The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy (50 page)

“On a purely practical level, this was achieved by adding a sell-by date to the notes in issue, rather like a maturity date on a bond. For example, on a note issued 21 November 1827, it ‘Promises to pay the bearer One Pound on the first of October 1830’. This begs the question as to how the future obligation was to be honored, but again, a simple mechanism was implemented whereby rent from the resulting infrastructure and tax revenues on liquor was set aside into a sinking fund to pay off the interest-free borrowing.

“The end result of the Guernsey Experiment was spectacular—new roads, sea defenses and public buildings were established, fostering widespread trade and prosperity. Full employment was achieved, no deficits resulted and prices were stable, all without a penny paid in interest. What started as a trial led to a string of construction projects, which still stand and function to this day. Money was used in its purest form: as a convenient mechanism for oiling the wheels of commerce and development.”

But Birch also noted that there was a fly in the ointment. “One would have thought that everyone would be happy with such a success story but this was not the case. When you open a closed shop to competition, those with vested interests become highly protective. In those days it was the private banks who were threatened, because they were cut out of the equation. No loans meant no interest and no profit margin. So they may well have been the source of a mysterious complaint made to England’s Privy Counsel which put a ceiling on the issuance of Guernsey notes for the next century.”

Why should we pay attention to a situation on a small British isle almost two hundred years ago? “Whenever stimulus packages, tax rebates or bank bail-outs are paraded as solutions to the credit crisis they are actually part and parcel of its very cause,” explained Birch. “It all stems from the quick-fix approach of producing money out of thin air and leaving it for the next generation to pay-off. This has been on-going in the United States since [at the very least] the Vietnam War, when the last vestige of monetary restraint was cast aside; in abandoning gold as a check on the money supply, the US freed the world from financial discipline. The dissolution of the Dollar has been evident ever since.”

Birch said banks still have a role to play in providing liquidity by matching investors with borrowers, but they can no longer be trusted with the unrestrained creation of credit. “The Guernsey Experiment…shows that simple ideas can work wonders,” he said. “They simply require an unselfish philosophy and a desire to do the right thing for future generations, much like America’s Founding Fathers.”

To disengage from the inflated national economy and to bolster local businesses, some Americans are experimenting with their own money. One instance of this is the BerkShare system, a local currency that has circulated in the Berkshires area of Massachusetts since 2006. According to the BerkShare website, nearly four hundred businesses in the Berkshire area accept BerkShares, which are printed on special paper including security features.

Labeled a “great economic experiment” by the
New York Times,
BerkShares are “a tool for community empowerment, enabling merchants and consumers to plant the seeds for an alternative economic future for their communities.” The BerkShare website proclaims, “Five different banks have partnered with BerkShares, with a total of thirteen branch offices now serving as exchange stations. For BerkShares, this is only the beginning. Future plans could involve BerkShare checking accounts, electronic transfer of funds, ATM machines, and even a loan program to facilitate the creation of new, local businesses manufacturing more of the goods that are used locally.”

FIRE CONGRESS

Our government, partially modeled after that of the Greeks, once flourished as a republican democracy. Yet, under recent authority, our government has devolved into a dichotomy of socialism and capitalism—melding public ownership and private ownership. Capitalism brings wealth to individuals who work hard while socialism brings wealth to those in control, who lie to get elected; for example, “No new taxes”—G.H.W. Bush, 1988; “Change you can believe in,” Obama, 2008. In virtually every case, capitalism yields more wealth for an individual than needed. To resolve the discrepancy between those who have too much and those who have nothing, the capitalists invented charity, a product of religious morality.

The globalists devalued individual charity decades ago by suppressing the free exercise of religion and by replacing private charity with government charity. Those who promised the most charity to the people got elected to public office. This leads to a nation where a majority of nonproducers are in charge of the producers. As a growing number of people realize that life is easier as a nonproducer, more and more people strive for jobs as nonproducers. In the end, there are fewer people left to produce. This is the ultimate failure of socialism, and appropriately accounts for the collapse of Soviet communism.

America’s elected Congress has allowed more and more nonproducers to live off the largesse of fewer and fewer producers. Today, adding government retirees, the disabled, Medicare, and Social Security to the welfare recipients, there are more Americans living off the government than paying into it.

Although no compassionate person is advocating cutting programs to those truly in need, the national budget must be trimmed and Congress appears unwilling or unable to do so.

In 2009 and 2010, a plan was offered to send an indelible message to Congress that the taxpayers want serious change—fire Congress. Many believe that such a plan may be the only way to effect real change in government. Several websites and organizations sprang up advocating voting out every incumbent in Congress. To borrow famous words, generally attributed to Mark Twain: “Politicians are like diapers; they need to be changed often and for the same reason.”

Anticipation for drastic change has been coming for decades. Wright Patman, who was chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency for more than sixteen years, predicted in 1941 that the public would demand a drastic change in Congress due to its monetary policies. Patman said, “I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money…. I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with the Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiotic system to continue.”

In early 2009, Rasmussen Reports, a firm that distributes public opinion polling information, reported that corporate CEOs were the least favorably regarded professionals among a list of professional groups that included bankers, lawyers, and small business owners. But in September, Congress took the honor of being the least favored. “Seventy-two percent (72%) view them unfavorably,” stated a Rasmussen news release. “There’s some intensity in that perception, too. Only four percent (4%) have a very favorable view of congressmen, while 37 percent view them very unfavorably. Even 56 percent of Democrats have an unfavorable view of Congress although their party controls both the House and the Senate. Of course, their opposition pales next to the 86 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of adults not affiliated with either party who have an unfavorable opinion of Congress. But then voters are evenly divided over whether a group of people randomly selected from the phone book would do a better job than the current Congress.”

As Obama’s promised “Change we can believe in” failed to materialize in 2009, a movement to throw out Congress began to gain strength. The website for an organization called Kick Them All Out reads, “Presidents have no Constitutional authority to do most of the things they claim they can do. They can only ask the Congress to do what they want. The Congress could have stopped everything that’s happening; the wars, the Wall Street takeover, the trillion-dollar defense budget they just passed. Our so-called representatives have sold us out so many times it makes my head spin and what do we all do? We not only let them keep their jobs, but you watch, they will most likely give themselves a raise, like they always do.

“The Congress critters work for
us,
not the central bankers and transnational corporations. What would you do if you owned a company and none of your employees listened to you, they lied to you, didn’t do the jobs you gave them to do, and in fact, were actually working for your competition and selling your company down the river as fast as they could? I don’t think you’d keep them on and give them a raise! Well, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing, only in this case, your company is our Federal Government, and your employees are the 435 members in the House of Representatives and the 100 members of the Senate, virtually all of them working for the transnational corporations (the competition) and they have already achieved a hostile takeover of our government on every level and are using the powers of our own government against us in order to take over our entire nation. What the heck happened to that thing called ‘the wisdom of the American people’? You don’t reward employees that betray you. YOU FIRE THEM [original emphasis]!”

The Kick Them All Out website offers free posters of the famous Uncle Sam painting by James Montgomery Flagg. But in this rendition, an artist has changed the slogan to read “I want you! To kick them all out! Do your patriotic duty and show Congress who the boss is!”

A similar group from Texas is calling to empty Congress of its incumbents. Formed by Houston native Tim Cox, the group is called GOOOH (Get Out of Our House) and, as of 2009, had two thousand members in Houston and a hundred thousand outside the city. According to one Houston TV station, ABC affiliate KTRK, the group might succeed in its goal as a poll conducted by the station showed 47 percent of respondents reported they were no longer aligned with a political party. Some observers feel this number may be reflected in other parts of the country and signifies a movement away from the two-party system.

WorldNetDaily.com, a conservative online website headquartered in Washington, D.C., offered its readers the opportunity to send actual “pink slips” to specific members of Congress, warning that “if they vote for more spending, socialized medicine, cap-and-trade legislation and a hate-crimes measure” they would not be reelected in 2010. World Net Daily claimed to have distributed as many as three million slips in a two-week period. “I believe this campaign, already tremendously successful beyond my wildest expectations, can have a real impact on politicians whose first priority is getting re-elected,” said WND’s editor and CEO Joseph Farah.

Slightly less radical groups are trying to shake up the status quo through legislation. The Fire Congress Meetup Groups effort looks for members to join “more than two hundred thousand Americans and impose ‘de facto’ term limits on all U.S. Congressmen and Senators, regardless of party affiliation or whatever they promise…. Kick them all out, so the new ones finally hear us,” stated the Fire Congress’s website. One Internet wag recommended, “Limit all U.S. politicians to two terms—One in office, one in prison.”

Term limits is another idea that has been brought up in the past as a means to curtail congressional power. Though credible legislators have made such proposals in the past, the very people affected by the change—the members of Congress—have always voted the bills down.

U.S. Term Limits (USTL), headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, claims to be the leader of what the organization’s creators describe as the largest grassroots movement in American history. According to the USTL website, the organization has placed term limits proposals into fifteen state legislatures. “[E]ight of the ten largest cities in America adopted term limits for their city councils and/or mayor, and 37 states place term limits on their constitutional officers,” stated USTL literature. “American politicians, special interests and lobbyists continue to combat term limits, as they know term limits force out career politicians who are more concerned with their own gain than the interests of the American people…. Remember, every town councilman wants to be a congressman; every congressman wants to be a senator; and every senator wants to be president.”

At WeShouldFire Congress.com, the message is the same. “It’s time we send the message straight to Congress—do your job or you’re fired!” states literature on the website. This site raises money to place billboards across the nation urging voters to fire Congress.

All of these organizations and websites implore Americans to vote for America, not a political party. Though the imperatives from these organizations resonate with many voters, when election time rolls around, many voters will continue to vote for the same old faces and political parties.

The question naturally arises, why don’t more progressives and independents run for public office? It would seem as if the progressives or independents would receive votes from those dissatisfied with Congress.

Yet this does not occur because progressives and independents are tied down trying to survive in a society in which the love of money has superseded the love of their fellow human being. To be specific, to win public office in any large city or state, a candidate must have television and radio broadcast time. Purchasing this time is expensive and often media outlets want cash in advance for political ads. Additionally, there are the costs of producing a professional-looking and effective ad. This is an expense that goes far beyond hand-painted posters and yard signs. It can run into the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars.

If candidates still want to succeed, they must ally themselves with one of the two major political parties and look for corporate or political action committee (PAC) money. This need for a huge stockpile of cash prevents most honorable and honest people from competing in the political campaign process. Most candidates, especially at the local and state level, simply do not have the kind of money it takes to produce and air an influential advertisement.