From Liberal to Libertarian: Bush, Obama and the Final Bubble Introduction: Ideas and Change Americas once

vibrant Republic has morphed into an imperial oligarchy. The regim e has weaved a new dogma preached faithfully by pundits and politicians of both parties. As that dogma crumbles in the face an impending economic collapse, the vast majority of citizens will be left in an ideological vacuum. Palin or Obama, Fox or CNN, The Drudge Report or The Huffington Post; they simpl y affirm to their followers and viewers different shades of the same worldview. From within this paradigm its impossible to grasp the enormous manipulation and dysfunction that besets the nation. In the past there was sufficient diversity of ideas within the mainstream to offer adequate solutions for the challenges o f the time. This is no longer the case. A Liberal Democrat Born in the late 1960s, Cold War mythology was very. The Soviets were bad, the W est was good yet the echoes of Vietnam left a crack in the armor of the noble Unit ed States. Nonetheless, FDR saved the nation and American GIs saved the world. Government was good, if not perfect. It protected us from Nazis, Communists as well as from the greed and ruthlessness of bankers, oil men, and dirty tricks. The Left was for civil rights, workers rights and sympathized with the plight o f the poor. I watched Capras Its a Wonderful Life and was sure George Bailey was a Democrat an d Harry Potter was a Republican. Toss in a strong dose of Irish Catholicism and you get the picture. Kennedy was good, Nixon was bad. But many thought otherwise, and saw the Democr ats as the architects of big political machines and powerful unions bent on taxi ng, controlling and stealing from hard working people. For them, the Republican Party represented fiscal responsibility, religious values and the war on Commun ism. The Reagan years were for the fiscally conservative, anti-communist Republicans a renaissance. A bizarre, sentimental journey through the present. Strangely e nough, Mr. Reagan began to spend like no other peace time president in history w hile at the same time cutting taxes. Needless to say, the country grew and pro spered and the biggest bull market in history began. The credit bubble began in earnest. Buy and hold was the mantra. Wall Street went wild, and the men from New York with slicked back hair became the rock stars of the 80s. This fit perfe ctly into my world view; evil bankers and Republicans together stampeding over t he great civilization founded by FDR and his crown prince Kennedy. Little did I k now that hourly wages had been falling in the US since the early 1970s and I had the honor of being part of the first generation in American history that would e arn less than their fathers. A bump on the road with the market crash in 1987 and the S&L crisis which I litt le understood. Almost in the blink of an eye, the Berlin Wall came down, the Col d War was over, and GWH was invading Kuwait and definitively reestablishing Amer ican hegemony in the world. Japan, after threatening to overtake the US economi cally, began its long fade into deflation. Bill Clinton made his entrance, seemingly too young and impetuous to become a go od President and surrounded by very bright and dogmatic folks from the Left. Th e waves of change that had begun before he arrived carried his administration fo rward into what for my generation will surely be its apex. Technology, innovati on, money, growth and an angry, dogmatic right apparently jealous of his good fo

rtune and attacking him in an unprecedented way. All of this simply confirmed m y world view. Newt Gingrich and the evil Republicans against Bill and the good Democrats. But something irked me. The Clintonites imposed their own brand of politically c orrect dogma. I tried to brush it aside, but the bad taste lingered. The suppos edly fiscally irresponsible Democrats even balanced the budget, Times cover with Rubin, Greenspan and Summers as our saviors. Low inflation and unemployment, st eady growth, and a stock market that seemed to never stop. Silicon Valley repl aced Wall Street as the Mecca for brains and innovation. Technology would save us all and the wise Mr. Greenspan had us fiscally under control. All was well, we won. 9/11 and Iraq I was working for an Internet company when Election Day arrived in November of 2 000. I was giving a presentation on how to use email as a tool for advertising. The media buyers were skeptical, SPAM was still something you ate. I was in M adrid at the time and actually hadnt used my Broward County, Florida vote but I t old everyone I would have voted for Gore and he was sure to win. The 2000 elect ion only reinforced my belief in the evils of the Republican Party. Nothing goo d could come of it and it certainly didnt. But up till this point I firmly belie ved in a two party system and was sure that our media had enough diversity to co ver all angles and versions of what was happening. Living abroad during the buildup to the War in Iraq, the true intentions of Wash ington were crystal clear. The administration was using the patriotic fervor o f 9/11 to bulldoze the country into a war that had nothing to do with terrorists or 9/11. There was another agenda, but whose agenda? I began to hear about Ne o-Cons and their strategies to re-shape the Middle East and I was sure the Democ ratic Party would put up the fight of its life to do what was right. They didnt. The majority of the Clinton era stalwarts supported the War in Iraq as did bot h the conservative and liberal media. What had happened? What was the agenda? Then came 2004, payback. John Kerry had a gun full of bullets and Bush a broken stick. The American people would awaken, cheered on by a duped media looking f or redemption, and they would oust Bush as an usurper and war monger. But it di dnt happen. Neither the electorate nor the media was willing to really call him out. If there was ever a moment when one party should overwhelmingly defeated t he other it was 2004. The War in Iraq was based on lies and mistruths, thousand s were dead, billions spent yet no one was willing or able to point the finger a t the culprits: AIPAC, the Neo-Cons and their apologists in the media. The Ker ry campaign was the first campaign I ever worked for, and the experience was not only disheartening, it was eye opening. 2008 and the Meaning of Money I must admit that even with an undergraduate degree in History, a Masters Degree in Management, and experience working for the marketing department of a bank, I had no idea how money was created, what fractional banking was, or really what t he Fed was. If you had asked me in 2006 how new money was created I probably woul d have guessed that the Treasury added on a certain amount to Federal spending t o increase M3. If you had asked me about the Fed, I would have guessed it was p art of the Treasury, and in a true/false scenario, if asked if the Fed was menti oned in the Constitution, I probably would have said yes. I dont ly well nce. I about a claim to be an expert on American history but I would consider myself fair informed and well read so I suspect I was not alone in 2006 in my ignora do remember a rather esoteric friend of mine telling me a bizarre story funny sounding island and Congress off on Christmas holiday and the crea

tion of the Fed. I chalked it up to conspiracy theories. By 2006 I had recently arrived in Silicon Valley and was doing okay for myself in a online marketing job. Making a good salary, it was still impossible for me to buy the most humble of converted rental one-bedroom apartments in the area. It reminded me of my mission to Argentina to try and salvage the operations of the Internet company I worked for at that time. Thousands spent on office furni ture, PR firms, big salaries but NO revenue. I knew what a bubble was firsthand , and Silicon Valley real estate had bubble written all over it. The second tim e in my life I came into contact with what can only be called funny money. Who in their right mind would give millions to companies with no income or people wi thout jobs to buy overpriced houses? I had worked in a bank and had had the ris k speech drilled into me. I knew bankers, and bankers werent stupid and never, n ever lost sight of risk. I was simply confused. These prices had to come down at some point or new buyers would simply not be able to afford a home. I had se en the same thing in Spain. It was very obvious but I assumed I was missing som e part of the puzzle; those with access to the data had to know better than I. By 2008 I was in New York working for an agency. The first cracks were appearin g in the hull, but I, as most, had no idea how far things would collapse. Once t hey did, it was the first truly cataclysmic event for my generation. While 9/11 , with all it horrors, did not shake the very core of the Republic; we were atta cked, we would recover, the financial crisis of 2008 brought the country to its knees. The extent of the illusory wealth and almost holographic reality that Wa ll Street and the Fed, with plenty of cheerleaders in the media, created was ext raordinary. How could so much wealth be created out of nothing, and disappear i nto thin air in the blink of an eye? Goldman Sachs, Summers, Greenspan, Bernanke, Rubin and the whole host of unsavor y characters once glorified as the creators of 1990s boom were finally being reve aled for what they were. The elections of 2008 would certainly bring about a ma ssive house cleaning, heads would roll. The bankers and the war mongers would fin ally be given what they deserve. Who better than Barack Obama to give it to the m? I had been right the whole time, it was all the Republicans fault. The Last Nail: Obama I didnt have a television, and hadnt had one for a long time. The first time I sa w Obama give a personal interview I was very underwhelmed. The topic was educat ion and he seemed incredibly bland and vague for someone who had been a communit y organizer, whatever that really meant. But I brushed it off. He was being in tentionally vague to keep the Right at bay. His rhetoric completely seduced me, and his impressive resume assured me he was much more on the ball than he appea red. I was beginning to figure out what TARP was, and it was sickening. Anyone in Am erica gets in over their heads with that type of arrogance always had and should get crushed, humiliated, sent out to pasture. But the bankers got a free pass after collapsing the world economy. Once in office, Obama would clean house. He had to tell AIPAC what they wanted to hear, but as soon as he took the oath, he would set them straight and send them back to Tel Aviv in leaky boat; it was all about getting him in. (See The End of the Republic for more on this topic) O nce in office he would make the changes he so vaguely insinuated, but could not mention. He was a Democrat, big money and foreign lobbies bent on war were the enemy; he was good and he would conquer evil. Then he was elected. Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Tim Geitner, Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Ben Ber nanke

I learned about the Fed. I watched Bernanke buy $1 trillion of assets from the cartel that he served. The Fed Board of Governors was the most powerful organ i n this country and could literally create trillions of dollars out of nothing. What right did he have to exchange $1 trillion of US currency for garbage assets from banks? Why were banks allowed to create money? With a flick of a finger on a mouse, they could whip up in milliseconds what would take hundreds of men and women a lifetime to earn. In the name of leverage they were creating money. Why could Bernanke spend trillions as he liked, yet the President had to fight toot h and nail to pass a stimulus bill of significantly less money? Learning how mo ney is made, what the Fed is and who runs it, and how the board is appointed mad e my skin crawl. (See The Myth of Abstract Money for more on this topic) From O bama or McCain never a word. Greenspan was still considered the closest thing t o a living George Washington. Learning what money was, who created it, and who the Fed was finally pushed me b eyond the pale. The little spat with Israel concocted on Joe Bidens trip to Jer usalem had all the ear marks of a straw man. Then the Rachel Corrie, one dead A merican and not a peep from the President. All we heard was Iran, Iran and more Iran. (See Banging the Drums of War: Iran and the Neo-cons for more on this top ic) It seemed that Wall Street and Tel Aviv were even more imbedded in the White House than under GW. In the first quarter of 2010 the five largest banks in th e US had record trading profits, and not one losing day. TARP and Quantitative Easing were nothing less than a $2 Trillion bankrolling of the banks that had de stroyed the world economy but were saved nonetheless. Then they miraculously ret urned the TARP money with new money Bernanke had given to them through Quantitat ive Easing just in the nick of time to cash in their bonuses. The country was r eeling from unemployment and foreclosures, our armies were fighting two wars, bu t Wall Street was back bidding up houses on the Hamptons. The same war mongers who had invented the War in Iraq were doing it again with Ira n. With a few exceptions (Matt Taibi, Alexander Cockburn for example) the media was giving them an incredible free ride. The right wing pundits talked about s ocialism, and birth certificates, the left about the Tea Party and Palin, but fe w if any would mention the 800lb gorillas of the Fed, fake money and the Israeli lobby. Kondrieff Along the way I encountered the Russian economist Kondrieff and his economic cyc les. Spring, a new time of innovation and change, Summer, consolidation and com fort, Fall, bubbles and credit induced mania, Winter, the collapse of credit, ec onomic and political turmoil. In the late 1920s Stalin asked him to create a fiv e year plan and he told Stalin it was not the time for grandiose plans, the worl d was entering into a long economic Winter, not the time to plant but rather ti me to hunker down, stay warm, and wait for Spring. Stalin sent him to the Gulag and later had him executed. Winter finally ended in the late 1940s, Spring last ed until the early 1960s, Summer through the late 1970s and the 1980s brought us th e very long Fall extended by the unprecedented power of historys greatest fiat cu rrency, the dollar. Winter began on 9/11, but we didnt get our first snow to til l 2008. TARP and Quantitative Easing have kept the blizzards at bay, but they w ill soon be upon us. The first major bubble I witnessed was the Internet equities bubble. People wen t mad bidding up page views when they didnt know the difference between a page vi ew and a pager. It was a very abstract bubble, futuristic, sexy and finally ver y painful for the investors as well as the employees of those nascent firms. Th e second bubble I witnessed was the real estate bubble. After the esoteric digi tal bust, what better place to put your dollars than brick and mortar? Wall St reet pounced on it as they began marketing away the debt as fancy sounding secur itized loans. Mortgages on a $500,000 McMansion wound up worth about as much a

few hundred page views on Pets.com. The only safer investment than a home is a Treasury Bond. If the sun rises, your money is good. This will be the last bu bble for a long, long time. Enjoy the popping sound. (See Ben and the Bankers B ig Bubble for more on this topic) What made so much sense for me about Kondrieff was how his theories answered a v ery simple question. Why was my generation so lucky? No provoked wars, no cons cription, no social upheavals, no major economic crisis. The truth was we were born in early Summer and came of age in a sunny, deceptive Fall. We didnt realiz e that Greenspan worked his magic by cooking the books. He changed how inflatio n and unemployment were calculated, giving the world the impression that our eco nomy was much healthier than it was and at the same time turning his cartel of b ankers into a mega powerful, too big too fail band of thieves. He made money out of thin air, creating massive asset bubbles he called froth. It worked until it d idnt. His faithful protg Bernanke is shooting the last bullets from the fiat gun i n defense of his cartel, but they are bouncing off the enemy like tennis balls t hrown by little girls. The valiant Kondrieff who while even in prison didnt stop writing or thinking, ga ve me the context, the historic sense of where we were, and what lie ahead. A Liberal Conscience The last Liberal Democratic hook in me was the Liberal Conscience. I was a terr ibly typical exemplar of this horrid phenomenon; the weak link in every left lea ner the world over. Help the weak, feed the poor, give shelter to the homeless and aid the sick. Its seemingly The Sermon on the Mount, the essence of Christia nity, but rather its the pious right to allow us to feel superior. Its in the fac t the origin of slavery and every totalitarian regime every dreamed up. Dont thi nk, dont act, I will do it for you but better. What most impresses me with people is the amount of vitality, greed and ingenuit y they have. Unleash it, respect it, let if fly and you have a free man finding his own unique way through life. The Liberal Conscience is a cowards scheme to control and manipulate. Those who wish to control what we think, what we say, what we do with our bodies and minds do not respect their fellow humans, they fi nd them inferior, unworthy of making decisions and living with the consequences. People will do wonderful things and wonderfully stupid things, they will live, have their moments of glory as well as their times of despair, and they will fi nally die. It is not for us to put each other in cages, we are not zoo keepers we are men. A trip to Eastern Europe finally removed the hook for good when I saw the enormo us potential of people, and how it was squandered by those who knew best. Only a man knows what is best for him, and only those that truly respect and love their fellow man give him the space and air to do his bidding. The Liberal Conscienc e is nothing more than jackboots disguised as penny loafers. The Media My taste in media had always been that of the quintessential liberal. NPR, The New Yorker, The New York Times, PBS, The Atlantic, and Harpers. Gradually, as I became more informed about the Fed and read Mearshiemer and Walt, I couldnt help but notice the incredible amount of censorship and outright propaganda that the se so called bastions of American journalism spewed. I watched Jimmy Carter and Mearshiemer and Walt get mauled when they should have become the driving force behind a complete overhaul of our foreign policy. I watched them write fluff pi eces on Larry Summers and send correspondents to Tehran with the only intention of bringing back the message everyone wanted to hear.

Five major corporations control almost all the mainstream media in this country. NewsCorp, Gannet, TimeWarner, GE and the New York Times Company. From CNN to Fox, ABC to NBC, The New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, never a word you hear against the Fed or Israel. They have dummied down and obfuscated to such an extent that the vast majority of Americans are convinced that there is a majo r difference between the two Madison Avenue bubble heads: Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. Once Americans realize that the only difference between All Things Cons idered and Rush Limbaugh is the cars their listeners drive will they be able to call a spade a spade and demand change. They may have their differences about w ho can get married, mosques and birth certificates but you will never hear NPR, CNN, FOX, Glen Beck or the puppet de jour directly address why we are fighting t he War in Iraq and preparing for one in Iran, or how the Fed is a cartel of bank ers with a license to steal. Corporate media is simply a propaganda machine fo r the select few who have prostituted the Republic and turned it into a den of t hieves and murderers. An Agenda The United States has become a cleptocracy parading itself as an oligarchy. But there is one thing the American people have up their sleeves, a birthright. W hile far from perfect, and with obvious mistakes especially regarding slavery, w omen and indigenous peoples, the Founding Fathers lived a moment of unique polit ical enlightenment. They understood with rare clarity the danger that governmen t posed, and created a Republic that let men live freely and restrained governme nt with unprecedented vigor. The tree of liberty they planted bore abundant frui t, but the time has arrived to get out the sheers. The coming crisis, of which w e have only felt the first tremors, will create an incredible opportunity for Am ericans to completely re-vamp their lives, the lives of their children, and poss ibly the future of the world by simply voting, en masse, for the Constitution th at they thought they already had. The following is a potential agenda for a thi rd party, radically Constitutional, unabashedly American. Debt and the Fed The first reality that must be accepted is that the United States Government and its citizens will never be able to pay back the enormous amount of debt, public and private, that has been accumulated over the last 30 years. It is simply im possible. The country is bankrupt. Total US public debt, including unfunded li abilities, is over $60 trillion. The Federal Government has revenues in the $2. 5 trillion range, and it is running a debt of about $1 trillion. In plain, Amer ican English; this dog dont hunt. You dont need a PHD from MIT to do the math. T his of course doesnt include private debt which brings the total to close to $90 trillion on a GDP of about $14 trillion. That is $300,000 for everyone man, wom an and child in the United States. What is the solution? A debt jubilee. We simply erase the hard drive and start over. What is created out of thin air, can be erased with the flick of mouse. Money is a store of value, and this deb t does NOT represent real value, it has been invented. It is as simple as that. No shots are fired, no one dies, and no one starves. All cash, bank accounts, equity ownership and property rights are fully respected, we start over. Only those holding US Treasury Bonds will be paid a percentage of face value on the d ebt they hold, probably in the 30% range, but that calculation does need a PHD w hich I am unfortunately lacking. Who will get the big haircut? Foreign governments who hold large stakes in US p aper, but in return they will get a portion of their money back in real money, and a once again vibrant US economy. The other group to get a serious trim will be the banking cartel that organized this massive ponzi scheme, and they will be g etting off very easy in the eyes of many.

The Fed is abolished as is fractional reserve banking. Banks will be refunded a nd become money agents, charging a spread on loans, as well as collecting fees f or monetary services. The new currency will be based on a basket of commodities : oil, gold, silver and natural gas for example. Money supply will be increased only to accommodate GDP growth. Not a penny more. Legislation will be passed that will make deficit spending illegal and only possible with an 80% majority i n both House and Senate in the case of a major emergency. Herman Daly writes ex tensively about this. The Welfare State For all its well intentioned origins, the welfare state must end. All citizens will be sent a check for the money they put into Social Security, with interest. A special fund will be created to maintain those citizens who are severely dis able and absolutely need government assistance, and then the responsibility for those funds will be passed on to the States. The same will happen for Medicare and Medicaid, with funds set up and passed on to the States to accommodate thos e persons with severe needs. All other Federal agencies, HUD, the Department of Education, Health and Human Resources etc. will be shuttered. Americans will b e free from the chains of debt, and from the intrusions of the Federal Governmen t. Free to live their lives and face the opportunities and challenges life bring s with the vitality and creativity that only liberty can offer. Taxes The Federal Government will fund itself primarily with an income tax and a consu mption tax. The tax code will be very simple. No taxes on the first $250,000, after that 50%. There will be no taxes on businesses or corporations, only on p hysical persons. Once the budget is set, a national VAT tax will be created to balance the budget. The VAT tax will be adjusted to meet the budgetary requirem ents of each new fiscal year. A reserve fund will be created for emergencies. This will be a point of major contention for many but we must not get bogged dow n ANY dogmas. The tax code will have as its goal to foster small businesses and entrepreneurs, and limit the radical accumulation of wealth. The oligarchy we have created now has isolated power and opportunity in the hands of a select few . This tax code will open up the playing field and reign in the mega rich. No loopholes. Tax returns will have 5 lines. The IRS will be eliminated and a new National Tax Agency will be created to carry out the implementation of the new tax system. Foreign Policy American foreign policy must be an extension of the core rights and beliefs we h old dear. We will treat other nations with the same respect and dignity we trea t our own citizens. The United States spends more on military spending than the next 19 countries co mbined. We must immediately relinquish the Empire. Within one year we must cl ose all foreign military bases and bring home all soldiers. A major foreign pol icy statement will be made. In the case of the Middle East, we will eliminate a ll foreign aid to Israel and Egypt, announce total neutrality in the Palestinian /Israeli conflict and end any special relationship with Israel. We will remove ourselves from NATO as well as all other military treaties/alliances. The Unite d States will become a bastion of neutrality. We will not involve ourselves in the internal politics of other nations and our military will only be used when W E are threatened as a nation. All of our major allies have the wherewithal to d efend themselves. We will respect each nation in the world in the same way we r espect each citizen of our nation.

The Alphabet Soup The CIA, FBI, DEA, ATF, NSA, Homeland Security and any others I missed will be e liminated. The United States will renounce spycraft and espionage. Military in telligence will be handled by the existing intelligence departments of the vario us branches of the military. The United States will unilaterally renounce assassination and torture of any pe rson in the world, regardless of citizenship. A new Federal Police force will be created to enforce those crimes, and only those crimes, that a literal readin g of the Constitution deems necessary. All other police activities will respons ibility of the States. The States With the abandonment of the Federal Welfare state, it will be up the States to d ecide whether they want to re-create those functions or not. Most likely, some will, and some wont. Each state, depending on the will of the citizens of that s tate, can create the type of society they deem fit, and fund it as they desire. This will add diversity to the country and create healthy differences that will allow the market to decide where and under what type of governmental umbrella s killed workers and industry best thrive. Drugs The war on drugs is a war on personal freedom that only perpetuates itself by cr eating massive drug cartels while turning our neighbors to the south into narcostates. (See One War we Dont Need for more on this topic). All Federal drug laws will be repealed, and all non-violent drug offenders detai ned in Federal penitentiaries will be released. It will be up to the States to decide what if any drug laws they want to have or not have. Caveats: Campaign Financing, the Environment, Education and Space Campaign Finance Reform One of the most insidious threats to our Republic has come from the influence of big money on politicians. Enormous amounts of money are needed to compete, and as in sports with performance enhancing drugs, campaign contributions have warp ed our political system and turned elected officials into the little more than m essenger boys for the mega rich. This is a thorny issue because it runs up against First Amendment rights, but no netheless it needs to be addressed. What happens on the State and local level s hould obviously be decided on that level. But for all Federal elections, a comp letely new system of campaign finance reform needs to be enacted. First, an official election period needs to be established, 6 months for example . At that point, an official list of candidates must be created, and an online ballot held. The top ten candidates would receive Federal Funds, and from that time on, that is all the money they would be able to spend on their campaigns. A second cut off would occur at 3 months, with only 5 campaigns funded, and the final cut off would come at on month, with only two candidates. At each cutoff, the eligible candidates would receive new funding. This system would be paid f or with a tax on advertising. A series of debates would be established and part icipation in these debates would be mandatory in order to receive funding. This system would level the playing field after the ten person cutoff, beyond wh ich, the candidates would be judged not by how much exposure they have, but by t

he quality of the exposure. Advertisers know the importance of reach and freque ncy, in effect, this system would give each finalist the same frequency and reac h, the winner would then be judged on the quality of the content. This system could have Constitutional implications that might require an Amendme nt process, but considering the importance of it, if needed, it should be embark ed upon. Energy and Taxes The new Federal Government will probably be less than a third of the size it is today. But there is one challenge facing the world that only a Federal governme nt can tackle, and that is the environment. History has shown that human greed will exhaust resources and contaminate the environment far beyond any point of r epair and certain constraints must be implemented to assure that we dont destroy our planet or exhaust necessary commodities. The Federal Government will create a new Energy Agency. The Energy Agency will have a twofold purpose, first to investigate new technologies and fund with seed capital new clean energy ventures. It will also create clean energy installati ons that will directly feed the grid. It will have a goal of having the country run off 100% clean renewable energy. It will be funded by a tax on non-renewab le energy sources, primarily oil, coal and natural gas. While this will skew ma rket dynamics to a certain extent, these taxes will also put a realistic cost on f ossil fuels by taking into account the contamination costs and depletion costs. The new EPA will have as its goal to convert unsustainable economic activity into sustainable ones. From agriculture and manufacturing to retail, all practices m ust be studied for their environmental impact, and those practices that are unsu stainable must be taxed to create competitive advantages for those following a s ustainable model. This of course is a slippery slope, but it is a path we must endure if we are to create a healthy long-term economic model. For example, are there re-usable alternatives to plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and plastic bag s? If so, tax the practices that contaminate so the cost of the product reflect s its true cost, not just the cost of production. Herman Daly has also written extensively on this topic. Education Education must be an entirely a State and local endeavor. Nonetheless, as a nat ion and a Republic we have in interest in at least setting a standard for how fu ture voting citizens are formed and educated. The proposed system would be a na tional test for all 18 year olds that covered all the major areas of study: mat h, science, philosophy, history, economics, art, music, political science, liter ature, languages, the environment etc. Taking the test would be completely volu ntary, but the incentive would be full university scholarships for the top 10% o f participants. A commission would be set up, an Academy so to speak, of cultural, political and business leaders to create the curriculum of the test. Hopefully this commissi on and the test itself would create great national debates on the key concepts w e consider relevant as a Republic. This would be funded entirely with a Federal Tax on advertising. (See ..for more on this topic) NASA Its logical that we continue to explore the Universe from a Federal level, as wel l as in cooperation with other nations. The exploration of Space helped define us as a nation, and it needs to be invigorated and supported so that it may cont inue to inspire Americans to seek peaceful adventure and exploration in the Univ

erse. While the military budget will be cut probably by around two thirds, a portion o f that should be re-directed toward a peaceful space program. Conclusion: Radicals and the Founding Fathers Many will read this and immediately exclaim that its radical, dangerous, or fring e. Its fascinating what people, after years of mass media indoctrination, find r adical. Take for example the issue of the Cordoba House in Manhattan. This a c ompletely fabricated issue to drive an agenda. What American would want to live in a country where you would have to show correct religious credentials before you could buy land and build on it? On the other hand, where is the national debate on AIPAC, an organization that h as immense power over our legislature and played a major role in the buildup to the War in Iraq? Its fascinating to see how as the last combat troops leave Iraq we are not hotly debating why and how we got entangled in this war, but discuss ing whether someone can build a cultural center (Muslim of course) in Manhattan. Another new hot topic will be whether to keep or let run out the Bush tax cuts. Thats akin to discussing whether to clip the nails of someone rushed to the emer gency room after a major car accident. They tell us, look at the nails, not the broken limbs. An interesting thought experiment is to imagine Thomas Jefferson, if we could ma gically transport him to the current period and get him completely up to date on all the issues facing the Nation. What we he have to say about our foreign adv entures, our media, The Fed, the national debt and our alphabet soup agencies? Once people regain their senses they will see that what is radical and fringe is our current political and economic situation. As a nation and a Republic we h ave completely lost north and the confusion wasnt brought on randomly. The time has arrived to begin calling things for what they are. No more double speak. We must demand that our media and politicians address the problems of the nation as a whole, not just the special interests of a few uber-rich manipulators. We MUST re-establish the Republic.