When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh.
This often includes one or more of the following: control over United
Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to
precious resources such as oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the
debtor still owes us the money –and another country is added to
our global empire."

At the conclusion
of his prologue, John Perkins writes, "we seldom resort
to anything illegal because the system itself is built on subterfuge,
and the system is by definition legitimate. However –and this is
a very large caveat — if we fail, and even more sinister breed steps
in, one's we EHMs refer to as they jackals… when they emerge, heads
of state are overthrown or die in violent "accidents."
And if by chance the jackals fail, as they failed in Afghanistan
and Iraq, then the old models resurface. When the jackals fail,
Americans are sent in to kill and to die."

Perkins concludes
his expose of the MICC complex by stating:

"…the
global empire depends to a large extent on the fact that the dollar
acts as the standard world currency, and that the United States
may and has the right to print those dollars… The United States
prints currency that is not backed by gold. Indeed, it is not backed
by anything other than a general worldwide confidence in our economy
and our ability to marshal the forces and resources of the empire
we have created to support us.

"The
ability to print currency gives us immense power. It means, among
other things that we can continue to make loans that will never
be repaid — and that we ourselves can accumulate huge debts…Much
of this debt is owed to Asian countries, particularly to Japan and
China, who purchase U.S. treasury securities (essentially, IOUs)
with funds accumulated through sales of consumer goods — including
electronics, computers, automobiles, finances, and clothing goods
to the United States and the world market.

"As
long as the world excepts the dollar at its standard currency, this
excessive debt does not pose a serious obstacle to the corporatocracy.
However, if another currency should come along to replace the dollar,
and if some of the United State' creditors (Japan or China, for
example) should decide to call in their debts, the situation would
change drastically."

Was Saddam
Hussein's attempt to price his nation's oil in euros one of many
reasons the United States invaded Iraq? And is the Iranian proposal
to price their oil in euros or other monetary units the real reason
the Bush administration is saber rattling against Iran?

If the U.S.
dollar loses its preeminent role in the world economy, then we will
have to put our financial house in order, instead of flooding the
world with our debt and U.S. dollars.

As congressman
Ron Paul of Texas said on the floor of the House of Representatives,
"All great republics throughout history cherished sound
money. This meant that the monetary unit was a commodity of honest
weight and purity. When money was sound, civilizations were found
to be more prosperous and freedom thrived. The less free a society
becomes, the greater the likelihood its money is being debased and
the economic well-being of its citizens diminished…

"Today's
economic conditions reflect a fiat monetary system held together
by many tricks and luck over the past 30 years. The world has been
awash in paper money since removal of the last vestige of the gold
standard by Richard Nixon when he buried the Bretton Woods agreement
— the gold exchange standard — on August 15, 1971. Since then we've
been on a worldwide paper dollar standard. Quite possibly we are
seeing the beginning of the end of that system. If so, tough times
are ahead for the United States and the world economy."

The costs of
the Iraqi war are wide and deep. From civil liberties to the national
debt to the soundness of the U.S. dollar, the so-called war on terror
undermines the economy's strength, shreds our liberties, and lays
the foundation for perpetual war.

Costs of
War: Threats to Civil Liberties

The greatest
threats to our liberties have not been Saddam Hussein, is not now
Osama Bin Laden (if he is still alive) or even the Chinese and North
Korean Communists. The threat to our liberties is much closer to
home, and all have easily pronounceable names. Their names are George
W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Bill Frist,
Dennis Hastert, Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton;
in short, America’s ruling political elite. To be more accurate,
we all have to fear members of the Bush administration, a majority
of the members of Congress, the nine justices of the Supreme Court
and the dozens of federal judges sitting on the bench. For they,
and they alone, can deny the American people their rights guaranteed
under the United States Constitution.

The few hundred
people who make the ruling class as well as the non-elected political
establishment who occupy places in D.C. think tanks, the media,
the military-industrial complex and corporate America, have one
agenda in mind for the foreseeable future: to wage war to eradicate
“terrorism." If Bush pursues aggressively this worldview America
will be unrecognizable — physically and constitutionally — in a
few years, because the federal government would impose marital law
after another major — possibly nuclear — attack.

In his zeal
to spread liberty, justice and the rule of law throughout the world,
even if it takes military action to right the wrongs everywhere,
President Bush has been leading us down a path that will continue
to transform America — into a police state.

We are destined
to become a full-blown authoritarian state in a few years, if we
do not reverse the course we are on.

Judge Andrew
Napolitano Senior Judicial Analyst of Fox News and author of Constitutional
Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws and
Constitution in Exile: How the Federal Government Has
Seized Power by Rewriting the Supreme Law of the Land,
argues that the Patriot Act may be transforming the United States
into a version of East Germany, the communist dictatorship that
brutalized its people for several decades after World War II. He
said several years ago, "There is no basis in law or history
for the president of the United States taking away all the person’s
constitutional rights. . . . National defense implies not just defense
of real estate, but defense of our values and our most basic value
is the rule of law.”

Butler Shaffer,
a law professor and columnist on LewRockwell.com
recently wrote (June 15): "We live in a country ruled by
dangerous and foolish people; by sociopaths who are prepared to
engage in the planned killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent
men, women, and children, for no other purpose than to satisfy their
insatiable appetites for power. But what is far worse than this
is the fact that we live in a country whose residents either value
such traits or, at the very least, are unable — or unwilling — to
recognize and condemn them. The ruling class — and its coterie —
offers the most specious rationalizations for their practices to
a public largely reduced to flag-waving.

"It
is a dreadful mistake to blame political leaders, the media, or
corporate-state structuring for our problems. By default — if not
enthusiasm — we have been the authors of our own madness. Our contradictory
thinking — unchecked by our inner standards of conduct — allows
us to internalize institutionalized insanity as acceptable behavior,
turning us into a society of the "normally neurotic."
This madness is destroying our sense of what it means to be a human
being, including our relationships with other people."

Costs
of War: The Financial and Economic Costs

According to
a paper prepared by Noble Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz of
Columbia University and Linda Blimes of Harvard University, the
costs of the Iraq War could reach $1 trillion by 2010 and $2.2 trillion
by 2015.

Even if American
troops do not stay in Iraq until 2010 or 2015, the costs of the
Iraqi war will still be substantial.

As the Washington
Post reported two months ago (April 27, 2006) the current costs
of the Iraqi war will soon reach $320 billion, according to the
Congressional Research Service. According to the Post article, "Even
if a gradual troop withdrawal begins this year, war costs in Iraq
and Afghanistan are likely to rise by an additional $371 billion
during the phase-out, the report said, citing a Congressional Budget
Office study. When factoring in costs of the war in Afghanistan,
the $811 billion total for both wars would have far exceeded the
inflation-adjusted $549 billion cost of the Vietnam War."

As Robert Higgs
author of Resurgence
of the Warfare State, Against
Leviathan and Crisis
and Leviathan, and editor of the scholarly quarterly journal,
The Independent Review, makes clear we are witnessing the
latest episode in the federal government’s expansion in response
to another “crisis” or "threat" to America’s security.
Historically, when America has been at war, regulations have increased,
taxes have skyrocketed, spending has exploded, and our rights have
receded. After each crisis has ended, America is less free and prosperous
because the welfare-warfare state has grown.

He concludes
his January 2003 essay with these words: "For conservatives
who now claim to support both free enterprise and a U.S. war of
conquest against Iraq, the lesson ought to be plain: they cannot
foster free enterprise and support war — the greatest of all socialistic
undertakings — at the same time. Unfortunately, it appears that
once again they are willing to sacrifice free enterprise on the
altar of Mars."

Peace, prosperity,
and sound money go hand in hand. The chart below shows how since
World War I war has correlated with the acceleration of inflation,
the debasement of the currency. In World War II, price inflation
was suppressed because of wage and price controls. Clearly, inflation
accelerated during the Vietnam War. The next chart shows that price
inflation is accelerating since the American invasion of Iraq.

To nip the
inflation genie, we will have another recession in the next year.
In other words, the cycle of boom and bust is still with us because
of war and the Federal Reserve, the institution that can create
new money out of thin air and then "tightens" money by
raising interest rates to put a lid on inflation. While the players
have changed in Washington DC, the ideas that give birth to war
and inflation are entrenched in the federal government.

Chart 1

Chart
2

Conclusion

What then does
the future hold? A few quotes over the centuries are just as applicable
today as when they were written or uttered by numerous well-known
individuals.

War is a
racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily
the most profitable, surely the most vicious.

~
General Smedley Butler

Imperialism
is an institution under which one nation asserts the right to
seize the land or at least to control the government or resources
of another people.

~
John T. Flynn

[T]he essence
of so-called war prosperity; it enriches some by what it takes
from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth
and income.

~
Ludwig von Mises

I hate those
men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the
pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys
must die.

~
Mary Roberts Rinehart

Of all the
enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded
because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

~
James Madison

If Tyranny
and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting
a foreign enemy.

~
James Madison

We must guard
against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought
or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

~
Dwight D. Eisenhower

That we are
to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

~
Theodore Roosevelt

Peace, commerce
and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with
none.

~
Thomas Jefferson

Right is
right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even
if everyone is for it.

~
William Penn

There are an
endless number of quotes about war — and particularly the Iraq war.
War, in the final analysis, is about deception, deceit, debt and
debasement. We have witnessed the lies of the Washington DC political
establishment to justify the use of force overseas. The deceptions
by government officials, pundits in the media, and analysts in the
think tanks who engage in illogical and disingenuous arguments provide
the propaganda to support the war. The explosion of government debt
to pay for the war is putting an enormous burden on future generations.
And the continued debasement of our money to maintain the welfare-warfare
state makes us poorer.

War is hell.
And the sooner we leave purgatory, the sooner we will fulfill the
promise of America — peace, liberty and free enterprise.

June
28, 2006

The Myth of the Fed

Murray Sabrin — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 06:00:00 +0000

When President
Bush nominated Ben Bernanke to be the next chairman of the Federal
Reserve Board, the financial markets heaved a collective sigh of
relief. Bernanke, currently chairman of the Council of Economic
Advisers after serving on the Fed’s board of governors for nearly
three years, is considered an outstanding economist.

Bernanke’s
admirers come from both sides of the aisle in the U.S. Senate, which
must vote on his confirmation. Republican Richard Shelby of Alabama,
who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, said, “Dr. Bernanke is
an eminently qualified and superb choice for the nomination of Federal
Reserve Chairman. He is extremely well-versed in monetary policy
issues and has earned tremendous respect and confidence from policymakers
in this country and around the world.”

Concurred Democrat
Charles Schumer of New York, “We need a careful, nonideological
person who understands that the Federal Reserve’s main job is to
fight inflation, and Ben Bernanke seems to fit that bill.”

When Bush picked
Bernanke on October 24, the nominee said, “If I am confirmed to
his position, my first priority will be to maintain continuity with
the policies and policy strategies established during the [Alan]
Greenspan years. I’ll do everything in my power, in collaboration
with my Fed colleagues, to help ensure the continued prosperity
and stability of the American economy.”

How good a
job will Bernanke do as the next chairman of the country’s central
bank? First, a little history of the Federal Reserve. It was created
in 1913 to provide the economy with an elastic currency to mitigate
the banking panics that occurred periodically throughout American
history, and to smooth out the business cycle and maintain the purchasing
power of the dollar. As a Progressive Era reform, the Fed was also
supposed to rein in America’s powerful banking sector. In reality,
the push for a central bank was a calculated public relations campaign
waged by the Wall Street banks that dominated America’s financial
sector.

The major Wall
Street bankers, from J.P. Morgan to the Rockefellers, saw the Fed
as their ticket to keeping interest rates artificially low and boosting
their incomes from loans. In addition, the Fed became the so-called
lender of last resort with the power to bail out the banks if a
liquidity crisis threatened a run on their deposits.

The Fed’s record
has been abysmal. Under the Fed’s sway the dollar has lost more
than 95% of its purchasing power, and easy-money policies spurred
the Roaring Twenties boom that led to the Depression. The boom-bust
cycle continued after World War II as the central bank has persisted
in manipulating interest rates. Whenever price inflation accelerates
because of the Fed’s cheap money policy, it tightens credit conditions
and ushers in a correction – i.e., a recession – or worse.

Despite the
Fed’s destructive policies, the American economy has shown remarkable
resilience. Productivity, output and employment have all increased
substantially since 1913. But in every Fed-induced boom some economic
sectors are pumped up more than others, and crash in the subsequent
correction. The late-1990s dot-com bubble provides the latest example
of the diversion of capital to an unsustainable boom.

The current
spike in housing prices reflects the Fed’s low interest rate policy
from 2001 through 2004. Will housing prices crash? While no one
really knows, the housing market is hardly immune from the old adage,
“What goes up must come down.”

So how will
Bernanke do as Fed chairman? He will perpetuate the myth that creating
money out of thin air is good for the economy. In short, after the
Fed stops raising interest rates early next year, Bernanke will
flood the financial system with money to stimulate the economy.
So hold on to your hats, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

November
7, 2005

Murray
Sabrin, Ph.D. [send him mail],
is professor of finance in the School of Administration of Business,
Ramapo College of New Jersey, where he is executive director of
the Center
for Business and Public Policy. Reprinted with the permission
of NJBIZ.

Bush? Kerry? Fuggedaboutit.

Murray Sabrin — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 05:00:00 +0000

On
Wednesday, October 27th I debated one of my left-leaning
colleagues on the topic: "Which presidential candidate will
best promote the general welfare?" Actually, it was more like
a press conference. We each began with a ten-minute opening statement,
and then the moderator asked us several questions. The audience
of students, staff members and faculty peppered us with questions
for another 30 minutes.

The
following is based on most of my opening statement and responses
to several questions.

For
those of you who are rooting for a Bush defeat next Tuesday, history
is not on the president's side.

First,
every president who lost the popular vote has not been re-elected.
John Quincy Adams was not re-elected in 1828, Rutherford B. Hayes
did not run in 1880 and Benjamin Harrison was not re-elected in
1892.

Second,
every president who initiated an undeclared war since World War
II has not been re-elected. Truman did not seek reelection in 1952,
LBJ dropped out in 1968 and Bush I lost in 1992.

Third,
every president who has an approval rating less than 50% in June
before the election has not been re-elected. Bush's approval rating
in June 2004 was below 50%.

Fourth,
consumer confidence is lower now than it was in 1980 and 1992, when
both incumbents, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, lost their respective
races.

And
lastly, if the stock market declines between Labor Day and Election
Day, the incumbent loses. The market would have to rally a couple
of hundred points in the next few days just to get back to the nearly
10,400 level it stood around Labor Day.

If
history is a guide to the future, Bush is a goner. History, however,
is not a guarantor of the future.

During
the presidential primaries Howard Dean said he represents the Democratic
wing of the Democratic Party. I am here today to tell you that I
represent the Republican wing of the Republican Party: fiscal conservatism,
limited government and a noninterventionist foreign policy.

A
candidate for federal office falls into one of three categories.

He
can support the status quo – high federal spending, high taxes, extensive
regulations deficit spending, and war. Most Republicans and Democrats
fall into this category.

He
can support expanding the welfare-warfare state, more spending,
more taxes, more regulations, and more overseas intervention. Many
Republicans and Democrats also fall into this category.

And
the last type of candidate wants to reduce the welfare-warfare state.
Only a handful of courageous members of Congress embrace limited
government. When I was a candidate for the United States Senate
in 2000, I campaigned in the Republican primary calling for the
abolition of most federal cabinet departments, substantial deregulation
of the economy, massive tax cuts and a noninterventionist foreign
policy.

I
wasn't successful running against three better-funded career politicians.

Getting
back to Bush's reelection bid. The Detroit News in its October 24th
editorial, "For President: None of the Above", wrote:
"Four years ago, the choice was clear. We endorsed George W.
Bush based on his promises of fiscal conservatism, limited government
and prudence in foreign affairs". The Detroit News concluded,
"…we sadly acknowledge that the president has failed to deliver
on those promises".

Four
years ago I too enthusiastically supported George Bush because his
rhetoric indicated he was going to govern like a Robert Taft
Republican. We were wrong.

George
Bush has given us Ted Kennedy's education policy, Dick Gephardt's
trade policy, Hillary Clinton's healthcare policies, and LBJ's foreign
policy. In other words, he has governed more like a big government
Democrat than a fiscal conservative with a humble foreign policy.

George
Bush has surrounded himself with the most dangerous people in the
federal government, the neoconservatives, some of whom are former
leftists. They believe that the United States government should
spread "democracy" by force, if necessary. In short, they
want to create an American global empire – in direct opposition to
the Founding Father's vision for America.

Our
country's guiding principle was "Commercial relations with
all, entangling alliances with none". In fact, the founders
were opposed to a standing army because they saw standing armies
as a threat to freedom, liberty and prosperity. The incessant wars
in Europe destroyed life, liberty and property. The Founders created
a nation based on a simple principle – we the people are endowed by
our Creator with natural liberty. They saw liberty as a necessary
condition for peace and prosperity.

Unfortunately,
the Founders' vision has been hijacked by the ruling elite of both
political parties. They want to maintain the welfare-warfare state,
continue the redistribution of income, and fund a massive military-industrial
complex.

More
than three decades ago, after President Nixon imposed wage and price
controls and did not end the Vietnam War, I left the Republican
Party, because I realized there is only party in DC, the Washington
Party, composed of two rival gangs the Republicans and Democrats,
who use the federal government to reward their special interest
supporters. I rejoined the GOP in 1999 hoping to inject, especially
here in New Jersey, a limited government view of the world. Members
of the Republican Liberty Caucus urged me to make the case for liberty
in the Republican Party instead of the Libertarian Party.

I
was the Libertarian Party's 1997 gubernatorial candidate for governor
and was the first third-party candidate in state history to raise
enough funds to receive matching funds, thereby entitling me to
participate in three debates with then Governor Whitman and Democrat
candidate Jim McGreevey, the now disgraced governor who is resigning
on November 15th after admitting to an extramarital gay
affair.

In
a second Bush term the welfare-warfare state would not be reduced.
Therefore I cannot support a president who I thought would promote
the limited government agenda I have been supporting and defending
for more than three decades.

What
about John Kerry?

John
Kerry claims to have plans for healthcare, education, jobs, scientific
research, the environment, or just about every aspect of life in
America. He is, in short, a collectivist. And he wants to raise
taxes. He also does not understand that our rights are not "afforded"
by the federal government. Our rights come not from government but
our Creator. In addition, he voted to give President Bush the authority
to use force against Saddam Hussein. Therefore, his judgment is
suspect, given his willingness to defer to the president the ability
to wage war.

If
I were a member of the United States Senate I would never give any
president a blank check to use force overseas. Never, ever. The
Congress has the constitutional responsibility to declare war. Senator
Kerry's vote on this issue leads me to conclude he too would intervene
around the world if he were to become president.

However,
I would not put my head in the oven if John Kerry is elected president
on November 2nd. In fact, a Kerry presidency and a Republican
Congress would cause gridlock. Historically, gridlock dampens spending
increase (just look at the Clinton budgets with a Republican Congress)
and may just give us a foreign policy that would be more inline
with the founders' vision.

On
the other hand, when we had one-party rule in the 1960s, LBJ and
the Democrats gave us the Great Society and the Vietnam War. In
the 21st century, George W. Bush and the Republican Congress
have given us a quagmire in Iraq, $400 billion budget deficits,
accelerating spending, and the Patriot Act – polar opposites
of a limited government agenda.

On
September 11th we had the greatest national security
and military intelligence failure in human history despite the most
expensive and widespread military industrial complex. And this occurred
under George Bush's watch.

The
political elites have failed the American people. The federal government
has a $74 trillion unfunded liability because of Social Security,
Medicare and Medicaid. We need to restructure the federal government
and create an economic political environment based on the principle
of limited government, free enterprise and nonintervention overseas.

How
can we then promote the common good? If we adhere to a simple adage:
"Do unto others as you would have others do unto you".
And if the federal government kept its hands out of our wallets,
businesses, and all other private affairs, and minded it's own business
overseas and renounced its goal of a global empire, we will have
a more prosperous and peaceful America. Until our political culture
embraces these principles, it won't matter much who occupies the
White House.

October
29, 2004

Liberty, War, and Peace

Murray Sabrin — Sat, 11 May 2002 05:00:00 +0000

The
greatest threats to our liberties are not Saddam Hussein, Osama
Bin Laden (if he is still alive), or the North Korean Communists.
The threat to our liberties is much closer to home, and all have
easily pronounceable names: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Tom Daschle, Trent Lott, Dennis Hastert,
Dick Armey, and Dick Gephardt — in short, America’s ruling political
elite. To be more accurate, we all have to fear the Bush Administration,
a majority of the members of Congress, the nine justices of the
Supreme Court, and hundreds of federal judges.

For
they, and they alone, can turn America into a dictatorship.

The
people who make up the ruling class, who also occupy
places in DC think tanks, the media, the military-industrial complex,
and corporate America, have one agenda in mind for the foreseeable
future: to wage the war against both terrorism and weapons of mass
destruction, in Iraq and elsewhere. If this policy is pursued aggressively,
America will be unrecognizable — physically and constitutionally
— in a few years because the federal government would impose marital
law after another major — possibly nuclear — attack.

This
past Monday night in New Jersey this issue — and others — was brought
into sharp focus by the three GOP candidates vying for the US Senate
nomination to face Senator Robert Torricelli in November.

The
candidates are two state senators, Diane Allen, a former television
anchor, and John Matheussen, an attorney who was first elected in
the GOP landslide in 1991 after Democrat governor Jim Florio raised
taxes $2.8 billion in a recession year, 1990. He has been reelected
ever since. Rounding out the field is wealthy businessman Douglas
Forrester, a former state pension official and small town mayor.
He is self-financing his campaign. So far, he has contributed three
million dollars, a far cry from the $62 million Jon Corzine spent
to win the primary and then the general election against former
congressman Bob Franks for the New Jersey US Senate seat in 2000.

During the one-hour debate, which could be viewed on http://www.njn.org/, Diane Allen was
“cool,” Douglas Forrester was “hot,” and John Matheussen gave the
best response of the night on the most important issue facing the
nation.

Diane Allen’s television experience showed last night a deliberate,
methodical message, which was “I’m behind President Bush all the
way.” Since Bush has been making mistake after mistake by signing
the so-called campaign finance reform bill, boosting federal funding
for education, hiking steel tariffs, supporting amnesty for illegal
immigrants, overseeing a quantum leap in government spending, and
supporting more agricultural subsidies, a candidate who is behind
the president 100% – even with his high approval ratings –
risks alienating the GOP base. Diane Allen did not show any independence
at all, but expects to ride to the US Senate nomination on the president’s
coattails.

Douglas Forrester gave rapid-fire answers to his questions
and showed feistiness that may play well with the voters. However,
according to one well-respected commentator of the New Jersey political
scene I spoke to Monday night, “Forrester came across as an elitist.
Princeton, Harvard, and all that. That may not play well with voters."
And why was Forrester sucking up to EPA administrator and former
New Jersey governor Christie Whitman, singing her praises, time
and time again?

Whitman gave us the disastrous auto emissions test instead
of standing up to the EPA. She gave us a mountain of debt, more
and more spending, and she refused to stand up to the Supreme Court’s
Abbott decision requiring more state dollars be funneled to urban
schools.

When
asked about a possible US invasion of Iraq, Sen. John Matheussen
responded that Congress has to be brought into the decision-making
process, all the facts have to be put on the table for members of
Congress and the American people, and only then could they decide
that an invasion of Iraq is in the national interests of the United
States.

John
gave a statesmanlike answer to the possibility of the United States
committing 250,000 troops to an invasion of Iraq, which could lead
to the deaths of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of American
troops.

As
co-chairman of Sen. Matheussen’s campaign I speak to the campaign
staff — and the candidate – constantly about the issues. On
Monday night, Sen. Matheussen told Sen. Kyrillos, chairman of the
state GOP, “Murray knows the issues.” In short, having the ability
to communicate the “right" positions to a candidate, who is
with us on several issues, is the first step in convincing a candidate
about ALL our principles, not just one or two.

By
the way, in the New Jersey US Senate race two years ago, I gave
Bob Franks some advice, after he beat three other candidates, including
yours truly, for the GOP nomination. (My website is still up.) He
ignored it. Corzine just squeaked past Bob, even though Bob was
outspent at least six to one. In last year’s New Jersey gubernatorial
campaign GOP nominee and former Jersey City mayor Bret Schundler
did not seek my advice in the general election either, or the advice
of my supporters who have been fighting the good fight in Trenton
for decades. After all, I debated McGreevey and Whitman three times
in 1997, when I was the Libertarian Party candidate.

This
is not to conclude that my input would have won the elections for
Bob or Bret. In the final analysis, the candidate has to prove himself
to the voters.

My
supporters in 1997 and 2000 made it possible for our ideas to be
part of the debate. At New Jersey Network on Monday night, a long-time
employee told me I was the most intellectually stimulating candidate
he has heard in the more than two decades he has been at the network.
In short, because of the support from libertarians and conservatives
in all fifty states, I was able to articulate hard-core free market
and limited government ideas to a wide audience…twice.

In
consultations with Sen. Matheussen, I give him our message loud
and clear — peace, limited government, and free enterprise. In fact,
the Matheussen campaign called a few weeks ago to get my support
and advice on the issues. Now it is now up to Sen. Matheussen to
step up to the plate. There is no more important issue than war
and peace. And for that reason, his response Monday night was a
home run.

There is a segment of the political establishment that is hell
bent on war, even though it may lead to unspeakable horrors. In
fact, our “victory” in the Gulf War more than a decade ago has been
a hollow one. (The neocons didn’t get their confrontation with the
Chinese last year after a US plane was forced to land in China.
Now after the attack on September 11th, the warmongers
are licking their chops for President Bush to order the invasion
of Iraq.)

The
consequences of our victory in the Gulf in 1991 has been the attack
on the World Trade Center in 1993, possibly the bombing in Oklahoma
City in 1995, the bombing of our embassy in Kenya, the attack on
the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, and the attacks on September 11th.
In other words, the Gulf War has been ongoing since August 1990,
when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

The
future of America may literally be in George Bush’s hands. Your
efforts could help prevent the unthinkable. During the 2000 campaign
I said the threat to America would be terrorists with suitcases
containing powerful weapons — not incoming missiles. According to
reliable sources, this is a reality. We must defuse the situation.
Otherwise, out of the ashes of a nuclear explosion in America, may
come the end of the Republic, and what’s left of our constitutional
rights, let alone the deaths of untold numbers of Americans.

May
11, 2002

Murray
Sabrin [send him mail] is
professor of finance at Ramapo College of New Jersey and author
of Tax
Free 2000: The Rebirth of American Liberty. He was the Libertarian
Party candidate for governor in 1997 and after rejoining the GOP
after 25 years, sought the party’s nomination for the United States
Senate in 2000.

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