Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 7 2009

Neel Kashkari went to Washington in 2006 as a 35-year-old assistant to then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. A little more than a year later, Kashkari was in charge of bailout stricken investment banks.

It was Kashkari who established the now-notorious $700 billion bailout price tag. As the Washington Post notes, that figure was entirely arbitrary. Kashkari admits that ?Seven hundred billion was a number out of the air.? Five percent of the $14 trillion in combined residential and commercial mortgages was $700 billion, which Kashkari decided was ?a nice round number.?

Following his resignation last May, Kashkari left Washington for the mountains of northern California, where he is living ?off the grid.? The would-be architect of the new economy is now trying to build small sheds and cabins, with less than spectacular results.

If the government?s bailout of the banking system has even the slightest chance of working, why did the former bailout czar literally head for the hills?

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 4, 2009

How many laws are really necessary?

The Bible says that God gave ancient Israel Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai. Because of transgression God mandated the Mosaic Law, which contained roughly 600 laws and commandments. In the New Testament, Jesus ? the same Lawgiver Who wrote the Law on Sinai ? summarized it in two challenging but easily understood commandments.

Those at the helm of the modern state are much more ambitious than God.

In 2007, for example, the Texas state parole board identified 2,324 separate acts that had been classified as felonies; this year, that list increased by 59. A felony was once a crime punishable by death. That status is now given to much more trivial offenses.

Legal analyst Scott Henson points out that the Texas state code lists eleven felonies involving oyster-fishing. Henson also notes that not even prosecutors can keep track of the newly minted felonies.

The political class won?t be satisfied until they can devise a way to make felons out of all the rest of us.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 3, 2009

The much-heralded economic ?stimulus? package is an undisguised boon to what the Washington Post calls ?the government-contractor nexus that is metropolitan Washington [D.C.]?

Thanks to immense ?stimulus? subsidies lavished on government-employed contractors, the suburbs of Washington, D.C. are booming even as the rest of the country plummets into a depression. This amounts to sucking wealth from the private sector for the benefit of the political class.

Much of that pilfered largesse is given to contractors who are paid to help direct subsidies to other government-connected beneficiaries. The District itself has received 10 times the amount of stimulus funding, per capita, that has been sent to Florida, Michigan, Nevada, and Ohio, states suffering severely as a result of the downturn. Unemployment in Washington, D.C. is 6.2 percent, well below the official national average of 10.2 percent and roughly one-third the real unemployment rate. Virginia and Maryland are faring similarly well.

It shouldn?t surprise us that, amid universal economic misery, the tax-feeding class looks to its own interests first.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 2, 2009

Legendary Swiss investor Marc Faber earned the nickname ?Dr. Doom? for his negative view of Washington?s management of the U.S. economy. As Faber?s dismal predictions are being fulfilled around us, he warns that much worse is yet to come.

Addressing a recent conference in Singapore, Dr. Faber warned that the credit expansion fueling the so-called stimulus program will end in an unprecedented economic bust. When that happens, Washington and other western governments, unable to finance expansion through borrowing, will turn to undisguised inflation, funding their expenditures by printing money. The resulting hyperinflation will wipe out what remains of the middle class.

At that point, Faber predicts, Washington ? and whatever friends it still has ? will turn to the oldest and most destructive stimulus program: ?There will be another war and it will be against an imaginary [or invented] enemy.?

Faber warns that no decent citizen should place his trust in Washington or the Federal Reserve. The wisdom of that warning is self-evident.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 1, 2009

Whatever precipitated the bizarre automobile accident in which Tiger Woods was injured, this much is certain: Mr. Woods is doing the right thing in refusing to discuss the matter with either the media or the police.

Woods has been criticized for deflecting police inquiries. But as CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin explained, ?Tiger Woods is under no legal obligation to speak with police...The Fifth Amendment gives everyone an absolute right to refuse to talk to them. He may be counting on the fact that if no new news emerges, everybody will move on.?

There has been a lot of public speculation that Woods ? who wrecked his automobile after leaving his home in the early morning hours ? had quarreled with his wife over a purported extra-marital affair. Whether or not this is the case, Woods has no responsibility to indulge the public?s prurient curiosity. And as a citizen he?s wise to recognize that in this situation, no good can come from cooperating with the police.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 27, 2009

Wherever taxation and regulation become onerous, a black market or ?shadow economy? will take root and flourish. In fact, the size of a so-called shadow economy is a telling indication of the size and intrusiveness of the government and the health of the ?official? economy.

That being the case, what can we learn from the fact that, as the Christian Science Monitor recently reported, America?s ?shadow economy? is ?larger than the official output of all but the upper crust of nations across the globe.? Some economists estimate that the American ?shadow economy? amounts to roughly 8 percent of the American Gross Domestic Product, or roughly $1 trillion.

As the economic contraction accelerates, the ?shadow economy? is growing; people are going into unlicensed ?necessity businesses? as a matter of simple survival.

In the old Soviet Union, the black market was the only thing that kept people from starving. Given the radical expansion of government and corresponding wreckage of the economy, Americans may have similar experiences in our future.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 26, 2009

Congressman Ron Paul has long warned the public about the consequences of government debt and inflation. He has also been one of the most outspoken and capable critics of the banking cartel called the Federal Reserve System, which is essentially a government-chartered counterfeiter.

For over a year, the Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars out of nothing to fund the bailout of politically favored investment banks. For the purposes of shielding its actions, the Fed claims to be a private business; for the purpose of immunizing itself against civil suits, it describes itself as a government agency. And all the while it continues to debase the currency and impoverish Americans.

Last week, Rep. Paul won a critical battle in his long, heroic struggle against the Fed when his bill to audit that institution ? HR 1207 ? was voted out of committee. Whatever happens to that bill ? and may God grant that it becomes law ? the long-overdue revolt against the Federal Reserve is well begun.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 25, 2009

The Justice Department?s decision to try accused 9-11 Mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four accomplices in a federal civilian court, rather than a military tribunal, has provoked fierce criticism from many conservatives who describe themselves as champions of the Constitution.

For instance, John F. McManus, President of the John Birch Society, told The Hill newspaper that ?These trials [of the accused 9-11 plotters] should be held in military courts?. Their crimes were acts of war (didn't we go to war as a result?), not the acts of ordinary criminals.?

McManus and the organization he represents have often criticized Washington for going to war without a constitutionally required congressional declaration. Yet here McManus dispenses with that compulsory prerequisite in order to justify the use of military tribunals.

The trial of civilians before military tribunals is permissible only in situations in which the civilian court system is no longer functioning. This clearly isn?t the case, a fact that should be obvious to McManus and other self-styled conservative defenders of the Constitution.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 24, 2009

Detroit, once the showcase of America?s industrial prowess, is descending into a bottomless depression. Residents trying to surmount the collapse confront a new and vicious enemy: Police who are resorting to undisguised theft, in the form of asset forfeiture, to fill empty municipal coffers.

The Detroit News reports: "Local law enforcement agencies are raising millions of dollars by seizing private property suspected in crimes, but often without charges being filed -- and sometimes even when authorities admit no offense was committed."

Sgt. Dave Schreiner, who is in charge of Canton Township's forfeiture unit -- which is to say that he's the kingpin of that community's most notorious criminal gang -- is astonishingly candid: "You'll find that departments are doing more forfeitures than they used to because they've got to -- they're running out of money and they've got to find it somewhere."

The city government?s out of money, so the cops become robbers. What will they do when there?s nothing left to steal?

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 23, 2009

Alma Minerva Chacon, a Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrant, lives in Maricopa County, Arizona, which is ruled by the demented thug known as Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Several months ago, Alma was arrested on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant. Nine months pregnant at the time, Alma went into labor. She was taken to the hospital with her hands and feet in shackles, despite the fact that she was not charged with a violent offense.

Sheriff?s deputies refused repeated requests that the mother be freed long enough to deliver her child. Alma gave birth to a baby girl while shackled to her bed. Alma wasn?t permitted the rudimentary dignity of going to the bathroom without her restraints.

Deputies refused even to let Alma hold her newborn baby. They also threatened to seize the infant unless someone came to claim her within 72 hours.

The problem of illegal immigration is subsiding. The residual tyranny of Arpaio and his ilk will afflict us for a long time to come.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.