Probably unbeknownst to Comcast, the company had fallen afoul of an organization with an animosity toward free enterprise, and thus to corporately controlled, privately owned assets. The organization Free Press was co-founded by University of Illinois professor Robert W. McChesney. From 2000 to 2004, McChesney served as editor of the Marxist/socialist journal Monthly Review, published in New York City. Monthly Review was founded in 1949 to speak “for socialism and against U.S. imperialism.”

This is no idle matter — McChesney views the media as a battleground in the socialist revolution. In a revised version of chapter seven of his book The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the Twenty-First Century, published online by Monthly Review, he writes: “Progressives need to work on challenging the corporate domination of media as part of the broader struggle for social justice. If changing media is left until ‘after the revolution,’ there will be no revolution, not to mention fewer chances for social reform.”

A chance to “change the media” apparently existed in the case of Comcast’s management of its network access. But the case finally ended up in the courts, where it found its way to the federal D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in April that the FCC could not regulate Comcast’s network management policies. The court found that the FCC “has no express statutory authority” over an Internet service provider’s network management practices.”

That came as a blow to the FCC. In its press release announcing that the agency would begin to “seek best legal framework for broadband Internet access,” the agency complained that the “recent decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit cast doubt on prior understandings about the FCC’s ability to ensure fair competition.” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski put it more bluntly. The Court’s findings, he said in a statement, amounted to an “unwelcome decision” and “a curveball.” The setback was also viewed unfavorably by FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, “a self-described New Dealer,” according to McChesney who had already tangled with Comcast earlier in the decade when he “was the one vote against approving Comcast’s takeover of AT&T’s cable systems in 2002.” In other words, Copps was familiar with using the power of government to thwart free enterprise.

The FCC is another agency that should never have existed, and exerts a continual drain on the economy and production of our nation.

via FCC Moves to Regulate the Internet.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal law that allows indefinite civil commitment of federal prisoners who have completed their sentences but are deemed “sexually dangerous.” The Court, which in 1997 rejected a challenge to a similar Kansas law based on the Double Jeopardy, Due Process, and Ex Post Facto Clauses, did not deal with the usual constitutional objections in this case. Instead it addressed the question of whether the federal government, as opposed to the states, is authorized to detain people based on sex crimes they might commit in the future. The seven-justice majority concluded that it is, finding that civil commitment of “sexually dangerous” prisoners is a “necessary and proper” means of “carrying into execution” the federal government’s enumerated powers. Yet the majority opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer never identifies the powers that provide the authority for this law. The omission is telling, especially since all nine justices agree that the Necessary and Proper Clause does not give Congress any independent powers.

Instead of citing specific powers, Breyer says the civil commitment law is justified by whatever enumerated powers underlie the federal criminal statutes that sexually dangerous prisoners are convicted of violating.

via Pre-Crime Detention Based on Enumerated Yet Curiously Unspecified Powers – Hit & Run : Reason Magazine, via Les Jones.

The only Constitutionally-specified federal crimes are: counterfeiting, treason, piracies and felonies committed on the high seas or against the laws of nations.  All other crimes and punishments are left to the states.

As Justice Clarence Thomas said in his dissent, “The Constitution does not vest in Congress the authority to protect society from every bad act that might befall it.”

We can only hope that a wise and prudent Executive will simply refuse to enforce any unconstitutional laws enacted by Congress or previous Executives.

As your Illegitimate President, I will be that Executive.

In olden days, our money was made out of metal that had an intrinsic value, and the value of the metal set the value of the money made of it.

Nowadays, the government has produced money in such quantities that it struggles to find metal sufficiently worthless that coins made from it will be at least as invaluable as the coin’s face value.

It parallels the first two Tales of Inflation written about by Les Jones.  We are repeating the same monetary follies that corrupt administrations have committed many times before, and yet we refuse to believe that we will suffer the same consequenses they suffered: increasingly severe booms and busts, ballooning national debts, incredibly bloated government, endless war, and eventually, hyperinflation and the collapse of the society.

And to think, reversing the trend would only require trading in our worthless paper currency for gold and silver!

Today I address you on the sensitive subject of inflation, which you may have guessed when you clicked on the title of this article.

What is inflation, you may ask?  Isn’t it when you pay more for the same jar of pickles that only cost $1.53 last year, but which now cost $2.76?  No, indeed it is not.

Inflation is an increase in the quantity of money in circulation, without a corresponding increase in the quantity of goods and services for sale.  An increase in prices is a symptom of inflation, because the more money there is in circulation, the more money is required to buy anything.    Inflation happens every time the government or a bank is allowed to create money from thin air.  Hyperinflation — the creation of so much money that it becomes preposterously worthless — happens every time a government realizes it can print as much money as it wants in order to fund wars and growth and corruption.

Lest you think hyperinflation is a rare occurance that happens only in the prehistoric past, back when everyone was ignorant of sound economic principles, Wikipedia lists 32 examples of hyperinflation happening in the last century, with many of those happening within the last 30 years!  The 33rd example on that page happened here in the colonies during the Revolutionary War, when the Continental Congress started printing up paper money to pay for the war, and wound up printing so much that it spawned the saying: Not worth a Continental.

The founders of this nation quickly learned from that experience, and declared within the Constitution that nothing but gold and silver should be legal tender within the U.S.  Coincidentally, gold and silver and copper and other precious metals and gems have traditionally been used as currency throughout the ages.  It is easy to establish a common value of these items, they are difficult to counterfit, and in the case of metals, easy to coin into standard denominations, and they are durable.  Gold coins 1000 years old are at least as valuable now as they were 1000 years ago.

And most importantly – the supply of precious metals is fairly constant and changes only based on what comes out of the ground, rather than what comes out of a government’s printing press.  If a politician wants to spend it, he must first take it from a person, either by taxation or conquest.  If a bank wants to make loans, it must first receive the express permission of a depositor, with the understanding that the person’s gold will not be available until — and if — it is repaid by the borrower, and the bank must pay interest to the depositor who’s funds were loaned out.

By contrast, with a worthless paper money, the government does not need to tax you directly to fund their expansions, and banks do not need your permission to loan out your money.  They simply create new money out of thin air, and spread it around the economy, inflating the money supply, causing an increase in consumer prices, and economic booms in stocks, housing, etc etc.  A bank simply calls any deposits “reserves,” and creates money out of thin air to loan out, up to the mandated reserve ratio, while still having all your money available for immediate withdrawal.  Example: When you deposit $10, the bank can then loan out $9.50.  There is now $19.50 in existence – inflation!

How is inflation taxation?  Well, if the government increases the money supply 10%, causing a 10% increase in the price of a dozen eggs, you must now pay $1.10 for what used to cost $1.00.  They just took $0.10 from you just as surely as if they’d had your employer withold it from your paycheck, or as if they’d applied a 10% sales tax on every item for sale everywhere.  But what’s a gazllion times worse: that $1.10 you’ve been saving in the bank is now worth only $1.00.  If you had $110,000 in the bank, you just lost $10,000 in purchasing power.  In a few years, you’re using a ten-dollar bill for purchases formerly worth a one.   Inflation is a tax on everything you’ve already earned, in addition to everything you will earn.  Sure, the resale value of your home goes up (until the boom goes bust), but the worth of the money with with it is purchased is worth less.  And you cannot save up to buy a house, because your money loses value while you save.  It’s the most insidious and underhanded method available for governments to steal the wealth of its citizens to fund their corrupt plots.

Anyway, I bring this up today because of a recent article by The Mogambo Guru:

Mark J. Lundeen, market analyst, writes that Currency in Circulation (CinC) can also be an inflationary problem, as “The historical period where the US saw double digit CPI inflation occurred from the mid 1970s to about 1982” which was a time when, “CinC’s annual increase was pegged at 10% during this period. The CPI Index soon followed.” Yikes! Double-digit inflation!

But that was back in the 70′s and 80′s, when every nation on that Wikipedia article was going inflation-crazy, and nobody would be so stupid as to repeat the mistakes of such a recent past, right?

Mr. Lundeen [...] says, “CinC, after falling for almost 8 years, has just recently jumped up to this same 10% year over year increase line that caused so many inflationary problems 30 years ago.” Yikes!

And besides, he says, “How can any economist claim that the Fed is fighting inflation when the US Currency in Circulation has increased 20,000% in the past 95 years?”

What he refers to at the end there is one of the lies goals of the Federal Reserve System when it was created back in 1913 by bankers wanting to have a monolopy and cartel-control of the money supply:

• Fight inflation
• Prevent the boom-bust cycle
• Stabilize the money supply

Mogambo continues:

So with trembling fingers I quickly verify this, and I see that, as of April 27, 2009, currency in circulation was $903.3 billion, up $90.4 billion from this time last year! He’s right! An increase of MORE than 10%!

That’s 10% in one year!  And that’s just currency in circulation, not counting the trillion or so dollars in electronic bank transfers thrown from helicopters during the last Congressional budget cycle and stimulus stuff!!!  The central goal of the Federal Reserve system is constant inflation!

The Five quoted Fed chairman Ben Bernanke trying to reassure Congress that things are under control and maybe even on the rebound:

And inflation? The chairman says he’s on it: “I just want to assure the American people that we are very focused, like a laser beam . . . on this issue of the exit and of making sure that we have price stability in the medium term… we understand the necessity of winding this down in an orderly way at the appropriate moment so that we will not have inflation problems on the other side.

“Our forecast is still for inflation to remain quite contained for the next couple of years,” he assured Congress. There’s really no need to worry… until it becomes a crisis.

However, the Fed’s forecasts have been consistently been anywhere between Wrong and Way Off, such as when Bernanke forecast last year that subprime losses could hit $100 billion… and the current estimates are $7+ trillion.

They have no idea what they are doing.  They follow Keynesian economic principles, and are consistently wrong, but they never give up!  The basic premise of Keynesian economics is that one person can make smarter economic decisions for one million individuals, than those one million individuals could make for themselves in their own best interest.  (It’s the ever-present desire of anti-Christs: I’ll make the decisions for you and save you.)  However, Keynesians cannot account for the millions of variables and circumstances influencing the decisions of those million people, so the Keynesians always get it wrong, and wind up paying for the difference out of taxpayer pockets, and then turn to inflation when the cost is beyond what a taxpayer would knowingly allow.

And so Obama looks solemly at the TV cameras and reads teleprompters about having to make “tough decisions” and create trillions out of thin are to fund every cause they can think of that the free market would not in a million years fund for that cost, which is why the government has to do it, because the government does not care about supply or demand, the government only cares about keeping the bankers fat and happy and from going out of business, because that would stop the money-spigot.

By contrast, our divine Constitution and the Austrian school of economics believe in the free market, sound money, limited government, deflation (where your money increases in value while you sit on it without even needing a bank to pay you interest), and prosperity and freedom for every honest person.

It is time to return to sound Constitutional principles!

Every experience of every nation and people throughout history, when a people have experimented with fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, and even central banks, that people have seen devestating boom and bust cycles, the destruction of  private fortunes, rampant inflation, consolidation of government power and corruption, and eventually, the toppling of that civilization.

Our founding fathers knew this, which is why they prohibited within the Constitution that the states should make “any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts”, and required that such coin be the sole legal tender of this nation.

Andrew Jackson knew the evils of central banking and fractional reserve banking, and fought throughout his presidency to abolise the Bank of the United States.  The Bank fought back by creating a huge bust and restricting the money supply, but when Jackson finally won, it ushered in an era of prosperity that did not end until the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 set us up for the Great Depression, and every boom and bust cycle between then and the one in which we now find ourselves.

As a people, we need to be brave, we need to be strong, and we need to abolish the Federal Reserve, abandon this worthless fiat currency, and return to a sound money based on gold and silver!

If we do so, we may experience some short-term pain as we transition from worthless paper,  but the ingenuity and resilience of the American People will quickly adapt, and this nation will recover and prosper in ways that will inspire the world!