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The title of this column on April 3 was Trump’s Three Greatest Betrayals So Far.  Today, I’m highlighting Trump’s fourth greatest betrayal so far. And, given the fact that we are only three months into Trump’s second term, there are doubtless many more betrayals on the way.

Trump’s Greatest Betrayal Number Four

On May 7, the Trump administration will require that all Americans obtain a Real ID to be able to board a domestic airliner.

FOX News covers the story:

Conservatives are speaking out against the Trump administration’s plans to finally enact long-expected REAL ID laws in a bid to crack down on illegal immigration.

“If you think REAL ID is about election integrity, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Someone has lied to you, or you’re engaged in wishful thinking. Please don’t shoot the messenger,” Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., wrote on X earlier this week.

Responding to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem’s video announcing the May 7 REAL ID deadline, the former vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin questioned in a lengthy post: “Or what?? Evidently, existing ID requirements for American citizens just aren’t adequate now, so Big Brother is forcing us through more hoops for the ‘right’ to travel within our own country.”

Palin continued: “Other administrations delayed this newfangled, burdensome REAL ID requirement. Are you curious why its implementation is imperative now?? And who came up with this?”

The REAL ID Act was passed in 2005, but the federal government has yet to implement it 20 years later. It requires all U.S. travelers to be REAL ID compliant when boarding domestic flights.

This was during G.W. Bush’s purge of constitutional liberties via his “war on terror,” which created the Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, etc.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced last week that REAL ID would go into effect May 7, and that no other state-issued ID cards would be accepted for air travel.

While an overwhelming majority of Republicans appear to have few issues with the change, some on the right have cried foul.

Republicans at large have always been eager to join Democrats in two areas: 1) Going to war with anybody overseas and, 2) Enabling and enlarging a police state and surveillance state inside America.

Massie argued in an X post, “As long as the pilot’s door is locked and no one has weapons, why do you care that someone who flies has government permission? REAL ID provides no benefit, yet presents a serious risk to freedom. If a person can’t be trusted to fly without weapons, why are they roaming free?”

“REAL ID is a 2005 George Bush-era Patriot Act overreach that went completely unenforced until Trump got into office. Let me guess: he’s playing 4D chess and I should just go along with it?” Massie wrote.

Former presidential candidate and ex-House Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, wrote on X, “Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem announced Friday that the notorious PATRIOT Act-era REAL ID scheme would go into effect at the end of the month. REAL ID is one of the greatest threats to Americans’ civil liberties in decades.”

Kentucky state Rep. TJ Roberts, a Republican, agreed with Paul on social media, writing, “Repeal REAL ID!!”

New Hampshire state Rep. Joe Alexander, a Republican, added on the accusations, calling REAL ID a “violation of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution,” and writing, “the Federal Government should not be mandating ID for its citizens to travel between states. Just say NO.”

Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Eddington told Fox News Digital, “I’m not aware of a single post-9/11 instance of an alleged or actual terrorist being apprehended, much less successfully boarding an airliner, with false ID credentials — which is the entire-stated rationale for REAL ID.”

Eddington argued it imposed unconstitutional burdens on people who are seeking to travel by air versus train.

“If you got word that your mother had just had a stroke and her prognosis was uncertain, and you wanted to quickly fly home to be with her but couldn’t because you didn’t have a REAL ID-compliant ID card, that would be one very real-world example of a tangible harm this insane law could cause on literally a daily basis,” he said.

“The REAL ID Act effectively institutes a form of mass surveillance and verification that doesn’t discriminate between those who have given reason for suspicion and those who haven’t, which is why it should never have been enacted in the first place.”

The reason the REAL ID Act hadn’t gone into effect after the GOP Congress moronically passed this super surveillance atrocity until now is due to the fact that conservatives and libertarians en masse rose up in opposition to it, forcing Bush to procrastinate signing it into law. And since then, neither Obama nor Biden wanted to awaken the sleeping giant on this issue. Of course, the sleeping giant has turned into Rip Van Winkle since Trump became president. So, now Trump is allowed to greenlight more egregiously unconstitutional assaults against our liberties than even Obama and Biden dared to do.

As I have previously noted, Donald Trump has commissioned uber Zionists Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem with the task of expunging the First Amendment protection of the freedom of speech for those who are vocalizing opposition to Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza—or any other murderous policy emanating out of Tel Aviv, for that matter.

And Trump is also collaborating with Elon Musk and Peter Theil in orchestrating a technocratic takeover of the U.S. government. It is not hyperbole to say that Trump is engaged in a hi-tech coup against the constitutional government in the United States. I discussed this treachery in this column here and here.

I urge readers to watch a 16-minute video exposé on Palantir’s plot—using the Trump administration—to dominate and control the entire federal government politically, economically and militarily. If they succeed, the Constitution and Bill of Rights will completely vanish and so will the voice and power of We the People—not to mention our freedom.

The introduction to this video is as follows:

A former Palantir employee is sounding the alarm. The tech company, founded by Peter Thiel, claims they can revolutionize government systems with their AI-powered software. They’ve been hired by the Department of Defense, the FBI, ICE, and even Wendy’s. Now DOGE will likely hire Palantir as well.

We talked to a former Palantir employee, dug into decades of research and listened to hours of Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s own words to carefully unwrap the layers of Palantir’s carefully cultivated sales pitch — and how they capitalize on fear and unrest to make money.

We report on the abuses and wrongdoing of corporate power, and we seek to hold accountable the ultra-rich who have too much power over America’s political and economic systems.

The plan is straight out of Orwell’s 1984. And Trump and Vance are the men who are bringing it into reality. Instituting the REAL ID Act by Trump is a major part of the technocracy surveillance agenda.

Watch the video here.

Pete Hegseth

In my view, Pete Hegseth is one of the most despicable people in Trump’s newly formed Zionist government. He is a maniacal Zionist. He has zero credentials to be Secretary of Defense. He is an uber neocon warmonger in the similitude of Lindsey Graham. And he is a punk bully, just like his boss.

That being said, we read this report:

The White House has begun the process of looking for a new leader at the Pentagon to replace Pete Hegseth, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly. This comes as Hegseth is again mired in controversy over sharing military operational details in a group chat.

The defense secretary is under fire after revelations that he shared classified information in a group chat with his wife, brother and lawyer, according to the official.

The source said Hegseth used the Signal messaging app on his personal smartphone, detailing minute-by-minute classified information about airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. It happened at about the same time in March that Hegseth shared similar details with top White House officials in a different Signal chat group that accidentally included a journalist. That leak, hours before air strikes hit, could have endangered U.S. pilots if that information about the timing of strikes was intercepted by U.S. adversaries. Already the Houthis have twice shot down American predator drones.

I am already on record as saying that Hegseth should not only be fired for this flagrant violation of U.S. law but he should be criminally prosecuted. But if you think that Hegseth is being fired for these leaks, you need to think again.

During an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, Max Blumenthal, editor of the Grey Zone, reported that it was Pete Hegseth, of all people, who was the one who actually talked Donald Trump out of following Israel’s madman Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to attack Iran last week.

As soon as I heard that report, I told my son-in-law that Hegseth would soon be relieved of his position as Defense Secretary. Sure enough, this seems to be the case.

But, again, if Hegseth is indeed sacked, it will NOT be for the leaks. No one in a senior position of government is ever sacked for violations such as these. Democrat or Republican, they are above the law. But what they are not above is the wrath of the Israel lobby.

Hegseth’s uber Zionism was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby—and C.I. Scofield. His appointment to Defense Secretary was due to the Israel lobby—and the Theil technocrats. When he was outed by people such as Max Blumenthal that he had been instrumental in Trump’s refusal to go along with Netanyahu’s massive attacks on Iran, the Israel lobby went ballistic.

Doubtless, the reason Hegseth opposed the madman’s plan was due to what America’s military officers (not the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I mean REAL military officers in the field) told him: That such an attack would be catastrophic; it would result in a total regional war; thousands of American troops in the region would die; it would produce an economic Armageddon; it would be a war that America could not win; and it even had the potential of igniting a global war with Russia and China.

Fortunately—albeit shockingly—Hegseth sided with his officers.

We might chalk this one up to a miracle of God.

But the wrath of the Israel lobby is now crashing down on Hegseth. Trump saying “No” to Netanyahu will not be repeated often. The Zionists were confident they had Hegseth in their pocket. You can bet that they will make an example out of him by orchestrating his dismissal. And who knows what will happen to the man after that?

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

The post Trump’s Fourth Greatest Betrayal so Far — And Pete Hegseth appeared first on LewRockwell.

So where are corporate profits going to come from as globalization, price-gouging, planned obsolescence, shrinkflation and immiseration run out of rope?

We all know there’s a time lag between the moment Wile E. Coyote runs off the cliff at full speed and the moment he realizes there’s nothing but thin air beneath his feet. His expression in the second before he begins his descent communicates surprise, fear and a woeful awareness of impending impact with unforgiving ground.

This is an apt description of the present moment. The economy has already run off the cliff, but we haven’t yet experienced that second of realization that there’s nothing but thin air below.

We can call this the Wile E. Coyote Recession, as there is a time lag of around one quarter between the moment we left the cliff edge and the moment we start falling. The economy has momentum, as what’s in transit and in the warehouses is already in the pipeline. But now that Deglobalization has disrupted supply chains, once what’s in the pipeline has been distributed, the new realities start playing out.

Legions of economists and financial pundits are claiming to measure the odds of a recession. This is akin to Wile E. Coyote attempting to measure his odds of catching the Roadrunner in mid-air: the recession is already a matter of gravity.

Similar prognostications are being issued about the stock market, which depends on many factors, but the one that looms largest is corporate profits. If profits rise, this justifies higher stock valuations. If profits fall sharply, then stock valuations will adjust downward.

Two charts reveal the primary sources of soaring corporate profits: globalization from 2001 to 2024, and profiteering from 2020 to 2025.

Here we see that corporate profits were in the $700 billion to $800 billion range all through one of the greatest booms in American history, 1995 to 2000. This was sufficient to spark an economic boom and a booming stock market.

Then globalization kicked into high gear in 2001 with China’s entry into the WTO (World Trade Organization). As corporations rushed to offshore production. profits soon tripled to the $2.2 trillion – $2.4 trillion range, a range that held steady through the 2010-2019 boom in GDP and stocks.

The Covid pandemic lockdown triggered a mini-crash which was reversed by unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus. In the span of a few years, corporate profits nearly doubled. Since globalization had been a force for two decades, this extraordinary rise can’t be attributed to that factor.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Wile E. Coyote Recession appeared first on LewRockwell.

The true scandal of current American fiscal governance needs be commented on. Or, better still, hammered upon good and hard.

To wit, the American electorate apparently doesn’t give a shit about runaway government spending because as a practical matter the overwhelming share of voters don’t pay the taxes to fund it. Aside from social insurance taxes, which most payroll taxpayers still believe to be a premium for a government-sponsored retirement annuity, the bottom 90% of households fund only a tiny fraction of Federal spending.

That’s right. The bottom 145 million US income tax filers (out of 161 million total filers) currently pay just $500 billion in Federal income taxes. That’s barely $3,500 per return and even then approximately 50 million of these returns owe zero taxes or actually get tax credit refunds for taxes they haven’t paid!

In the grand scheme of things, therefore, direct tax payments by the bottom 90% of income tax filers amounted to only 12% of Federal spending in FY 2024 outside of social insurance trust funds. To wit, Federal spending ex-social insurance was $4.82 trillion in FY 2024 and upwards of $4.3 trillion of this was paid for by the top 10% of income tax payers, corporations, minor excise and import duty payers and borrowing—of which there was $1.8 trillion of the latter in FY 2024.

Needless to say, the top 10% got soaked good and hard, paying $1.538 trillion of Federal income taxes and as a practical matter nearly the entirety of the $530 billion corporate income tax, which in today’s globally competitive world gets mainly pushed back to shareholders. In effect, $2.1 trillion or 43% of Federal spending outside of social insurance is paid for by the top 10%.

Needless to say, that’s just plain unfair and economically counter-productive, too. The current marginal rate for top bracket taxpayers is 40.8% when you include the Medicare surcharge and the so-called NIIT  (net investment income tax). That’s already extortionate because in a free society there is no way that the government should grab 40% of anyone’s income—especially since that’s only the Federal take, which can easily grow to 50% after state and local income and property taxes.

Moreover, when the TCJA act of 2017 expires at year-end 2025, the top marginal rate will jump to truly confiscatory rate of 43.4%, and well beyond 50% in most states after state and local levies are layered on.

In short, America desperately needs to raise more revenues to fund even a downsized government after the DOGE treatment. But the income tax is more than tapped out, and 90% of the public is getting a hall pass on the latter.

Accordingly, what needs to happen is a sweeping reform, which would shift the Federal revenue base overwhelmingly to consumption and sales tax levies. That would ensure that the economic damage is limited and that 100% of the voting public would have skin in the game and feel the pain of spending via commensurate tax extractions. Then they might well demand fiscal sanity from their elected representatives in a manner that rarely occurs under the current defective fiscal regime.

We will elaborate more on the needed sweeping tax base reform in Part 2, but suffice it here to say that not only is the current Federal income tax grossly unfair to the productive classes and tapped out as a practical matter of revenue generation, but it is also unadministratable. Accordingly, more than half of the massive 100,000 man IRS bureaucracy could be eliminated even without a sales/consumption tax replacement, while upwards of 90% could be eliminated if the income tax were mainly substituted by a sales tax.

Needless to say, we are not talking about just bureaucratic nannies and meddlers in the case of the current 83,000 IRS employees—-a figure which is heading for 102,000 by the end of the decade under the still unrepealed Biden revenue grab. In the ranks of what amounts to a small city’s worth of Federal bureaucrats are also a goodly phalanx of tax cops, gumshoes, enforcement lawyers and tax filing proctologists.

So the question recurs: What has generated this massive bureaucracy in the first place, and what fundamental policy shifts are needed to cut the IRS headcount by 50% (42,00 jobs) and upwards of $5 billion of compensation and other operating costs?

The answer starts with calling the IRS’ bluff.  When you look at the actual tax filing data it is damn evident that the Deep State bureaucrats are faking mightily when it comes to their massive staffing demands. We discovered the scam way back in our OMB days while jousting with the Treasury Department over the sacred cows in its budget. But nothing is different 40-years later—so here’s the smoking gun that points the way.

In the most recent complete tax-year (2022) there were 161.336 million individual income tax returns filed, which reported $14.83 trillion of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). But fully 146.045 million of those filings, which reported $10.025 trillion in AGI, did not claim any itemized deductions.

Moreover, among these non-itemizers about 97 million owed taxes and used the standard deduction to calculate taxable income and the amount owed before tax credits. And another 49 million standard deduction users owed no Federal income taxes at all due to low taxable income or child and other tax credits.

In short, you absolutely do not need a giant IRS bureaucracy—and, indeed, hardly any labor-intensive operation at all—to administer the IRS code in the case of 92% of annual tax filings and the overwhelming share of US income taxpayers. That’s because virtually all the relevant data for completion of these non-itemized filings is machine readable and available on other IRS reporting systems, as shown below.

For want of doubt, here is the entirety of the tax computation for a couple earning wages at the US median income of $80,000, using the $13,850 standard deduction for a joint return and claiming two $2,000 child tax credits. The fact is, with today’s technology 99.999% of the work of processing, examining and adjusting (if necessary) non-itemized tax returns of this type should be accomplishable by IRS computers, with nary a bureaucrat’s finger-prints evident in the whole shebang.

That’s especially the case because the overwhelming share of the $10 trillion of AGI among non-itemizers is for wages and salaries reported to the IRS on W-2s; and, also, for interest, dividends, rents, royalties, independent contractor earnings, stock sales, pensions, annuities, IRAs and taxable Social Security earnings—all of which are also reported by the payers of these amounts on Form 1099s.

In the illustration below, any alert machine—to say nothing of an AI-enabled one rigged-up by Elon & Co.—could cross check the W-2s, calculate the taxable income, apply the three relevant tax brackets, deduct the $4,000 of child credits, verify the tax liability of $6,243 and subtract the taxpayer’s withholding amounts to determine whether a payment or refund was required.

All in literally a nanosecond. Presto!

Step-by-Step Calculation of $80,000 Wage-Earning Couple With 2 Kids And The Standard Deduction

1. Gross Income: $80,000
2. Standard Deduction: $13,850 (for married filing jointly in 2023)
3. Taxable Income: $80,000 – $13,850 = $66,150

Tax Liability Calculation

1. Taxable Income: $66,150
2. Tax Rates:
   • 10% on income up to $22,000
   • 12% on income from $22,001 to $38,600
   • 22% on income from $38,601 to $66,150

Tax Calculation

• 10% on the first $22,000: $22,000 * 0.10 = $2,200
• 12% on the next $16,600: $16,600 * 0.12 = $1,992
• 22% on the remaining $27,550: $27,550 * 0.22 = $6,051

Total Tax Before Credits: $2,200 + $1,992 + $6,051 = $10,243

Child Tax Credits

• 2 Child Tax Credits: $2,000 per child
• Total Credits: 2 * $2,000 = $4,000

Tax Liability After Credits: $10,243 – $4,000 = $6,243

So how in the world can they justify 83,000 bureaucrats and a budget of $16.1 billion when the overwhelming share of returns involve what can be aptly described as “machine work 101”?

The answer, purportedly, lies in the balance of filings—the 15.29 million itemized returns. But even here the overwhelming bulk of the relevant income items and deductible expense items are not so complex or opaque at all. Indeed, they too are available on other IRS reporting systems and are machine readable at the individual taxpayer ID level.

Specifically, in 2022 the amount of AGI reported on these itemized returns was $4.809 trillion or about 32% of total AGI. But within this total there was included the following amounts which are all machine readable from W-2s and 1099s:

• Wages and salaries: $2,345 billion.
• Taxable interest: $78 billion.
•  Taxable dividends: $230 billion.
• IRAs: $110 billion.
• Pensions and annuities: $176 billion.
• Taxable Social Security $82 billion.
• Unemployment benefits: $3 billion.
• Subtotal: $3.024 trillion.
• Above Income As % of AGI on Itemized Returns: 63%.

When it comes to verification on a machine-readable basis, the above income items are all check, check and check. This means that when you combine the above machine-readable AGI amounts from itemized returns with the $10.025 trillion reported on non-itemized returns, it works out to 88% or $13.049 trillion of the $14.834 trillion of total AGI reported for 2022.

None of this AGI should require any significant labor-intensive administration, examination, adjustment or enforcement. The IRS computers should be aware of every dime of AGI from the above categories and whether it was filed accurately by the taxpayer or in need of the proverbial IRS-ordered “adjustment”.

So it is hard to figure out why on the AGI/income side of the equation there is a need for anything remotely like the headcount and budget magnitudes shown below. For instance, the 22,000 headcounts in “enforcement” and “compliance” should be as idle as the proverbial Maytag repairman when it comes to standard deduction returns and the machine-readable sources of income filed on itemized returns. In these instances, there is nothing material for taxpayers to cheat on that wouldn’t be flagged by a properly programmed computer instantly upon filing.

And the same is true in the case of the 33,000 headcounts in “taxpayer services”, “operations support” and “administrative support”. Virtually none of these bureaucrats are needed to process the $10 trillion of AGI on the 146 million non-itemized returns and the $3 trillion of AGI on 15 million itemized returns that is already reported independently by the underlying payers of these income sources.

To the contrary, that’s work for 24/7 machines, not 6.5 hours per day (after civil service required breaks and lunch) government bureaucrats who get 35 vacation, personal leave and sick days per year, on average. And a high share of whom in the post-pandemic era don’t deign to come into the office even on workdays, anyway!

Breakdown of IRS Budget and Headcounts By Function:

For want of doubt, here are the other arguably more complicated categories of AGI reported on itemized returns. But even in these cases, there is plenty of work for the machines to do with respect to examination and verification. For instance, $845 billion or nearly half of the total below is owing to capital gains. But that source of income is already reported by issuers on Form 8940 and Schedule D of 1040s. So Elon’s machines should be on top of that, as well.

At the end of the day, most of the complexity and opacity of the IRS code relates to the $106 billion of net profits reported for business and professional income and the $704 billion reported by sub-chapter S corporations. Here the complexity arises not just from gross income reporting, but more especially from the timing and amounts of allowable business expenses incurred in getting to the net profits figures shown below.

Still, the total amount of AGI involved in these two sources at $950 billion is just 6.5% of total AGI. Even if returns with heavy sub-chapter S or professional and business earnings involve a lot of digging, checking, reconciling and verifying by humans, it is hardly likely to be anything close to 83,000 bureaucrat’ worth.

So, yes, there may well be 2,650 pages of IRS code and another 9,000 pages of IRS regulations, and the whole thing may have 25 times more words than the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But when it comes to the overwhelming bulk of income tax filings and the AGI reported on them, 98% of this legal labyrinth is largely irrelevant. It’s unfortunate existence is merely cited as a smokescreen to justify a massive, unnecessary tax collection bureaucracy.

Other Sources of Income Reported on Itemized Returns in 2022

• Business and professional profits: $106 billion.
• S-corporation net income: $704 billion.
• Capital Gains: $845 billion.
• Property sales: $26 billion.
• Rents and royalties: $20 billion.
• Estate and trust income: $29 billion.
• Gambling income: $29 billion.
• Other, net: $5 billion.
• Total of above: $1.785 trillion.

Nor does the itemized deduction side of the ledger change the picture. Upwards of 91% of itemized deductions, which amounted to $669 billion in 2022, were accounted for by the first five line-items shown below. These are largely machine readable based on standard reporting forms that originators of these deductions are required to file with the IRS.

For instance, mortgage interest deductions are reported on Form 1098; charitable contributions are reported in Form 990 and deductions for state and local taxes paid are available from IRS information sharing reports by the states. Yet in 2022 these three deductions alone amounted to nearly $500 billion or 75% of the total.

Major machine-readable itemized deductions in 2022:

• Medical deductions after floor: $93 billion (gross deductions of $121 billion less $28 billion floor effect).
• Taxes paid deduction: $125 billion.
• Mortgage interest deduction: $147 billion.
• Investment interest deduction: $23 billion.
• Charitable contributions deduction: $222 billion.
• All other itemized deductions: $59 billion.
• Total Itemized Deductions: $669 billion.

In short, upwards of 90% of the AGI reported in 2022 for all returns was machine readable from independent reporting sources and more than 90% of itemized deductions were also machine readable. Accordingly, the preponderant share of income and deduction data coursing through 161 million annual income tax filings is essentially riding in a self-driving vehicle. The work of processing, assessing, validating and adjusting it, where necessary, does not likely require more staff than the current headcount of the Capitol Hill Police (2,400).

Moreover, even a few small intelligent changes in the IRS code would narrow even further the number of returns and amounts of AGI that need labor-intensive review and verification. For instance, among the 15.29 million itemized returns filed in 2022, the overwhelming share were at the lower and moderate ends of the income scale where disputed deduction amounts are inherently limited.

2022 Distribution Of Itemized Deduction Returns By AGI Level:

• $100,000 and under: 5.755 million (37.6%).
• $100,000 to $500,000: 8.076 million (52.8%).
• $500,000 to $1,000,000: 0.903 million (5.9%).
• $1,000,000 and over: 0.558 million (3.7%).
• Total Itemized Returns: 15.292 million (100%).

As indicated above, 13.831 million of itemized returns, or more than 90%, reported AGI of $500,000 or lower–including 5.8 million at $100,000 or lower.

In turn, these $500,000 and under filings reported an aggregate of $1.960 trillion of AGI and $475 billion of itemized deductions. So a “variable standard deduction” allowance of roughly this ratio—24% of AGI— for currently itemized returns up to $500,000 would be revenue neutral. But by eliminating upwards of 90% of itemized deduction filings, an income based “variable standard deduction” would also surely reduce the need for several thousands of examiners, service personnel and overhead managers, as well.

After all, there are only 1.461 million returns with AGI of $500,000 or higher, which reported the amounts shown below for 2022. We absolutely do not believe, for instance, that you need a bureaucracy of 83,000 to examine $213 billion of itemized deduction taken by the wealthy, when $126 billion of these were owing to charitable contributions and $41 billion to investment interest deductions.  That’s nearly 80% of the total deductions taken by the wealthy, yet every dollar of this is machine readable and verifiable because it is reported independently to the IRS by the charitable institution recipients and interest-receiving banks, respectively.

Likewise, 71% of the $2.78 trillion of AGI is due to W-2 salaries ($931 billion), investment interest ($62 billion), ordinary dividends ($170 billion), capital gains ($774 billion) and rents and royalties ($40 billion). As indicated previously, all of these items are also reported to the IRS separately and are machine readable by its computers at the taxpayer ID level.

So even in the insane nest of complexity which is the US tax code as it applies to the wealthy, the case just isn’t there to justify the egregiously padded payrolls at the IRS. Not even remotely—and that’s before taking a legislative scalpel to the tax code with the aim of drastically broadening the base and flattening the rates.

Key Tax Data for The 1.461 Million Filings with AGI of $500,000 or Higher:

• Total AGI: $2,780 billion.
• Itemized Deductions: $213 billion.
• Other Adjustments: $86 billion.
• Taxable Income: $2.481 billion.
• Taxes Paid: $708 billion.
• Itemized Deductions as % of AGI: 7.6%.
• Taxes Paid As % of Taxable Income: 28.5%.

So can the DOGE find a way to cut the IRS staff by upwards of 50% and 42,000 bureaucrats at a budget savings of $5 billion per year? We’d say, yes, just dig into the rich drove of data in the IRS Data Book for recent tax years and the degree of the current scam will become more than evident.

In that context, DOGE might well consider a technologically modern version of the old postcard-based approach to simplification of the Federal income tax. Thus, there is no reason why upwards of 150 million filers with AGIs under $500,000 could not simply receive an “E-Card” from the IRS at their personal email address in which the IRS machines have already done all the work. The E-Card would:

• Calculate and sum all sources of AGI.
• Apply the standard deduction and child credits.
• Compute the tax liability owed.
• Calculate the amount of either payment or refund due after crediting taxpayer withholdings.
• Provide an option to “accept” the E-Card outcome or elect to file different amounts in the regular way.

Again, based on the IRS filing data it is likely that at least 90% of E-Card recipients would check the “accept” box and be done with tax time, with no expense on their end and no IRS bureaucrats on the other end.

Our confidence in the conclusion is based on these considerations from the 2022 IRS data. Only 4.7% of the 120 million returns with AGI under $100,000 claimed itemized deductions and the amount of AGI on these returns was just 7% of AGI on all returns under $100,000.

Summary of Filings with AGI of $100,000 or Under:

• Returns With No Taxes owed: 47.048 million returns with $922 billion of AGI.
• Standard Deduction Returns: 66.865 million returns and $3.424 trillion of AGI.
• Itemized Deduction Filers: 5.755 million returns with $345 billion of AGI:

Likewise, 1.88 million or 22% of filings in the $100,000 to $500,000 range used itemization, but it is likely that the aforementioned variable standard deduction approach would limit the number of itemizers very sharply.

Finally, even without sweeping tax reform and the substitution of tariff and consumption taxes for the income tax, as has been vaguely proposed by President Trump, a huge share of the $550 billion that taxpayers now absorb to figure and file their taxes and contest with the IRS bureaucracy could be readily and substantially reduced.

Of course, the prospect of 42,000 IRS agents and hundreds of billions of filing and record keeping expenses should be more than welcome.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockton’s Contra Corner.

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By now it’s become increasingly clear that both the U.S. and China are eager to de-escalate the trade war, yet neither is willing to make the first move. In China, export orders are drying up, and factories are shutting down. Meanwhile, across the Pacific Ocean in the U.S., containerized cargo volumes through the Port of Los Angeles are teetering on the edge of a very sharp decline, threatening to send shockwaves through Southern California’s economy and beyond.

Early Friday, several media outlets reported that China’s government has either considered or exempted some U.S. imports from a 125% tariff rate.

Let’s begin with Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter who said Beijing is considering removing tariffs on medical equipment and certain industrial chemicals, including ethane.

As we noted earlier this week, the U.S. is a major supplier of ethane—a petrochemical feedstock and component of natural gas. Ethane is a critical input for China’s plastics industry, with few alternative suppliers outside the U.S. Needless to say, any disruption to ethane shipments would severely impact China’s plastics sector.

Those sources continued down Beijing’s laundry list of potential tariffs to be removed, including waiving the tariff for plane leases… Boeing has caught a sigh of relief.

“It’s another step toward a de-escalation of the trade war,” said Kok Hoong Wong of Maybank Securities, adding that a trade deal might not be imminent, but certainly, “it would appear the worst may truly be over.”

Bloomberg Economics analysts Chang Shu and Eric Zhu commented on the BBG headline:

“Exempting critical, hard-to-replace U.S. products from tariffs would be a pragmatic approach that could ease tensions with the U.S. and serve the interests of Chinese industry. Anything that helps lower the temperature in the trade war is also beneficial from the perspective of avoiding broader clashes with the U.S.”

In a separate report, Reuters stated that instead of merely considering exemptions, Beijing has already “exempted” certain U.S. imports from the 125% tariff, citing businesses that were notified by authorities about the change.

“As a quid-pro-quo move, it could provide a potential way to de-escalate tensions,” said Alfredo Montufar-Helu, a senior adviser to the Conference Board’s China Center.

Montufar-Helu warned: “It’s clear that neither the U.S. nor China want to be the first in reaching out for a deal.”

Earlier in the week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned a US-China trade deal could take 2 to 3 years to finalize.

Bessent emphasized at a closed-door investor meeting on Tuesday: “No one thinks the current status quo is sustainable, at 145% and 125%, so I would posit that over the very near future, there will be a de-escalation. We have an embargo now on both sides.”

Both sides may want a deal to avoid further tariff fallout in their respective economies, but neither wants to appear desperate on the global stage. China is grappling with shuttered factories and possible ethane supply woes that threaten to roil its core manufacturing economy, while in the U.S., containerized volumes through the Port of Los Angeles are poised for a steep decline in the coming week.

Reprinted with permission from Zero Hedge.

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“Fighting fascism,” for the American Jacobins who lead the Democratic Party, means opposing any attempt to flush the corruption out of the entrenched bureaucracy, just as their pet phrase “our democracy” actually refers to the matrix of grift and despotic activism that drives their political operating system. That is exactly how and why the USAID was so crucial to spread captured taxpayer spoils as NGO salaries for the gender studies grads to play “activist,” so as to inflict their special brand of sadistic power madness over the land — to keep the game going.

Now, USAID is scattered to the winds and all they have left is their installed base of federal judges and the horde of lawfare lawyers who feed them bogus cases to halt the remaining work of Mr. Trump’s executive branch clean-up operation. Remember: Robespierre, leader of the Jacobins in the French Revolution, was a lawyer. Their version of defending “our democracy” in 1793 was the Reign of Terror that sent at least 17,000 political opponents to the guillotine.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is the Democrats’ Robespierre. He is promising his own reign of terror when his party recaptures Congress in the 2026 “midterm” election. Norm Eisen is his chief lawyer and legal strategist. His sole aim is recapture power in order to restore the Democrats’ sadistic regime of thought-control and the money-flows that feed it. That’s where things stand for the moment. You can sense how this tension is tending toward something that looks like civil war.

The game now is to goad President Trump into any kind of executive action in defiance of this legal insurrection that would subject him to impeachment after January 2027, when a new Congress is seated, theoretically with a Democratic majority. There are several flaws in the Raskin / Eisen plan-of-action. One is their supposition that the Democratic Party is popular enough to win a Congressional majority in 2026, or that they will enjoy the installed devices of electoral cheating to achieve victory no matter what.

The party is currently blundering wildly in support of obviously insane actions that a vast majority voters oppose, such as stopping the deportation of illegal immigrants, allowing men to compete in women’s sports, and opposing proof of citizenship in federal elections. Which is to say that the voters are onto exactly how crazy and destructive the Democratic Party has become.

The question is: what can be done about this lawfare insurrection. An easy solution would be for Congress to pass a law restricting the power of federal judges to issue orders that affect the nation as a whole outside their own designated districts. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Charles Grassley has introduced the Judicial Relief Clarification Act of 2025. Grassley argues that nationwide injunctions, which allow a single district judge to block federal policies across the country, represent judicial overreach and disrupt the constitutional balance of powers.

In the House, Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA) has introduced the No Rogue Rulings Act of 2025 (HR 1526, passed on April 9) to complement Sen. Grassley’s bill. The Constitution is somewhat vague about the composition of a federal judiciary below the Supreme Court, and essentially leaves the matter to Congress to set parameters for the power of federal judges. Congress can also alter or abolish districts, such as the DC federal district from which so much partisan Democratic Party lawfare has emanated under political activist Judges James Boasberg, Amy Berman Jackson, Tanya Chutkan, and Beryl Howell (all of them involved in the sadistic prosecutions of J-6 defendants).

The bills from each house next must go through a reconciliation process that boils them down to a single piece of legislation that can be sent to Mr. Trump for the presidential signature. The House passage is likely assured. The hang-up is that under Senate rules, the Democrats could mount a filibuster that would require 60 votes to break. The Republicans only control the chamber by a 53 to 47 majority, and no Democrats have signaled any intention to vote in favor of such a bill. In any case, the entire process would take months and might not succeed at all.

A much simpler remedy would be for the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to rule in any of a number of cases now on their docket that the lawfare antics of the federal judges amount to interference with an independent executive branch — in short, that the judiciary can’t usurp the executive powers of the President, which include the conduct of foreign policy, the ability to manage personnel in executive agencies, and certain issues around the spending of taxpayer dollars.

A different sort of remedy would be the application by the DOJ of federal statute 18 USC 371, Conspiracy to Defraud the United States against Norm Eisen and his colleagues-in-lawfare for attempting to maliciously bury the executive branch in litigation for the purpose of nullifying the executive powers of the president. Beyond all that is the abyss: a nullified election, a paralyzed chief executive, and a constitutional crisis that has the potential to lead to civil violence. The Democrats seem willing to go there, perhaps even avid for it.

The Jacobins of 1793 were mad for blood, too, and they spilled a whole lot of it. By the summer of 1794, the blood was finally spouting out of their own necks. . . and then the Jacobin reign of terror came to a sudden and complete end. Heed their example.

Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.

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Supporters of liberty had much reason for hope due to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. becoming secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This man’s tenacity and eloquence in challenging the coronavirus crackdowns suggested great potential accomplishments for both liberty and health at HHS with him in the lead.

Indeed, there are early signs that HHS under Kennedy’s oversight is seeking to roll back the dangerous to health and liberty extreme vaccine pushing mission the department has pursued in recent decades. But, there is also reason to worry — including news earlier this month of the HHS fast-tracking an experimental bird flu shot — that this roll back will turn out to be quite limited.

One thing surprising people is that Kennedy’s HHS is acting like a police baton to whack American institutions and individuals into submission to the demand that they show allegiance to the Israel government. First, HHS became one of three parts of the US government leading an effort to punish colleges if they fail to stomp out “antisemitism” — defined bizarrely to include criticism of the Israel government — communicated by leadership, employees, or students. Kennedy, in the announcement of this endeavor, even made the extraordinary claim that such targeted free speech, press, and assembly is a manifestation of illness. This is the same sort of “medicalization” of ideas and communication that the Soviet Union employed to suppress dissent.

Then, this week, came news that HHS subsidiary the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has, effective immediately, barred any entity that boycotts Israel from continuing to spend, or receiving any new, NIH grants. Given the importance of NIH grants in medical research, this new demand threatens to shut down much research and upend the lives of many people employed in research projects. All this is done based on a criterion that has nothing to do with the task-relevant qualifications of the grant seekers or the quality of their work. Out with merit. In with kissing up. That does not seem conducive to achieving Kennedy’s often repeated goal to Make America Healthy Again. It also seems a big divergence from the protecting liberty objective many Kennedy supporters hoped he would pursue.

These actions from HHS are in a way not a surprise because Kennedy made clear in his 2024 presidential run that he was a major booster for the Israel government, praising it without caveat. He even went so far as to make the following declaration in a Twitter post: “As President, my support of Israel will be unconditional.” But, at the same time, it seemed reasonable to think that, given HHS’s focus on health matters in America, Kennedy’s Israel views would be irrelevant in his new job. Well, surprise, surprise: In the Donald Trump administration it turns out that, with Kennedy at the helm, even HHS can put Israel First.

During the coronavirus crackdowns, Kennedy stood up for people who opposed taking experimental shots, wearing masks, or going along with other government admonitions and dictates. But, now his HHS, reminiscent of the “Soup Nazi” in the Seinfeld episode, is saying “no funding for you” if you don’t stand with Israel. What a letdown.

The HHS thought police are on the march. Fail to fall in line in support of the Israel government and you will be punished. HHS and its fellow US government departments have not reached the level of domination used to ensure love for Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984. But, hey, the Trump administration is just three months into its Israel boosting operation. These things take time.

Reprinted with permission from The Ron Paul Institute.

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Nationalism is villainous and globalists are the heroes? It’s a propaganda message that has been building since the end of World War II and the creation of globalist institutions like the UN, the IMF, World Banks, etc. By the 1970s there was a concerted and dangerous agenda to acclimate the western world to interdependency; not just dependency on imports and exports, but dependency of currency trading, treasury purchases and interbank wealth transfer systems like SWIFT.

This was the era when corporations began outsourcing western manufacturing to third world countries. This is when the dollar was fully decoupled from gold. When the IMF introduced the SDR basket system. When the decade long stagflationary crisis began.

This was when the World Economic Forum was founded. The Club of Rome and their climate change agenda. When numerous globalists started talking within elitist publications and white papers talking about a one world economy and a one world government (under their control, of course). By the 1990s everything was essentially out in the open and the plan was clear:

Their intention was to destroy national sovereignty and bring in an age of total global centralization. One of the most revealing quotes on the plan comes from Clinton Administration Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot, who stated in Time magazine in 1992 that:

“In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority… National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”

He adds in the same article:

“…The free world formed multilateral financial institutions that depend on member states’ willingness to give up a degree of sovereignty. The International Monetary Fund can virtually dictate fiscal policies, even including how much tax a government should levy on its citizens. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade regulates how much duty a nation can charge on imports. These organizations can be seen as the protoministries of trade, finance and development for a united world.”

The globalists use international trade controls as a way to ensnare competing economies, forcing them to become homogeneous. They take away the self reliance of nations and pressure them to conform to global trade standards. It’s important to understand that they view centralized dominance of trade as a primary tool for eventually obtaining their new world order.

The idea of a country going off the plantation and initiating unilateral tariffs is unheard of. The notion of countries producing their own necessities is absurd. As least, until 2025.

One of the most humorous and bewildering side effects of the Trump Administration’s policy rollout is the scramble by the political left (especially in Europe) to portray themselves as “rebel heroes fighting for freedom” in the face of a supposedly tyrannical dictatorship. Of course, these are globalists and cultural Marxists we’re dealing with, so their definitions of “freedom” and “tyranny” are going to be irreparably skewed.

The EU elites have truly lost the plot when it comes to their message on “democracy”. Today, many European nations are spiraling into classical authoritarianism, yet they’re pretending as if they’re in a desperate fight for freedom.

I’ve heard it said that authoritarianism is the pathology of recognition. One could also say that it’s the pathology of affirmation – It’s not enough for the offending movement to be recognized as dominant, the population must embrace it, joyfully, as if it is the only thing they care about. This is the underlying goal of globalism: To force the masses to love it like a religion.

But to be loved by the people, they have to believe that globalism is their savior. They have to believe that globalists are somehow saving the world. Enter the new world order theater brought to us by The Economist. The magazine, partially owned by the Rothschild family, has long been a propaganda hub for globalism. They recently published an article titled ‘The Thing About Europe: It’s The Actual Land Of The Free Now’.

Yes, this is laughable given the fact that many European governments are currently hunting down and jailing people for online dissent. Mass open immigration is suffocating western culture on the continent. Violent crime is skyrocketing. Not to mention, the new trend among EU governments is to arrest right leaning political opponents to stop them from winning elections.

Hell, in Europe you can be arrested for silently praying within the vicinity of an abortion clinic. We all understand how absurd The Economist’s claims are. Their argument boils down to this:  If it hurts globalism, it’s a threat to democracy.  That’s the tall tale being formulated in the media today.

The Trump Administration instituting “America First” policies is being called authoritarian by the elites because these things interfere with THEIR agenda, not because Americans are being oppressed.

In many ways the European shift in rhetoric is merely a reflection of the long running globalist strategy: To rewrite nationalists as agents of chaos and paint the internationalists as defenders of order.

In a recent interview with the German news platform Dei Zeit Online, EU President Ursula von der Leyen took the disinformation even further with her claim that there “Is no oligarchy in Europe”. In other words, European leaders are innocent victims under attack by the rich and dastardly nationalists. Frankly, this is news to most of us because the EU government has long been considered the very definition of faceless and unaccountable oligarchy. She argues:

“…History is back, and so are geopolitics. And we see that what we had perceived as a world order is becoming a world disorder, triggered not least by the power struggle between China and the United States, but of course also by Putin’s imperialist ambitions. That is why we need another, new European Union that is ready to go out into the big wide world and to play a very active role in shaping this new world order that is coming.”

Notice the attempt to paint Europe as the virtuous bystander caught up in the geopolitical turmoil of the US, China and Russia. No mention of their ongoing roll in fomenting a wider war in Ukraine, their interference with peace negotiations or the fact that globalism has made them dependent on energy imports for their very survival. This isn’t a lack of awareness, this is carefully crafted propaganda. The EU President continues:

“The readiness of all 27 Member States to strengthen our common defense industry would have been inconceivable without the developments of recent weeks and months. The same applies to the economy. Everyone wants to emulate our common plan for greater competitiveness, because everyone has understood: We need to stand firm in today’s globalized world…”

The EU has been peddling the idea of a unified European army for some time. It makes sense – In order to erase national boundaries even further in Europe, a singular defense structure would have to be established. They’re simply using the war in Ukraine and America’s economic decoupling as an excuse. She continues:

“For me, it is crucial that Europe plays a strong role in shaping the new world order that is slowly emerging. And I firmly believe that Europe can do that. Let’s look back at the last decade: the banking crisis, migration crisis, Brexit, pandemic, energy crisis, Russia’s war against Ukraine. All these are serious crises that have really challenged us, but Europe has emerged bigger and stronger from every crisis…”

Economically, socially, spiritually, culturally, the continent is in a death spiral. No one wants to fight for what Europe is today, including the millions of third world immigrants they’ve invited in. If they do try to institute a centralized military they will have to turn to forced conscription, which means even more tyranny. In terms of the economy she states:

“The West as we knew it no longer exists. The world has become a globe also geopolitically, and today our networks of friendship span the globe…”

“Everyone is asking for more trade with Europe – and it’s not just about economic ties. It is also about establishing common rules and it is about predictability. Europe is known for its predictability and reliability, which is once again starting to be seen as something very valuable. On the one hand, this is very gratifying; on the other hand, there is also of course a huge responsibility that we have to live up to…”

The US makes up 30%-35% of all global consumer spending and is the largest consumer market in the world. There are no clear numbers for the whole of Europe, but Germany, Europe’s largest economy makes up only 3% of global consumer spending. Germany is also the third largest economy in the world next to China. In other words, Europe has NO capacity whatsoever to fill the void in trade left behind by the US. If the US economy detaches from Europe, or if the US economy crashes, Europe would crash also. This is a fact.

Von der Leyen then dismisses the role of globalism in driving populist movements against the EU. She claims:

“There is one thing we should not underestimate: the polarisation is, in part, heavily orchestrated from outside. Via social media, Russia as well as other autocratic states are deliberately interfering in our society…”

“Views on both sides are being amplified because the real goal is to polarize and divide our open societies. But the European Union also has a big advantage. Inequalities are less pronounced here, in part because we have a social market economy and because the levers of power are more widely distributed.”

Russia is to blame for millions of Europeans wanting an end to globalist multicultural policies? Taking a rather Marxist stance, she asserts that populist divisions must be artificial because Europe is economically “equitable”. But the populists are not fighting for economic parity, they’re fighting for European identity which is being systematically erased.

Finally, she comes to the issue of oligarchy:

“Europe is still a peace project. We don’t have bros or oligarchs making the rules. We don’t invade our neighbors, and we don’t punish them…”

“Controversial debates are allowed at our universities. This and more are all values that must be defended, and which show that Europe is more than a union. Europe is our home.”

The EU government is a pure oligarchy with near zero accountability and it is actively trying to suppress and destroy any national party with conservative views. They support silencing any dissent among the peasants, only allowing for debate behind the closed doors of academia because they know academics police their own. The more a society moves towards globalism the less free it’s going to be.

I see this messaging as a kind of crude rough draft for the theatrics to come. They haven’t fine-tuned their story yet, but they have the fundamental pieces in place. The allegation is that national sovereignty is a threat to “democracy”; not freedom, but democracy. And the globalist notion of democracy is progressive rulership in the name of a subjective greater good that they can’t really define.

I feel sympathy for the common European, many of them are hungry for a free society built on traditional western principles. It’s a future that will never materialize, at least not without revolution. These people are at the epicenter of the death of the western world and many of them don’t even know it. In the meantime they’re being told that America is ruining them. I can’t speak for everyone, but many of us would like to save them. The fall of the west to globalism cannot be allowed to continue.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

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On a recent appearance on the Young & Profiting podcast, Peter Schiff joins host Hala Taha to explain why today’s economic challenges—from rising income inequality to persistent inflation—trace back to misguided monetary policy and unsustainable government spending. Peter lays out his case against the conventional wisdom of redistribution, critiques the current tax system, and calls for a return to sound money.

Peter opens by challenging the narrative that capitalism produces rampant inequality. Instead, he argues, it’s Federal Reserve policy that fuels the ever-widening wealth gap in America:

But income inequality today is actually higher than it’s ever been, and the reason for that is because of the monetary policy that the Federal Reserve has pursued. And as a result of that, we have an extreme income inequality that is not the natural byproduct of capitalism and which is a problem. But the solution isn’t for the government to try to redistribute the wealth from the rich to the poor. That always backfires. And that will lead to even greater income inequality. What we have to do is change the monetary policy that has enriched the few at the expense of the many.

He then turns to the tax system, pointing out how middle-class workers bear a much heavier burden than most realize—especially when considering hidden payroll taxes:

So it’s counterproductive to say, ‘Hey, just let’s raise taxes on the rich.’ But I do think that in America today, the middle class pays a tax rate that’s much too high. It’s not just the income tax that they’re paying; it’s the payroll tax, the Social Security and Medicare tax. And a lot of people don’t realize this. They think they just pay half, right? They just think they pay half of the Social Security tax, and the employer pays the rest. No, the employer doesn’t pay any of it. The employer just collects it from the worker. So everybody is paid a little bit less so that their employer can send Social Security payments to the government. 

He goes on to explain that America’s ability to sustain budget deficits hinges on the special status of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency—a privilege that cannot last forever:

But the reason that we can actually get away with all this stuff is because the dollar is still the primary reserve currency. The world wants our dollars, even though it costs us nothing to create them, and so we’re able to finance these massive deficits because of the unique status the dollar has. So we could create dollars out of thin air and use them to buy the goods that other people work hard to produce, and we get it basically for free. So that’s really what’s allowing us to continue to live beyond our means.

Turning to solutions, Peter makes a strong case for gold—arguing that history, as well as the U.S. Constitution, affirms gold’s role as real money and a stable store of value. He contrasts gold’s century-long consistency with the steep decline in the dollar’s purchasing power:

I look at gold not so much as an investment, but as a store of value, so gold is money. Constitutionally, if you know, in 1789, when they established the United States and wrote the Constitution, gold and silver were written in as money. It’s the only lawful money in the country—it’s the only thing that states can make legal tender. The only thing the federal government was authorized to do was to take gold and make a coin out of it.

Finally, Peter addresses the rise of cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin, and offers a warning. He argues that Bitcoin’s claims to be “digital gold” are unfounded—and likens its surge in popularity to classic Ponzi schemes:

Bitcoin is not digital gold; it’s not real money; it’s really a digital Ponzi, like a pyramid scheme, a chain letter. I call it a blockchain letter. The fact that it’s digital internet and all that, that’s what’s new, but the idea of a pyramid is old. … It’s not going to replace any currency. And it’s certainly not going to replace gold.

This originally appeared on SchiffGold.com.

The post Inflation, Taxes, and the Case for Real Money appeared first on LewRockwell.

The feud between President Trump and Fed Chair Powell is really a fool’s errand. Neither can possibly know what interest rates should be, simply because interest rates are derived in the marketplace. Price fixing, by either the Fed or the President, always ends us creating economic malaise. The Fed should not exist because there’s no way to properly fix prices, and counterfeiting is unconstitutional and immoral. The current posturing between fails to get us closer to ending this anti-American institution.

The post Trump vs. Powell: Fixing Rates Is A Fool’s Errand appeared first on LewRockwell.

Il manoscritto fornisce un grimaldello al lettore, una chiave di lettura semplificata, del mondo finanziario e non che sembra essere andato "fuori controllo" negli ultimi quattro anni in particolare. Questa è una storia di cartelli, a livello sovrastatale e sovranazionale, la cui pianificazione centrale ha raggiunto un punto in cui deve essere riformata radicalmente e questa riforma radicale non può avvenire senza una dose di dolore economico che potrebbe mettere a repentaglio la loro autorità. Da qui la risposta al Grande Default attraverso il Grande Reset. Questa è la storia di un coyote, che quando non riesce a sfamarsi all'esterno ricorre all'autofagocitazione. Lo stesso è accaduto ai membri del G7, dove i sei membri restanti hanno iniziato a fagocitare il settimo: gli Stati Uniti.

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(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/in-che-modo-gli-inglesi-hanno-venduto)

Il 13 aprile 1919 un distaccamento di cinquanta soldati britannici aprì il fuoco sui manifestanti ad Amritsar, in India, uccidendone a centinaia.

I soldati erano indiani, in uniforme britannica.

Il loro comandante era un inglese.

Quando il colonnello Reginald Dyer diede l'ordine, cinquanta indiani aprirono il fuoco sui loro connazionali senza esitazione e continuarono a sparare per dieci minuti.

Questo si chiama soft power.

Su di esso è stato edificato l'Impero britannico.

Il soft power è la capacità di sedurre e convincere gli altri a fare ciò che non vogliono.

Alcuni lo chiamerebbero controllo mentale.

Grazie all'uso del soft power, un piccolo Paese come l'Inghilterra è riuscito a dominare Paesi più grandi e popolosi.

Persino i potenti Stati Uniti cedettero all'influenza britannica in modi che la maggior parte degli americani non comprese.

Per più di cento anni noi americani siamo stati spinti inesorabilmente verso la globalizzazione, contro i nostri interessi e contro la nostra naturale inclinazione.

La spinta verso la globalizzazione proviene principalmente da gruppi di facciata britannici che si spacciano per think tank americani. Tra questi il più importante è il Council on Foreign Relations.

Origine del Council on Foreign Relations

Il Council on Foreign Relations è nato dal Movimento della Tavola Rotonda britannico.

Nel mio ultimo articolo, “Come gli inglesi hanno inventato il globalismo”, ho spiegato come i leader britannici iniziarono a formulare piani per un governo globale nel corso del XIX secolo.

Grazie ai finanziamenti del Rhodes Trust, nel 1909 venne fondato un gruppo segreto chiamato Tavola Rotonda. Fondò sezioni nei Paesi di lingua inglese, tra cui gli Stati Uniti, per promuovere una federazione mondiale di popoli di lingua inglese uniti in un unico superstato.

L'obiettivo a lungo termine della Tavola Rotonda, come chiarito da Cecil Rhodes nel suo testamento del 1877, era raggiungere la pace nel mondo attraverso l'egemonia britannica.

Nel frattempo Rhodes cercò anche (e cito) il “recupero definitivo degli Stati Uniti d'America come parte integrante dell'Impero britannico”.

I Dominion

Si scoprì che le colonie anglofone della Gran Bretagna non volevano far parte della federazione di Rodhes. Volevano l'indipendenza.

Così i membri della Tavola Rotonda proposero un compromesso: offrirono lo status di “Dominion”, o una parziale indipendenza.

Il Canada doveva essere il modello. Aveva ottenuto lo status di Dominion nel 1867 e ciò significava che si autogovernava internamente, mentre la Gran Bretagna gestiva la sua politica estera. I canadesi rimanevano sudditi della Corona.

Gli inglesi proposero lo stesso accordo anche alle altre colonie di lingua inglese.

Era prevista una guerra contro la Germania, quindi i membri della Tavola Rotonda dovettero agire in fretta.

La Gran Bretagna aveva bisogno di placare i Dominion con l'autogoverno, in modo che accettassero di fornire truppe per la guerra imminente.

L'Australia divenne un Dominion nel 1901, la Nuova Zelanda nel 1907 e il Sudafrica nel 1910.

Corteggiare gli Stati Uniti

Gli Stati Uniti rappresentavano una sfida particolare. Eravamo indipendenti dal 1776. Inoltre i nostri rapporti con la Gran Bretagna erano stati burrascosi, rovinati da una sanguinosa Rivoluzione, dalla Guerra del 1812, dalle dispute di confine con il Canada e dall'ingerenza britannica nella nostra Guerra Civile.

A partire dagli anni Novanta dell'Ottocento, gli inglesi lanciarono un'offensiva di pubbliche relazioni chiamata “Grande riavvicinamento” per promuovere l'unità anglo-americana.

Nel 1893 il magnate dell'acciaio di origine scozzese, Andrew Carnegie, chiese apertamente un'“Unione anglo-americana”. Sostenne il ritorno dell'America all'Impero britannico.

Nel 1901 il giornalista britannico, W. T. Stead, sostenne la necessità di creare “Stati Uniti di lingua inglese nel mondo”.

Una soluzione “canadese” per l’America

Dal punto di vista britannico il Grande Riavvicinamento fu un fiasco.

Quando la Gran Bretagna dichiarò guerra alla Germania nel 1914, le truppe arrivarono da ogni angolo dell'Impero ma non dall'America. Gli Stati Uniti inviarono truppe solo nell'aprile del 1917, dopo due anni e mezzo di accanite pressioni britanniche.

Per gli inglesi quel ritardo era intollerabile. Dimostrava che non ci si poteva fidare degli americani per prendere decisioni importanti.

La Tavola Rotonda cercò una soluzione “canadese”, manipolando gli Stati Uniti per ottenere un accordo di tipo Dominion, con la Gran Bretagna che controllava la nostra politica estera.

Tutto ciò doveva essere fatto in silenzio, attraverso canali segreti.

Durante i colloqui di pace di Parigi del 1919, gli agenti della Tavola Rotonda collaborarono con anglofili statunitensi accuratamente selezionati (molti dei quali membri della Tavola Rotonda) per ideare meccanismi formali in modo da coordinare la politica estera statunitense e britannica.

Il meccanismo di controllo

Il 30 maggio 1919 venne fondato l'Anglo-American Institute of International Affairs (AAIIA), con filiali a New York e Londra.

Per la prima volta fu istituita una struttura formale per armonizzare al massimo livello le linee di politica degli Stati Uniti e del Regno Unito.

Tuttavia il momento storico era pessimo. In America stava crescendo un sentimento anti-britannico, molti accusavano l'Inghilterra di averci trascinato in guerra. Allo stesso tempo i globalisti inglesi denunciavano gli americani come scansafatiche per non aver sostenuto la Società delle Nazioni.

Poiché l'unità anglo-americana era temporaneamente in discredito, nel 1920 i membri della Tavola Rotonda decisero di separare le filiali di New York e Londra, per salvare le apparenze.

Dopo la separazione la filiale londinese fu ribattezzata British Institute of International Affairs (BIIA). Nel 1926 il BIIA ricevette uno statuto reale, diventando il Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), comunemente noto come Chatham House.

Nel frattempo, nel 1921, la filiale di New York divenne il Council on Foreign Relations.

Dopo la separazione da Chatham House, il Council on Foreign Relations continuò a collaborare strettamente con la controparte britannica, nel rispetto di un rigido codice di segretezza denominato “regole di Chatham House”.

L'agenda del Council on Foreign Relations

Il Council on Foreign Relations afferma sul suo sito web di “non prendere posizioni istituzionali su questioni politiche”, ma questo non è vero.

“L'impronta dell'internazionalismo” è evidente in tutte le pubblicazioni del Council on Foreign Relations, osserva il politologo britannico, Inderjeet Parmar, nel suo libro del 2004 “Think Tanks and Power in Foreign Policy”. Negli scritti del Council on Foreign Relations è evidente anche una marcata ostilità a ciò che esso definisce “isolazionismo”.

Parmar conclude che il Council on Foreign Relations persegue due obiettivi:

1. Unità anglo-americana
2. Globalismo

Si tratta degli stessi obiettivi stabiliti nel testamento di Rhodes, il quale auspicava un'unione globale anglo-americana così potente da “rendere in seguito impossibili le guerre [...]”.

“La nave madre”

Protetto dalle “regole di Chatham House”, il Council on Foreign Relations ha a lungo operato nell’ombra e la sua stessa esistenza è sconosciuta alla maggior parte degli americani.

Ciononostante nel corso degli anni sono trapelate voci sul suo potere.

“Poche istituzioni di spicco nella società americana sono state messe alla gogna con tanta costanza quanto il Council on Foreign Relations”, scrisse lo storico Robert J. McMahon nel 1985. “Per i complottisti di destra, così come per i critici radicali di sinistra, l'organizzazione con sede a New York ha spesso evocato il timore di una piccola élite che tira i fili della politica estera americana con una certa cattiveria”.

In realtà il controllo del Council on Foreign Relations sulla politica estera degli Stati Uniti non è un complotto, ma piuttosto un fatto ben noto tra gli addetti ai lavori di Washington, i quali hanno soprannominato il Council on Foreign Relations “il vero Dipartimento di Stato”.

Nel 2009 il Segretario di Stato Hillary Clinton ammise di aver ricevuto istruzioni dal Council on Foreign Relations definendo la sede centrale di New York “la nave madre”.

Parlando presso il suo nuovo ufficio a Washington, la Clinton dichiarò: “Sono stata spesso nella sede principale di New York, ma è positivo avere una sede distaccata proprio qui, a due passi dal Dipartimento di Stato. Riceviamo molti consigli da questo organo, quindi significa che non dovrò andare lontano per sentirmi dire cosa dovremmo fare e come dovremmo pensare al futuro”.

Il Council on Foreign Relations contro Trump

Trump non condivideva l'entusiasmo di Hillary per i “consigli” britannici.

Al contrario le politiche di Trump si opponevano espressamente alle posizioni britanniche sul cambiamento climatico, sulle frontiere aperte, sugli accordi commerciali truccati e sulle guerre senza fine. La politica “America First” di Trump incarnava ciò che il Council on Foreign Relations definisce “isolazionismo”.

Tutto ciò era troppo per gli inglesi e i loro collaboratori statunitensi.

È nata la “Resistenza” anti-Trump.

Il 16 giugno 2015 Trump annunciò la sua candidatura alla presidenza.

Verso la fine del 2015 l'agenzia britannica di intercettazioni, il GCHQ, avrebbe scoperto delle “interazioni” tra la campagna di Trump e l'intelligence russa.

Nell'estate del 2016 il GCHQ trasmise questo “materiale” all'allora capo della CIA, John Brennan.

Un titolo del 13 aprile 2017 del quotidiano britannico The Guardian annunciava con orgoglio: “Le spie britanniche sono state le prime a individuare i legami del team di Trump con la Russia”.

L'articolo spiegava: “Fonti di intelligence statunitensi e britanniche riconoscono che il GCHQ ha avuto un ruolo iniziale e di primo piano nell'avvio dell'indagine dell'FBI su Trump e la Russia [...]. Una fonte ha definito l'agenzia britannica di intercettazioni il 'principale informatore'”.

Così l’intelligence britannica ha preparato il terreno per l’inchiesta Mueller e per l’impeachment del “Russiagate” più di un anno prima dell’elezione di Trump.

Richieste di ammutinamento militare

Solo 10 giorni dopo l'insediamento di Trump nel 2017,  la rivista Foreign Policy chiese un “colpo di stato militare” contro il nuovo presidente.

L'articolo del 20 gennaio 2017 recava il titolo “3 modi per sbarazzarsi del presidente Trump prima del 2020”. In esso la professoressa di diritto Rosa Brooks chiedeva l'impeachment di Trump o la sua rimozione ai sensi del 25° emendamento.

Come ultima risorsa, disse la Brooks, si poteva provare un metodo “che fino a poco tempo fa avrei ritenuto impensabile negli Stati Uniti d’America: un colpo di stato militare [...]”.

Foreign Policy è di proprietà della famiglia Graham, la cui matriarca Katharine Graham contribuì a rovesciare Nixon quando era direttrice del Washington Post.

I Graham sono degli esperti di Washington. Non avrebbero mai invocato un “colpo di stato militare” senza il via libera della “nave madre”.

Destabilizzare l'America

La prova della complicità del Council on Foreign Relations è arrivata nel novembre 2017, quando la rivista Foreign Affairs ha fatto eco a Foreign Policy esortando i “leader militari di alto rango” a “resistere agli ordini” di Trump e a prendere in considerazione la sua rimozione ai sensi del 25° emendamento.

Foreign Affairs è la rivista ufficiale del Council on Foreign Relations.

Durante la presidenza Trump il Dipartimento degli Esteri lo accusò ripetutamente di instabilità mentale, esortando i “leader militari” e i “funzionari di gabinetto” a tenersi pronti a estrometterlo.

Provenienti dalla “nave madre”, questi incitamenti avevano un'autorità insolitamente forte. Soffiarono sulle fiamme della retorica di Washington fino a livelli indicibili, scuotendo la nazione e affermando l'insurrezione e il colpo di stato come la “nuova normalità” nella politica statunitense.

Considerata l'innegabile discendenza britannica del Council on Foreign Relations, la retorica della rivista Foreign Affairs solleva interrogativi sulle motivazioni britanniche.

Chiaramente Whitehall considerava Trump una minaccia esistenziale. Ma perché? Perché le obiezioni di Trump sulla politica commerciale erano considerate così minacciose per gli interessi britannici da giustificare un ammutinamento militare?

Neutralizzare la minaccia americana

Credo che la risposta si possa trovare negli scritti originali del gruppo Rhodes.

Nel suo libro del 1901, The Americanization of the World, il giornalista britannico W. T. Stead, stretto collaboratore di Rhodes, sosteneva che l'Inghilterra avesse solo due scelte: fondersi con l'America o essere sostituita da essa.

La scelta era chiara: unirsi agli Stati Uniti avrebbe potuto salvare la Gran Bretagna, mentre qualsiasi tentativo di competere con gli Stati Uniti si sarebbe concluso solo con una sconfitta.

Già negli anni Novanta dell'Ottocento, i leader britannici sapevano che sorvegliare il loro Impero era diventato troppo costoso. Concedere l'autogoverno ai Dominion permise di risparmiare denaro, rendendoli responsabili della propria difesa, ma la spesa militare era ancora troppo elevata.

Nel 1906 il banchiere britannico Lord Avebury si lamentò del fatto che gli Stati Uniti si stessero arricchendo a spese della Gran Bretagna. Mentre gli Stati Uniti traevano profitto dalla Pax Britannica, la Gran Bretagna spendeva il 60% in più dell'America per le sue spese militari, per garantire la sicurezza del mondo per gli affari.

Oggi, grazie al Council on Foreign Relations, la situazione è capovolta a favore della Gran Bretagna.

Ora l'America controlla il mondo, mentre gli investitori britannici si arricchiscono grazie alla Pax Americana. La spesa militare britannica è ormai una frazione della nostra.

Alla luce di questi fatti, diventa più facile capire perché gli inglesi non vogliono che Trump rovini la situazione.

I nuovi imperialisti

Le élite britanniche non si accontentavano di scaricare il costo dell'impero sull'America, volevano anche mantenere il controllo della politica imperiale, ottenendo così la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca. Con l'aiuto del Council on Foreign Relations, sono arrivate molto vicine a raggiungere questo obiettivo.

Il movimento “Nuovo Imperialismo” in Gran Bretagna mira a ricostruire l'influenza globale del Regno Unito, appoggiandosi alle forze armate statunitensi. Lo storico britannico Andrew Roberts annunciò questo nuovo movimento in un articolo del Daily Mail dell'8 gennaio 2005.

Il titolo riassume bene la loro filosofia: “Ricolonizzare l'Africa”.

Sostenendo che “l'Africa non ha mai conosciuto tempi migliori che durante il dominio britannico”, Roberts invocava senza mezzi termini la “ricolonizzazione”. Affermava che importanti statisti britannici sostenevano “in privato” questa linea di politica, ma “non si sarebbero mai sognati di approvarla pubblicamente [...]”.

Roberts si vantava che la maggior parte delle dittature africane sarebbero crollate al “semplice arrivo all’orizzonte di una portaerei proveniente da un Paese di lingua inglese [...]”.

Non specificò quale “Paese anglofono” avrebbe dovuto fornire portaerei per simili avventure, ma ve lo lascio immaginare.

La rivoluzione incompiuta dell'America

Sono passati più di cento anni da quando W. T. Stead avvertì che la Gran Bretagna avrebbe dovuto fondersi con l'America, o essere sostituita da essa. Poco è cambiato.

Le élite britanniche si trovano ancora di fronte alla stessa scelta. Non possono accettare un mondo guidato dagli americani, quindi devono trovare il modo di controllarci.

Da parte nostra, non dobbiamo accettare il loro controllo.

La sfida della nostra generazione è quella di rompere l'incantesimo del soft power britannico.

Completiamo l'opera della nostra rivoluzione incompiuta.

I nuovi imperialisti spingono CANZUK

Sedici anni dopo aver annunciato il “Nuovo Imperialismo”, Andrew Roberts e i suoi compagni imperialisti continuano a sostenere il sogno di Cecil Rhodes di un'unione di lingua inglese.

In un editoriale sul Wall Street Journal dell'8 agosto 2020, Roberts promosse il cosiddetto Trattato CANZUK, il quale mira a unire Canada, Australia, Nuova Zelanda e Gran Bretagna in un superstato globale “in grado di stare fianco a fianco con gli Stati Uniti” contro “una Cina sempre più revanscista”.

Come sempre, Roberts sta facendo progetti per noi.

Come al solito, i suoi piani prevedono di trascinarci in guerra.

Le élite britanniche non ci capiranno mai

Nel suo libro del 2006, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, Roberts suggerisce con leggerezza che l'America potrebbe vivere meglio sotto una monarchia.

Un governo monarchico ci avrebbe risparmiato il trauma del Watergate; un monarca sarebbe intervenuto e avrebbe licenziato Nixon, proprio come la regina Elisabetta II licenziò il primo ministro australiano Gough Whitlam nel 1975.

Non c'è bisogno di alcun processo democratico.

Roberts non arriva a capire come un simile intervento reale sarebbe stato recepito dalla “maggioranza silenziosa” che aveva votato per Nixon e lo aveva sostenuto.

MAGA contro MABA

In conclusione, Trump ha voluto realizzare il programma “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) ripristinando la nostra indipendenza e autosufficienza.

Il Council on Foreign Relations si propone di rendere l'America di nuovo britannica (MABA).

È semplice.

Se c'è una cosa che ci hanno insegnato gli anni di Trump è che MAGA e MABA non vanno d'accordo.

Nel momento in cui abbiamo un presidente che difende la sovranità americana, gli inglesi impazziscono, spingendo il nostro Paese sull'orlo della guerra civile.

È chiaro che non possiamo essere “grandi” e “britannici” allo stesso tempo.

Dobbiamo scegliere l'uno o l'altro.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

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On his latest appearance on “Capital Cosm,” Peter shares his perspective on the mounting pressures facing the U.S. economy, especially as America’s debt situation grows more dire. He unpacks the consequences of persistent trade deficits, the shifting global appetite for U.S. financial assets, and the implications for the U.S. dollar’s reserve status.

Peter opens with a dose of humility, addressing critics who suggest he’s eager to celebrate a long-awaited crisis. Instead, he explains, the stakes are far too serious for celebration:

Well, I don’t want to necessarily describe it as a Super Bowl in that the Super Bowl is a fun thing, a celebration. It’s not really that I want to celebrate the fact that I think we’re going to have an economic crisis. I mean, it’s something that I’ve been predicting for a long time, and it hasn’t even totally happened yet. So it’s even premature to really say I told you so. But I’m not necessarily going to celebrate the fact that I was right. … In a way I want to be wrong.

While the crisis Peter has forecast isn’t in full swing, he argues that the warning signs are undeniable. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s recent comments on debt sustainability draw skepticism from Peter, who points out the faulty logic behind official reassurances:

It’s not happening yet, but I think that we’ve set into motion the forces that will ultimately produce a sovereign debt and US dollar crisis. Powell said again yesterday, or he talked, and he said, we’re on an unsustainable path. He said the debt is not unsustainable, just the path, which I think is BS because if the path is unsustainable, then the debt is unsustainable because that’s the path the debt is on and it’s not changing. The path is the path. If anything, we’re picking up the pace.

A critical shift is already unfolding in the global marketplace. The long-standing pattern of foreign nations recycling their U.S. trade surpluses back into American government debt is beginning to unravel, posing a serious challenge to the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency:

But what I think is significant about what’s happening is that we’ve begun the exodus out of U.S. financial assets, where the U.S. dollar is no longer the primary reserve and our trading partners are not recycling their trade surpluses into U.S. financial assets. Donald Trump has made it clear that a goal of his presidency is lower trade deficits. And the only way that’s going to happen is if Americans import less. And since we don’t have the capacity to produce more, we’re not going to close the hole with exports. It’s going to be with lower consumption and a weaker U.S. economy, and more of our inflation is going to stay within our own borders.

Turning to U.S. trade policy, Peter remains unconvinced that current political strategies will bring meaningful change. He believes that cosmetic victories may be announced, but the underlying structural issues won’t be fixed by symbolic deals or negotiation theatrics:

Well, I think it’s difficult. I think Trump is going to try to dig himself out of this hole by kind of pretending that this is all part of his master plan, and it’s all going exactly the way he planned it in his 4D chess game that nobody else can understand because he is the greatest negotiator in the world. And none of us can really understand the method of his madness because that’s how smart he is. But I think they will announce some deals with various countries that they will tout as being this major win, but they’ll really be insignificant, just cosmetic victories. 

In light of these broad systemic risks, Peter draws attention to gold’s renewed appeal. With mounting uncertainty and a visible move away from the dollar’s hegemony, he cites gold’s recent price action as a signal that the world is seeking genuine safe havens:

Yeah, gold had one dip below 3,000, and then it made a new high. I think the record I saw was above 3,360, and that was last night it made a new record. It’s pulled back a little bit now, but it’s still above 3,300. So we’re 10% above 3,000. Yeah, I think it’s becoming clear to people who didn’t see it before that gold is the new safe haven.

This originally appeared on SchiffGold.com.

The post Gold Shines as the Dollar Falters appeared first on LewRockwell.

Amidst the horrific U.S. abuse of foreigners through the use of tariffs and police-state enforcement of immigration controls, it’s easy to forget that the U.S. government abuses foreigners in other ways, such as sanctions, embargoes, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, torture, indefinite detention, and state-sponsored assassinations.

Perhaps the longest-lasting, continuous example of this foreigner-abuse syndrome is the U.S. government’s horrific abuse of the Cuban people, which has gone on for more than 60 years. Given that there is no good reason for abusing the Cuban people — and there never has been one — this would be a good place to begin breaking with the longstanding, ongoing U.S. policy of abusing foreigners.

It’s worth pointing out that Cuba has never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. Ever since the Cuban revolution in 1959, the U.S. government has always been the aggressor against Cuba, not the other way around.

For more than 60 years, the U.S. government has imposed and enforced a cruel and brutal economic embargo against Cuba. The embargo is designed to inflict maximum economic harm on the Cuban people with the intent of impoverishing them and even killing them through starvation.

The aim of this embargo is one that has been standard for many decades within the U.S. Empire: regime change. Ever since the Cuban revolution, U.S. officials have been obsessed with ousting the communist regime that controls Cuba and replacing it with a pro-U.S. dictatorial regime — that is, one that will be a loyal, obedient servant of the U.S. Empire, much like the current dictatorial regime in El Salvador. The idea has always been that to avoid death by starvation, the Cuban people can rise up and violently revolt against their regime.

The embargo strategy is much like the thinking that undergirds terrorism. Terrorists kill innocent people as a way to pressure a regime into changing its political system or behavior. That’s what the U.S. embargo against Cuba does also.

But it’s worth mentioning that the U.S. embargo is not the only way that the U.S. Empire has inflicted abuse on Cubans. During the early 1960s, the Empire also engaged in real acts of terrorism against commercial facilities inside Cuba.

That’s not all. U.S. officials, in partnership with the Mafia, also engaged in secret state-sponsored assassination attempts against Cuba’s first president, Fidel Castro. U.S. officials maintained that such assassination attempts were morally justified because Castro was a communist. However, it is difficult to understand how that would morally justify murdering someone. It’s also worth noting that the U.S. Constitution makes it illegal for U.S. officials to murder anyone, including foreigners.

Needless to say, the U.S. embargo against Cuba has never worked. For one thing, many Cubans hate the U.S. government. Moreover, many of Cubans who hate Cuba’s communist and socialist systems hate the thought of being under the control of the U.S. government even more. For another thing, there is a strict system of gun control in Cuba, which means that the Cuban people lack the means to violently overthrow their government. Thus, all that the U.S. embargo has accomplished for the past six and a half decades is extreme economic suffering among the Cuban people.

Proponents of the embargo do their best to avoid personal responsibility for this intentional infliction of suffering on innocent people by focusing exclusively on the harm caused by Cuba’s socialist system. What they avoid confronting is that the U.S. government’s embargo is the other side of an economic vise that, in combination with Cuba’s socialist system, succeeds in squeezing the lifeblood out of the Cuban people. What these embargo proponents also fail to confront is that while Cuban socialism inflicts harm on the Cuban people, it’s misguided harm. The harm inflicted by the embargo is fully intentional and deliberate.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the embargo against Cuba has contributed to the destruction of fundamental rights of the American people, such as economic liberty, liberty of contract, freedom of travel, and freedom of association. In a genuinely free society, people have the right to travel wherever they want, spend their money anyway they want, sell whatever they want to whomever they want, and associate with whomever they want. Yet, if an American sells things to Cubans, buys things from Cubans, or travels to Cuba and spends money there, he is immediately arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated by U.S. officials upon returning to his own country. He is also condemned as a “bad person” by U.S. officials for exercising fundamental rights.

Inflicting abuse on foreigners does not make a country great. It actually does the opposite. It produces a weak, frightened, contemptible country. A great country treats everyone, including foreigners, with decency and respect. A great way for America to start becoming great again would be by lifting the decades-old cruel, brutal, and unjustifiable U.S. embargo against the Cuban people.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post Stop the U.S. Abuse of Cuba appeared first on LewRockwell.

Okay, history buffs, I write this on April 19, 2025, exactly 250 years from that most famous of midnight runs, that of Paul Revere and William Dawes to warn fellow patriots that the British army was on the march. Popular legend has it that Paul warned them by yelling, “The British are coming, the British are coming.” Not true. He yelled, “The regulars are coming,” as back then both sides thought themselves British.

Joseph Warren, a Founding Father, had tipped off Paul Revere and Willy Dawes to the British plans. The ride was immortalized by Henry Longfellow’s poem and has been reenacted in Massachusetts streets ever since. The Brits sent a contingent in secret out at night to capture weapons stored by anarchic locals at Concord. Paul and Willy warned them, and the war was on. Actually there was very little fighting. The local militia in Lexington was not looking for a fight. No one has ever proved who was the first to shoot. Nevertheless it became known in America later on as “the shot heard round the world.” After that shot a little hell broke loose. The Brit regulars fired volleys and charged with fixed bayonets. Eight local defenders died. Then the colonials retaliated. That’s when the Brit regulars fled. Victory has many followers, and more and more colonials joined, eager to fight.

“What kind of nation would this part of the world be had America lost the war?”

The British regulars stood and fought back in Lexington. The so-called Americans at the time surprised the Brits by fighting in formation and with courage and discipline. The British regulars were driven back to Boston, having suffered 300 casualties compared with 100 of the resisting locals. This, then, was the first day of that most incredible birth of a country now dominating the world, the United States of America. The Concord and Lexington battles may have been small beer in comparison with what ensued, but like Thermopylae 1,500 years before, they signaled great things to come. Like the Ancient Greeks, the Americans warned the all-conquering British that they were not about to lie down and be good little British subjects. Pay taxes without representation. Be looked down upon as simple colonials. Like it or not, and they didn’t like it and still don’t, the Brits were taught their first lesson. I lived in London for close to 35, perhaps 40, years, and I know what I’m talking about. The Americans are admired by many but also seen as loud and vulgar and too rich. But let’s put our cards on the table. Basically the Brits are jealous. The Yanks, as they call them, not only beat them on the field, they also prospered in an unimaginable way.

Perhaps I exaggerate. I’ve been torn between the two countries’ history, changing my mind about them time and again. Writing this on the date it all began puts me on the side of the Americans. My favorite general was Benedict Arnold. And still is. Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, the Brit general who came to fight in Saratoga with 40 trunks of clothes and his mistress along, was another favorite. And did you know that Alexander Hamilton had led the last charge down south before General Cornwallis surrendered? What do any of you think would have happened had the Howe brothers captured Washington before he snuck out of Brooklyn and into Manhattan and eventually New Jersey? What kind of nation would this part of the world be had America lost the war?

And now for some gossip about how the locals found out that the army was on the move against them and scored that first all-important victory. How did Joseph Warren know about the move and warn Paul Revere? Well, as in all mysteries, a woman was involved. Mind you, this could be vicious Brit gossip, because the lady was an American beauty. She was married to Gen. Thomas Gage, who ordered the army to move against the locals. Margaret Kemble Gage was a very rich local lady who married the Brit general when she was 24. After the outbreak of the war she sailed to England, and her hubby followed after a few months. Thus the stage was set for a fable that suited the British establishment as well as the American revolutionaries. She had extracted her husband’s plans to attack and passed them on to a fellow American. The myth pleased everyone. The British were happy that their loss was due to a betrayal. The Yanks were pleased that an American had chosen her country above her husband. The London set was also pleased because Margaret was a looker and the London gals were not.

Last but not least, by the great society arbiter Taki: An 18th-century lady of her standing did not exactly call on gentlemen she hardly knew and extract secrets from them. The Brits did not take the upstarts seriously enough, no matter the bull Hollywood puts up every so often. The Howe brothers, both great gentlemen and feeling that the Yanks were their naughty cousins, did not truly pursue George Washington in Brooklyn. They dined and wined instead. Margaret Gage was a loyal wife who was snubbed for the rest of her life for something she didn’t do.

This originally appeared on Taki’s Magazine.

The post Revolutionary Lore appeared first on LewRockwell.

A few readers thought I went a bit too far in my column two days ago when I expressed concern that if President Trump loses the existential conflict between Mega Americans and the corrupt anti-American Establishment, a return to power of the Democrats will mean oppression for traditional white ethnic Americans.  Not in America, they said.  But, yes, especially in America.

White heterosexual gentiles, especially males, have been second class citizens in the United States ever since Alfred Blumrosen at the EEOC stood the 1964 Civil Rights Act on its head and defied the clear statutory language in the legislation and imposed racial and gender quotas on white gentile heterosexual American men. These quotas have been in effect for 60 years, supplemented during the Biden regime with DEI-imposed quotas.

The American judiciary, despite the 14th Amendment absolutely requiring equality under the law and the clear unambiguous language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, did nothing to enforce the Constitution and the Law.  The American judiciary, the American corporations, the American universities accepted and enforced the illegal and unconstitutional racial and gender quoters.  Essentially, the quotas are still in place.  The US Supreme Court ruled against them a year or two or so ago, but in a weak way that did not stop the Biden regime from extending them to DEI privileges and refusing to promote in the military based on merit.  Instead, the Biden regime placed racial and sexual constraints on military promotion. Promotions were not available for white heterosexual gentile males.

So what does law mean in the US?  Nothing except the right to gain money by suing and the right of partisan Democrat judges to block the President of the United States from fulfilling his contract with the electorate. For example, currently 12 Democrat states are suing the Trump administration for alleged damages to them from tariffs which so far are nothing but negotiation tools.

There is no law.  American Law Schools were taken over years ago and turned into instruments for overthrowing alleged white, racist America.

The George Soros-implanted Leticia James in New York is the perfect example of an Attorney General trained in law school to use law as a weapon against those in the way of revolutionizing American society. The electorate in New York is so indoctrinated and brainwashed that the people accept as attorney general a person committed to their demise. What was once our greatest state appears now to be our most stupid.

The same happened in journalism schools.  I was an invited  lecturer for some period at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism or at some program of the institution.  I remember watching the transformation of journalist training from finding and reporting the facts to learning to use journalism to support narratives that advanced the agendas of the ruling establishment. It became the only path to employment and success, and the budding “journalists” moved willing into it.  Today they know no other function.  Today the normal function of journalists is to lie in support of the agendas of the American Establishment, which most certainly is not a Mega American establishment.

I don’t think Trump understands the strength of the forces that he has challenged.  If you peruse the left-wing websites, you will acquaint yourself with the retaliation that is being prepared for the “Trump deplorables,” Hillary’s term, once Trump is defeated or out of office.

Without going there, let’s just consider what Democrat members of Congress, elected by Americans, have to say about the retaliation measures they will be able to use once Trump is gone.

Democrat US Representative Jamin Ben Raskin represents the 8th congressional district of Maryland. He is a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law School. He led the impeachment of President Trump during Trump’s first term of office.

US Representative Raskin has issued a threat to everyone who does business with the Trump administration that “when we come back to power we are not going to look kindly.”

In other words, Raskin has clearly threatened repercussions for doing business of any kind with a lawfully elected government of the US.

This threat, of course, applies to the “domestic terrorists” who elected Trump.  Remember, it is Trump who is trying to restore America, and the Democrats who are trying to turn America into a Sodom and Gomorrah Tower of Babel.  But Raskin, the Democrats, the left-wing and most of the white liberals regard President Trump’s effort to resurrect America as the imposition of fascism. In US Rep. Democrat Raskin’s words, “We’re going to restore strong democracy to America and we will remember who stood up for democracy in America and who tried to drive us down towards dictatorship and autocracy.”

Raskin is indicting the traditional Americans who elected Trump by such a large margin that the Democrats could not again steal the presidential election.

It is my opinion that Trump, his government, and his supporters do not understand that they are up against a more powerful destructive ideological force than America ever faced from the Soviet Union.  The entirety of the Democrat Party, media, universities, deep state, are totally opposed to America and want to transform America into a Sodom & Gomorrah Tower of Babel.  

How else can you explain decades of totally open borders?

How else can you explain teaching white kids that they, their parents, their grandparents are racists who exploit black people?

How else can you explain teaching kids that they are born into the wrong body and need sex change operations that their parents cannot prevent?

The United States is a crazy land as is all of the Western World.  The Belief System that comprised Western Civilization has been destroyed by decades of propaganda from well-funded universities.

As I have said before, every institution that constitutes the United States has been hollowed out by decades of anti-American propaganda from American universities and public schools.  Those who defend America have been written out of public discussion and banned from the presstitute media. I used to be a Wall Street Journal editor and columnist, a columnist for Business Week, for the Scripts Howard News Service.  I was often on the major TV networks.  Today I am totally banned.  As a truth-teller, I am an enemy who must be suppressed.

Americans are very slow in realizing that the Democrats are an ideological party, like the Bolsheviks.  Democrats already know the truth and are unbothered by facts.  Facts are what serve the agenda.  The truth is in the agenda.  

The post What Happens to Us if President Trump Loses the Existential War With the Evil American Establishment? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Introduction by Bishop Joseph Strickland

Please read through this article prayerfully. As we look ahead to the next conclave, I urge you to pray fervently for the election of a truly Catholic pope. The Church is in a time of great trial, and we must be vigilant in guarding the faith that has been handed down to us.

While we know that the Holy Ghost assists us in the governance of the Church, He does not override the free will of men. It is possible for cardinals to elect someone who does not truly uphold the Catholic Faith, and if a man who has publicly embraced heresy were to be elected, he could not be a true pope. As St Robert Bellarmine and others have taught, a heretic cannot be the head of the Church because he is not a member of it.

Therefore, we must pray with great urgency — not only that the conclave chooses a worthy successor to St. Peter — but also for clarity and wisdom in recognizing whether the man elected is truly the pope. In these confusing times, we must remain steadfast in the unchanging truths of our faith, knowing that Our Lord will never abandon His Church.

Let us turn to the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Peter and all the saints, asking for their intercession in this most critical matter.

Bishop Joseph E. Strickland,
Bishop Emeritus

The cardinals will soon enter a new conclave, yet it remains unclear whether the man who will emerge will be a legitimate Successor of St. Peter.

An article recently published by LifeSiteNews reminds us that the papacy is a divine institution and was established by Our Lord Jesus Christ to achieve specific ends according to His divine will.

If we approach the election of a pope as we approach the election of a political leader, or if we view it as a contest between “liberals” and “conservatives,” we will have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the office.

As another recent article explained:

The power and authority of the Roman Pontiff is immediate in the sense that it is received immediately from Christ and not through the agency of another person or groups of persons. [1]

According to the current law of the Church, it is the cardinals who elect the pope. Yet it is always Our Lord Jesus Christ who confers jurisdiction on the elected candidate:

It is left to the Church to elect, or otherwise designate, the person who then obtains the power of universal jurisdiction by virtue of divine institution, i.e., immediately from Christ, not from those who have elected him. [2]

It is the teaching of the Catholic Church that only a member of the male sex who is in possession of the use of reason and is a member of the Catholic Church can be elected pope. A member of the Catholic Church is one who is (i) baptized, (ii) publicly professes the Catholic faith and (iii) is subject to the lawful hierarchy. The non-baptized, public heretics, public schismatics, and public apostates are not eligible for election.

Our Lord will only confer papal jurisdiction on a man who fulfils the conditions which He has established. He will not confer it on an ineligible candidate, even if the cardinals were to choose such a man.

As the conclave approaches many will want to know more details about the cardinals who are regarded as papabile. In this article LifeSiteNews offers short profiles of eight men who are spoken of as being among the main contenders.

These profiles are not intended to endorse any candidate or to imply that they are members of the Church and eligible for election. They are simply intended to provide LifeSiteNews readers an introduction to who they are and what they stand for.

Longer profiles of some of these men will follow.

1. Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline – Archbishop of Marseille, France

Cardinal Aveline has been described as the most “Bergoglian” of the French bishops and it has also been reported that he is the man Francis wishes to succeed him. Aveline signed a positive statement of the French Bishops’ Conference (CEF) about Fiducia Supplicans. This letter stated that the “blessings should be given as a sign of ‘unconditional and merciful welcome.’” Furthermore, it stated that “Fiducia Supplicans reminds us that those who are not in a position to commit themselves to the sacrament of marriage are not excluded from God’s love or from his Church.” And specified that “it is in particular through prayers of blessing, given in a spontaneous, ‘non-ritualized’ form (no. 36), without any sign likely to be assimilated with the celebration of marriage, that the Church’s ministers will be able to manifest this broad and unconditional welcome.”

Aveline has supported the process of “synodality”; he was on the drafting committee for the final report of the “Synod for Synodality” and has called for a “Mediterranean Synod”. He holds erroneous views on the subject of other religions and interreligious dialogue. For example, he has said: “Basically, religions are ways for men and women to seek answers to the great, simple questions of life. It’s better to have a religion that helps you, that doesn’t give you answers to questions you don’t ask yourself, but that helps you to truly experience life – that’s the most important thing.”

He has also stated: “The Catholic Church first recognizes the possibility of a positive role for other religions, as socio-cultural realities, in the general economy of salvation. This excludes an exclusivist position, which, on the basis of a narrow ecclesiocentrism, would deny non-Christian religions any salvific or revelatory value, relying on a hardened, and thus distorted, interpretation of the ancient Patristic adage: ‘Outside the Church, no salvation.’”

An in-depth study of Aveline’s theology can be found here.

2. Cardinal Stephen Brislin – Archbishop of Johannesburg, South Africa

Cardinal Brislin has welcomed Amoris Laetitia and taken the approach that Fiducia Supplicans is reconcilable with the teaching of the Church. He has previously praised Cardinal Fernandez, whose congregation produced Fiducia Supplicans, and who is one of the figures at the forefront of Francis’s agenda, as “a person who’s got a very broad vision.”

In the past Brislin has made orthodox statements on moral questions; he has condemned abortion and euthanasia. Like many other cardinals he seems to have manifested more liberal tendencies under Francis. In 2019 he allowed dissident group “We Are Church” to meet on church property, reversing a ban he had introduced in 2012. He has expressed public support for the Synod on Synodality, calling it “a wonderful opportunity for the Church.” The synodal journey, he said, is “something that we can develop more locally, to become that listening Church, that discerning Church, and really opening ourselves to God’s Holy Spirit.”

3. Cardinal Kurt Koch – Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity

Cardinal Koch is a man who opposes fundamental doctrines of the Church. His dicastery produced a radical blueprint for the destruction of the Catholic Church and its replacement with a new “Synodal Church.” Ecumenism has been longterm interest for Koch and, if this blueprint were implemented, the “Synodal Church” would become a global church without true authority or unity in doctrine. Koch also holds the heretical position that there is no need for a mission to the Jewish people as they can be saved under the Old Covenant. His dicastery has produced documents that contain heresy, both with regard to the nature of the Church and outreach to the Jews. He defends his rejection of the teaching of the Catholic Church by an appeal to Vatican II.

4. Cardinal Marc Ouellet – Archbishop Emeritus of Quebec

Cardinal Ouellet was once regarded as conservative but has become a strong supporter of the radical agenda of Francis. He supports Amoris Laetitia and has publicly criticized the dubia cardinals.

In 2024 Ouellet published a book entitled Word, Sacrament, Charism: Risks and Opportunities of a Synodal Church. This book sets out his endorsement of the radical programme of “synodality.” At the book launch he lauded the “great synodal movement that is spreading throughout the entire Church.”

Ouellet permitted his titular church in Rome, that of Santa Maria in Traspontina, to be used for the pagan rituals in honor of Pachamama, an Amazonian idol. On October 4 Francis welcomed the idol of Pachamama to the Vatican gardens; during the ceremony some clerics prostrated themselves before the idol. Ouellet said of this act of apostasy, that it “did not bother me.”

Ouellet has been identified as one of the cardinals most responsible for Traditionis Custodes. An order of nuns in his archdiocese, which had used the traditional rite exclusively since 1969, was forced to introduce the novus ordo rite. Ouellet was found guilty by a French court of unjustly expelling a nun from the community after she opposed his subversion of the order. The court described her expulsion as “infamous and vexatious,” and said it was executed without her having committed “the slightest offense.”

Read the Whole Article

The post These 8 Cardinals May Succeed Francis. Here’s What They Believe appeared first on LewRockwell.

An American-brokered peace deal between Ukraine and Russia is becoming more unlikely by the day.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff bailed on a major meeting Wednesday in London set up to bring about peace in Eastern Europe. This happened after Ukraine had just rejected a U.S. proposal for a deal that recognizes Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. “Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday. “There’s nothing to talk about here. This is against our constitution.”

The White House has grown increasingly frustrated as efforts to end the war “on Day 1,” as candidate Trump repeatedly vowed, have advanced into the third month with little promise on the horizon. During an interview with NBC News in March, Trump said he was “pissed off” at Russian President Vladimir Putin and threatened to level secondary tariffs against Russia. The Kremlin refused to ink a U.S.-brokered, 30-day full ceasefire agreement that Ukraine had agreed to. Witkoff’s three visits to Russia have only yielded a 30-day ceasefire on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and a partial ceasefire in the Black Sea. And now, it seems like the Americans are ready to walk away.

Negotiations at a Crossroads

Echoing earlier comments from Rubio and Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance said on Wednesday that negotiations are coming to a crossroads. Talking to reporters during a visit to Agra, India, Vance said, “We’ve issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it’s time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process.” During his time as an Ohio senator, Vance was among the few Republicans opposed to Ukraine aide. He is also on record admitting Ukraine’s fate is of little concern to him. During an interview with Steve Bannon just days before Russia invaded in 2022, Vance told the one-time Trump advisor, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine, one way or the other. We did not serve in the Marine Corps to go and fight Vladimir Putin because he didn’t believe in transgender rights.”

Trump told reporters on Friday that if the two sides don’t come to terms “soon,” the United States is “going to take a pass.” Rubio said, the same day, “We’re not going to continue to fly all over the world and do meeting after meeting after meeting if no progress is being made. We’re going to move on to other topics that are equally if not more important in some ways to the United States.”

Russian Demands

Among Russia’s demands for a peace deal are recognition of its “new borders.” In addition to Crimea, Russia already occupies the eastern border regions of Ukraine. There’s no indication Putin has any plans to relinquish territory that cost his army three years and hundreds of thousands of soldiers to capture. And given that the two nations have been embroiled in intense fighting all this time, short of intervention from other nations, there is little chance of Ukraine gaining that territory back. In fact, it seems the longer the war continues, the more advances Russia makes. Ukraine has been wholly dependent on arms and technology from Western nations the entirety of the war. It has also been experiencing a significant manpower problem for quite some time now.

The NATO Issue

U.S. officials have also agreed Ukraine should be kept out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), aligning with a key Russian demand. Ukraine’s Parliament passed legislation in 2019 to codify the pursuit of NATO membership, a main trigger of Russian aggression. While Western mainstream media has insisted Russia’s invasion was completely unprovoked, Russia has been complaining about NATO’s eastward expansion for decades. It views NATO as a hostile alliance. None other than U.S. diplomat George Kennan, who authored the U.S. policy of containment of the Soviet Union back in 1947, warned that NATO expansion would trigger a violent Russian reaction. In 1997, Kennan said that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American foreign policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

Kennan wrote in a February 5, 1997, New York Times op-ed that in 1996 Western leaders decided “somehow and somewhere” to expand NATO up to Russia’s borders. He said this would be a terrible foreign policy move:

The view, bluntly stated, is that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.… [Russia] would, of course, have no choice but to accept expansion as a military fait accompli. But they would continue to regard it as a rebuff by the West and would likely look elsewhere for guarantees of a secure and hopeful future for themselves.

Given that Kennan predicted the 2022 invasion, it could also be argued that Russia’s more recent chumminess with China and Iran prove him correct on his latter point.

Proxy War

On March 29, The New York Times admitted the conflict in Eastern Europe has been a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia all along. While it naively assumes America’s role in Ukraine’s military operations was “hidden,” it confirms that the United States supplied the intelligence, strategies, technology, and weaponry — $66.5 billion worth of it. As far as intelligence, military intel and the CIA drew up the plans.

The Times article was approved (and possibly commissioned) by the Pentagon with what the Times dubs “remarkable transparency.” Nevertheless, for whatever reason, it confirms that the United States “was the backbone of Ukrainian military operations,” which it claims have led to the death of 700,000 Russians and 435,000 Ukrainians. Casualty numbers vary depending on who’s reporting them. In February, Zelensky reported a ridiculously unbelievable casualty toll of 46,000. Independent journalists and commentators report roughly one million casualties for the Ukrainians, and a few hundred thousand for the Russians. The Russians, for their part, haven’t since 2022 even tried to broadcast casualty propaganda.

In the Times article, the Pentagon brags about how it continuously tracked and targeted “one of Russia’s most-feared battle groups, the 58th Combined Arms Army.” Perhaps this was an attempt by higher-ups in the U.S. military complex to so embarrass Russia’s leadership in front of the whole world that they would have no choice but to wage war against the Untied States.

According to the Pentagon, the war was going well until the Ukrainians insisted on making their own decisions:

The Ukrainians sometimes saw the Americans as overbearing and controlling — the prototypical patronizing Americans. The Americans sometimes couldn’t understand why the Ukrainians didn’t simply accept good advice.… As the Ukrainians won greater autonomy in the partnership, they increasingly kept their intentions secret. They were perennially angered that the Americans couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give them all of the weapons and other equipment they wanted. The Americans, in turn, were angered by what they saw as the Ukrainians’ unreasonable demands.

Strikingly, the Pentagon was aware the entire time that U.S. involvement risked nuclear escalation, yet it kept on. Trump, for his part, has cited the possibility of nuclear breakout as a key reason for the United States to pull back and attempt to broker peace.

Read the Whole Article

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It’s been three months since Vice President Vance cast the tie-breaking vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as Defense secretary.  The Deep State worked hard to scuttle Hegseth’s nomination in December and January with a steady drip of news stories calling his character into question, but President Trump and his trusted veep stood by their man and applied enough pressure on wayward Republican senators to secure his confirmation.  Suddenly, corporate propagandists posing as reporters are back with fresh stories meant to undermine Secretary Hegseth and get him fired from the Pentagon’s top post.

It’s almost as if the Deep State tabled its sabotage campaign for a neat ninety days.  Do you think there’s a section in some clandestine handbook on the dark arts of information warfare that recommends a three-month cooling-off period before ramping up operations against a given target?  Our domestic spooks have gotten so tiresomely predictable!

Make no mistake: The silly attempts to create a public “narrative” that Secretary Hegseth threatens national security are part of the same Intelligence Community operation that targeted him last winter.  It’s quite revealing how desperate the Deep State is to keep “outsiders” away from the levers of power, isn’t it?

If the CIA and its Establishment co-conspirators don’t “own” you, they don’t want you around sticking your nose in their business.  And it is big business!  They’ve got elections to rig (foreign and domestic!), governments to topple (for the right price), and trillions of dollars in war funding to spend!  They can’t let the president of the United States and his secretary of Defense get in their way!  Don’t Trump and Hegseth understand that they’re just here for cute photo ops while the permanently installed shadow government runs the global show?  Heck, Defense secretary Lloyd Austin disappeared for days at a time, and nobody even noticed!  The same information warfare specialists who continue to call Hegseth a “drunk” never said anything about Austin performing his duties while under sedation!

C’est la vie.  MAGA Americans are well versed in the Deep State’s double-standards.  If you burn down cities and loot stores in the name of “social justice,” the mockingbird media chirp about civil rights and the “summer of love.”  If you show up in D.C. to protest election fraud, the same mockingbird media call you an “insurrectionist” and deny that you have any civil rights at all!  Because Hegseth’s not part of the Deep State team, he gets the Orange Man Bad treatment from the press.  Since the Gestapo-FBI effectively acts as a pimp for Politico and The New York Times, the presstitutes who work those rags’ street corners get slapped around when they don’t do the Intelligence Community’s bidding.  In the corporate news world, that’s just life!

So after a ninety-day hiatus in the information war against Secretary Hegseth, the I.C.’s “journalistic” brothel is back to its old tricks.  Despite vigorous denials from the White House, NPR is pumping out the following headline on car displays: “White House looking to replace Pete Hegseth at Defense.”  Talk about modern “journalism” in a nutshell!  Everybody at the White House says this story is bunk.  President Trump says it’s horse pucky.  Undaunted by overwhelming testimonial evidence to the contrary, NPR insists that some anonymous government official has assured its bordello of scribes that Trump is planning to fire Hegseth, even though the president is publicly saying the exact opposite!  Could this unnamed “official” perhaps be related to the tubby Tweedle-Vindmans, a diminutive Ukrainian president, or some cash-strapped Nigerian prince?  Holy moly, President Trump can’t defund fake-news NPR soon enough!

Last winter, when the Deep State’s “Operation: Sink Hegseth” was in full force, corporate news presstitutes nearly succeeded in giving RINO squishes enough cover to vote against his nomination.  Celebrity “journalists” — whose profession remains a notorious breeding ground for alcoholism and sexual harassment — did their best to slander Pete Hegseth as a drunken womanizer and “Me Too” villain.  Like monkeys flinging poo at the public, the nation’s trashiest gossip rags created a scene almost ugly enough to distract from Senate Republicans’ premeditated betrayal.

Read the Whole Article

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“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” — Ayn Rand

130 executive orders in under 100 days.

Sweeping powers claimed in the name of “security” and “efficiency.”

One president acting as lawmaker, enforcer, and judge.

No debate. No oversight. No limits.

This is how the Constitution dies—not with a coup, but with a pen.

The Unitary Executive Theory is no longer a theory—it’s the architecture of a dictatorship in motion.

Where past presidents have used executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements to circumvent Congress or sidestep the rule of law, President Trump is using executive orders to advance his “unitary executive theory” of governance, which is a thinly disguised excuse for a government by fiat.

In other words, these executive orders are the mechanism by which we finally arrive at a full-blown dictatorship.

America’s founders established a system of checks and balances to prevent the concentration of power in any single branch. To this end, the Constitution establishes three separate but equal branches of government: the legislative branch, which makes the law; the executive branch, which enforces the law; and the judicial branch, which interprets the law.

And yet, despite this carefully balanced structure, we now find ourselves in a place the founders warned against.

Despite Trump’s attempts to rule by fiat, the president has no unilateral authority to operate outside the Constitution’s system of checks and balances—no matter how urgent the crisis or how well-meaning the intentions.

This is what government by fiat looks like.

Where Congress was once the nation’s lawmaking body, its role is now being eclipsed by a deluge of executive directives—each one issued without public debate, legislative compromise, or judicial review.

These executive orders aren’t mere administrative housekeeping. They represent a radical shift in how power is exercised in America, bypassing democratic institutions in favor of unilateral command. From trade and immigration to surveillance, speech regulation, and policing, the president is claiming broad powers that traditionally reside with the legislative and judicial branches.

Some orders invoke national security to disrupt global markets. Others attempt to override congressional control over tariffs, fast-track weapons exports, or alter long-standing public protections through regulatory rollbacks. A few go even further—flirting with ideological loyalty tests for citizenship, chilling dissent through financial coercion, and expanding surveillance in ways that undermine due process and privacy.

Yet here’s where these actions run into constitutional peril: they redefine executive authority in ways that bypass the checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution. They centralize decision-making in the White House, sideline the legislative process, and reduce the judiciary to an afterthought—if not an outright obstacle.

Each of these directives, taken individually, might seem technocratic or temporary. But taken together, they reveal the architecture of a parallel legal order—one in which the president acts as lawmaker, enforcer, and judge. That is not how a constitutional republic operates. That is how a dictatorship begins.

Each of these orders marks another breach in the constitutional levee, eroding the rule of law and centralizing unchecked authority in the executive.

This is not merely policy by another name—it is the construction of a parallel legal order, where the president acts as lawmaker, enforcer, and judge—the very state of tyranny our founders sought to prevent.

This legal theory—the so-called Unitary Executive—is not new. But under this administration, it has metastasized into something far more dangerous: a doctrine of presidential infallibility.

What began as a constitutional interpretation that the president controls the executive branch has morphed into an ideological justification for unchecked power.

Under this theory, all executive agencies, decisions, and even enforcement priorities bend entirely to the will of the president—obliterating the idea of an independent bureaucracy or impartial governance.

The result? An imperial presidency cloaked in legalism.

Historically, every creeping dictatorship has followed this pattern: first, undermine the legislative process; then, centralize enforcement powers; finally, subjugate the judiciary or render it irrelevant. America is following that roadmap, one executive order at a time.

Even Supreme Court justices and legal scholars who once defended broad executive authority are beginning to voice concern.

Yet the real danger of the Unitary Executive Theory is not simply that it concentrates power in the hands of the president—it’s that it does so by ignoring the rest of the Constitution.

Respect for the Constitution means obeying it even when it’s inconvenient to do so.

We’re watching the collapse of constitutional constraints not through tanks in the streets, but through policy memos drafted in the West Wing.

No matter how well-meaning the politicians make these encroachments on our rights appear, in the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes. Even the most principled policies can be twisted to serve illegitimate ends once power and profit enter the equation.

The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

We are approaching critical mass.

The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it doesn’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen.

What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.

In effect, you will disappear.

Our freedoms are already being made to disappear.

This is how tyranny arrives: not with a constitutional amendment, but with a series of executive orders; not with a military coup, but with a legal memo; not with martial law, but with bureaucratic obedience and public indifference.

A government that rules by fiat, outside of constitutional checks and balances, is not a republic. It is a dictatorship in everything but name.

If freedom is to survive this constitutional crisis, We the People must reclaim our role as the ultimate check on government power.

That means holding every branch of government accountable to the rule of law. It means demanding that Congress do its job—not merely as a rubber stamp or partisan enabler, but as a coequal branch with the courage to rein in executive abuses.

It means insisting that the courts serve justice, not politics.

And it means refusing to normalize rule by decree, no matter who sits in the Oval Office.

There is no freedom without limits on power.

There is no Constitution if it can be ignored by those who swear to uphold it.

The presidency was never meant to be a throne. The Constitution was never meant to be optional. And the people were never meant to be silent.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the time to speak out is now.

As our revolutionary forefathers learned the hard way, once freedom is lost, it is rarely regained without a fight.

This originally appeared on The Rutherford Institute.

The post How a President Becomes a Dictator: By Executive Order appeared first on LewRockwell.

NBC just reported that high level talks in London to end the war in Ukraine foundered when Zelensky proclaimed he would never agree to a deal in which the U.S. officially recognized the Crimea as Russian territory.

Zelenskyy has consistently rejected the suggestion that his country give up its claim to the Crimean Peninsula.

“There’s nothing to talk about here,” he said at a media conference Tuesday. “This is against our constitution.”

A brief review of history reveals there is little historical basis for Zelensky’s claim. Demanding that Russia give up Crimea—home of its Sevastopol Naval Base since 1783—resembles the demand that the U.S. return the Hawaiian Islands (including its Pearl Harbor Naval Station) to an independent Hawaiian state.

After American agents deposed the Hawaiian monarch in 1893, the U.S. government annexed Hawaii in 1898—at the same time it snatched Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines from Spain.

In 1954, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet transferred administration of Crimea to the Ukrainian Oblast of the Soviet Union. This was, at the time, the equivalent of the United States government ceding territory that was part of Texas (annexed in 1845) to the U.S. territory of Colorado (annexed from Mexico when the U.S. won the Mexican-American War in 1848).

The following is a brief timeline of Crimean history.

1441-1783: Territory of the Crimean Khanate, a Crimean Tatar state that ran a slave trade, abducting Europeans and selling them in Ottoman slave markets.

1783-1917: Territory of Imperial Russia. The peninsula was annexed by Russia under Catharine the Great and became home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet at the Sevastopol Naval Base.

1853-56: Crimean War: Russia lost the war against Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire. Russia retained control of the peninsula but was forced to end operations of its Black Sea Fleet. The peninsula continued to be inhabited by a Russian majority, with some Tatars, Ukrainians, and a small number of Germans and Jews.

1877-78: Russo-Turkish War. Russia won the war and reconstituted its Black Sea Fleet.

1905: Russian Revolution. Crew of Battleship Potemkin mutinied against the Russian Imperial officers. The revolution was suppressed.

1914-1917: World War I: Ottoman and German naval vessels skirmished with Russian vessels that were part of the Black Sea Fleet.

1917-1922: Russian Civil War.

1922-1991: Territory of Soviet Union.

1991-2014: Territory of Ukraine, which leased the Sevastopol Naval Base to Russia.

2014-2025: Unrecognized territory of Russia.

Note that the United States never had a dog in any of the above fights until 1917, when it entered World War I on the side of the Russians. The U.S. again entered war on the side of the Soviet Union in 1941. Hostilities between the U.S. and Russia over Crimea only really began when the U.S. DoD and CIA began meddling in Ukraine during the 2005-2014 period.

The American people have never had any interest in which of Europe’s ever-quarreling powers controls the Crimean peninsula.

Zelensky may well choose to fight “until the last cartridge” over Crimea. However, it seems to me that President Trump should now tell him he can do so without U.S. military assistance.

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

The post Crimea’s Bloody History appeared first on LewRockwell.

Yesterday the White House released an executive order called “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” taking aim at the inane and destructive “disparate impact” policy.

According to this policy, if any employment requirement has a “disparate impact” on the races, the employer can be hauled into court and forced to defend the requirement — easier said than done.

That includes requiring that applicants pass a test (even an excruciatingly simple test), or hold a high school diploma, or not have dishonorable military discharges. If the net result of such requirements is a disproportionate percentage of white people qualifying, the Justice Department can leap into action.

Rather than have their lives and businesses destroyed, employers generally just do what the regime wants and engage in race-based hiring.

Even if all sides concede that no discriminatory intent existed, the employer can still be punished.

According to the Order, disparate impact

holds that a near insurmountable presumption of unlawful discrimination exists where there are any differences in outcomes in certain circumstances among different races, sexes, or similar groups, even if there is no facially discriminatory policy or practice or discriminatory intent involved, and even if everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. Disparate-impact liability all but requires individuals and businesses to consider race and engage in racial balancing to avoid potentially crippling legal liability.

And then further:

On a practical level, disparate-impact liability has hindered businesses from making hiring and other employment decisions based on merit and skill, their needs, or the needs of their customers because of the specter that such a process might lead to disparate outcomes, and thus disparate-impact lawsuits. This has made it difficult, and in some cases impossible, for employers to use bona fide job-oriented evaluations when recruiting, which prevents job seekers from being paired with jobs to which their skills are most suited — in other words, it deprives them of opportunities for success. Because of disparate-impact liability, employers cannot act in the best interests of the job applicant, the employer, and the American public.

An accompanying Fact Sheet summarizes the practical effects of the order:

• It directs all agencies to deprioritize enforcement of statutes and regulations that include disparate-impact liability.
• The Order instructs the Attorney General to repeal or amend all Title VI (racial nondiscrimination) regulations that contemplate disparate-impact liability.
• It directs the administration to assess all pending investigations, lawsuits, and consent judgements that rely on a theory of disparate-impact liability, and take appropriate action.

This should have been done a long time ago. I have no further comment beyond that.

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