Podcast: Restoring the Constitution-Free Markets vs Controlled Economy, Liberty vs Security
Federico Lines, of States Rights Radio, and I discussed economics and the security state America has become as the “rulers” use fear to destroy our liberty.
The podcast (link here) can be found here:
https://www.spreaker.com/user/16611197/tonight-s-episode-2-segments-trumpnomics
So, are you looking for a job’s president? Are you looking for a president who is going to build a great economy?
If you are, then you’re in favor of a centrally planned, command and control economy. You oppose free markets.
I support free markets. There’s often this misnomer that free markets mean no regulations. That’s not correct. Free markets simply change who the regulators are. In a free market economy, the consumer regulates the market by using their purchasing power to reward businesses that produce the best products or services at the best price. It promotes honest business, and honesty is rewarded.
In a command-and-control economy, the government is the regulator. The government picks winners and loser, often determined by which tribe is in control of the government at any given time. It promotes dishonesty and corruption. Friends of politicians and bureaucrats are rewarded while honest businessmen fail.
If the U.S. Constitution were followed, we’d have a free market economy. The government would have a minimal impact on the economy, so small you wouldn’t even know we had a government. There wouldn’t be government regulations. Of course, there would be laws (albeit few and easy to understand) that governed business. I’m not opposed to that. Certainly, there are criminal business actors (think Big Pharma).
We all know the Constitution is not followed. Criminal business actors, like Big Pharma, are rewarded. We have a command-and-control economy.
The importance of this discussion is to show how both sides of the tribal political circus support this command-and-control economy.
I started realizing that when George W. Bush, whom I once supported (and have since repented for that support), said: “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.”
What a joke, what an absolute lie. When you’ve abandoned the principles, you’ve abandoned the free market. What a disgrace.
Let’s fast forward to today. Let me state emphatically, Joe Biden is an awful president in so many ways. I don’t have to convince anyone of that.
However, you’re not going to hear me complain about Biden destroying the economy. You certainly won’t hear me blame Biden for price inflation. Certainly, he’s making things worse. Certainly, he’s contributing to the destruction. But we abandoned the free market long ago. And every modern president is to blame, including the “conservative’s” precious Donald Trump.
Trump and Biden are one in the same. They believe in central planning. They believe in command-and-control.
Mark Twain once wrote that “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”
As candidate in the 2016 cycle, Trump accurately described the unemployment numbers as rigged. As president, he sold the lie that he created the best economy ever with the best unemployment rates ever, as if presidents are supposed to be in control of the economy.
Let’s look at the real numbers. The unemployment calculation was changed and rigged in 1994. John William’s Shadow Stats has the real numbers:
Those numbers are based on adding the “short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.” It includes the Americans who have stopped looking for work and have given up. You can see John William’s calculation here.
As you can see, unemployment has been above 20% every since Bush “abandoned free market principles.” That means above 20% for all four years of Trump and all eight years of Barrack Obama. It’s been above 10% since 1994 when the numbers were rigged.
Let’s talk regulations. Trump was heralded as a deregulator by “conservatives.” In reality, the federal code of regulation grew by 0.65%, according to the Mercatus Center. Sure, that was a slower rate of growth than the average 2.1% growth prior to him, but that’s not deregulation. It’s kind of like claiming you’ve cut spending by slowing the growth. And let’s just say Trump completed dismantled all regulations, I would counter that he gave us the ultimate and only regulation an authoritarian government needs: lockdown.
Trump, like Obama before him and Biden preceding him, ruled by dictate, by executive order. He averaged 55 a year compared to 35 for Obama and 47 from Biden.
And yet, those who proclaim themselves free market adherents still support Trump. I’ll turn to a debate between Stephen Moore, a faux free marketer who was a Trump economic adviser, and Peter Schiff, an actual free marketer. This debate was in August of 2020:
Moore sets things up by stating government spending is destructive to the economy then touts how the massive government spending from Trump stimulated the economy. The mental gymnastics for him to sell the lies is amazing.
Schiff responded:
“The fed is printing more money than the government is raising in taxes. So, this inflation tax is enormous. We’re not getting all this government for free. Donald Trump is a big taxer because every dime of government spending is a dime of taxation. And he was signing these big increases of government spending even before covid. The deficits were already running out of control before covid. There were a lot of opportunities that Trump had to veto those spending bills and to try to actually cut government spending. In fact, now he’s just using his executive orders to expand government, to make government bigger. Why not use the presidency, while he has it, to make government smaller? The only way you’re going to make America great again is to make government small again. But Donald Trump has used his first three years in office to make government bigger, to spend more and to cheerlead the Federal Reserve to print more….
Trump has governed like a Democrat. He’s a big government, big spender. He just doesn’t want to be honest about taxation. He doesn’t want to raise taxes to pay for a bigger government. He just wants to print money to pay for a bigger government as if all that money printing is free. It’s not. It is a massive tax increase, and it’s going to hit hardest the people who can least afford to pay.”
And guess what, Moore concurred. He conceded that “Peter is right,” but that’s ok because Trump is “not an ideological free market conservative.” Trump’s “a Keynesian. He really does believe government spending stimulates the economy.”
My first question is, if you believe in free markets and were an economic adviser to a man who doesn’t, what advice did you give Trump?
The insanity of Moore claiming Keynesianism is destructive to the economy, Trump is a Keynesian and Trump built a great economy is astounding.
And I’m kind of tired of hearing “conservative” hypocrites. Just be honest. You believe in command-and-control economies, central planning. Or, reject the tribal politics and actual believe in liberty and free markets. I prefer the latter, but at least be honest and stop calling yourself a conservative, supporter of free markets or the Constitution if you remain a slave to party politics.
And the “Trump plan” is no different than Biden’s. He believes in every unconstitutional agency. The Huff Post reported on the plan called “Project 2025” led by CONservatives at the Heritage Institute.
I’ll note, of course the Huff Post has a leftist bent. They laughably headline it the “plot to dismantle the U.S. government.” In reality, the plan shows exactly how Trump and Biden are one in the same.
The plan is to fire all those federal bureaucrats they call the “deep state” and replace them with their own deep state. It’s disgusting. Not only is there no plan to shut down unconstitutional agencies, the plan is to expand them. But hey, they’ll call themselves “conservative” which makes their authoritarianism alright?
There are absolutely no principles among the “conservative” mainstream. And many who are, or were, actual conservatives, have gone along with these lies.
I’ll point you to a piece from “conservative” Victor Davis Hanson over the summer. He wrote that the dangers of Biden are that he’s “tarnished for generations the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the IRS.” He argues that paying income taxes is a “hallowed American tradition” and the IRS suddenly became corrupt because of Biden.
I can’t state things much better than one commentor on the piece:
“Victor Davis Hanson is arguing with a straight face that federal income tax is a ‘hallowed American tradition.’
This requires either deliberate deception or a stupendous ignorance of history.
Or both.”
The income tax was determined to be unconstitutional for the vast majority of American history. It wasn’t until 1913 that the 16th Amendment was passed to allow this travesty. And the IRS has always been corrupt.
https://sethhancock.substack.com/p/america-a-weekend-at-bernies-nation
https://sethhancock.substack.com/p/podcast-restoring-the-constitution-45e
https://sethhancock.substack.com/p/the-irs-criminal-racket
But Hanson wants to pass out the idea that Biden is an “existential threat” to America, and he acts as if Biden is the first corrupt president. Seriously, they’re all corrupt, and the “existential threat” isn’t Biden. It wasn’t Trump, either. Nor Obama. Neither is it any politician. The “existential threat” is an entitled American public that is fully dependent on the state which demands the government control their lives, whether they call themselves “liberals” or “conservatives.”
Liberty vs. Security
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”—Benjamin Franklin
Fear is a useful tool for authoritarians. They use it to destroy liberty. And because people demand security, they let it happen.
Hanson sold that fear in the above piece, the fear being of politicians, at least the ones he doesn’t like.
There’s fear pushed about terrorists, immigrants, the freaking cold virus. And every time fear is pushed, our liberty erodes.
I’ll note, both Lines and I believe there should be border security and enforcement. But when you let the politicians, specifically from the GOP, push fear of illegals, you’ve allowed them to destroy liberty.
Take e-verify which demands everyone, including American citizens, ask permission from the government to work.
https://sethhancock.substack.com/p/show-me-your-papers-gop-passes-bill
Did you know that our government has a 100-mile radius on the borders with Canada and Mexico which they call “Constitution-free zones” where they can setup “show me your papers” checkpoints well into the inland and not solely at the border:
John Whitehead wrote for The Rutherford Institute:
“How far would you really go to secure the nation’s borders in the so-called name of national security?
Would you give the government limitless amounts of money? Surround the entire country with concrete walls and barbed wire? Erect a high-tech, virtual wall of AI-powered surveillance cameras and drones that does a better job of imprisoning those within its boundaries than keeping intruders out? Empower border police to trample on the rights of anyone who crosses their path, including legal citizens?
Relinquish some of your freedoms in exchange for the elusive promise of non-porous borders? Submit to a national ID card that allows the government to target individuals and groups as it chooses in order to identify those who do not ‘belong’? Turn a blind eye to private prisons and detainment camps that profit off the forced labor of its detainees?
Would you turn your backs on every constitutional principle for which our founders fought and died in exchange for empty campaign promises of elusive safety by fast-talking politicians?
This is the devil’s bargain that the U.S. government demands of its people.
These devilish deals have been foisted upon ‘we the people’ before.
Every decade or so, the government makes the case for expanding its wartime powers and curtailing the citizenry’s freedom—in the war on terrorism, war on drugs, war on communism, war on foreigners, war on extremism, war on dissidents, war on peace activists, war on anti-government speech, etc.—all for the sake of national security, of course, and as expected, the American people fall in line.
Increasingly, the government wants us to buy into the fiction that its war on illegal immigrants is so necessary for national security that we should be grateful when roving bands of border patrol agents, flexing their muscles far beyond the nation’s borders, exercise their right to disregard the Constitution at every turn.
Except these border patrol cops aren’t just disregarding the Constitution.
They’re trampling all over the Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits the government from carrying out egregious warrantless searches and seizures without probable cause.
As part of the government’s so-called crackdown on illegal immigration, drugs and trafficking, border patrol cops are expanding their reach, roaming further afield and subjecting greater numbers of Americans to warrantless searches, ID checkpoints, transportation checks, and even surveillance on private property far beyond the boundaries of the borderlands.
That so-called border, once a thin borderline, is now an ever-thickening band spreading deeper and deeper inside the country.
Consequently, nearly 66% of Americans (2/3 of the U.S. population, or 197.4 million people) now live within a 100-mile-deep, Constitution-free zone.”
Don’t let fear guide you. We need to have a rational discussion on how to deal with the border and immigration, such as dismantling the welfare state (for immigrants and Americans alike). But when you are ruled by fear, you support liberty-destroying policies.
Of course, we know the fear pushed for covid. But we’re coming off a week since the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001.
I’ll state this, the official story is a lie. I don’t have any theories. My only believe is we’ve been lied to about what happened. Donald Jeffries has a good piece describing a lot of the oddities:
Or listen to this from James Corbett, the transcript available here.
However, what exactly happened doesn’t matter as much as what we allowed the government to do in response. It was the event used for all kinds of tranny against us.
Another good piece from The Rutherford Institute, Whitehead wrote:
“In the 22 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.
The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.
The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience are now considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.
The Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens—no doubt a reflexive impulse shared by small-town police and federal agents alike.
This, according to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., was a fantasy that ‘had been brewing in the law enforcement world for a long time.’ And 9/11 provided the government with the perfect excuse for conducting far-reaching surveillance and collecting mountains of information on even the most law-abiding citizen.
Federal agents and police officers are now authorized to conduct covert black bag ‘sneak-and-peak’ searches of homes and offices while you are away and confiscate your personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence.
The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you’ve checked out in any public library and Internet sites you’ve visited (at least 545 libraries received such demands in the first year following passage of the Patriot Act).
In the name of fighting terrorism, government officials are now permitted to monitor religious and political institutions with no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government has subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation; monitor conversations between attorneys and clients; search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without showing probable cause; and jail Americans indefinitely without a trial, among other things.
The federal government also made liberal use of its new powers, especially through the use (and abuse) of the nefarious national security letters, which allow the FBI to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies at the mere say-so of the government agent in charge of a local FBI office and without prior court approval.
In fact, since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.
We’re also being subjected to invasive patdowns and whole-body scans of our persons and seizures of our electronic devices in the nation’s airports. We can’t even purchase certain cold medicines at the pharmacy anymore without it being reported to the government and our names being placed on a watch list.
In this way, ‘we the people’ continue to be terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.
The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, a viral pandemic, and more to come), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.
A recitation of the Bill of Rights—set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and the like (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, and the courts)—would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.
What we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Sadly, most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights.”