An Intrusion of Reality

Never a Good Thing

by Fred Reed

(Editor’s note: The penultimate paragraph of this article is the most insightful analysis of Washington that I have seen in recent years, and one of the most compelling reasons for secession that could be stated.)

Things change, usually for the worse, and always against the innocent. (This truth is a principle of curmudgeonry.) When I came to Mexico some eight years ago, it was a peaceful, moderately successful upper-Third-World country—middle-class, barely, literate, though often barely, and as democratic as the United States, which is to say barely. Things were improving, though often they had a long way to go. The young were visibly healthier than preceding generations. The birth rate was in sharp decline. Women entered the professions in substantial and growing numbers.

And it was safe. Expats sat over coffee at the plaza laughing at people back in the States, insular, fearful, ignorant of the world outside their borders. (For recent college graduates, Mexico is a country south of the United States. “South” is down on maps.) Mexico, they believed, was most astonishing perilous. Don’t drink the water, avoid ice. Salads were thought especially lethal. The Federales would kill you for sport, like squirrels. On any given day, you would probably be shot several times by bandidos. It was nonsense.

Then Vicente Fox left office, and Felipe Calderon came in. He declared war on the narcotraficantes. Why he did this, I don’t know, since Mexico didn’t have a drug problem. My guess is that Washington pushed him into it, but I don’t know.

Unfortunately Mexico, which neither produces nor uses a lot of drugs, lies between Colombia, which produces vast amounts of drugs, and Americans, who want vast amounts of drugs. Washington does not want Americans to have vast amounts of drugs. Neither did it want to lose votes by imprisoning white users of drugs, such as college students, high-school students, professors, Congressmen, lawyers, and blue-collar guys driving bulldozers. The answer was to make Mexico fight Washington’s wars.

But Mexico couldn’t fight the narcos, because the United States was actually on the side of the traficantes. Does this sound counter-intuitive? What happened was that the narcos gave the Americans the huge quantites of drugs they wanted, and in return Americans gave the narcos huge amounts of money and military-grade weaponry: chiefly AK-47s,but also grenades and the occasional RPG. The Mexican police, lightly armed, barely paid, and utterly corrupt, could do nothing against these odds. The narcos had a further argument: Do what we say, and we will give you money. Otherwise, we will kill your family.

You figure it out.

The Mexican army doesn’t do a whole lot better. It is chieftly a disaster-relief outfit since it has nobody to fight. Mexico doesn’t want to invade Guatemala, and has not for some time been openly invaded by America, though truculo-louts north of the border urge this bright idea.

So Washington, to keep Americans from doing what in fact they are contentedly doing with no restriction and little inconvenience — using every drug know to man or beast — is wrecking yet another country.

The killing was for some time largely in the northern tier of states, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Durango, and of course Sinaloa, but now the states of Mexico, Guerrero, Michoacanand Jalisco decapitated bodies strewn about like cherry blossons in spring.

Jalisco, a state in west-central Mexico, contains Guadalajara, Lake Chapala, and me. Along the north shore of Lake Chapala lie Chapala, Ajijic, Jocotepec, and lesser towns inhabited by lots of expat gringos. These towns, as I say, were quiet when I arrived. You could wander home at two in the morning with little concer and a beer in hand. But now the narcos have arrived. Ergo:

A few weeks back in downtown Chapala there was a firefight with automatic weapons. A few days ago a police car on the local by-pass was attacked with automatic weapons. A few days more ago three bodies, buried by kidnappers, were found in Joco, and three local police were arrested for complicity. Various beheaded or chopped-up former people have surfaced locally, as well as a couple of meth labs. I could go on.

So far, gringos have not been targets. This may last. It may not. Still, things are out of control and getting crazier. For example, in Guerrero the narcos told the teachers in the schools of Acapulco to hand over half their pay in protection money, at which point many dozens of schools closed as teachers declined to attend. This comes close to qualifying the country as a disaster area which, without the narco wars, it wasn’t even close to being.

What does this mean for Americans? It depends on the Americans. If gringos begin to be attacked here, there will probably be a mass exodus back to the Northern Rubber Room. A few are already bugging out.

For Mexico, such a remigration would be a catastrophe. To simplify and approximate vigorously, Mexican law requires expats to have incomes of a thousand bucks a month.

Most have a lot more. I read that a million gringos live in Mexico. So, a thousand times a million times twelve is, well, a bunch of money annually. Losing it would unhelp the local economy, and probably send people toward the Rio Bravo in bathing suits.

Most Americans don’t care at all what happens in Mexico, or anywhere else they can’t actually see. However, it is hard to figure the advantage of having a major trading partner turn into Afghanistan with better music.

Conservative bozos of immoderate idiocy fantasize, as mentioned, of sending the Marines. Oh sure, that will work. The Pentagon couldn’t win a rigged lottery, much less a war. Mexico, especially in the godawful, broken, infernally impassibe mountains where the dream-weed grows, is perfect for displaying the clownish incapacity of the Nintendo military. The GIs don’t know the territory, most don’t know the language, the people, or the culture, but they can yell “Ooo-rah!”really well. That’s because it has only two syllables.

Nothing can change things except the utter collapse of the US economy and the burning of its cities, a singularity the other side of which is not visible. Any possible solution would require a decision. The US no longer does decisions. It can neither stop the drug traffic nor legalize it. It can neither win wars nor abandon them, neither make money nor stop spending it, neither stop immigration nor assimilate the immigrants. Washington can beat its thumb with a hammer, yes, and notice that it hurts, but it can’t stop beating its thumb. That would take a decision, and Washington doesn’t do decisions.

People email me, asking where I would go if I were trying to get out of the crumbling US before the roof falls in. Argentina. Thailand. Viet Nam. China. Pederably to a country without oil. Chile. Maybe Uruguay. Almost anywhere in Europe if you can afford it. Mexico is a fine place, but getting dicey. Very dicey.

©Violeta de Jesus Gonzalez Munguia
www.FredOnEverything.net

Bail

by Fred Reed

(Editor’s note: Fred means “bail out”…as in leaving, not the money to get out of jail. Fred’s article is talking about expatriation, but is dangerously close to advocating secession.)

When a country works reasonably well—when the schools teach algebra and not government-mandated Appropriate Values, when the police are scarce and courteous, when government is remote and minds its business and works more for the benefit of the country than for looters and special interests, then pledging to it a degree of allegiance isn’t foolish. Decades back America was such a country, imperfect as all countries are, but good enough to cherish.

As decline begins, and government becomes oppressive, self-righteous, and ruthless yet incompetent, as official spying flourishes, as corruption sets in hard, and institutions rot, it is time to disengage. Loyalty to a country is a choice, not an obligation. In other times people have loved family, friends, common decency, tribe, regiment, or church instead of country. In an age of national collapse, this is wise.

A fruitful field of disengagement might be called domestic expatriation—the recognition that living in a country makes you a resident, not a subscriber. It is one thing to be loyal to a government that is loyal to you, another thing entirely to continue that loyalty when the Brown Shirts march and the government rejects everything that you believe in. While the phrase has become unbearably pretentious, it is possible to regard oneself as a citizen of the world rather than of the Reich.

Home schooling is an admirable form of disengagement for those who cannot physically expatriate. The primary schools once taught enough of reading and arithmetic, and little enough of mediocritizing propaganda, as to render them other than pernicious. Today, no. Here it is worth reflecting, contrary to governmental insistence, that schools are needless, at least for bright children. An intelligent child quickly reads several years ahead of his grade level, at which point school becomes only an obstacle. He will be savagely bored, regard his teachers as imbeciles, and learn nothing that justifies his being there but much that justifies being somewhere else. In the deepening twilight, home-schooling becomes almost a responsibility, a parallel to medieval monks copying Greek manuscripts.

Disengagement from the system of universities is also advisable. This is true, first, because if you seek cultivation, to gain a grasp of such matters as history, literature, the arts and the sciences, you can do it better on your own. Professors serve little purpose other than to ensure that the student does his homework. If the student wants to study, he can do it by himself, and if he doesn’t want to study, he has no business in a university.

Second, universities these days, with exceptions I hope, are citadels of intellectual darkness. They teach little, and chiefly serve to force the young to borrow backbreaking sums from colluding banks. The wasted time and phenomenal cost cannot be justified unless they provide some remarkable recompense, and they do not.

Universities largely prepare the student for a life of office work in some dismal institution, trapping him in the retirement system and making him a prisoner of the state. In a nation subsiding into the third world, institutions cannot be counted on.

It makes more sense to become, say, a commercial diver, or a master auto mechanic. The training costs less than piratical fifth-rate USOs (university-shaped objects). Both are interesting, challenging, and well-remunerated, which cannot be said of law for most who do not go into Wall Street. Crucially important, cars can be found everywhere, and such as oil companies the world over need divers. You are not tied to the United States, where the death rattle begins to be heard over the thump of the storm troopers’ boots.

Disengagement from the consumerist zeitgeist is essential. Yes, I know. Distaste for a life dedicated to buying the unnecessary can seem a pose: “I, I, am of such lofty character that I do not dirty my philosophical hands with mere…things.”

No. It is not a pose. In a time of economic retrogression, rejection of consumerism is utterly practical. And almost treasonous.

One might ask oneself, “What do I really need, and what things really matter to me? How much money do I really need, and how much am I willing to pay to get it?” Remember, you pay more for money than for anything else.

I once lived briefly in an old one-bedroom trailer set in a patch of pine woods near Farmville, Virginia. A brick barbecue came with it, and a large floppy pooch, apparently a mixture of Irish setter and whatever was around. The place was blessedly quiet. Birds and bugs aren’t noise. When it rained I delighted in being almost in the storm, but dry. I think the whole shebang cost the owner five thousand dollars, including a well and septic system.

If you are thinking, “Why…no…I couldn’t possibly live that way,” you are probably right. But if I were doing it now, I would have staggering amounts of pirated music on today’s monstrous memory sticks, a set of very decent speakers for a few hundred doomed green ones, a Kindle or the free computer version for reading books from Amazon if I had the money or Project Gutenberg if I didn’t, and a fairly large flat screen for watching movies donated by uTorrent. Net cost: Under a grand.

Circumstances differ, yes. But you get the idea: Comfort, quiet, music, books, barbecue, undefined dog, storms, friends, for practically nothing. Mutatis mutandis, the principle applies almost everywhere.

It also fits well with Fred’s Bifurcate Law of Economic Independence: If you can’t pay for it, don’t buy it; and if you don’t need it, don’t buy it. Therein lie the seeds of the utter destruction of America, but I’m not Wall Street’s mother.

To labor the point a tad, where I live, near Guadalajara in Mexico, at least two friends are living quite comfortably on a thousand a month, to include beer, internet, and in one case substances crucial to the bloated salaries of DEA. Each has a tired truck, but no granite counter-tops or riding mower.

Another step toward independence is to disengage to the extent possible from the maintenance cycle. You are much better off in bad times if you can do the kind of plumbing, wiring, and auto maintenance that used to be commonly understood. This is easy to say, I know. Yet, if done, it gets you farther off the grid.

Again, circumstances differ and details vary. The principle remains: Disengage, cut your expenses, seek the interstices, and don’t believe in anything unless you are sure it was your idea to believe in it. What is coming looks to be ugly. If so, it will be every man for himself, his family, his friends, and what principles he believes. The government doesn’t give a wan, eitolated damn about you.

©Fred Reed

Where Will You Go?

When the Sovereign Debt Volcano Blows?

by Ron Holland

(Editor’s Note: To quote Davy Crockett…”you may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.”)

“People never believe in volcanoes until the lava actually overtakes them.” ~ George Santayana

Last fall, while on an investment cruise, I had the opportunity to visit a “dormant” volcano in Chile. There was even a ski area with lift, restaurants etc. near the top on the lava and cinders. I thought at the time how I would ski the volcano but never risk my funds on a real estate investment there for obvious reasons.

Today we find the United States and most of Europe in a similar situation. We risk an eruption and collapse of the mountain of unsustainable sovereign debt built up over the last two decades. Frankly, the US dollar and national debt situation is so dire and our means to contain a sovereign debt crisis so limited by multiple wars, Washington’s debt and political incompetence at home, that anything could happen – almost overnight. Even a minor foreign policy or economic event like a Greek default or Middle East crisis could reap havoc with the precarious interlocking sovereign debt pyramid in the West.

Of course, no nation wants a collapse – especially China – because a western debt collapse and write down is certainly uncharted financial waters and the contagion risks are global. Still, America and most European governments and the central banking elites, which created the criminal sovereign debt fiasco, are only trying to buy more time and delay the inevitable. This inaction means the threat of an immediate US debt and dollar collapse cannot be ruled out. Therefore, readers who have not protected themselves certainly have cause to worry because now could be too late.

It Is Exit Time For Your Gold, Wealth & Family

Although you may have some time, nothing else has to happen before a big collapse could take place, even within days. Consequently, after 30 years of watching, writing and creating protective retirement planning and financial strategies, today I’m finally going to yell “FIRE” inside the closed ‘financial iron curtain” which is America.

If you have failed to store your precious metals outside the US, diversify out of the dollar or reduce or terminate your private retirement plan, there is now a clear danger of a Washington dollar and sovereign debt crisis which could sweep away most of your remaining wealth and financial security.

I do not have a crystal ball or inside political information on a specific imminent threat, only the observation that the sovereign debt crisis from Europe, a debt ceiling misstep from the clowns in Washington or a Middle East event could suddenly trigger the collapse. Actually any major political or economic shock could bring the Madoff style Ponzi scheme, which Greenspan and Bernanke have created, down almost overnight on top of us.

This will likely happen over a weekend and the following Monday morning you could wake up to Presidential Executive Orders “means testing” you out of Social Security benefits if you still have substantial retirement benefits or personal savings. You’ll likely discover an end to your home interest deductions, new confiscatory taxes and restrictions on US gold and silver, controls on moving private wealth and funds to safety offshore and dramatic hikes in taxes and cuts in government programs. In addition, spiking inflation rates, violence and massive protests will immediately follow these confiscatory actions and cutbacks. You can also expect severe banking and stock market liquidity restrictions, or closures, and this will only be the beginning. In short your wealth will be trapped in dollars and locked up for the duration of the emergency inside the American jurisdiction.

Therefore if you haven’t already prepared for this type of crisis contingency ahead of time, I’m telling you there will be little you can do after the fact. Washington will simply take and throw your wealth and promised benefits at the problem thus buying them more time with your wealth.

The Central Banks, City of London & Wall Street Have Looted America and the World

Back in 2007, did the Federal Reserve or your politicians or financial experts predict a collapse in housing prices of 30 to 50 percent? Remember, Bernanke, George Bush and Barack Obama all promised this was a temporary blip in the long-term upward trend in housing values. All advised you to “stay the course.”

Today, Tim Geithner claims we have a “strong dollar policy” but have you observed the 35% plus appreciation in the currencies of Brazil and Switzerland to the dollar in the last year? The EU establishment has repeatedly claimed over the last few months that the Greek problems are solved but these fake solutions usually only last a few days at best.

Back here in the US, there is talk about deficit reduction, cutting programs and tax increases but nothing really happens because solving the problem is political suicide. The American and European elites are buying time knowing that only a crash or war will give them the opportunity to act as they did in the 2008 meltdown. They only wait for a cataclysmic event to provide the fear, excuse and public support for government action needed to grab our private wealth and to delay their problems.

The mainstream American press doesn’t cover it, however the rest of the world knows that Wall Street banks and their central banking buddies in London and New York created the sovereign debt crisis. They then sold their profitable template, or imposed it on the end of a gun, for debt democracy to politicians around the world as a means to buy votes and maintain political control. The scam is now over and no one has a solution to the tens of trillions in debt already spent.

While many millions of poor people overseas are going hungry because of our exported inflation on food costs, now the foreign middle classes are being impoverished just to pay interest on the sovereign debts to our banking elites. Although, much of the world correctly blames their thieving politicians who’ve been bought off by our banking elites as the problem, our nation is also a target for their outrage.

Foreign politicians will attempt to shift the blame to America and this will speed the end of our American free ride from the fiat dollar and our reserve currency status. The world is just waiting for the spark to start the run out of the dollar and our Treasury debt. No nation will really help us when the collapse comes.

What If You Have More Time?

Maybe we have months instead of weeks – or at most a couple of years before the event takes place. Allow our politicians “buying time” to work for your benefit instead of theirs:

1. Educate Yourself With Free Subscriptions: First, to protect yourself, you must assume the balance of establishment news coverage and opinion is all disinformation designed to delay panic and create actions which will benefit the establishment probably to the detriment of your best interests. Therefore I suggest you subscribe to the following free e-mail publications:

* Follow what the elites are planning ahead of time with The Daily Bell.
* Keep up with the real freedom news and philosophy by going to LewRockwell.com
* Get an Austrian economics view on the markets and gold with Mountain Vision – Subscribe.

2. Maintain Liquidity & Reduce Political Risk: Legally and following all reporting requirements, move your private wealth outside the US into safe secure investments which will remain liquid and trading should US markets close as they did following 9/11.

3. Create A Domestic Safe-Haven Location: The potential for violence, theft and property destruction in the US dwarfs what could happen in Greece. If you can afford a safe-haven second home away from major cities and high crime locations, then do so. Consider taking advantage of the real estate collapse and buying something you can enjoy in good times and have as insurance for bad times.

4. You Will Likely Be Safer Outside the US: In a serious crisis, most of the criminals out to steal your property and do harm to you will come with official government sanction and not from traditional criminal elements. Consider a more secure safe-haven jurisdiction where the rule of law might still prevail with a condo, second citizenship or residency in a nation outside the United States for the duration of the domestic disorder and economic collapse. Remember, currency and government debt collapse is common throughout the world and history shows the difficulties don’t last forever. My fear is we haven’t seen a world reserve currency collapse before and the aftermath is uncharted waters. I would expect a scenario several magnitudes worse than the 1991 Russian collapse.

5. Secure Your Gold: Finally move most of your gold or silver offshore where it will remain secure rather than become a tempting target for confiscation from parasitical groups and individuals. Washington will need your gold as I doubt there has been substantial gold at Fort Knox since Nixon closed the gold window. The eventual outcome of the crisis may well be some fake gold backing for the dollar. Why else would anyone use a collapsed currency?

6. Don’t Trust Washington With Your Retirement Benefits: Consider closing and taking a withdrawal from your retirement plans to avoid new taxes and penalties at withdrawal, the means testing and loss of your Social Security benefits or the forced investment into collapsing Treasury obligations.

You can read all about the gold and retirement threats in my Lew Rockwell archive. Pay specific attention to the following essays:

* The Greek Tragedy
* There’s Gold In Fort Knox?
* Retire In Poverty-Retirement Plan Nationalization
* The Obama Retirement Trap

The debt crisis is here and I promise you only that you will not hear the truth on cable financial news or from your establishment investment firm or professional. To avoid a panic, neither the government, the Federal Reserve or Wall Street will be honest with you about the risks we face, just like they all lied and covered-up before the market meltdown in 2008.

If you are an American, the last place you should keep most of your wealth now is in the dollar or your home country. You might personally get out but your wealth will be trapped for the duration and probably lost during the disruption.

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Bell.

Ron Holland is a contributing editor to the Swiss Mountain Vision Newsletter and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Foundation for the Advancement of Free-Market Thinking (FAFMT) in Vaduz, Liechtenstein.

Copyright © 2011 The Daily Bell

Expatriation: Top Fifteen Reasons To Relocate to Panama

by Russell D. Longcore

Here at DumpDC.com, we want you to consider all your options as you prepare to weather the economic firestorm coming soon to a state near you.

Friday, we told you about the Texas Nationalist Movement, and we think living in Texas would be the first choice of those serious about continuing to live in North America.

Saturday, Dr. Gary North gave another opinion about moving to better environs, and gave great suggestions on how to do a proper evaluation to find your new location.

Today, let’s look at my favorite choice for a place to live outside North America.

Top 15 Reasons to Relocate to Panama

1. Dollar denominated currency

At this point, the Panamanian Balboa and the Dollar are tied to each other. If you relocate before TSHTF*, you’ll be able to use your dollars freely throughout the nation. After the dollar melts, it will be anybody’s guess what Panama will do. But my opinion is that they will choose money that suits the rest of the world, since Panama relies on the world for most of its income.

2. Year-round growing season, abundant fresh food.

Matthew 24:20-21 “But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day. For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.”

If THSTF in fall or winter, what will you be doing to feed yourself and your family? There are very few places in the continental USA that have climates that sustain year-round growing seasons. Panama is near the equator, and the soil is volcanic. Stick nearly anything in the ground in Panama and it will grow year around.

3. Abundant clean water

Panama has a rainy season that fills the rivers and lakes and aquifers every year. I’ve drunk Panama tap water and never had one problem with it…and it’s delicious. Moving into the future, many nations will have potable water shortages. Not in Panama.

4. Tropical climate, little HVAC required

Panama is about 8-9 degrees above the equator, so it’s a tropical climate. But there are prevailing westerly breezes off the Pacific that temper the climate. Panama City is as hot as you might expect. But temperatures in the Panama highlands are 10-15 degrees cooler. Imagine living in a place where the temps never go below 60 and never above 85…year around. One of the most surprising things I discovered is that most houses built up in the highlands are not built with a central heating system. Wrap your mind around that. Think how much money you would save if you didn’t have to heat your house.

5. Government is stable

Panama is well run. Sure, there is corruption. What government doesn’t have corruption? But post-Noriega Panama has been run pretty well.

6. Government is pro-immigration

Panama welcomes immigrants. The resident visa program is very popular. The “Turista Pensionado” visa is the best known. Anyone entering the country as a qualified pensionado is guaranteed to retain that legal status as long as they choose to stay in Panama. And you do not have to be a retiree to qualify for this visa.

7. Panama has the Pensionado program

Panama has the Pensionado Program for retirees. Discounts and tax benefits of all sorts are offered to retirees. Check it out.

8. High-tech backbone for the Internet

All of the fiber optic cables that connect the entire world run along the bottom of the Panama Canal. Consequently, a high-tech community has sprung up in Panama. Internet connection speeds are blindingly fast for obvious reasons.

9. Panama has no taxes on income earned outside Panama

This is a huge benefit, and stands in stark contrast to the US which taxes Americans globally. In my own situation, 100% of my business activity is outside Panama, but with the bandwidth and speed of the Panamanian Internet, I could live there with no Panamanian tax liability. And your pension or Social Security payments can be sent anywhere in the world.

10. National economy growing

The Panama Canal is being expanded to accommodate Supermax shipping. The canal is scheduled to be completed by 2014. Canal income will skyrocket for the Panama government. Their economy is growing by over 8% per year, and will continue into the future.

11. English widely spoken

Because of the American presence in the old Canal Zone for the past 100 years, English is widely spoken. Sure you should learn Panamanian Spanish, the official national language. But it’s great to be able to speak English most everywhere in Panama.

12. Only four hours by jet back to the USA.

Miami and most of the South and West is a four-hour plane ride from Panama City. I catch a jet in Atlanta and step off the plane in Panama City four hours later…which is due south of Atlanta.

13. Low cost of living

Panama has one of the lowest costs of living in all of Central and South America. An average house can be built for less than $50/square foot. Learn more at that link in #7.

14. Escape US regulations

Think of all the Washington regulations that you won’t have to deal with simply because your physical body is no longer in America. Most everything is less expensive in Panama because it doesn’t have the cost of American regulations built in.

15. Dual citizenship available

Panama offers dual citizenship, but it’s expensive. You must live in Panama for five years in order to apply for citizenship. Knowing Spanish and Panamanian history are also required. Proving your financial solvency, your medical condition and many other “paperwork” details are also included in the process. But it can be done. First, move there. Then decide if becoming a Dual Citizen is to your advantage.

Conclusion

There are lots of cool places to choose for expatriation. One of the most important things you must remember is that, unless you are an American Indian, your ancestors expatriated to the USA. My people came from Germany in 1742. I think often of Johann Jacob Langhaar, our patriarch, who brought his wife and infant son to America. He left family, friends and his family history to start anew in America. What motivated him? Was he moving to…or fleeing from?

You’re going to have to make the same choices. Even no choice is a choice. You either plan and choose your life, or react when TSHTF.

DumpDC. Six Letters That Can Change History.

*The Shit Hits The Fan

© Copyright 2011, Russell D. Longcore. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got

Logical, Practical Baby Steps Toward Survival and Secession

If you have been reading the articles posted here at DumpDC, you have read about the impending economic collapse. But sometimes all this gloom and doom, although accurately predicted, can be overwhelming. And when you feel overwhelmed you may just give up, thinking all is hopeless.

So today, I’m offering some common sense steps you can take to become as prepared as you possibly can become.

First, remember that none of us know when the s*** is going to hit the fan (WSHTF). We cannot accurately predict dates when events will occur. Let’s just do what we can until those days transpire. As legendary businessman A.L. Williams said, “All you can do is all you can do.” Let’s just hope that all you can do is enough.

1. Begin this week buying silver coins.

I started buying gold and silver about ten years ago when the price was $300 an ounce. Today’s gold prices are above $1,360 and will go higher. Ten years ago silver was about $15 an ounce. Today I’m buying silver at $35. It will go higher too, but it’s much more affordable for the average person. Make a commitment to yourself to buy as many silver coins as you can each month. If that’s only one coin, that’s better than doing nothing. Always try to buy coins that are 99.99% pure silver. Do not buy collector coins because the collection value melts away when you are using the coin for money. No one will care if it’s rare. Only the purity of the silver will matter.

Survivalists might disagree with me about placing this recommendation as number one. They might say that stocking in food, water and weapons are more important. But my opinion is that hard money will buy all those things, but only if you have hard money. Sure, you may be able to buy supplies cheaper now before the crash. But hard money is king and you’d better have it in your possession after the crash.

Gold and silver coins are actually money. Paper “money” is not money…it’s currency. When you buy gold and silver coins, you are exchanging your paper currency for real money. You are taking the value still found in your currency and storing that value in real money. As time goes by, it will take more and more paper currency to buy real money.

Do not sell gold and silver you already own. The carnival barkers on TV and down your street looking to buy your old jewelry will pay pennies on the dollar, and they will hand you paper currency as payment. That is backwards and foolish. Don’t fall for that scam. Tuck your old jewelry away as a stash of value.

Where to buy? Check coin dealers in your area as well as pawn brokers. You can even go online and find dealers with great prices. I recommend buying coins face to face with a dealer and only using cash. Why create a paper trail of your purchases?

2. Sell some stuff

You have personal property around your home that still has value that you are not using anymore. Electronics, furniture, tools, CDs, DVDs, even collectibles. Sell your extra stuff to raise cash. Then use that cash to buy even more silver.

Thank God for Ebay and other auction websites! It gives all of us great tools for selling our unwanted personal property. But if you’re not Internet savvy, just have a yard sale.

3. Start storing food and supplies

By selling off some old stuff, you’ll have more storage space. Make a special storage space in your home and being to buy extra food. Start with canned goods. Buy food you already like. Canned vegetables and meats are great. Then buy some paper products, like toilet paper and paper towels. If you are going to buy bulk items like rice or pasta, you’ll need sealable food containers for them. Don’t forget toiletries, like soap and other cleaning products. Buy some chorine bleach, which can be used to purify water. Buy canned juices, cake mixes, pudding, etc. My point here is to begin to put aside extra supplies toward the day that you can no longer just run to the store for stuff you need. That day will surely come whether you believe it or not.

4. Own firearms

If you do not already own a firearm, you are a victim waiting to be victimized. In the days following the collapse of the American financial system, crime will be rampant as desperate people do desperate things to survive. So, not only do you need to own firearms, but you need to become proficient in their use. Go to the gun range and learn how to use your firearm. Start now buying quantities of ammunition for your firearms. Having one box of ammo is not enough. Ammo is cheap. Buy 1,000 rounds or more for every different firearm you own. Make your ammo purchases at a gun shop and use cash, no credit or checks. No paper trail.

5. Get out of debt

Do everything you can to pay off debt of any kind, especially debt that is tied to collateral, such as your house or car. Last thing you want is to have your collateral repossessed or your home foreclosed.

How about consumer debt? In 2010, I heard financial guru Suzie Orman tell an Oprah Show audience to not worry about paying off consumer debt. She actually said that if you had to choose between credit card debt and house/car debt, choose house/car debt because it is secured debt. The credit card companies may be able to ding your credit score, or even sue you for the debt, but they cannot foreclose or repossess because it’s unsecured.

6. Increase your income

If you make more money, you can get prepared for disaster quicker. But making more money isn’t all about disaster preparedness. Have you ever heard of the concept of “having a Plan B”? Most people concentrate on just their present source of income, like their job. That’s Plan A. As most of you have noticed lately, jobs can go away unexpectedly even if you’re a great employee. Having more than one source of income lowers your risk of losing your major source of income.

The best “Plan B” you can have is a home-based business of your own. You can make great money, and having a home-based business opens up a source of tax deductions you never had before. You can write off thousands of dollars of business deductions…IF you have a business.

Most average people do not know how to properly evaluate a business opportunity. So, they make bad choices, lose a bunch of money, and come to the conclusion that being in business doesn’t work. But what if there was a simple way to evaluate ANY business opportunity before you jump in and risk your capital?

I’ve got the answer for you. I have a free video for you to watch. Click on www.ExploreFreedom.com. At the homepage, look to your left and find “Watch Brilliant Compensation.” Most of you should choose “English Live” and click “GO.”

If you want to learn more about how to make money in the energy business, contact me through the ExploreFreedom website. I’ll give you a hint…energy is one of the only truly recession-proof industries in America today. Is YOUR job recession-proof?

7. Do a security check at your home

Most folks live day to day with a false sense of security. They have no awareness of their surroundings and are surprised by robberies, car jackings and burglaries. But breaking into a residence is pretty easy. Have you made it easier for burglars inadvertently? Here’s quick checklist:

• Trim shrubs away from door and windows. Shrubs are good hiding places.
• Place a motion sensor exterior light next to every exterior door.
• Invest in a monitored security system for your residence. Make sure ALL openings have a sensor, even second floor openings.
• Reinforce your exterior doors to make them harder to bust open. I wrote an article at my insurance blog HERE.
• Install deadbolt locks with LOOOONG screws that sink into the framing behind the door frame.
• Don’t leave ladders and tools outside your home for obvious reasons.
• Get a concealed weapons permit and carry a pistol at all times.

8. Start planning where to live

When we reach The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI), will you want to live in a state that takes its orders from Washington DC, or will you want to live free? Spend the time NOW deciding where you want to live. Get out of the cities, which will be the most dangerous places of all. You might even consider choosing a state NOW and moving there before TEOTWAWKI. The other option is to expatriate and live outside the USA. That’s a very attractive alternative. But if you wait until TSHTF, Washington might not let you leave.

9. Spread the word

Friends don’t let friends stay ignorant. Discuss these concepts with those you love. Be prepared to take some criticism.

10. Face some tough decisions.

Remember the story of the Little Red Hen. Her friends did not want to help her prepare, but they were sure ready to help eat what she had worked for. Keep this in mind when, after you have sacrificed to be prepared, your family, neighbors and friends want to latch onto you for survival. What will you do if they discover that you have a stash of supplies and money and you don’t want to share? Will they come try to take it by force? You’re going to have to make some tough decisions then.

Jesus told a parable in Matthew 25:1-12 about ten virgins, five wise and five foolish. Read it HERE.

Conclusion

Don’t allow your mind to be overwhelmed by the prospect of economic collapse. You can begin TODAY to change your life and be prepared for the worst. But no one can make you do this. It has to be your decision.

Secession is the Hope For Mankind. Who will be first?

DumpDC. Six Letters That Can Change History.

© Copyright 2011, Russell D. Longcore. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Thinking About Expatriation? Watch This Video

by Simon Black

(Editor’s Note: This is DEFINITELY worth four minutes of your time. Make sure you show this to your kids.)

Professor Hans Rosling has an uncanny ability to take enormous heaps of data, crunch the numbers, and present them in such a fluid way that it would make the most disinterested viewer sit up and take notice, and his focus on developing countries shatters a lot of misconceptions.

In the video below, Rosling charts a moving 200-year history of the wealth and life expectancy of 200 countries. In just 4 minutes, he shows that the gap between developing countries and developed countries is actually rather small, and that places like Shanghai, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore have already caught up with the West.

Two of the things that I thought of immediately when watching this video were:

1) The catastrophic long-term effects of government-organized folly (war, central planning, currency debasement, etc.) are very clear when watching the progression of his data set;

2) It’s incredible how fast developing nations can catch up with the West; technology, productivity, and a high savings rate are key drivers, and those are the critical ingredients to look for when assessing the long-term growth capacity of any economy.

I highly recommend the above video, it’s only 4 minutes. If you have time for a more in-depth presentation about the growth rates of developing nations (particularly India and China), check out Rosling’s lecture at a 2009 Ted conference, it’s about 15 minutes.

And finally, if you want to play with the data yourself, you can do so at Rosling’s website.

Anyone considering a move or exploratory trip overseas, might want to consider starting his or her research in some of the developing nations that rank highly in Rosling’s data set. Chile ranks the highest in Latin America, Malaysia in developing East Asia, and Sri Lanka in developing South Asia… 3 of my top picks.

Copyright © 2010 Sovereign Man

La Fuente on a Slow Afternoon

by Fred Reed

(Editor’s Note: Expatriation facilitates slow afternoons and articles like this one. You could do worse than packing up your gear and starting over in another country…and if you stay here in America, you will do worse.)

So I was sitting with Tom the Robot and Jonesy in La Fuente, an old and cavernous beer bar hard by the cathedral in Guadalajara, and swapping lies. Except they weren’t lies, because some people can’t lie to equal the truth. Otherwise I guess they would. Thing is, lying is a limited form. Life isn’t.

La Fuente is dark and inelegant. It covers about a roaring acre of locals hooting and hollering and you pay for beers as you get them.

The Robot was talking about social interaction. Like Jonesy, he has what writers call a checkered past, but chaotic is more like it—ground Marine in Nam, paramedic in New York, curious jobs in remote parts of Alaska. He once played a bottle-nosed dolphin in a movie, hovering two feet below the Gulf of Mexico in scuba gear and waggling a plastic dolphin’s head above the water.

The Robot is crazy. He is also a dangerous brawler and has anger-control problems. Actually, he doesn’t see a problem. He’s perfectly happy smacking the hell out of people who need it.

Anyway, social interaction. He comes out of a bar in Guad late one night, three sheets to the wind, and probably the blankets and pillow cases too, and these young bad-asses come up with a knife and request his wallet. When that happens, the smart thing is just to give it to them. So the Robot reaches for his wallet and nails the sumbitch with a drop-shouldered sucker-punch, hard, and the jerk goes down leaving teeth on the concrete, and the others decamp.

“Bloody chicklets,” said the Robot, referring to the teeth. “I was stupid. I coulda got killed.” He has anger-control problems. And his wallet.

He wasn’t bragging, just telling beer stories.

Jonesy is a retired bush pilot out of Alaska with a soft Southern accent like Karo syrup dripping on busted china and he’d talk about flying way up north with ice on the wings and in a fog in places that made nowhere look like somewhere. Maybe he was in a high-wing Cessna, but I forget.

“What happens if you can’t find a place to land?” asked the Robot, who knew the answer.

“Shucks, you can land anywhere,” said Jonesy. “Nothing to it. What you want to do is find a airfield before you do it.”

I guess you could drink beer with a tax accountant. But I wouldn’t want to try it.

The waiter came by on a resupply run with more Corona and I mentioned coming out of Angola on a story for Soldier of Fortune in a DC-3, flying ten feet over the trees to keep SAM-7s from getting a lockThis was this when Cuban soldiers, whom I rather like, were supporting the evil commmie government in Luanda. I didn’t care. The world is complex. I didn’t need to solve all its problems, or take sides.

Anyway, among a certain kind of riffraff and rabble, such as us, the DC-3 is a legend. It first flew about 1936, and still does, age seventy-five and re-engined, and it was the platform for Puff the Magic Dragon, a gunship popular in Asia. More popular with one side than the other, I guess. With Gatlings firing tracers it looked like it had ray guns.

But that’s neither here nor there. La Fuente was getting noisier as people came in for an after-work brew. There was nothing hositle aobut it, just good times and bad acoustics.

Mexico changes fast. You see women in lots of bars. You’ve heard a lot about machismo, but it’s on life-support, at least in the cities. Which is a good thing. In the US you can see some diesel-dike feminist with spiked hair like an alarmed porcupine and hollering about what she thinks is machismo because she caught some guy leering at her tits. Mexican machismo isn’t funny. It often involved broken jaws. Still does in the wilder parts.

You might think guys who know more about guns, engines, and questionable bars than about polishing doilies, or whatever you do with doilies, would be untouched by civilizing influences, and regard women as furniture or captive hookers. No, actually. I know lots of pilots, former door-gunners, cowboy divers, and generally very tough guys. They think women are nuts, but don’t speak badly of them, even in private. Except gringas. Jonesy will gaze at an ambient lovely and opine wistfully that she could suck-start a leaf-blower. But he would never say it to her. He’s just dreaming. He treats his wife with kindness and respect. But then, she’s Mexican.

The Robot looks like a skull with skin stretched over it. Hollowed out, he’d make a good lamp shade. He has don’t-fuck-with-me eyes that make you want to be his friend, or somewhere else. I’ve never figured it out. Some guys you look at and you know mayhem is readily available. It isn’t a scowl, threatening manner, over-hanging orbitals, or angry voice. But you know. You just know. “Cops eyes,” they have been called.

He talked about motorcycles he’d had, which was lots, and falling off them occasionally to no good effect on bad turns, and long lonely rides down to Florida on a Harley panhead to dive and hang out with people your mother wouldn’t like at all.

The better forms of human detritus tend to travel in similar social tunnels. The Robot and I both knew the Last Chance Saloon, a biker bar at the top of the the Florida Keys. My lunatic friend Stu and I had spent time there when we drove down to pass the turn of the millenium underwater, which we did at Davis Ledge, trying to drink, at forty feet, a bottle of rust-cutter champagne called Domme Bahd Stufe, or something similar. It didn’t work too well.

A couple of hours and considerable Corona later, I’d heard about getting dropped off in distant lakes in Alaska to fish by a float plane plane that wouldn’t come back for two weeks so you better be alive then. About the shark that swept in on an attack run in cloudy water and veered off when it realized that divers weren’t in its food chain. About the bomb squad in DC that sent robots to investigate what seemed to be a bomb, but turned out to be bull sperm in liquid nitrogen. About cold rain over an disintegrating M60 tank on the mud ranges of Fort Hood. About….

I don’t guess we saved the world or cured cancer. But I thought it was a pretty good way to spend a slow afternoon, way south of the border.

Fred, a keyboard mercenary with a disorganized past, has worked on staff for Army Times, The Washingtonian, Soldier of Fortune, Federal Computer Week, and The Washington Times. He has been published in Playboy, Soldier of Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Harper’s, National Review, Signal, Air&Space, and suchlike. He has worked as a police writer, technology editor, military specialist, and authority on mercenary soldiers. He is by all accounts as looney as a tune.

Copyright 2010 Fred Reed.

Secession or Expatriation: The Only Answers To Martial Law?

by Linda Brady Traynham

(Editor’s note: Linda submitted this fine analysis in response to yesterday’s article on Martial Law. After you read it, you will understand that secession is the ONLY possible way to thwart Martial Law. Or you can consider expatration, but you’d better do that before the meltdown. After the meltdown, DC will likely close borders for exit.)

As powerful as this presentation is, it does not–for reasons of space, I am certain; Russell states that these are excerpts–begin to make clear how quickly martial law could be imposed or how few options would be left. Any sitting president who chooses to be the last one in America in order to become the first dictator/king/emperor/first consul can do so easily. I thought it quite possible that Dubya would make that decision. There was nothing to stop him. The process is very simple:

1. Declare a national emergency (any pretext will do, and Obama does so routinely);
2. Dismiss Congress for a minimum of six months, as allowed by the Constitution; and
3. Homeland Security then becomes the law of the land and no one or group can even question any actions taken during that six months. Let me stress that this is by current law.

Impeach the president? How? Congress has been disbanded. Supreme Court interference, even if they could muster 5 votes? How many battalions do the Supremes have? The President has a sizable force under his personal, as opposed to titular, command now, and an enormous number of troops have been trained in “crowd suppression” and “riot control” at Ft. Benning, Georgia. I do not suppose it is by coincidence that 80,000 troops are enough to close off every freeway exit in America–and that isn’t hyperbole; it has been worked out mathematically.

A very easy explanation of precisely how every last piece of enabling legislation Hitler used has been passed in this century in Washington, D. C., can be found in Naomi Wolfe’s slim volume, The End of America. Frills have been added since, such as the “pre-census” workers taking GPS readings on our homes, which will make it far easier to arrest such “dissidents” as I. Your computer tattles on you, and having visited such a site as this–far less what could be termed by Janet Napolitano as “fomenting insurrection” by contributing here–could get one put on the “No Fly” list which will form the basis for identifying trouble-makers. The Feds are against “profiling” only when that is used to identify probable foreign terrorists and illegal aliens; it has no difficulty with stigmatizing me as a “domestic terrorist” because I have read the Bible, own guns, speak out against the government, and consort with former military personnel. Are you now or have you ever been a listener of Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck? Clearly a prospect for terrorism, particularly men who cut their hair short and have tattoos and wear bluejeans. How unAmerican can they get?

Do you know what Executive Order 11921 says? You’ll have to hunt because it is being removed from the Internet. It allows the government to confiscate everything you have, for the common good, of course. Starting with your food, guns, ammunition, alcohol, fuel, water, and a cute little provision for “naval stores.” That probably sounds like rope and tar to you, but under the new definition it includes everything the Navy purchases, which is basically… everything. It is improbable that you will be reimbursed for the appropriated goods, but even if you were the money would be worth nothing. When a squad armed with genuine “assault” rifles, wearing body armor, shows up at your door, resistance will be dealt with harshly. Most of us patronize Sam’s Club and have little plastic cards from Kroger’s grocery stores, and others. Their computers keep track of your purchases, you know. If you have been “prepping” in the wrong places you left a clear paper trail of what you bought. Just try explaining that you have consumed 700 pounds of rice in the last year. Credit card purchases are on file, so they know how many boxes of Meals, Ready to Eat, you bought. There are murmurings of reinstituting the charge of “hoarding,” and at least one group defines that as having more than three days’ food in your home. The government knows, within an easy to estimate allowance for normal usage on the ranch, how many gallons of red diesel I have; I was required to get a permit to purchase it. (Red diesel can be used only on farms and ranches; from time to time inspectors check the tailpipes of vehicles used on road, and woe betide anyone caught with dye residue.)

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have been planning a totalitarian state for over fifty years, and danger is high between now and at least the end of January, 2011. Obama knows that there are only two ways to prevent resounding rejection at the polls in November: a short, victorious war, or a “fortuitous” “man-made disaster” which might unite the country behind him and would at least provide a flimsy excuse for martial law. Short, victorious wars are a little hard to come by unless you’re Moshe Dyan or Golda Meir. Consequently, I see two particularly perilous questions: will there be elections this year? If there are, will a new Congress be seated next January? The Democrats state bluntly that whether they win or lose they are going to spend the time between now and then pushing through all of the legislation possible, and after the elections they will have absolutely nothing left to lose. I don’t expect Congress to be in recess even for Christmas.

The superb article we are discussing is a year old, and it may have included a more lengthy discussion of the dangers of government control of the food supply. The so-called “Food Safety Modernization Act” is, indeed, a giant pay-off to Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s husband, who is associated with Monsanto, but not only does it push Monsanto (with those genetically modified seeds which produce seeds that are sterile, and have enormous resistance to weed killers), but it outlaws heritage seeds! Sometimes known as heirloom seeds, those are old varieties which produce excellent vegetables lavishly and are in no way deleterious to mankind. (If you like Roma tomatoes, almost all those for sale are from Mexico and of heirloom stock. Scrape the seeds out gently onto a paper towel and dry them for future use. If you spread them out thinly you will be able to cut the paper up for ease of planting.) That, obviously, is very bad, but there is much worse.

The true purposes of the bill are to locate all of the livestock in America, put prices totally under the control of Agribiz, and to make it illegal to process so much as a chicken for your own use. The very threat has driven our local butcher out of business for anything except deer season. The current regulations, which require expensive USDA inspectors on the premises at all times just barely allow him to make a profit, but he can see that the changes will destroy his business. He’s quitting while he’s ahead.

I run a small ranch, and here are the differences the bill will make for my prospects of ever making a profit, not that they were ever large. Without spending at least $150,000 I will not be able to purchase a dairy license. Without the license there will be absolutely no point in keeping 6 dairy goats and two dairy cows in milk. It will be legislated a crime to give away their milk and a crime to transport it in a private vehicle. In theory I can make cheese out of it–if and only if that cheese is aged more than 90 days–but only if I have a separate, all stainless and concrete block “commercial kitchen.” A gallon of milk produces a pound of cheese, with a fair amount of fuss and expensive enzymes and rennet. In theory (and with constant work), I could produce 150 pounds of cheese about 10 months out of the year, and, in theory, sell it for about four dollars a pound if I could find a store that only sold 150 pounds/month of cheddar, which I can’t. Does it sound sensible to build a separate building with air filters and costly refrigeration for the small profit I would make? I didn’t think so, either, but somebody has to protect Lily and Oak Farms from the likes of amateur goatherders.

It gets worse. So far Congress has not pushed through NAIS, but it probably will this fall, at which point I will be required to insert an RFID chip in every animal on the place and be able to account for every last one of them at all times. I will be subject to exceedingly large fines if I do not report the death, sale, loss, or birth of all animals within 24 hours. I don’t know how many chickens I have…somewhere between 100 and 150, probably. They are free range and roost in an assortment of places. Consider the sheer volume of work required to run a scanner over every neck every day! Sanderson and Tyson will only be required to chip one bird out of a house of 5,000. In theory this will be used to track flocks and herds if an animal is found to have Mad Cow disease or Anthrax. Never mind that no sensible person believes that the chip # would be kept with every cut from a side of beef, making it possible to track diseased beef down to the hamburger level.

“But wait! There’s more!” It will become a crime to process beef, chicken, hogs, deer, rabbits, goats or even squirrels and fish on the premises, even for our own use. Because I don’t have a butcher’s license, of course, and I don’t have a commercial kitchen. Never mind that I have 48′ of stainless steel counter tops (Craig’s List is wonderful!) and a professional butcher’s bandsaw, they aren’t in a separate concrete block building with proper drains and filtered air and sub-zero refrigeration. It isn’t as though the West were settled by men who dressed their own carcasses, now, is it?

What do you suppose the purpose of this is, if you aren’t credulous enough to believe it is to protect me from hurting myself eating tainted meat or slicing my hand? Why…in addition to letting the government know where to raid for supplies, it limits where I can sell the pastured beef I raise. Obviously I cannot take a steer to the butcher who has gone out of business, but even if I found one I would not be allowed to sell the meat, although I suppose we could transport it to our home freezers and eat it ourselves. I cannot sell my steers and chickens to private individuals because they won’t be able to get them processed easily, either. I will only be able to sell my livestock at public auction, where the only buyers will be from the big slaughter houses. Do we suppose that this restraint of trade will result in lower prices to consumers? No, we do not. Neither can we suppose that those buyers will pay a fair price for the pastured beef I raise, free from hormones and pesticides, at considerable expense and over twice the time of those fed hormones. Still, we can’t let let small ranchers and farmers survive. Oh, I’m a real threat to Hormel, Swift, and Oscar Meyer, I am. Why, I could send about a dozen head to market this year if I wanted to, totally ruining their bottom lines without doing more than paying my feed bills, if that.

A very reasonable question at this point is, “Linda, why are you running cattle, goats, and chickens at all, if this is what in store?” One answer is that it wasn’t, when I began restocking the ranch. A better one is that I never intended to make a profit as a rancher, and a good thing, too. In good years ranchers make 4%. In bad ones they lose $150/head, or more, as they did last year. The livestock preserves my “agricultural exemption” which is worth over a thousand dollars a month off my taxes. We love having the critters around. Primarily, the stock is my hedge against The Greater Depression, hyperinflation, and TEOTWAWKI. It is a renewable source of food–supposing I can protect it against the government and desperate, hungry strangers.

What will I do if ordered to surrender my animals to the government “for the common good,” or “the general welfare,” two phrases that have never included me? I don’t know, any more than most folks know how they will react if put under martial law and see our neighbors disappear into one of the 800 or so internment camps. My instinct is to say that given sufficient warning I will shoot them myself rather than allow the Statists to appropriate them. Shoot them and shove the carcasses into one of the lakes or taint them with gasoline. If being Irish, Scottish, and/or Southern aren’t on Janet’s list of subversive characteristics they ought to be, because we don’t take kindly to rustlers, even if they are wearing black jackets that say BATF & Cattle Confiscation on them and are carrying fully automatic rifles. I absolve them of being jack-booted thugs; I’m sure they will wear Corcorans.

I’m a great believer in doing our thinking ahead of time, but there are too many unknowns to set any rules other than to prepare for the worst, speak out, and share our information. I do wonder, though, how many Americans would resist blatant tyranny, and my sad suspicion is that we would be divided roughly into the Red and the Blue, with the provisos that a great many city dwellers would be constrained by geography and reliance on the food distribution network from protesting while large “entitled” groups would riot and loot. Some, but by no means all, of those in small towns and the country would be more apt to protest..which may be part of the move to get people off the land and into urban environments. Roosevelt had 5.1 million small farms to feed a population of 125 M. There are only 2.1 M small farms, now, and an estimated 330 M residents. 30% of the orange juice in the world is produced in Brazil, as well as most of the sugar cane and coffee. If legislation is efficacious in squeezing out the last of the small time threats to globalized food procurement, at least some small towns will die, no longer able to subsist on selling each other goods and services. The farms went under due to grocery chains, population density, ruinous taxation on inheritances, and the unfounded idea that our sons could make better lives for themselves in the cities. A hundred years ago 85% lived on the land. Today 85% live in cities and suburbs while only 2% are involved in food production, potentially a very dangerous situation.

I am not a violent person and all I want from the Feds is a non-aggression pact. Unfortunately, like foot traffic across our southern borders, they keep pushing into our lives, eating more and more of our substance. They think in terms of how much of their money they will allow us to keep. What if they decide all of the food and water are theirs, too? Do we take up growing lettuce, tomatoes, and bunnies in our closets under grow lights?

Linda Brady Traynham for DumpDC, copyright 2010.

Individual Secession

By a Texan currently living abroad

courtesy SouthernNationalCongress.org

Some years ago I listened with keen interest to a speech by a professor from Alabama speaking about how Americans had tried “State Secession” twice. It had worked once and it had failed once. While we all look forward to the time that we might go for “the best of three”, there remain some things that one can do as an individual. They fall in the category of Individual Secession. Individual Secession comes in many flavours and the applications are as diverse as the people who implement it.

For some, it begins with taking our children out of government indoctrination centers, and arranging for private or home school solutions. That is as much an act of secession as anything else, and has been resorted to by literally millions of parents at this point. Believe me, it concerns the Central Planners, when those fertile brains are removed from their dominion. (It’s always touching to see their “concern for the children.”)

Others have walked away from churches which teach false doctrines, or left social clubs and even jobs over issues they feel are inimical to their family or the entire country. In fact, it’s an American tradition to quit when you don’t like the way things are going – to just walk away. That’s why songs like, “Take This Job and Shove It”, resonate with the American working man. Indeed, “I was lookin’ for a job when I found this one,” was a theme long before it was a song.

In 1865, and for a decade following, Southerners emigrated from the South in such numbers that it constituted one of the great migrations of Western Civilization. Much has been written of the fact that the American West draws its independent nature from Southerners who had no intention of living with the boot of Yankee occupation squarely on their neck. Most of them fled west to Texas and beyond.

Tens of thousands, however, went to different countries. Not a few went to England and Scotland. Many thousands went into Mexico. Between ten and twenty thousand went to the most famous settlement of Americana, leaving an interesting cultural impression upon the region, where ante bellum cotillions are still danced, and the most Southern accents you can imagine are still spoken by the older descendents. Most, however, returned to the US, and found their way west. The primitive conditions and foreign cultures were difficult on all, and the distance from families was not worth the price, especially when locals were not necessarily welcoming of these strange new immigrants.

Where did we all come from in the first place? There is not a single American or European (or Asian or African, for that matter), who does not descend from an immigrant at some point. We are a nation of immigrants, legality notwithstanding. And those who came, did so under conditions far more difficult than what we face today. They left family behind, without benefit of FaceBook or e-mail for daily communication. They went to a strange culture, often a strange language for a couple of major reasons – the chance to own their own land (private property) and/or the necessity to flee tyranny. (The two are often related.)

In the late 18th Century, Scottish and Irish immigrants found it so difficult to feed a family that they voted with their feet, by walking to the nearest port and booking passage to the colonies, principally to America, and later to Australia and New Zealand. The government became alarmed, shortly after the absentee landlords became alarmed, for the rents simply quit coming in. A royal commission was created to figure out what had happened to all the (formerly servile) farmers and shopkeepers.

As is so typical of governments, they immediately developed a conscience about the conditions in which those poor emigrants had to travel. (Wink, wink.)

In 1803, the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the Passenger Vessels Act. It was the first of many laws intended to regulate the transportation of immigrants and to protect emigrants on board ships from exploitation by transportation companies (such as exorbitant rates and consequent subjection to poor sanitary conditions). The Passenger Act required improved conditions relating to hygiene, food and comfort for passengers travelling to North America. However, this law was not always followed by transportation providers and the spread of infectious diseases such as typhus continued.

This act was established under humanitarian pretences, but the more practical and desired effect was to raise the cost of passage to prevent as many as possible from leaving. Landlords who feared the emigration of their population lobbied extensively for this piece of legislation, and where one could previously travel to Canada for £3–4, the price for the same passage was in some cases raised to £10 or more. The ability to move abroad was subsequently limited to a small class of people until it was repealed in 1826.

As one South Texan recently told me, when I asked him, what would your ancestors say, who came from Europe 150 years ago to claim this ranch and build a homeland for generations. His response was startling in its intensity. He said, “My family came here to escape government oppression and to find cheap land. I’ve had enough government meddling with my property and confiscatory taxation. I’ve found cheap land in another country. If my family lived here with me now, I guarantee you, they would be helping me pack!” He now owns a ranch in Argentina. (I asked him about the socialist government there, and he said, “It could be bad, if they were efficient, but they’re so incompetent that they practically don’t exist. I can live with it.”) Reminds me of Will Rogers’ famous quip, “I should think the last thing you want is all the government you pay for!”

Someone told me recently that 4,000 Americans a week arrive in Panama to make it their new home. Obviously, many are retirees, choosing to get better value for their dwindling dollars there than they can back home. But many of the people leaving the US these days are simply fed up, and no longer convinced that they can do a thing in the world to change things here, and willing to make the effort to start over for the sake of children and grandchildren.

All of that to say, “Things are at a head.” None of us are surprised that a crisis is coming – it’s the common core belief of a huge section of Americans today. And some are preparing creative ways to secede, right where they are. They are opting out of government systems, disappearing from the traditional and moving into alternative forms of buying and selling their goods and services. These things need a lot of discussion and development and debate. Whether it’s food production and cooperative buying, or alternative health programs, or herbal medicine, or contract labor, etc., there is a healthy underground economy out there that is (a) invisible, and (b) helping prop up the sick and dying economy.

If you decide to become an expatriate and leave the country, you’re in good company. Follow your own path, knowing you’re not the first, nor the last. (Chances are, you’ll be back.)

Tick – Tick – Tick: The Economy Bomb Part Three

by John Gaver

Intimidation only makes matters worse.

Recent legislative attempts at forcing or intimidating the wealthy into staying have only made matters worse. As mentioned above, in 1996, Congress passed and President Clinton signed into law, two bills aimed at “punishing” those wealthy Americans who had the audacity to leave the United States (rather than creating economic “incentives” for wealthy Americans to stay). Any first year political science major can tell you that historically, disincentives almost never work.

Let’s examine the effect of these two pieces of totalitarian legislation.

I will just touch on the changes made to the Immigration and Nationality Act first, since the only purpose of those changes was to discourage wealthy Americans from leaving and their only effect was to scare more wealthy Americans into leaving. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act Act of 1996 included a provision that would permanently bar wealthy American expatriates from ever returning to the United States for any reason, if the expatriate was wealthy, under the afore mentioned government standards, at the time of his expatriation.

Pay special attention to the fact that this law did not apply to ordinary expatriates, but only to the wealthy. Our government obviously doesn’t care if you or I should leave, since it is not our taxes that funds their gravy train.

Obviously, the feds, who publicly claim that native capital flight is not a serious problem, must be privately terrified of the consequences that the continued increase in native capital flight will bring. However, they erroneously believed that those wealthy Americans, who were considering leaving, would ever want to come back to a country that treated them like second class citizens, for no better reason than that they had worked hard and acquired some assets. Instead, the wealthy saw that law for what it was – a harbinger of things to come.

Instead of discouraging expatriation, that law was, in fact, the trigger event that caused even more wealthy Americans to leave. As I mentioned above, I have lived offshore for an extended period. Furthermore, in my business, I have traveled offshore a lot and often to tax haven countries. Both in London and elsewhere, I have routinely had a chance to talk with American “expats.” I was not surprised to find that among the reasons high on the list of recent expats, for leaving the USA, was this change to the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996, on the other hand, has much more ominous overtones. So, what does a health insurance law have to do with expatriation? To begin with, the United States government, through this act, has the audacity to claim the right to tax expatriates for 10 years after they renounce their US citizenship, if the expatriate was guess what?… wealthy, under the afore mentioned government standards, at the time of his expatriation. Do you see what this says? Think about this.

The United States government is now claiming the right to tax foreigners!

They want to tax people who live in, work in, hold citizenship in and pay taxes to another country and who no longer hold US citizenship or even US permanent residence and have no assets in the USA. They want to tax people who are, by every reasonable definition, “foreigners”.

The United States long shared with Libya the infamous distinction of being one of only two countries in the world that claimed the right to tax the income of its citizens regardless of where in the world that income was earned or banked. But, even Libya was not so tyrannical as to claim the right to tax foreigners, who had no connection to the country. In fact, even Gadaffi was smart enough to realize that taxing the foreign income of citizens was causing an unacceptable amount of native capital flight and Libya has now dropped its claim to the offshore earnings of its citizens.

If a self-absorbed despot like Gadaffi can understand that, what does that say about the US government?

Granted, a few other small countries have since implemented a similar non-territorial tax. The December 28, 1998 issue of the Wall Street Journal reported that two other countries in the entire world attempt to tax the offshore earnings of its citizens. One is the Philippines. The other is Eritrea. Since that Journal article was published, South Africa has also implemented such a tax regime. But, enough of the sad company that our government keeps…

The real problem is not the abhorrent nature of this law. It is its effect.

When word of the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 reached the wealthy, they saw this law for exactly what it was – not just another brick in the economic Berlin Wall that our government has been erecting, to keep wealthy Americans from leaving with their wealth intact, but in fact, a large section of that rhetorical wall. Many wealthy Americans, who had been hesitant to leave, saw this provision in the law as the last straw and began making preparations to leave.

The government’s claim of this absurd right to tax ex-citizens for 10 years gave the wealthy no pause at all. After all, they had a solution. For many years, when wealthy Americans chose expatriation, they most often left as much of their wealth as practical in some sort of tax sheltered investments in the United States, so capital flight did not represent as serious a threat, as it does today. The wealthy would leave, but a good portion of their investment capital stayed here. And that portion, though somewhat sheltered, still generated a significant amount of taxes and funded many US jobs.

But since 1996, wealthy Americans who have chosen to leave, have had no choice but to take ALL of their wealth with them when they leave or risk it being confiscated by the IRS, to pay that 10-year tax penalty.

Let me emphasize that word. ALL!

Wealthy expatriates can no longer afford to leave anything behind. To protect what they have earned, they must sell or encumber ALL of their US-based real estate, US stocks and bonds,… EVERYTHING! Over a period of time, they must move all of their wealth into offshore investments or at the very least, create debt against anything that is left here. Then, when they leave, there is nothing left behind for the IRS to confiscate. Unfortunately, it also leaves nothing behind to fund US jobs or the US government.

The government, of course, pouts and claims that these expatriates are being very un-American, just because they had the audacity to protect what was rightfully theirs, from IRS confiscation. The government fails to realize or at least refuses to accept, that it was their own attempts to grab more power that made it impossible for these wealthy Americans to stay or to leave any money in the United States, when they left.

So, instead of preventing wealthy Americans from leaving, that law not only encouraged them to leave at an even higher rate, but it forced them to take ALL of their wealth with them when they leave. And, therein, lies the root of the real problem.

When the wealthy take ALL of their money out of the United States, it has many undesirable effects. The most obvious, as pointed out above, is the loss of tax dollars. But, there are far more serious consequences that lay beneath the surface. Most of the wealth that we are talking about is what we refer to as investment income. Regardless of whether that money is in a passbook savings account, an IRA, mutual funds, stocks, bonds or direct investment, it is almost certainly money that is funding business somewhere in the United States. That money effectively represents JOBS in the United States.

When that investment capital moves offshore, several things happen. Most notably, JOBS that the investment capital funds move offshore, as well. We are already beginning to see this.

Some of that investment capital will be replaced, it might be argued. In fact, some, though not all of it, will be replaced. But, it is the source of that new capital that creates yet another problem. When US based capital is not available, businesses look offshore for investment capital. Since US expatriates can no longer safely invest in US businesses, foreigners move in to fill the gap, temporarily.

Just look at how much Communist China has invested in the US. As more and more wealthy Americans are forced to flee the United States, the remaining Americans will find that they are increasingly the labor force for wealthy foreigners who, by the way, generally pay tax only on what they earn in the US.

But, once the tax rates are forced up, by the lack of wealthy citizens to tax, even that foreign investment capital will dry up.

Add to all of this, the appalling increase in frivolous lawsuits by the greedy, the recent rash of government confiscations (forfeitures*) and the heavy burden upon business, represented by legislation like the Patriot Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and you discover that increasingly, the wealthy are finding that their only choice is to leave. It’s like a snowball rolling down hill. Right now, it’s just a big glob of snow. But if we don’t create some major incentives to keep US capital in the United States, it will soon become an avalanche.

Creating Incentives and Removing Disincentives

The problem is very complicated and there is no single solution. But, there are two issues that, far and away, represent the most pressing problems surrounding native capital flight. Those issues are the abuses of the IRS and the USA Patriot Act.

I mentioned earlier that I have interviewed many American expats about their reasons for leaving. Until six years ago, the number one reason for leaving, cited by EVERY expat that I talked with, had something to do with the IRS – not the Income Tax, but the IRS. When I asked them to be more specific, they cited IRS abuses and witch hunts, lack of privacy in their financial dealings, hundreds of thousands of pages of incomprehensible and contradictory laws, from which the IRS picks and chooses and let us not forget, the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which are nothing more than covert tools of the IRS.

Every last expat that I talked with, prior to 2001, told me that the “principal factor” that pushed them over the edge had something to do with the “not to be sufficiently damned IRS.” (By the way, though not universal, I have found that phrase in quotes to be rather common in the expat community.) Even when I tried to suggest that, since they rated the IRS as the key factor in their leaving, that it all boiled down to taxes, they corrected me. Though taxes may have been a factor, the tax load alone, was not enough to force them to leave. The thing that pushed them over the edge had to do with the IRS, itself.

I should mention that today, there are some who now cite the Patriot Act, as their number one reason for leaving, though the IRS still holds a commanding lead. The point to remember here, is that both the IRS and the Patriot Act represent attacks on personal and business privacy.

So, if we eliminate the deciding factor that is causing these wealthy citizens to expatriate, it would go a long way toward keeping any more wealthy Americans from leaving. Every previous attempt to solve this problem has been aimed at strengthening the power of the IRS and every previous attempt has failed.

It should now be obvious that any proposed solutions to this problem that leave the IRS intact, should be summarily dismissed. One of the most important things that we must do to stop native capital flight, is ABOLISH THE IRS.

That would mean replacing the Income Tax with some system of taxation that does not require such an autocratic organization looking into the personal finances of every individual. The Flat Tax would not work, since it retains the source of the problem, the IRS. There are, in fact, only three tax plans that would fit this requirement – excise taxes on imports, a National Retail Sales Tax and taxing the states according to their productivity, which would allow the states to collect all federal taxes, as their voters choose.

Since broad use of excise taxes have generally been found to have a negative impact upon the economy, they are not a practical solution. Of the three options, taxing the states, instead of individuals, is most in line with the intentions of the Founding Fathers and it would achieve the desired affect of getting the government out of the affairs of individuals. The competition between the states would serve to keep the system efficient. But alas, no such bill has been proposed in Congress.

That leaves the National Retail Sales Tax (H.R.25, in the 111th Congress), that has been proposed in every congress for years and gains supporters every year. It was sponsored by Rep. John Linder, of Georgia and now has 58 cosponsors. Even Tom Delay, before he left office, had announced his support for it, in April of 2004 and set a schedule to push H.R.25 through committee and get it to a floor vote. The Fair Tax was also a major component of Mike Huckabee’s presidential bid. As more in congress learn about the Fair Tax, the more support it gets.

The findings of a CATO Institute Policy Analysis on “The Economic Impact of Replacing Federal Income Taxes with a Sales Tax” predicts that the shift in tax structures will raise the stock of US capital by at least 29 percent and potentially by as much as 49 percent.

Former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman, Bill Archer reported, “A recent survey was done, in Europe and Japan, of the major corporations and I was astounded at the results. They were asked, ‘If the US abolished its income tax and went to a sales tax, would that have any impact on your decisions?’ Eighty percent of the corporations said they would build their factories in the United States of America. Twenty percent said they would move their international headquarters to the United States of America!”

A National Retail Sales Tax would not only create the incentive for wealthy Americans to keep their assets right here at home, but it would actually have the effect of reversing native capital flight and bring a lot of expatriated capital back into the United States. But, for that to happen, the 10-year expatriation tax on the wealthy, the “Don’t come back” law and the Exit Tax would have to be repealed, as well.

New Disincentives to Overcome

Although a National Retail Sales Tax would serve to slow the flight of the wealthy, that alone, would no longer have the sizable effect on keeping native capital here that it once did. Financial analysts have made many excuses, for why the US dollar is falling and continues to fall against the Euro and other currencies. But, for the most part, they limit their analysis to traditional models and those models just don’t fit here.

The problem that traditional models fail to account for is, since the implementation of the Patriot Act, transferring US dollars internationally, has become extremely difficult. Even transfers of US dollars from one bank in a foreign country to another bank in that same country could be held up in the Fed for weeks.

It is not unusual for US dollar transactions that used to take one to two days, to be held up in Patriot Act compliance for one to two months. Such delays did not exist prior to the Patriot Act and do not exist today, when dealing in Euros, Pounds, Yen or any other foreign currency, if you are not a US citizen. That’s because those currencies don’t move through the Fed and because foreigners, who deal in other currencies, don’t have to meet Patriot Act requirements.

To understand what is happening, you must understand how the US dollar became the currency of choice for investors worldwide. The creation of the Fed made it possible to execute US dollar denominated transactions internationally, in two or three days that previously would have taken six to ten days or longer, with other currencies. That extra few days of interest on, say $100 million dollars, is a lot of money. It was the efficiency of the Fed that made the US dollar the currency of choice in international transactions. But, the Patriot Act has reversed all that.

Today, as a result of technology, foreign currencies can usually be transferred via Euroclear, almost as fast as and sometimes faster than dollars. But until enactment of the Patriot Act, the dollar remained the currency of choice, not only because of the certain efficiency of the Fed, but because there was no reason to change. It was just practical.

But, with the onerous requirements of the Patriot Act, it can now take weeks to transfer US dollars, while the same amount of a foreign currency may only take a few days. Today, when using Euros for such transactions, the interest savings alone, can be significant.

It should be noted here that every US government agency that watches such things, has reported that the terrorists did not and do not use our banks for laundering money, since they have access to Arabic banks that provide untraceable transfers. In other words, the financial provisions of the Patriot Act, that make up almost two-thirds of that bill, had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism, but were instead, aimed at control of wealth and wealthy Americans. But, like previous such attempts at disincentives, to control wealth (HIPAA, IIRIRA, S.1701 and the Heroes Tax Act, mentioned above), the Patriot Act had an effect that was exactly the opposite of what the government desired.

Disincentives don’t work.

Disincentives like those discussed above, along with about two-thirds of the Patriot Act, have had the exact opposite of the intended effect. Disincentives just don’t work. If native capital flight is to be reversed, before it’s too late, we must eliminate all of those disincentives, abolish the IRS and roll back large portions of the Patriot Act (mostly the financial provisions).

Then, we must replace those disincentives with incentives, like a National Retail Sales Tax and a return to a banking system that encourages the use of the US dollar in international transactions, before another currency rises to the top and becomes the de-facto standard for international business.

We also need to implement some serious tort reform laws that include, among other things, “loser pays” and if the plaintiff is indigent and the plaintiff’s attorney is working on a contingency, then “loser’s attorney pays”. This would also significantly reduce healthcare costs and the cost of all types of insurance.

But, here is the important thing. Those changes must be implemented soon, before the US dollar ceases to be the currency of choice in most international transactions and before the expatriation snowball picks up too much speed to be stopped. If other currencies become as common in international transactions as the US dollar, it will be too late, as the dollar will stagnate. If we wait until the economy begins to react to this native capital flight, it will be too late. Time is not on our side.

You saw what happened when the markets reacted to tech stocks being overpriced. Imagine what will happen when the markets take notice of the seriousness of our problem with native capital flight. Once that slide begins, it will be the economic equivalent of the collapse of the World Trade Centers and all that we will be able to do is pick up the pieces of a shattered economy and wonder why our government didn’t do anything to stop it. Unfortunately, few will realize that government disincentives were actually the cause.

WE MUST ACT NOW!

It’s no longer simply a matter of equity in taxation nor of the tracking of terrorists’ funds. As a result of recent and continuing legislation aimed at controlling or punishing the wealthy, the economic future of the United States of America is now seriously at risk, since those who can save our economy, are precisely the people who are being forced to leave.

The wealth expatriation snowball is growing, day by day. Nobody can say when it will reach critical mass. But at the rate it’s going, it likely won’t be long.

We urge you to contact your Congressman TODAY and tell him/her that you want him/her to support the Fair Tax Act of 2009 (HR 25) and real tort reform and the repeal of the 10-year expatriation tax, the “Don’t Come Back” law, the exit tax and all of the financial restrictions in the Patriot Act.

The Fair Tax Act will go a long way toward reversing capital flight, eliminating IRS confiscations and getting the IRS out of our personal lives. But, without the roll-back of the Patriot Act’s financial restrictions and the repeal of all of those disincentives, even that bill will give us only limited relief.

There is however, one other alternative. You can start packing your bags.

*To make confiscation seem less severe, the government has taken to calling it forfeiture. The term, “confiscation” connotes taking something that belongs to a citizen. The term, “forfeiture” connotes giving up something that was not the citizen’s property in the first place. This also shows what the federal government thinks of your right to actually own private property.

Copyright 2009 John Gaver, All rights reserved.