Secession: It’s All About Timing

by Russell Longcore

Not so long ago, secession was a taboo subject for discussion in polite society. It was almost un-American to thoughtfully consider a state leaving the Union for any reason. Everyone thought that Lincoln’s War settled that issue. But today’s America is a seething cauldron of race, resentment toward Washington and the “Mobocracy Looter Minions” that populate the District of Columbia and its suburbs.

If you watch any news service for seven days, you’ll learn that the dollar is in trouble around the world. You’ll learn that other nations are disconnecting from the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. And you’ll learn that America is in big trouble, at home and around the world. The DC government is the king of chaos, fomenting revolution, government overthrows and war.

Over half of the American states have passed legislative resolutions exerting their rights under the Tenth Amendment. That’s nice, and symbolic…and somewhat unusual for slaves to stand up to the plantation owner. But it’s not really necessary, unless you only perceive yourself as only a slave.

So when is the best time to actually pull the trigger and secede from the United States?

I believe that states should be making concrete plans right now for secession. States already have intricate plans in place in case of natural disasters and such. Should not a state have a plan in place in case of political disaster?

The United States Federal Government is a dying monster. But is still possesses political might, military might and potency. Dying monsters quite often thrash about and injure those that are too nearby. So at this point in time, while Washington still APPEARS viable, state secession would be a foolish move.

After all, why would a state willingly take the chance of incurring the wrath of Washington? It would be like in the Tolkien movie “Return of the King,” when the good guys presented themselves at the Black Gate to divert the gaze of Sauron’s all-seeing eye. Washington might turn its fury on a seceding state to make an example of it, in order to discourage any other state from trying secession.

Washington’s politicos are working 24/7 to produce radical, unconstitutional changes in American governance and culture. And here is early 2016, the Republican majorities in the House and Senate are such cowards that they allow the president and the Democrat minority to set policy and run the government unchallenged. At some point, some state might decide that enough is enough. But I believe that it will take an event that happens outside of Washington to bring about Washington’s collapse.

The most likely event is the worldwide rejection of the US Dollar as reserve currency, and the worldwide adoption of any other currency as reserve. Even the change of the dollar as the currency of choice of any major petroleum bourse¹ will spell disaster for the dollar.

Iran has already formed an oil bourse, which uses the Euro, the Iranian Rial and a basket of other currencies as the settlement currency for petro transactions. Its first day of trading was Monday, October 26, 2009, on the Free Trade Zone Iranian island of Kish. Iran, having the world’s second largest gas reserves and third largest oil reserves, is trying to play a more active role in oil and petrochemical transactions in international markets. And since that day in 2009, there has been an amazing story unfolding of gold smuggling into Iran through Dubai and UAE to facilitate Iran’s skirting of the DC embargo.

Between the rejection of the dollar worldwide, and the selloff of US Government securities by nations like China, combined with runaway money printing by Washington and the hyperinflation that MUST follow, the dollar has nowhere to go but down…and precipitously.

The value of the dollar will tumble against other currencies….very soon. It will happen as other nations scramble to get rid of American currency and securities holdings and protect the very survival of their own nations. Washington has been passing bad checks for too long, and the nations are stepping to the pay window.

However, there is another…and I think more likely…scenario to cause the collapse of the Dollar. I can easily see the situation in which a nation like China sells off a large amount of US bonds with the direct intention of collapsing the bond market, thereby causing the collapse of the Dollar.

We won’t run the story of the days after the collapse. That could take a book.

It is at this moment in time, when the dollar freefalls, that the states will have a golden opportunity to secede. States must do what it takes to assure their own survival, and not as a slave state to Washington. But a secession alone won’t solve anything. The heavy lifting just begins when a state secedes.

First there would have to be a Provisional Government installed until the formal government could be designed and brought into being as a legal entity.

The very next thing that MUST be settled is the issue of money. If a new nation adopts the very same banking environment that America has right now, the new nation will be doomed to fail. The new nation MUST have a 100% gold/silver standard. It must also prohibit by law fractional reserve banking. Both government monopoly on monetary policy and fractional reserve banking are counterfeiting by another name. It must be prevented before it starts.

How will states with no gold and silver create a money system? Again, that is another article altogether.

Monetary policy and banking worldwide is failing. A new nation needs to go another way, and that way is to return to sound money. Most of the other challenges that a new nation would face will be easier if the new nation has money backed with precious metals at 100% reserve. But you cannot counterfeit your way to liberty and prosperity.

Timing is everything. If states secede at the time that Washington is drowning in worldwide debt and the financial markets worldwide cause the collapse of the dollar, Washington may be powerless to stop secession. Ask Moscow how well they stopped the secession of the Western Soviet republics in 1989.

I know I’m getting to be “Johnny One-Note” about monetary policy, but that should tell you how crucial it is. Remember that no nation in the history of the world has survived that counterfeited its money. Not one. Ever.

But also remember that the Byzantine empire, on a gold standard, lasted over a thousand years…until it debased its own money.

1. A bourse is a commodities exchange in oil, petroleum and natural gas.

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 140,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Flash Editorials November 2, 2012

By Russell D. Longcore

Welcome to Flash Editorials for November 2, 2012. I am Russell D. Longcore, owner and editor of DumpDC. Flash Editorials is presented by http://www.DumpDC.com. DumpDC is the world leader in secessionist thought. We show the world that secession is the only hope for personal liberty and property rights on the planet.

This is the first Flash Editorials I’ve done since May. My schedule changed and now I can go back to being a smart ass on video. Let’s go to the news!

The Nation I: The Gross Incompetence and Breath-taking Negligence of Barack Hussein Obama, otherwise known as the Libya Embassy Scandal. The Obama camp bitched about Mitt Romney “politicizing” the tragedy because in the early days of the attack, Romney made negative comments about Obama’s handling. Turns out, Romney was right. But what we have now learned is that Barry is the very person who politicized the murder of four Americans in Benghazi. Various reports have verified that the CIA and State Department apparachiks were watching the embassy in real time from a drone-mounted camera in the sky above the embassy. As the event unfolded, we have learned that there were military assets within ONE HOUR of Benghazi, including a battalion of Marines, Seal Teams and all. The military REQUESTED authority to make the rescue. And get this…the ONLY PERSON who could authorize the request for our military to cross an international border to rescue the Ambassador and the others was BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA. An Admiral in the Mediterranean can’t do it. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta can’t do it. Joint Chiefs can’t do it. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton can’t do it. Only the President. So, what did the president do? Did he leave the situation with his National Security advisor Thomas Donilon? NO!! He dropped the situation into the lap of David Axelrod, his Senior Political Advisor…and he went to bed. You see, Barack had a big fundraiser in Las Vegas the next day, and he needed to be rested. And a few hours later, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were brutally murdered by the Libyan gunmen. And this after Stevens had repeatedly requested more security for the Embassy and the requests were denied.

Barack Obama didn’t do anything illegal that I know of. He did not commit an impeachable offense. He just simply did not give a shit about four Americans in Libya getting murdered. Keeping his job and raising money was…and is…far more important to this tinpot tyrant than doing the right thing. And what would it have taken? A nod of his head? His signature on a form? A verbal order “GO?” But he could not be bothered. But let a storm blow up the East Coast where all those voters live, and you can see photos of Obama in the White House Situation Room making plans to rescue everybody in the East. Of course, you know that it is all bullshit. FEMA will work just like FEMA does. But all that will occur AFTER the election next Tuesday.

The Nation II: The election is next Tuesday. Don’t vote. For God’s sake, don’t vote. The voting process has been taken over entirely. Electronic voting machines are programmed regularly to miscount votes for one candidate or another. You CANNOT be certain that your vote will count for the candidate you vote for. And in a larger sense, when the people who are actually in power present you with two Presidential candidates that are nearly the same man, what does it matter which one you vote for? And think about this. Even if 100 million voters did NOT vote next week as a protest, there is NO minimum number of votes below which the election becomes illegitimate. So if a million people voted for Obama, and a million plus one voted for Romney, Romney would take office. So if your vote truly does not count…and it only gives legitimacy to an illegitimate system…if you vote, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The Nation III: Hurricane Sandy was a Godsend for Barack Obama. Just before the storm hit the East Coast, the news was filled with the breaking stories about the Benghazi fiasco. It looked like Barry was going to have to eat that shit sandwich right up to election day. But Hurrah for Hurricane Sandy! Widespread devastation will help Obama look like a good guy instead of the dim-witted coward he is.

But let’s talk about Sandy for a moment or two. Hurricanes usually need warm sea water to gain strength. In late October, Weather Underground reports sea temps along the Eastern coast at less than 65 degrees. Hurricanes like sea temps above 75 degrees, and the temperature differential does make a big difference. Sandy was a big storm in the Caribbean where sea temps are still about 85 degrees. So you can see that if Sandy had come north in late August or early September, she may have been a Cat 3 hurricane when she made landfall. Sandy slowed to Tropical Storm status…because of the cool water…and made landfall at high tide in a full moon. So the water levels were spectacularly high. Some say the wall of water that came ashore was over 30 feet tall. And just like in New Orleans, Sandy flooded vast, densely populated areas with sea water, which is highly corrosive.

One of the biggest issues in Hurricane Katrina was if the wind damaged insured property first, followed by water damage from flood. It will be the same issue in the Northeast, mark my words. Insurance companies will deny hundreds of thousands of claims because of flood exclusions and then only pay small claims for a few shingles getting blown off. One of the upsides for coastal policyholders is that Sandy was not a named hurricane when she made landfall, so many policies with huge wind deductibles won’t trigger. Watch it happen and remember my words.

The final total of damages along the Eastern Seaboard will be many billions of dollars. But don’t worry. Washington has a printing press. They won’t run out of money. The insurance companies might…but not DC.

International I: Unemployment in the Eurozone rose in September to a record high of 11.6%, according to a report by the European Commission’s Eurostat agency. Spain has the highest numbers in the Eurozone, with a jobless rate of 25.8%, followed by Greece with 25.1%. On the other end of the spectrum…or perhaps I should say in the northern region of the Eurozone, Austria has a 4.4% jobless rate, and Luxembourg’s rate is 5.2%. Friends, it is only a matter of time until the Euro currency collapses…just like here in America. They can take us down, and the collapse of the Dollar will surely take down the world.

Business: Just last week, I learned about a new business concept called “Social Commerce.” We all know about Social Networking and how big it has become. The use of websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others has exploded in just a few short years. Remember, Facebook launched in 2004. So in eight years, it has become the giant it is now, with over 1 billion worldwide members.

Social Commerce is simply gaining access to the vast numbers of eyes looking at Social Networks for business purposes. Now, the traditional method of gaining that access is advertising. But advertising on social networks is not working out as well as expected. Facebook thought they were going to make a killing selling ads to business who wanted access to all those eyes. But Facebook’s stock price has gone from its IPO high of $38 to today’s price around $21.

Turns out that social network users don’t like ads any more than they do on TV. I want to see a show of hands. How many of you record TV shows…even sports events…to view later? And how many of you fast forward through the commercials? That’s what I thought. You ALL DO. So, how can a business take advantage of Social Networking?

Referrals. Networking. Word Of Mouth advertising…the most powerful and effective form of advertising in existence. And Word of Mouth advertising costs nothing. Think about this. You went to a movie you liked and you recommended it to friends. You ate a great meal at a restaurant and told your friends. That is Word Of Mouth advertising. But let me ask you this…did the theater or restaurant pay you any commission when your friends spent money there? Of Course Not!!

So how can you harness the power of Word Of Mouth advertising for your business? An even better question is…How can I start a business using Social Networking and turn in into Social Commerce?

That question leads me into tonight’s Commercial Message. Would you like to learn how you can make all your social networking PAY YOU! Let me introduce you to a new company named Solavei. Solavei just launched nationwide on September 21, 2012. They have created a company that will allow YOU to refer your friends and relatives and make money by doing it. You don’t have to sell anything. Simply post messages and links and let your network look for themselves. If they like what they see and make a purchase, you get paid!!

Solavei’s first Value Proposition is this: Unlimited talk, text and data on a 4G nationwide network for $49.00 per month. No Contract. No Credit Checks. No Deposits. You can bring your phone and phone number with you. And enrolling takes about 5-6 minutes online. I saved $46 a month by switching!

Think about this: Cell phone service is a life-essential service that nearly every person from age 14 to age 100 has. And they will not voluntarily give up their phone service. What would they do? Get a land line? That requires credit checks and deposits. So phone bills…like utility bills…will get paid every month even if other expenses get cut or eliminated altogether. That makes a business recession-proof.

Solavei’s business model is this: Refer people you know to Solavei. When those people sign up like you did, you will receive monthly commissions as long as those new customers remain Solavei customers.

To learn more watch the two videos below. Then sign up TODAY!!

What is Solavei? from Solavei on Vimeo.

The Solavei Vision

Solavei Vision from Solavei on Vimeo.

Economy I: The number of actual initial unemployment claims filed under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 342,702 in the week ending October 20th. But the Labor Department said that New Jersey and Washington DC did not submit their weekly numbers because of the storm. All day, I’ve heard the news readers only say that the national number was 9,000 less than last week. Any outrage that 342,000 people THIS WEEK file for unemployment…and that AT LEAST this amount of people PER WEEK have been filing for unemployment for THREE YEARS? Let’s see…350,000 times 24 months is 8,400,000. NEW. UNEMPLOYMENT. CLAIMS. And then the Obama Administration crows like a rooster that 114,000 jobs were created last MONTH…and that the unemployment rate is 7.8%. Let’s see…at least a million three new unemployment claims in September and 114,000 jobs created. Sure! The Obama Administration has this under control! He deserves a second term!

Sports: In the World Series, the San Francisco Giants mugged the Detroit Tigers in four straight games. Looks like the Ti-girls peaked in the playoffs because they swept the New York Yankees in four games. The Girls had no offense at all in the World Series. Cheer up, Detroit. You were in the World Series back in 1968, and then again this year. In another 44 years, you can play in the World Series again.

Sports Part II: The Atlanta Falcons have a 7-0 record in the National Football League. Oh my God! That has never happened in the history of the franchise. Team Owner Arthur Blank, billionaire former owner of Home Depot, can’t stop smiling. The team is deep in talent and healthy. They could go all the way.

Finally, in Entertainment: I watched the second installment of Atlas Shrugged last week. It’s a very well done motion picture. Beautifully shot and well directed. But the events in America in the movie closely parallel what is happening in America today. Crushing Federal regulations are forcing some businesses out of business. In the movie, the Feds order businesses to continue in business at present pricing of their goods and services, and forbid them to close. Then the Feds come to the owner of a steel company and require him to sell them steel. He refuses to sell at any price and they have him arrested and place him on trial. Meanwhile, top leaders in science and industry are disappearing. Yeah, I know how the book ends. But I’m still looking forward to the third installment of Atlas Shrugged.

That’s all for tonight. Thanks for looking us over. I am Russell D. Longcore. For all of us here at DumpDC…Good night and good luck.

Dump DC: Six Letters That Can Change History.

Copyright 2012: Russell D. Longcore. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

The Principle Of The Gold Standard Part 8

Editor Notes:

I discovered a remarkable thinker and author recently. Antal E. Fekete is a Professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. He has written outstanding articles and does compelling lectures about money. This is a ten-part series on the gold standard. Ladies and Gentlemen, the first thing that a state must do at secession is invent a monetary system…that is the Power of the Purse. Creating gold money is a lot easier than you think.

The Principle Of The Gold Standard Part 8

The Principle of the Gold Standard Part 2

Editor Notes:

I discovered a remarkable thinker and author recently. Antal E. Fekete is a Professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. He has written outstanding articles and does compelling lectures about money. This is a ten-part series on the gold standard. Ladies and Gentlemen, the first thing that a state must do at secession is invent a monetary system…that is the Power of the Purse. Creating gold money is a lot easier than you think.

The Principle of the Gold Standard Part Two

It’s Comedy Friday

I’m going for straight-up laughs today, Friends. This song will never get any radio air play, but it’s worth watching Vince Gill and Rodney Crowell in drag. OH. MY. GOD.

Bravery Hurts

Never Trust Anyone Who Hasn’t Been Punched in the Face

by Scott Locklin

(Editor’s note: A state that secedes from the Union must build its militia as one of its first acts. That means that every able-bodied man or woman age 18 to age 55 is a rifleman and trained as a soldier. Non-able bodied persons can do desk work or cook meals. Militia training is exactly the sort of training this featured author is speaking about. I guarantee you that a new nation with a citizen militia trained to kill and fight would be a formidable nation. Ask Switzerland. We hope that one day soon the secession and independence movements will begin having serious public discussions about the very real possibility of armed resistance in the process of secession.)

Conservatives like to talk about the causes of Western Civilization’s downfall: feminism, loose morality, drug abuse, Christianity’s decline, reality TV. Blaming civilization’s downfall on lardy hagfish such as Andrea Dworkin is like a doctor diagnosing senility by an old person’s wrinkles. The fact that anyone listened to such a numskull is a symptom, not the cause, of a culture in decline. The cause of civilizational decline is dirt-simple: lack of contact with objective reality. The great banker-journalist (and founder of the original National Review) Walter Bagehot said it well almost 150 years ago:

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.

Every great civilization reaches a point of prosperity where it is possible to live your entire life as a pacifist without any serious consequences. Many civilizations have come to the state of devolution represented by modern Berkeley folkways, from wife-swapping to vegetarianism. These ideas don’t come from a hardscrabble existence in contact with nature’s elemental forces; they are the inevitable consequence of being an effete urban twit removed from meaningful contact with reality. The over-civilized will try to portray their decadence as something “highly evolved” and worthy of emulation because it can only exist in the hothouse of highly civilized urban centers, much like influenza epidemics. Somehow these twittering blockheads missed out on what the word “evolution” means. Evolution involves brutal and often violent natural selection, and these people have not been exposed to brutal evolutionary forces any more than a typical urban poodle.

Through human history, vigorous civilizations had various ways of dealing with the unfortunate human tendency toward being a weak ninny. The South Koreans (for my money, the hardest men in Asia today) have brutally tough military training as a rite of passage. I’ve been told that the Soviet system had students picking potatoes during national holidays. The ancient Greeks used competitive sports and constant warfare. The Anglo-American working classes, the last large virtuous group of people left in these countries, use bullying, violent sports, fisticuffs, and hard living.

I think there is a certain worldview that comes from violent experience. It’s something like…manhood. You don’t have to be the world’s greatest badass to be a man, but you have to be willing to throw down when the time is right.

A man who has been in a fight or played violent sports has experienced more of life and manhood than a man who hasn’t. Fisticuffs, wrestling matches, knife fights, violent sport, duels with baseball bats, facing down guns, or getting crushed in the football field—men who have had these experiences are different from men who have not. Men who have trained for or experienced such encounters know about bravery and mental fortitude from firsthand experience. Men who have been tested physically know that inequality is a physical fact. Men who know how to deal out violence know that radical feminism’s tenets—that women and men are equal—are a lie. We know that women are not the same as men: not physically, mentally, or in terms of moral character.

Men who have fought know how difficult it is to stand against the crowd and that civilization is fragile and important. A man who has experienced violence knows that, at its core, civilization is an agreement between men to behave well. That agreement can be broken at any moment; it’s part of manhood to be ready when it is. Men who have been in fights know about something that is rarely spoken of without snickering these days: honor. Men who have been in fights know that, on some level, words are just words: At some point, words must be backed up by deeds.

Above all, men who have been in fights know that there is nothing good or noble about being a victim. This is a concept the modern “conservative movement,” mostly run by wimps, has lost, probably irrevocably. They’re forever tugging at my heartstrings, from No Child Left Behind to Israel’s plight to MLK’s wonders to whining that the media doesn’t play fair to the overwrought emotional appeals they use to justify dropping bombs on Muslims. The Republicans are even taking seriously a pure victim-candidate: Michelle Bachman. As far as can be told, she’s a middle-American Barack Obama with boobs and a slightly loopier world view.

Modern “civilized” males don’t get in fistfights. They don’t play violent sports. They play video games and, at best, watch TV sports. Modern males are physical and emotional weaklings. The ideal male isn’t John Wayne or James Bond or Jimmy Stewart anymore. It’s some crying tit that goes to a therapist, a sort of agreeable lesbian with a dick who calls the police (whom he hates in theory) when there is trouble. The ideal modern male is the British shrimp who handed his pants over to the looter in south London.

How did we get here? Estrogens in the food supply? Cultural Marxism’s corrosive influence? Small families? Some of the greatest badasses I’ve known had many brothers to fight with growing up. When good men who will fight are all extinct, there is no more civilization. No lantern-jawed viragos are going to save you from the barbarian hordes. No mincing nancy boys with Harvard diplomas will stand up for the common decencies: They’re a social construct, dontcha know. The conservative movement won’t save you: They’re chicken-hearted careerists petrified of offending a victim group.

Teddy Roosevelt, my ideal President, kept a lion and a bear as pets in the White House and took his daily exercise doing jiu-jitsu and boxing. He even lost vision in an eye in a friendly boxing match while he was president. Our last three glorious leaders are men who kept fluffy dogs and went jogging. I don’t trust squirrelly girly-men in any context. When confronted with difficult decisions, they don’t do what’s right or tell the truth—they’ll do what’s easy or politically expedient. Unlike the last three, Teddy Roosevelt never sent men to die in pointless wars, though he was more than happy to go himself or risk his neck wrestling with bears.

I’m no great shakes: I’m a shrimpy egghead in a suit who thinks about math all day. I don’t train for fighting anymore, and my experiences with violence are fairly limited. Nonetheless, I judge people on these sorts of things. When I first meet a man, I don’t care what kind of sheepskins or awards he has on his walls. I don’t care if he is liberal or conservative. I want to know if they have my back in a fight. That’s really the only thing that matters.

Copyright 2011 TakiMag.com All Right Reserved

Smugglers As Heroes

by Walter E. Williams

(Editor’ Note: While I agree with Dr. Williams, he hesitates to take his argument to the most logical, most widespread smuggling enterprise of all…recreational drugs. If he is to remain true to his assertions, he would have to say that he supports the smuggling of drugs into the USA. What is the moral difference between John Hancock’s molasses and cocaine, heroin and marijuana? The “War on Drugs” has been a disaster, and will never prevent the “voluntary exchange among individuals.”)

Smugglers are heroes of sorts. The essence of what a smuggler offers is: “Government tyrants want to either prevent or interfere with peaceable voluntary exchange among individuals. I can reduce the impact of that interference.” Let’s look at smuggling, keeping in mind that not everything illegal is immoral and not everything legal is moral.

Leading up to our War of Independence, the British, under the Navigation Acts, had levied taxes on a wide range of imports. One of those taxes was on molasses imported from non-British islands. John Hancock, whose flamboyant signature graces our Declaration of Independence, had a thriving business smuggling an estimated 1.5 million gallons of molasses a year. His smuggling practices financed much of the resistance to British authority. In fact, a joke of the time was “Sam Adams writes the letters (to newspapers) and John Hancock pays the postage.”

Hancock’s smuggling, as well as that of many others, made the people of our nation better off by providing cheaper prices for molasses used for making rum. British oppressors were worse off by having lower tax revenues.

In 1920, the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the production, distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States, went into effect. It had wide public support. In my opinion, no case can be made for stopping another person from enjoying beer, wine and whiskey. That’s oppression, but along came heroes to the rescue. The ink hadn’t dried on the 18th Amendment before smugglers started smuggling beer and whiskey from Canada and Mexico. Ships lined up along our shores, just beyond the three-mile limit, to off-load whiskey onto speedboats. Smugglers and bootleggers spared millions of Americans from do-gooder oppression.

While the smuggler qua smuggler is my hero, several important negative effects surround his activity. Smuggling is illegal. It becomes a sometimes-nasty criminal enterprise because those who engage in it tend to be people with an overall lower regard for the law. Since smuggling is illegal, disputes must be settled with guns and violence instead of courts. Plus, police and other public officials are corrupted. Worse of all is the reduced respect for laws by the public at large. After the 18th Amendment’s repeal, virtually all of the crime and corruption associated with Prohibition disappeared.

Not many Americans are aware of today’s big smuggling activity – cigarette smuggling. Confiscatory taxes that are as high as $7 a pack, in New York City, making one pack of cigarettes sell for $13, have encouraged a thriving smuggling business across our country. Like Prohibition, confiscatory tobacco taxes are popular with Americans.

A recent study by Michael LaFaive and Todd Nesbit of the Midland, Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy titled “Cigarette Taxes and Smuggling” shows that states with the highest cigarette smuggling rates are those with the highest tobacco taxes such as Arizona (51.8 percent of the state’s total consumption are smuggled), New York (47.5 percent), Rhode Island (40.5 percent), New Mexico (37.2 percent) and California (36.3 percent).

Cigarette smuggling, like yesteryear’s whiskey smuggling, has become a livelihood for criminals. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has found that Russian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Taiwanese and Middle Eastern (mainly Pakistani, Lebanese and Syrian) organized crime groups are highly involved in the trafficking of contraband and counterfeit cigarettes. What’s worse is that some of these groups use their earnings to provide financial assistance to terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas. That means tax-hungry politicians and anti-tobacco zealots are providing the means for aid to America’s enemies.

The solution to cigarette smuggling, and the criminal activities associated with it, is to eliminate the confiscatory taxes. Unfortunately for tax-hungry politicians and anti-tobacco zealots, who see confiscatory taxes as a tool in their moral crusade against tobacco, only benefits count. For them, the costs of their agenda are irrelevant or secondary at best. And, as novelist C.S. Lewis put it, “Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University, and a nationally syndicated columnist. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page.

Copyright © 2011 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Arizona’s Lace-Curtain Secessionists

by Bernie Quigley at www.thehill.com

First I heard about ideas like this when driving through Chapel Hill, N.C., 15 years ago and listening to a radio interview with Dr. J. Michael Hill, writer and founder of The League of the South, a secessionist organization that seeks through democratic and non-violent means a “free and independent Southern republic.”

It was a local NPR show and quite a generous interview, as I recall. The interviewer brought to her story that morning surprise so featured in NPR stories in those days when it was discovered that penguin husbands sat on the eggs (Huh!”) or pig snouts could actually smell out truffles in the hills of North Carolina. Now that is something to think about. And here was a guy who wanted to reawaken the Confederacy.

Before the cry of the Orcs went up, he did manage to get a word in. Isn’t it against the law to, you know, secede, asked the interviewer?

Reared in Rhode Island, where we were taught funny things about the South — possibly because of the vastness of our involvement in the slave trade — I was quite surprised by the answer. As I recall, he said that it was one of those historic snafus. When Ulysses S. Grant became president after the Civil War, Jefferson Davis, president of the South, was in prison, pending, potentially, a trial for treason for advocating the secession of the Southern states. But Grant was advised that such a trial would open or reopen a can of worms because Davis may have been within his constitutional rights in that regard. The invasion of the South as it hatched in the minds of Northern thinkers was called “higher law” in motive. It would be a moral campaign to end slavery. It was not constitutionally sanctioned. In fact, Jefferson had written a secession clause in Virginia’s Constitution and New York and Rhode Island had one too. (Huh!)

This little breach of constitutional etiquette did not go unnoticed here in Vermont and New Hampshire when George W. Bush invaded Iraq, an invasion that took place with full cooperation of an appeasing and weakling Congress of Easter Peeps and a cowardly and accommodating Supreme Court; an invasion that brought torture, stripped Americans of their most basic constitutional rights, repealed habeas corpus and unleashed other un-American and unconstitutional strategies. An invasion for which men of honor lied outright at the United Nations and the press went along fully embedded in the cause.

It was in my opinion inspired by “the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man” — John Locke’s phrase to describe the essence of tyranny. So secession was proposed in Vermont.

Now liberal Arizona wants to secede from conservative Arizona simply because it lost influence in a recent election. Paul Starobin, author of After America: Narratives for the Next Global Age, wonders what California would look like broken in three. Or a Republic of New England. “Picture an America that is run not, as now, by a top-heavy Washington autocracy but, in freewheeling style, by an assemblage of largely autonomous regional republics reflecting the eclectic economic and cultural character of the society,” he has written.

Capote’s Holly Golightly meets Nathan Bedford Forrest. In an age where world opinion is formed on Oprah’s couch, Nobel prizes are given to just anybody and Lady Gaga forms the mind (or mindlessness) of a generation, the question that should be asked is, is there anything left? Is there anything to retrieve? Is there anything worth retrieving?

© 2011 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Ron Paul: First President of New Texas?

by Russell D. Longcore

reprint from 12-13-09

When Texas inevitably secedes from the United States, it will need a President. I nominate favorite son Ron Paul, of Lake Jackson, Texas as the first President of the new nation.

There is no other person that has the credentials of Dr. Ron Paul. Doctor Paul ran a successful ob/gyn medical practice before entering politics, so he knows small business. He served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force during the 1960s. He has been a US Congressman for Texas’ 14th District since 1997, returning to Congress after previously serving in the same capacity in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. He knows the Washington culture and the Washington games from the inside. His record of voting against pork-barrel spending has gotten him the nickname “Dr. No.” Congressman Paul has often been the lone voice on Capitol Hill for compliance with the Constitution of the United States. Paul enjoys a national reputation as the premier advocate for liberty in politics today. Dr. Paul is the leading spokesman in Washington for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies based on commodity-backed currency.

Recently, Paul sponsored HR 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, designed to regulate and audit the Federal Reserve. On December 9, 2009, he introduced the Free Competition in Currency Act in Congress, which if enacted, would get the government out of the money business.

He is known among both his colleagues in Congress and his constituents for his consistent voting record in the House of Representatives: Dr. Paul never votes for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution.

No other person in Texas can show a lifelong commitment to liberty like Ron Paul can proffer. No governor, Senator or other Congressman can compare their voting records and legislative records with Congressman Paul. All others would be proven to be big-government spenders and friends to tyrants…or tyrants themselves.

I heartily encourage Ron Paul to voice his support for Nullification and eventual Secession in a prepared statement delivered in an open session of the United States House of Representatives. That would throw an ideological hand grenade into the Washington political culture that would reverberate from that moment forward into the history books. That one speech would mesmerize and captivate the Main Stream Media. Paul, his speech and Texas would be the Number One headline for weeks. The line of media interview requests for Rep. Paul would be as long as the Rio Grande…and just about as shallow.

Few events could bolster the cause of nationhood for Texas as the unflagging support of Ron Paul. I dare to say that few events could galvanize the support of Texas citizens as much as Ron Paul’s support of the concepts of Nullification and Secession.

Not since John C. Calhoun’s advocacy of Nullification in the 1830s, and the formal secession of South Carolina in 1860, would Washington’s applecart be up-ended like a simple statement of support of Nullification and Secession from Ron Paul.

But please note: I am not recommending that ANY ACTION toward secession be taken any time soon. The national political events that will precipitate secession have yet to occur. And Timing Is Everything.

Just as George Washington was swept into the Presidency after the 1776 secession, so too would Ron Paul be the logical and emotional choice for Texas.

Perhaps Dr. Paul could convince Judge Andrew Napolitano to relocate to Texas and become the first Vice President or Chief Justice of the New Texas Supreme Court?

The Texas Nationalist Movement is the current driving force for the secession of Texas from the United States. The TNM is presently reaching out to Texans across the state and telling the story of the many reasons that nationhood is best for Texas…and Texans.

The TNM is currently spearheading a petition drive to collect signatures from Texans who support the concept of secession. TNM leaders want to be able to present thousands of signatures to the Governor on January 11, 2011, the opening day of the next Texas legislative session. The petition requests that a straight up or down referendum be scheduled so that the people of Texas may vote themselves whether or not to secede from the Union.

Fore more information about the Texas Nationalist Movement, go to: http://www.TexasNationalist.com A basic membership is a mere $20.

DumpDC. Six Letters That Can Change History.

© Copyright 2009, Russell D. Longcore. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.