By Al Coryell
PoHo correspondent

RECESSIONOMICS

Question: Do you think the Federal Reserve is going to be able to guide us out of this economic catastrophe?

I’m going to tell you a story -  a story of corruption, deceit, greed and political intrigue. As it turns out, a true story, one stranger than fiction as true stories usually are. But amazingly, this story is little known by most of you, for the parties whom the story is about do a masterful job of hiding their true intentions while convincing you they are your best friends. They insist you need them, and without them your lives would be chaos. It’s all smoke, of course. But I assure you, most of you believe them because the machine they control is incredibly powerful. So powerful, in fact, that… well I get ahead of myself.

The story begins just after the turn of the 20th century, when, in 1910, seven men board a train in Hoboken, N.J.

The men were ostensibly on a duck hunting trip to a remote and exclusive Georgia coastline resort called Jekyll Island Club. It was a resort and hunting club owned by some of the richest men in North America, one of whom was J. P. Morgan. One of the men boarding the train that day carried a borrowed shot gun with him although, it was later revealed, he had no idea how to hunt. The shotgun was merely part of a cover story were he to be recognized by the press. Each man arrived at the train station separately. They spoke to no one, not even to each other until they had boarded a railroad car owned by Sen. Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island, Republican “whip” in the Senate. The senator’s railroad car was not attached to the rest of train during the boarding period. Only after the train left the Hoboken station did it stop, reverse direction onto a side track, and couple the Aldrich car onto the very back of train, behind the caboose. No passengers on the train ever saw any of the men or even knew that they were on the train. Thus no one was aware that in that single car attached to back of the Georgia bound train, representatives of fully one-quarter of the wealth of the entire world were meeting clandestinely to reshape the monetary system of the United States of America.

Six of the seven men aboard that train were bankers. The six represented the three most wealthy families in the world, the Rockefellers and the Morgans from America, and the Rothchilds from Europe. The seventh man aboard was Aldrich, who was also chairman of the National Monetary Commission, and a business associate of J.P. Morgan. All were well known at the time, particularly to the newspaper media so they all dressed incognito, gave false names on the train roster, and called each other only by their first names. It was important no one recognize them lest their plan be discovered and forced to be abandoned. In his N.Y.Times bestseller called The Creature from Jekyll Island, G. Edward Griffin described the meeting this way:

The purpose of the meeting on Jekyll Island was not to hunt ducks. Simply stated, it was to come to an agreement on the structure and operation of a banking cartel. The goal of the cartel, as is true of all of them, was to maximize profits by minimizing competition between members, to make it difficult for new competitors to enter the field and to utilize the police power of government to enforce the cartel agreement. In more specific terms, the purpose and, indeed, the actual outcome of this meeting was to create the blueprint for the Federal Reserve System.

The blueprint was indeed completed at that meeting on Jekyll Island in Nov. 1910, and just three years later, Congress voted the creation of the Federal Reserve System into U.S. law as the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The nature of that vote is a controversial subject. Detractors submit that the Senate Republicans conspired to delay the vote on the Fed’s establishment until the anti-Federal Reserve Democrats had left town on Christmas vacation. Federal Reserve supporters claim that there was no such conspiracy and that the accusation is unfounded. What is not in dispute is that the vote was taken in the late evening hours of Dec. 23, 1913, with the entire Republican constituency in attendance but very few Democrats and no proof seems to exist as to whether or not a quorum was in attendance. Of the 96 Senators at the time, it is claimed 27 of them, all Democrats, were not in attendance that night leading to conspiratorial accusations by the anti-Federal Reserve detractors that the vote was illegally taken and therefore the Federal Reserve Act was unconstitutionally passed. Supporters of the Fed have portrayed these accusations as fabricated myths. The following website is just one of many which support the efforts of the Federal Reserve and attempt to debunk the anti-Federal Reserve accusations:    Debunking the Federal Reserve Conspiracy Theories

Regardless of conspiracy theories or the constitutionality of the enactment vote, with that vote any semblance of a true free market economy disappeared and was, instead, replaced with a centrally managed economy, patterned after the Rothchild central bank of Europe and privately owned by the heads of the wealthiest families in the world. It remains that way today. Ironically, the moniker Federal Reserve Bank is a complete misnomer, a fraud if you will. The privately owned, for profit corporation we fondly call the Fed is neither federal nor has any reserves, nor is it even a bank. And we can be quite certain that the misnomer was not an accident.

The Federal Reserve’s connection to the European central banking system remains as strong today as it has ever been. Because of the current “economic crisis,” the Fed’s secretive operations are coming under heavier scrutiny today by some of those in Congress who have finally awoken to the reality that perhaps the Fed is complicit in the problems, i.e. they are more part of the cause of this catastrophe than they will be a solution to it. One of the enlightened is Florida Congressman Alan Grayson. Watch him grill Ben Bernanke as to why we are loaning European central banks money to loan around the world when our own American businesses and corporations can’t find lenders to help them stay afloat here at home.

Next installment: What is a “free market” and why did the creation of the Federal Reserve System eradicate its existence from the face of the earth? The answer will surprise you. I’ll bet you thought we had a free market economy. I’ll bet you thought it failed and that’s why we are having to get control of (read “regulate”) the big corporations and greedy financial institutions.  Well, we haven’t had a true free market economy since 1913. I will explain why. Stay tuned.

By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor
Catherine Durkin Robinson is a “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field.

When he speaks about the impact of captivity on the mammals, he doesn’t sound like a showboater, and what might seem like New Age-y talk about dolphin intelligence is pointed up with footage that left me haunted, too. That smile, says O’Barry, is nature’s greatest deception. Dolphins smile even when they’re crying on the inside.

Living in Florida, I am used to certain theme-and-water-park douchebaggery.

Comes with the heat, bugs, and old people driving 30-mph down the highway.

But there is something vastly disturbing about certain aquariums and water parks. And not only in Florida.

(Read the rest and see the film’s trailer after the jump)

Most of the places where you are allowed to swim, pet, and kiss dolphins are getting these self-aware and beautiful creatures from the seas of Japan. Trainers from all over the world flock to a little town called Taiji where about 13 fisherman use loud noises to frighten hundreds of dolphins every year and force them into a tiny cove.

Once there, trainers pick only the cutest, sweetest animals to fill our resorts, parks, and petting ponds.

The ones who don’t make the cut are slaughtered and the meat (poisoned with mercury) is fed to an unsuspecting public. The ones who do make it out become lethargic, depressed, and sometimes kill themselves.

See, your paradise is a fucking nightmare to them. This *dophin petting* thing is a cold and cruel business.

Which is so not hot. And neither are the pictures of you in a bathing suit rubbing up against them.

You don’t look like an animal lover. You look like an ass.

The Cove is coming to The Tampa Theatre this weekend. It’s an important film because it documents the way these precious animals are tortured and killed.

The filmmakers were recently on Fresh Air and I dare you to listen without feeling sick to your stomach.

WARNING: TANGENT TIME – The activist featured in the film, former Flipper trainer Ric O’Barry, says that people who compare the lagoon to a slaughterhouse are wrong. He says that animals in a slaughterhouse aren’t tortured before they’re killed. And that’s why this is worse.

He just wants us to swallow that shit so he can swallow that burger he’s eating.

But I agree with him on everything else. I hope The Cove encourages people to bypass cruelty disguised as entertainment. Family fun shouldn’t be so bloody awful.

Stop loving dolphins so much and instead help set them free. Your love, after all, is killing them.

By Rob Piccirillo
PoHo contributor

It may be a surprise to most people who know me that I used to own an insurance agency. That’s right! I, Rob Piccirillo, for a period of about one year and seven months, owned and operated a Florida Insurance Agency, which specialized in selling private health insurance.

My company sold various forms of private insurance, but our bread and butter was Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage is a private option that beneficiaries may select instead of Original Medicare (parts A & B), which is provided by the federal government.

I will tell you now, and may the Lord Almighty strike me dead if this is not so: Sometimes it was hard to sleep at night knowing the disservice many in the industry, my cohorts, perhaps even those in my own company had done to many people on many occasions. And although the money I made got me the necessary REMs, the moral question made me quit the business! (That’s why I’m here writing this blog. Do you think the owner of a successful insurance agency would bother scribbling a Political Whore post? Negatory…)

Anyway, the fact of the matter is this: I received a bird’s eye view of what goes on in the health insurance industry.

I witnessed agency owners and mid-level managers conning their agents into believing they were doing the right thing by their clients. I saw beneficiaries bamboozled by those who lied to them, telling them they would receive extra benefits by signing their names onto forms that would switch their doctors and deny them coverage! I understand the way health insurance agencies are organized and managed like a true pyramid scheme, and how political it can be, i.e. the conducting of backroom deals with executives of health care facilities to attain access to leads.

If it was against regulations, I have either seen it, known someone who’s done it or participated in it myself! (That admission of guilt was worked into this piece purely for shock value…wink wink.)

I am for Obama’s “public option” and here is why.

Congress passed a “private option” for Medicare recipients. They allowed millions of older, mostly unknowledgeable and somewhat senile senior American citizens to be fast-talked and hoodwinked by silver tongued, sleezeball salesmen such as myself! So why can’t the vast majority of Americans, many unknowledgeable and somewhat senile as well, opt for public insurance instead?!

Ladies and Gentlemen, you may disagree with the following statements if you’d like, for I truly don’t give a shit! So, here it goes:

Private health insurance companies, as a whole, are a bunch of scumbags. They do not care about you, your health, the well being of your family, or anything, for that matter, that might be construed with good, decent, morals and human interest. The only thing they care about is their bottom line, which is MONEY.

I hope Obama’s plan passes. I also hope, no pray, that if your opinion is anywhere in line with the psychos that pass the propaganda that blinds people into believing Obama’s “public option” is a bad thing, you will begin the process of self-realization. For you, my friends, are sheep.

Todd Persico, the owner of Hop Tampa, was bemoaning Wednesday as a “very bad day” after the Hillsborough Public Transportation Commission voted narrowly to (in effect) put free electric vehicle taxi services out of business.

“They determined that we were for-hire vehicles, and without permits, we’re out of business,” Persico said late this afternoon. That puts seven drivers out of work, three $18,000 vehicles in the garage and Persico scrambling to keep his business alive after a year and a half of operations.

It is a classic Catch-22; electric vehicles operators downtown say they were told they didn’t need permits because they didn’t charge for their rides (they make their money on advertising on the vehicles and the drivers get tips), and since the PTC tightly controls taxi permits, they likely wouldn’t be able to get them anyway. But even though they are free and mostly provide rides that the for-pay taxis won’t/don’t give (short hops that aren’t profitable), the PTC put them out of business after cabbies complained.

So much for energy-efficiency and reducing our carbon footprints.

For a restaurateur such as Ferrell Bonnemort of Cafe Dufrain on Harbour Island, the electric vehicles were a godsend; advertising on them brought new customers, and they showed up to give patrons rides home when regular cabs took forever to respond.

“Before these kinds of vehicles came about, our guests would have to wait 45 mintues for a cab,” she said.

By Ben Luongo
PoHo contributor

Our debate on health care reform has been a disappointing state of affairs. Stories of town hall meetings turning violent and reports of organizations planting disruptors are hardly proud examples of a successful democratic process. It speaks volumes of how political a society we have come to be.

Click after the jump to watch what has been happening in Florida.

The purpose of the town hall meetings have been to discuss the future of our health care system – whether it needs to be reformed, what kinds of reform, etc. However, while our current health care system may be flawed, the discord and violence at these town hall meetings have exposed a more urgent concern – the politicization of the issue, the disregard for mutual understanding, the heightened emotions and lack of reason mark our inability to constructively exchange ideas for the discovery of a better way. Our ability and need to deliberate on the issues rationally and without agenda is somehow overpowered by the political animal in us that is all too quick to leap to action.

Rather than being used as a forum of public discourse, these town hall meetings have been used as a place of protest. Is this the new way of American democracy? Is the town hall meeting still a public square and a market place for ideas, or sadly, do we make up our minds at home and treat the town hall as a fighter’s ring only to gratify our political nature.

It is important to remember that basic tenets in democracy, the right to speech, the right to press, the right to assemble, are not merely ends in themselves, but are meant to promote an exchange in society. John Stuart Mill believed that such an exchange could lead to the discovery of truth

“The peculiar evil in silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth.” – On Liberty

For John Stuart Mill “we can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion.” However, these town hall meetings turn loud and violent, where the freedom of speech is abused and seen as an instrument to stifle others. The exchange of error for truth could never happen in this environment and we walk away from a missed opportunity to find a better way.

Democracy requires deliberation, which means that the ideal of free speech does not only grant us the right to speak but also obligates us to listen. More importantly, both sides have to enter discussions with a desire to learn the truth (in this case the truth would be the ideal American healthcare system), which would require us to abandon any preconceived notions of the truth (such as partisan views of healthcare held to be true without good reason).

It is not an easy lesson but America must learn that a healthy democracy is one where its participants calm their political animals and inspire in themselves a desire to listen and learn from each other.

By Tom Bortnyk
PoHo correspondent

“Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American” - Nancy Pelosi

Madam Speaker, I could not agree more. Freedom of speech is one of our most cherished rights as American citizens. So, too, is the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the government without fear of punishment or reprisal. These rights are the foundation for Western Civilization as we know it.

Why then, Madam Speaker, do these rights only apply to citizens who share your ideological views? It seems to be the very definition of irony and a text book example of hypocrisy. The political Left in the US has been working diligently to silence opposition, not only with the current health care debate, but in numerous instances in the past.

I have personally experienced such measures. Just this past semester, while at Florida State University, I helped organize an effort to protest Bill Ayers, the self-proclaimed Communist and admitted terrorist of the Weather Underground, from coming to speak on the school’s dime. When the opposition was peacefully organized outside the event, the campus police forced us to back off into a “free speech zone“. This Orwellian sounding abomination is a slap in the face to the Constitution and the rights we hold dear as Americans.

“Danger lies not in some speaker’s ideas. Danger lies in teaching students that ideas they don’t agree with
are not important”, proclaimed FSU President TK Wetherell upon hearing that the event would be protested. Very true, Mr. Wetherell. Again, I agree. Which is why I am, to this day, perplexed that police were called in to silence the ideas that opposed Mr. Ayers.

Recently, at a town hall meeting on health care reform in, members of the community group ACORN commanded police to remove, from a public street, those demonstrating against the bill. A small group having a polite discussion on the issue (on a public sidewalk, no less) were told that they had to stop conversing, and move to another location.

“When a police officer tells you to do something, and you don’t do it, you’re actually resisting. So you have to listen to him” said a representative of ACORN, regarding the officer’s actions. Really? So then what was the outrage of the Henry Gates incident at Harvard recently? Was he not “resisting” as well?

Democrats and the political left have been characterizing their opposition as thugs and mouthpieces for the insurance lobby, but all evidence points to the contrary. A recent Rasmussen poll puts opposition to the health care bill at 53 percent, the highest it has ever been. Forty-four percent of voters strongly oppose the bill, while a meager 26 percent strongly support it.

Mike Sola, a man who recently had a heated confrontation with Congressman John Dingell (D-MI), has been bullied with threats and harassment ever since he voiced his opinion of the bill. At a town hall debate in Tampa, a Democratic Party official slapped a man in the face. Tell me again who the thugs are?

This of course says nothing about the “snitch” program that the White House has created. The administration has encouraged proponents of the bill to flag those who are speaking out against it, by reporting them to flag@whitehouse.gov. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) has openly criticized this program, suggesting that it is merely an attempt to intimidate political opponents. It is certainly reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s enemies list, and it may be illegal under the Privacy Act of 1974.

Individual rights were trampled during the Bush year, say the Democrats, so why is there outrage from the Right now? I would respond by simply citing the age-old philosophy: two wrongs don’t make a right. The hypocrisy of some does not excuse the hypocrisy of others, and the suppression of ideas is wrong no matter which political party is in power.

You are correct, Madam Speaker. Silencing opposing views is, indeed, un-American. Including when you do it.

Tom Bortnyk is a student at Florida State University.

By Al Coryell
PoHo correspondent

RECESSIONOMICS

Question: The government economists are telling us that the economic crisis is over and things should slowly get better now. Should I believe them?

When I first heard the doom and gloom talking heads being trotted out onto the daily money shows like CNN, FOX financial, Bloomberg or CNBCs Squawk Box, I took them with a huge grain of salt like everyone else. Their arguments simply didn’t seem plausible to me. At the time (2005-06), the economy seemed fine. In fact, we were gloriously bouncing back from the 2000-03 recession caused by the “dot-com” bubble. However, the reason they didn’t seem plausible, I have reluctantly come to admit, is because I was ignorant.

Not only was I ignorant, but I simply didn’t want to believe that things could get as ugly economically as they predicted. I have finally come to accept the harsh reality that confronts us. But so many of the people around me, certainly many of you, still haven’t accepted it and understandably so. For the vast majority, what is happening to us, even as we live through and witness it first hand, just doesn’t seem real. It is so surreal, in fact, it often seems like we are living inside a Salvador Dali or a Picasso painting.

In the past two years, I have read and studied more about banking, money and financing, and particularly economics, than I could ever have guessed I would in my wildest dreams. I have become obsessed with it because the more I learn the more I realize how preventable was the magnitude of the current crisis (though not the crisis itself), and unfortunately, how inevitable is the bleakness of our future.

There are three men today whose voices I trust when I hear them speak.

For years, their voices were used as the comic relief for the talking heads shows that touted the Goldilocks economy of the ‘new economic era’. The three men are Rep. Ron Paul from Texas, Peter Schiff and Robert Prechter. Ron Paul has been calling for the abolition of the Federal Reserve System since the early 1990s. Robert Prechter, socionomics expert, wrote a book in 1995, Tidal Wave, which predicted the inevitable economic tsunami and explained in detail how it would take place. Economist Peter Schiff has been an economic advisor to Ron Paul for many years. He wrote his most popular book, Crash Proof, in 2002. So there have been people for over a decade that not only told us what was coming, but why it was happening and how and when it would happen. Nobody listened to them back then. Nobody believed them because nobody wanted to believe them, including me.

As early as 2006, Peter Schiff was on CNBC as the cartoon character put up against Art Laffer. Some of you may remember Laffer was an economic advisor to Ronald Reagan. He was extremely respected as a Keynesian economics expert. (By the way, all three of the gentlemen I admire above are Austrian School free market, sound money advocates. I will talk more about Austrian School economics in the near future.) Watch this youtube video of Laffer and Schiff debating Schiff’s prediction of both the housing and financial crisis we are currently experiencing. Keep in mind this was in 2006, before most of us even knew there was a housing bubble and well before the housing market, financial companies or the stock market had started to collapse.

Of course, Laffer never paid Schiff his penny. He has become something of a laughing stock in certain economic circles because of this video. But, then, his Keynesian friends at the Fed didn’t see this coming any better that he did so the laughter is somewhat muted. Ironically, Laffer co-authored a book in 2008, called The End of Prosperity, in which he claims to have seen the crisis coming and blames high taxes for the economic collapse. Sad but true.

Schiff’s point that real wealth in this country has steadily declined since the 1960s, as evidenced by the fact that it was only necessary for one person in a household to work to support a family back then, pretty much got lost in the working women discussion. But his point is well taken. One person, man or woman, could more easily support a family then. My father supported a wife, six kids and a dog on $80 a week in 1962. The wealth effect, our perception that we are wealthier because we make more money or because the price of our house increases, is a false perception. Price inflation, caused by the Federal Reserve’s intentional suppression of interest rates and inflation of the money supply since the early 1980s, is the primary cause of the decline in the true wealth of Americans since then. Today it is often necessary that two or more family members work to support it. We have come to accept this as normal. What we fail to realize is the toll it takes on families with a single head of household, particularly women, who still today tend to make less than men. And it will, unfortunately, get much worse before it gets better.

So who should you believe?

The people who never saw this coming, continue to deny that it is really happening and arrogantly advise us to ignore the “doom and gloom” prognosticators?

Or, The people who saw this coming years ago, warned us what would happen if we didn’t listen and who are now being vindicated by the events unfolding just as they predicted?

You decide.

Pro-reform AARP has planned a town hall meeting for Wednesday afternoon in Lakeland, and the big question is: Will it feature the same kind of testiness, shouting, shoving and calamity that has befell other town halls, including one last week in Tampa’s Ybor City?

Organizers don’t think so. A Florida AARP spokesman told March on Politics that the organization has already held some of these town halls (part of a grassroots-TV ad blitz to support the president’s initiative) and while some got heated none reached the level of the Ybor event. UPDATE: Florida AARP spokesman Dave Bruns tells me this afternoon that while the AARP events have seen some “very pointed exchanges” (and, in Leesburg, one woman who came forward and dumped her cut-up AARP card in front of the speaker) that they have not seen the kind of disruptions that have plagued other town halls. “There’s been some backlash about what happened in Tampa,” Bruns said.

The town hall is on the radar screen of the Lakeland 9-12 Project, an offshoot of Fox host Glenn Beck’s right-wing fomenting. But RedCounty — a conservative blog that chronicles various counties across the nation, including Hillsborough — is urging civility:

Before attending this meeting or any other, keep in mind that calling people names and screaming will get you nothing more than bad publicity.  Many Democrats have flooded politics with incorrect attacks and have often demonstrated their bad manners in public forums over the years.  That is no reason for those against their current plans to act like them. They should have plenty of room inside a church to have a sizable crowd.  It’s great to have signs and even be a little loud outside.  Decorum and civility should always be in mind while inside the meeting.

Be polite and read up as much as you can about the health care legislation, from credible sources, before attending a town hall.  Make sure your words are defendable and clear. If Democrats and their allies really want to debate, then lets give them a real debate!

It is likewise on the radar screen at Conservatives for Patient Rights, which is also urging civility from its members who want to attend.

My best guess is that they will be testy but violence-free. Two reasons: the lack of a congressperson on hand to direct anger at, and the lack of the SEIU, which is always a target of conservative criticism and stereotyping (yeah, we know, all union members are goons, thugs and mobsters, just like everyone who is against the current health care reform bills are knuckle-draggers and naysayers.)

The town hall is set for 1-3 pm at Faith Lutheran Church, 211 Easton Drive in Lakeland.
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