$37.9

Lord Monckton hands the faithfull their arses!

The New Hong Kong Precious Metal;s exchange is open for business, silver closed this weeked at $40.3 , will this new exchange drive the price up over the weekend ?

$40.6

How Much Would It Cost To Buy Congress Back From Special Interests?

Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds

How Much Would It Cost To Buy Congress Back From Special Interests?

Here's a thought: let's buy our Congress back from the special interests who now own it.

We all know special interests own the U.S. Congress and the Federal machinery of governance (i.e. regulatory capture). How much would it cost the American citizenry to buy back their Congress? The goal in buying our Congress back from the banking cartel et al. would not be to compete with the special interests for congressional favors--it would be to elect a Congress which would eradicate their power and influence altogether.

A tall order, perhaps, but certainly not impossible, if we're willing to spend the money to not just match special interest contributions to campaigns but steamroll them.

A seat in the U.S. Senate is a pricey little lever of power, so we better be ready to spend $50 million per seat. Seats in smaller states will be less, but seats in the big states will cost more, but this is a pretty good average.

That's $5 billion to buy the Senate.

A seat in the House of Representatives is a lot cheaper to buy: $10 million is still considered a lot of money in this playground of power. But the special interests-- you know the usual suspects, the banks, Wall Street, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Tobacco, the military-industrial complex, Big Ag, public unions, the educrat complex, trial lawyers, foreign governments, and so on--will fight tooth and nail to maintain their control of the Federal machinery, so we better double that to $20 million per seat. Let's see, $20 million times 435....

That's $8.7 billion to buy the House of Representatives.

It seems we're stuck with the corporate toadies on the Supreme Court, but the President could scotch the people's plans to regain control of their government, so we better buy the office of the President, too.

It seems Obama's purchase price was about $100 million, but the special interests will be desperate to have "their man or woman" with the veto power, so we better triple this to $300 million.

Add these up and it looks like we could buy back our government for the paltry sum of $14 billion. This is roughly .0037% of the Federal budget of $3.8 trillion, i.e. one-third of one percent. That is incredible leverage: $1 in campaign bribes controls $300 in annual spending--and a global empire.

Once we bought back our government, what would be the first items on the agenda? The first item would be to eradicate private bribes, a.k.a. private campaign contributions and lobbying.

If you allow $1 in campaign contributions, then you also allow $10 million. There is no way to finesse bribery, so it has to be cut and dried: no member of Congress can accept any gift or contribution of any nature, monetary or otherwise, and all campaigns will be publicly financed.

Is this system perfect? Of course not. There is no perfect system. But the point here is that a system which allows even a $1 private contribution to a campaign cannot be restricted; after the courts have their say, then all attempted limitations prove worthless.

So it's really all or nothing: either we put our government up for auction to the highest bribe, or we ban all gifts and private campaign financing and go with public financing of all elections in the nation.

That is the only practical and sane solution. Any proposal that seeks to finesse bribery will fail, just like all previous attempts at campaign finance reform.

Any member of Congress who accepts a gift, trinket, meal, cash in an envelope, etc. will lose their seat upon conviction of accepting the gift. Once again, you can't finesse bribery. It has to be all or nothing, and the only way to control bribery is to ban it outright.

As for lobbying, thanks to a Supreme Court dominated by corporate toadies, it will be difficult to ban lobbying outright. However, that doesn't mean Congress shouldn't try to force the toadies on the Supreme Court to make a distinction between a corporation with $100 billion in assets and billions to spend on bribes and a penniless citizen.

(Those two are not coincidental; in a nation run by and for corporations, the citizens all end up penniless unless they own or manage said corporations, or work for a Federal fiefdom which can stripmine the nation at will.)

Congress should pass a law banning paid-for lobbying. If a citizen wants to go to Congress and advocate a position, they are free to do so--but they can't accept money to do so. If they receive any compensation from any agency, enterprise, foreign government, other citizen, you name it, from any source, then they will be sentenced to 10 years of fulltime community service in Washington D.C., picking up trash, etc.

If the Supreme Court toadies strike down that law, then here's another approach:

Require all paid lobbyists to wear clown suits during their paid hours of work.

In addition, all lobbyists are required to wear three placards, each with text of at least two inches in height.

The first placard lists their total annual compensation as a lobbyist.

The second lists the special interest they work for.

The third lists the total amount of money that special interest spent the previous year on lobbying, regulatory capture, bribes to politicos and political parties, etc.

Every piece of paper issued by lobbyists must be stamped in large red letters, "This lobbying paid for by (special interest)", and every video, Powerpoint presentation, etc. must also be stamped with the same message on every frame.

The second item on the agenda is a one-page tax form. The form looks like the current 1040 form except it stops at line 22: TOTAL INCOME. A progressive flat tax is then calculated from that line. Once again, you cannot finesse bribery or exemptions, exclusions, loopholes and exceptions. Once you allow exemptions, exclusions, loopholes and exceptions, then you've opened Pandora's Box of gaming the system, and the financial Elites will soon plow holes in the tax code large enough to drive trucks through while John Q. Citizen will be paying full pop, just like now.

The entire charade of punishing and rewarding certain behaviors to pursue some policy has to end. Any deduction, such as interest on mortgages, ends up creating perverse incentives which can and will be gamed. It's really that simple: you cannot finesse bribery or exemptions, exclusions and loopholes, because these are two sides of the same coin.

The tremendous inequality in income, wealth, power and opportunity which is distorting and destroying our nation all flow from the inequalities enabled by bribery and tax avoidance. The only way to fix the nation is to eliminate bribery (campaign contributions and lobbying) entirely, and eliminate tax avoidance entirely by eliminating all deductions, exemptions, loopholes, etc. State total income from all sources everywhere on the planet, calculate tax, done.

When you think about how tiny $14 billion is compared to the $3.8 trillion Federal budget and the $14.5 trillion U.S. economy, it makes you want to weep; how cheaply we have sold our government, and how much we suffer under the whip of those who bought it for a pittance.

$39.3

I thought this was a good read:

Lol good read mcnasty.

From today

World Stock Markets:

Trade with

World Stock Markets Value Change Last Update

FTSE 100 4,989.54 -102.69 -2.02% 10:09:18

FTSE 250 9,727.18 -133.04 -1.35% 10:09:18

Dow Jones I.A. 10,990.58 -419.63 -3.68% 21:30:16

Nasdaq 100 2,073.03 -108.59 -4.98% 22:16:13

Nikkei 225 8,719.24 -224.52 -2.51% 07:28:04

Hang Seng 19,399.92 -616.35 -3.08% 09:02:04

Xetra DAX 5,428.14 -174.66 -3.12% 10:09:18

CAC 40 3,018.80 -57.24 -1.86% 10:09:15

LLOYDS BANKING ... 28.13 -1.68 -5.62%

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND... 21.19 -0.76 -3.46%

Gold 1,863.79 +38.29 +2.10%

Silver 41.31 +0.80 +1.97%

"The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money."

-Sir Josiah Stamp, (Director-Bank of England)

Last edited by eazyas 14 years ago

Today is a good day, zerohedge.com has moved onto their new server payed for fully by donations from readers, here is a comment from a reader of zerohedge which sums it up better than i could.

In a world of a completely incompetent and/or corrupt governments, regulatory agencies, central banks (including the illustrious [/sarc/] Federal Reserve Bank), a Lame Ass Stream Media, a bought off judiciary, and in a world where the military-industrial-financial-central banking complex has gone further than ever before in terms of rigging, twisting and shaping the rules, with malice and with knowledge aforethought, to concetrate power for themselves (money, wealth, information, political influence/legislative influence, military might - these are the tools of power)...

...whatever Zero Hedge's blemishes may be...and everyone and everything has a few...

...Zero Hedge is the one site that has done more than any other to at least inform people about the processes and mechanisms of monetary and fiscal policy (QE, TARP, TALF, LSAP), and the gaming of markets by various entities (HFT, dark pools, front running, expert networks, etc.), that has allowed anyone to learn about the ways in which the entire playing field is so terribly skewed, and in roughly what proportions (i.e. massive and maybe unprecedented ones) and ways.

Whatever its flaws may be, and whatever critics claim about it, Zero Hedge has literally educated countless people about what may have been formerly opaque concepts and mechanisms.

Who knew what POMO was? Who knew how direct and indirect bidders 'took down' treasury bonds, why, and how the process is so grossly subsidized in favor of Primary Dealers? Who knew about how the literal monopolization of and suppression of precious metal pricing (via COMEX), the ways by which Goldman Sachs & John Paulson literally turned toxic MBS into alleged prime rated, investment grade MBS, or how the Fed was not just bailing out bad financial institutions with discount window access, but by working with Treasury to buy their toxic assets for amounts criminally higher than what any remotely fair transaction would have warranted?

I could go and on, but I'll leave it at what is just the tip of the iceberg, and just a few examples of why Zero Hedge rocks.

And 2 million hits a day? It's going to be 5 million in no time. That's a testament to the fact that more & more people are waking up and unplugging from the Matrix (the Matrix is real; maybe hyperbolically presented by a popular film with the same name, but real in the sense that nothing is as what most believe it to be, and by design), because they always felt they were being lied to and bombarded with propaganda and misinformation, but they only now are getting access to the information that allows them a peek behind the curtain as to how it's been orchestrated.

Thank you, Zero Hedge.