Pragmatic Economist

Kucinich endorses Ron Paul

This clip of the South Carolina GOP debate was edited out of the rebroadcast.

Same on FOX NEWS! someone needs to teach them a lesson!

Source http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/genera_melinda__080109_99_ways_to_steal_ele.htm

The Corporate types who have worked so diligently to ignore the only real Republican running in this primary made a mistake. They thought that they could use their Diebold Machines to steal the primary in New Hampshire for John McCain and it would be believed. No one is buying it.

According to Sally Castleman of Election Defense Alliance every county where a hand count was done came in exactly as predicted by Zogby. Where Diebold was in control we see what happens. Sally is getting me more information; stay tuned. Jim Condit reports that the Official Campaign spent less than $200,000.00 for advertising for Paul in New Hampshire. The corporate GOP Republican candidates each spent millions. Were they thinking that instead of getting Ron elected their jobs were to make sure there was money for bonuses for themselves? Those people also insisted that they had a plan and the people in place to watch the ballot. Again, just like in Iowa, so much bullshit.

In time people tell you the truth. Now we know.

I subscribed to the McCain online newsletter and was struck by the sudden heady certainty that they began to express a while back. Where did that come from? Why, when not even those in his own state can stand him? Just months ago the NeoCons lost control in Arizona to a group of real Conservatives.

It was a two for one package deal. Hillary got to steal the election from Obama and McCain’s votes were rearranged so that he ‘beat’ Ron Paul. There are only two parties in America today. Corporate Republican-Democrat, and Ron Paul.

Really, they made a mistake when they let their confidence show so clearly. They have made one mistake too many.

Paul lost in counties that counted by Diebold Machines.

To do the recount we need to have Ron ask for one by Friday. We also need $300,000.00 for the GOP count. With $600,000.00 we could make Hillary cry. Would it be worth it? Can Trevor get it going in time? Let Ron know we want it. He will understand. Since the NeoCons running his campaign isolate him we must reach out to him directly. Ask him everywhere you see him. Instead hello, say, “Recount NOW!”

The vote must be hand counted; we need to let the local people who cooperated know we will be taking legal action against them if they try again. We know it works. Remember Fergus.

http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=5219

Source: Prison Planet - Paul Joseph Watson

Major allegations of vote fraud in New Hampshire are circulating after Hillary Clinton reversed a mammoth pre-polling deficit to defeat Barack Obama with the aid of Diebold electronic voting machines, while confirmed votes for Ron Paul in the Sutton district were not even counted.

According to a voter in Sutton, New Hampshire, three of her family members voted for Ron Paul, yet when she checked the voting map on the Politico website, the total votes for Ron Paul were zero.

With 100% of precincts now reporting, the map still says zero votes for Ron Paul as you can see below.

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CLICK FOR ENLARGEMENT

It’s not as if Sutton had a handful of voters like some other districts - a total of 386 people voted yet we are led to believe that not one voted for Ron Paul? Judging by the Iowa results, around 10% of residents would be expected to vote for the Congressman, returning a total of around 38 votes in this district. Let’s be ultra-conservative and say just 5% support Paul - he’d still get 19 votes - but he got absolutely none whatsoever. Is there something wrong with this picture?

Greenville also tallied 144 votes yet not one for Congressman Paul.

Anyone else in Sutton who voted for Ron Paul needs to go public immediately with the charge of vote fraud and make it known that they were cheated out of their right to vote.

Diebold voting machines also did Congressman Paul no favors last night - compared to hand counted ballots Giuliani gained just short of 0.5% from electronic voting whereas Paul lost over 2%, which was the difference between finishing 4th and 5th, as this graph documents.

Mitt Romney profited the most from the Diebold swing, he received 7% more votes compared to hand counted ballots.

In the Democratic race the Diebold voting machines clearly swung the primary in Hillary Clinton’s favor at the expense of Barack Obama, who had a commanding lead over the New York Senator going into the contest.

Zogby polling numbers had Obama leading Clinton by a whopping 42/29 per cent, yet Clinton eventually took the primary by three per cent.

“If I was Barack Obama, I’d certainly not have conceded this election this quickly,” writes The Brad Blog. “I’m not quite sure what he was thinking. And as far as offering an indication of whether he understands how these systems work, and the necessity of making sure that votes are counted, and counted accurately, it does not offer a great deal of confidence at this hour.”

“While I have no evidence at this time — let me repeat, no evidence at this time — of chicanery, what we do know is that chicanery, with this particular voting system, is not particularly difficult. Particularly when one private company — and a less-than-respectable one at that, as I detailed in the previous post — runs the entire process.”

Clinton would not have beat Obama without the aid of Diebold voting machines. In precincts where electronic voting machines were used, Clinton got a 7% swing over Obama, having gained 5% in comparison to hand-counted ballots and Obama losing 2%.

As we reported yesterday, the contract for programming all of New Hampshire’s Diebold voting machines, which combined counted 81 per cent of the vote yesterday, is owned by LHS Associates, whose owner John Silvestro has gone to great lengths to deflect accusations that the machines can easily be rigged.

After purchasing a Diebold 1.94w machine, the same system used in New Hampshire, a computer repair shop employee picked at random by Black Box Voting was able to zero in on the system’s vulnerable memory card within just ten minutes. Hacking expert Harri Hursti testified in front of the New Hampshire legislature that the machines were wide open to fraud.

Table Comparing Machine vs Hand Counts

One person stood up and told the truth about the Fed, about housing and about our corrupted Congress.

And America evidently wasn’t ready for him.

They weren’t ready for the truth.

Too bad.

No one can say we did not see this coming. The writing was on the wall for many years! Most just had too big of a conflict of interest to pay attention. Sorry you gambled with your house, but now you lost. time to pay up. (just like vegas, betting the farm… Farm on Black… and the winner is RED… DOH!)

This chart from Credit Suisse via the IMF shows the heavy subprime resets in 2008, plus it shows the reset problems with Alt-A and Option ARM loans in later years.

Although many of the homeowners in the 2009 to 2011 reset periods will refinance (if they can), this shows that the problems in housing will linger for several years. What is especially concerning is all these Option ARM resets in 2010 and 2011. Most of these homeowners are selecting the minimum payments (negatively amortizing) and many homeowners will be upside down when the ARM resets.

source

Choice 1: Subsidize them with our taxes.
Choice 2: Bomb them paid for by our taxes.
Choice 3: Let them handle their own affairs & keep our money in America where it belongs.

When it comes to the housing bubble, the Fed and even bogus government CPI data, Ron Paul gets it. Hands down. The dude just gets it.

Everyone else running by comparison is an imbecile.

And yet that’s what America wants. Vote Imbecile 2008!

Ron Paul Gets Huge Endorsement From Conservative Congressman For anyone who thinks US Presidential candidate Ron Paul does not have support from the old school Republican conservatives, think again.

Last month, Paul received a ringing endorsement from one such man, New Jersey Assemblyman Michael Doherty. 

This story first broke in USA Daily.  Since that time, Doherty has told his political colleagues he’s going to be very vocal in support of Ron Paul.

“It’s not just an endorsement, he’s doing the whole Oprah Winfrey thing,” said Gambling911.com Senior Editor, Payton O’Brien, comparing Doherty’s efforts in getting Paul elected to that of Oprah Winfrey’s work in getting Barack Obama elected.  “He’s been attending Ron Paul rallies.”

While New Jersey typically votes Democrat, Paul’s appeal stretches beyond party lines. 

Doherty had been identified as a likely candidate for the 2008 U.S. Senate race against incumbent Frank Lautenberg.  However, in August of 2007, Doherty stated he would not seek the Republican nomination for Senate in 2008.

Doherty was elected to the New Jersey General Assembly in 2001, and re-elected in 2003 and 2005. He serves on the Assembly on the Appropriations Committee and the Labor Committee.  Previously, he has served on the Agriculture Committee, the Housing and the Local Government Committee and the State House Commission. Doherty has been endorsed repeatedly by pro-business groups such as the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, the Commerce and Industry Association of New Jersey, the New Jersey Restaurant Association and the National Federation of Independent Business (awarded a perfect 100% voting record by the NFIB). His voting record is ranked A+ by the National Rifle Association and has been repeatedly endorsed by New Jersey Right to Life. Doherty is an outspoken critic of the court system, and has introduced numerous pieces of legislation challenging court decisions and procedures. He was designated as “Legislator of the Year” in 2007 by the N.J. Family Policy Council for his continued efforts to support conservative legislation. Doherty is a self-described global warming skeptic.

“The Republican voters of New Jersey will listen to Doherty,” O’Brien said. 

Ron Paul has been mostly shunned by those in his own political party, or so the media would like people to believe.  Nevertheless, he’s received the endorsement of the US Military and he led the Texas Delegation to nominate Ronald Reagan for president, which should have a lot of Reaganites backing the long term Texas Congressman.  

Even though Huckabee can be bought off, Ron Paul is called “Dr. No” because the special interest groups will not even attempt to bribe him because he never takes any of their money over 20 years in congress! Don’t fall for Huckabee, the tax hiking, bribe taking, amnesty loving, FAKE CONSERVATIVE.

If you have ever wondered how our modern fractional reserve banking system really works, then watch this. It’s fun and simple, but it spells out how banking started, and how it devolved in to what we have today.

 Read this… does it not sound like it could have come right out of Ron Paul?

• Abolish the Fed.
• Break up the credit rating cartel.
• Eliminate fractional reserve lending (this cannot happen all at once but rather over time).
• Put in place sound money policies based on a sound currency.

Nouriel Roubini is exploring Why monetary policy easing is warranted even in the current insolvency crisis.

While aggressive monetary policy easing will not prevent a hard landing – as it did not prevent one in 2001 – the length and depth of an economic downturn is affected by monetary policy. And it is both the duty and responsibility of central banks to reduce partly avoidable severe economic downturn that lead to massive losses of jobs, welfare and incomes. The job of a central bank is not to bail out the financial system and/or investors but that of bailing out the real economy. Having millions of workers lose their jobs only to teach a lesson to reckless investors and lenders on Wall Street and the City does not make sense.

This is the most severe financial crisis that the global economy has experienced in the last few decades. But so far central banks have been deluding themselves that this is a temporary run-of-the-mill liquidity shock. It is time to recognize the severity of this crisis and take policy actions – that while unable to prevent now unavoidable and necessary massive financial losses and unable to prevent a US recession - that will minimize the extent of the collateral damage to the global economy of the reckless US economic policies of the last six years.

I have great respect for Nouriel Roubini. He has been proven correct about housing, about commercial real estate, and about the recession that is already upon us that most economists do not even see yet. His views on where things are headed are extremely close to mine and have been for as long as I can remember. I look to Roubini to see if I am on track with my own opinions about where we are headed and why.

Looking ahead, his views that the problem at hand is not a question of liquidity but a question of solvency are spot on. If he is wrong, then so am I. I have said the same things. I tip my hat to Nouriel Roubini.

Furthermore, there is no question a hard landing is coming. It will likely be the biggest hard landing since the great depression. Those are my words not Roubini’s, but that seems to be what he is projecting with the statement “central banks have been deluding themselves that this is a temporary run-of-the-mill liquidity shock”.

The problem I have is not in Roubini’s analysis as to what is happening but rather in his proposed cure. Roubini alludes that the Central bank is somehow in control of the jobs picture and jobs will be saved if only the Fed would aggressively cut rates.

I disagree. The Fed is not in control of much of anything, and certainly not jobs. Given the rampant overcapacity in darn near everything (see Implications of Commercial Real Estate Collapse), and given a housing bust we both seem to think is going to last for quite some time, I believe the Fed could slash rates to 0% and it will not create many jobs (at least not in the US).

The Seen and the Unseen and the Guesses

There is the seen and the unseen of slashing interest rates to save jobs. There is the seen and the unseen about what slashing interest rates would do about price inflation. There is the seen and the unseen about how our trade partners would react. There is the pure guess as to what might happen to long term interest rates if the Fed did what Roubini asked.

That is just the beginning of the seen and the unseen and the guesses. And oddly enough, there is not a person alive that can possibly say that slashing the Fed Funds Rate would save any US jobs. Even if by some miracle slashing interest rates did save jobs, the next question would be at what cost?

Roubini and many others continue to place faith in the Fed’s ability to do something intelligent while admitting the Fed’s interest rate policy led us to the current path of destruction we are now on. This is not only missing the boat, but missing it big time.

The proposed cures are the same cures that got us to where we are today.

Greenspan attempting to prevent a hard landing in 2001 put off the problem to where we are today. Looking back at 2001-2002 there are only three possibilities as to what transpired.

• The Fed is was guessing at what to do.
• The Fed slashed interest rates to 1% hoping it would fix the problem, willing to take the chance no matter what the downstream consequences.
• The Fed knowingly and willingly created a housing bubble for some naive if not outright devious purpose.

There simply are no other possibilities. And no matter which one of those you believe, there can be nothing but zero confidence in the Fed going forward. Bernanke and central bankers in general have a huge credibility issue now, and it is a credibility issue of their own making.

Sadly, not once have I heard Roubini say “The problem is the Fed. Therefore the Fed should be abolished”. Instead I see call for more intervention, more government regulation, and more of the same price fixing interest rate solution that got us to where we are today.

The free market never would have let interest rates get to 1%, nor would the free market have let the ratings agent scam get as carried away as it did. For more on that subject please see Time To Break Up The Credit Rating Cartel.

More regulation is not the answer. More price fixing interest rates is not the answer. More guessing about what to do is not the answer.

A simple solution with no guesswork

• Abolish the Fed.
• Break up the credit rating cartel.
• Eliminate fractional reserve lending (this cannot happen all at once but rather over time).
• Put in place sound money policies based on a sound currency.

A currency backed by gold is the best sound money solution because a gold standard forces discipline. However, any solution that guarantees fiscal discipline could work, at least in theory. What we know for sure is the free market never in a million years would have come up with a scheme for currency that can be produced at no cost and backed by nothing, while pretending there is great value in it.

I pulled out my copy of The Monetary Elite vs. Gold’s Honest Discipline for a quick review. I found these passages:

In 1970 80% of all money transactions were directly related to the production of goods and services. Five years later after the collapse of Bretton Woods, only 20% of all money transactions were directly related to the production of goods and services. In 1997, the figure was 1%.

If meaningful reform is not forthcoming, a financial crisis dwarfing all previous crisis is probably in the cards. One cannot know when this will occur but one can know why: the lack of scarcity and distributional integrity in the monetary unit.

Ironically, Roubini might be correct in that slashing interest rates is the right thing to do. After all, it is possible (even if extremely unlikely) the free market would opt for exactly his proposals. However, he is guessing just as the Fed is guessing. In simple terms, he does not know what the correct interest rate policy is. Nor do I, nor does anyone else.

If that was not bad enough, Roubini never really addresses the root cause of the problem. The root cause of this mess is government intervention into the free market. The free market boat would sort this out far better than price fixing guessers. And the free market, unlike price fixing guessers, would change as conditions warranted. As right as he has been on everything else, Roubini simply missed this boat.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Great interview with Ron Paul today. Talking about all the money he raised on the 16′th