Blog Comments

  1. angelatc's Avatar
    These forums have always had a strain of people who are here only to destroy us. Collins and his ties to the Paul campaign also openly sought to destroy any grassroots momentum in the 2012 cycle. Swordshill here is doing exactly the same thing. Based on the amount of time he spends writing here and in other venues, it's pretty clear someone is paying him.
  2. r3volution 3.0's Avatar
    Swordsmyth isn't multiple people.

    I've spent too much time arguing with him.

    His derangement is quite consistent.
  3. Swordsmyth's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    More lies and insults.

    I never opposed rallies, I opposed rallies to no purpose and opposition to improvements combined with a failure to do anything substantial to achieve the perfection he demands.

    But you and he are just here to misdirect and hobble the movement so of course you jump in to agree with him and attack me.
    ...
  4. Swordsmyth's Avatar
    ...
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Bernie wouldn't really follow through and you know it.
    Many Demoncrats have spoken words about border security but they never do anything about it.
    The invaders are not innocent as you pretend to believe, they have already done extreme damage to liberty.
    You want to flood this country with communists so they can establish a communist regime on the ashes of the Constitutional Republic that you as an anarcho-communist intend to help them burn down.
    And you're a filthy, lying, traitor to everything Americans believe in.
  5. Swordsmyth's Avatar
    Without independence you can't have liberty and you can't have independence without the means to produce your needs.



    Aside from the direct threat of conquest there is also the fact that allowing the destruction of your economy will create millions of voters that are dependent on government for their needs while impoverishing and thereby disempowering millions more.

    Political power (and therefore liberty) flows out of gun barrels and bank accounts.


    It has been said (and seemingly forgotten) that even if you believe in open borders you can't have them while the welfare state exists and it is just as true that even if you want free trade or something as close to it as possible you can't have it while the regulatory state exists.

    Tariffs are also simply the best form of taxation and as much of the cost of the legitimate functions of government should be shifted to them as possible.
  6. Swordsmyth's Avatar
    The U.S. population is around 328 million. It’s estimated that about 11 million — or one in 30 — are illegal immigrants. Yet criminal aliens account for more than one in five federal prison inmates. Even assuming a pretty radical margin of error for the sake of argument, that would still mean illegal immigrants are drastically over-represented among the criminal population.
    And the actual picture may be worse, since the government says it has no way to be notified of all imprisoned illegal immigrants. So, instead, it counts a subset of them that it learns about through identifiers such as an FBI number.
    The latest information is included in a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The summary by the leader of GAO’s Homeland Security and Justice team, Gretta Goodwin, seems oddly written to try to put a positive spin on the grim findings. It highlights this figure: From 2011 through 2016, the criminal alien proportion of the total estimated federal inmate population generally decreased, from about 25 percent to 21 percent.
    Stop there and you might think we’re on a good path. But dig into the actual report and footnotes — and it’s difficult to sugarcoat the findings.
    For starters, 91 percent of federal criminal aliens were citizens of Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Colombia or Guatemala.
    There were more than 730,000 criminal aliens in U.S. or state prisons and local jails during the period measured. They accounted for 4.9 million arrests for 7.5 million offenses. (The numbers, according to the GAO: 197,000 criminal aliens in federal prisons, arrested 1.4 million times for 2 million offenses, between 2011 and 2016; 533,000 in state or local facilities between 2010 and 2015, representing 3.5 million arrests for 5.5 million offenses.)
    The arrests include allegations of more than 1 million drug crimes, a half-million assaults, 133,800 sex offenses and 24,200 kidnappings. Even more serious, the imprisoned illegal immigrants, over a five-year period, had been arrested for 33,300 homicide-related offenses and 1,500 terrorism-related crimes.
    In terms of cost, federal taxpayers shelled out more than $15 billion during the period studied — or $2.5 billion a year — to keep criminal aliens behind bars in federal, state and local facilities.
    Many are repeat offenders. Of about 146,500 criminal aliens who finished a federal prison term, about one in six — around 24,800 — already had been imprisoned again at least once.

    More at: https://thehill.com/opinion/immigrat...criminal-alien
  7. Swordsmyth's Avatar
    Liberal lies.

    And crime is not the primary problem with excessive or illegal immigration, politics is #1 and culture is #2.
  8. PierzStyx's Avatar
    You understand the US Constitution as well as you do the free market, which is to say you don't at all.

    [url]http://www.ronpaulforums.com/entry.php?1131-AArticle-1-Section-9-About-Slave-Trade[/url]

    You should also beware of linking that Mises Institute article as everyone on that thread just embarrasses over it, showing its falws and your error for accepting it merely because it agrees with your notions. Really you shouldn't link to MI in general I would think as it is an avowed anarchist site ran by an avowed anarchist.
    Updated 03-09-2018 at 01:24 PM by PierzStyx
  9. Swordsmyth's Avatar
    What the country does need, he said, is "a much better immigration service" fed by more resources. Not that he'd "vote for extra money." But he does, he told the crowd, have a plan.
    If he believes in open borders then he is wrong.

    Freedom brings success, success attracts leeches, leeches destroy freedom.

    Any freedom society must control immigration and naturalization or it will die.


    Article 1 Section 9

    Mises on Nationalism, the Right of Self-Determination, and the Problem of Immigration

  10. GARNET's Avatar
    in our practice we see a lot of wives of military men.. sometimes the men themselves. I always thank them for their service and their promise to protect the county and the people of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. most of the time i can tell they know what it is I am asking of them and most of the time I get the eye to eye contact that lets me know they understand.. I sure hope
  11. GARNET's Avatar
    and.. living in the country with out buildings and such... i am wondering about a hidden safe room.. a few spiders wouldn't bother me lol
  12. GARNET's Avatar
    what guns?? I don't have no stinking guns =)) actually i really really don't but im thinking about it =)
  13. GARNET's Avatar
    I'm a single woma living in the country part of california.. I have been spending a lot of thought for my safety and well being... I agree with you about a personal protection piece/ it doesn't mean your out to get someone.. it means you wish to be safe and left alone. our country will have a lot to learn in that area i think
  14. cbritt's Avatar
    Obama's background is communism. The Communist Manifesto is being implemented in the USA and globally. So how are we doing with these 10 points in the manifesto? NWO agenda- he who rules the money rules the world.

    THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO or FASCISM


    1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. (land is all STATE owned. Try not paying taxes and see what happens to YOUR land)

    2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. (Obamacare and more to come)

    3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. (state owns everything)

    4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

    5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. (THE FED and all central banks around the world - Rothschild owned)

    6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. (media, internet, federally controlled)

    7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. (modern day industrial-animal-farming and Monsanto crops- -no place for small farmer or organic crops)

    8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. (forced labor)

    9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. (people moved around and settled where the government wants them to work; as happens in communist China)

    10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, (kids educated on the job in "industrial production"; factories??
    Updated 07-10-2012 at 09:47 AM by cbritt
  15. cbritt's Avatar
    Interesting: "Blessings of Law and Liberty, equally enjoyed by every British Subject, which they have fatally and desperately exchanged for all the Calamities of War, and the arbitrary Tyranny of their Chiefs."

    "Blessings of every British subject" in reality meant a system of taxation and serfdom that kept the peasants living at a subsistence level while providing goods and money-taxes for the wealthy to live like "kings". Sounds like what the elite are trying to achieve globally TODAY, with the so-called NWO which is basically a revival of the peasant-poverty, elite-wealthy FEUDAL system.
  16. porchdog's Avatar
    Revolution Anyone????????
  17. stormyweatherz's Avatar
  18. PierzStyx's Avatar
    [B]Total Size of the Transaction[/B]

    In the free market, the total size of transaction is up to the parties involved. One might choose to buy a single Quarter Pounder, or a five-pound roll of ground beef, or to go to the farmer and buy the whole cow. In a Pragmatarian transaction, on the other hand, the size of the transaction is a given. The price A will pay is fixed. That price is his tax bill, and what that total comes to is a completely separate issue from Pragmatarianism, not coming under its loving purview.

    So what does this mean? For one thing, it eliminates the opportunity cost of the transaction from consideration entirely. No longer will Mr. A weigh the benefits of spending one additional dollar on beef vs. the foregone joy of spending one additional dollar on funny hats. Now any alternative joys are already foregone; he has no choice about it. It's a done deal. No need to weigh anything. His tax bill is what it is and there's nothing he can do about it. He's giving $10,000 to the beef man this year and that's it.

    For another thing: the Pragmatarian likes to take each individual earmark that A makes ($20 to French diplomacy, $200 for zero-gravity toiletries) as a separate transaction. This fiction makes his construct appear superficially slightly more like a market. However it is fiction. In reality, the entire tax payment is one transaction. The transaction is not divisible and separable. One cannot itemize the separate items on the tax bill and treat them as separate transactions. One can often do exactly this in a world of market transactions, because in that case each separate line-item could have, in theory, not taken place, had the purchaser decided not to purchase it. Thus the main cable service, the movie channels, and the extra WWF channel, could all be considered either one big purchase or as separate purchases, because each is separable and terminable. If the consumer had chosen to forgo the joy of world wrestling, his bill would have been $20 less, so he did in a sense pay $20 for the wrestling. That is not true for the line-items in a Pragmatarian transaction. In that case, the price is set. Mr. A may cancel the wrestling, but he's not going to get his $20 back; he merely gets to redirect it towards some other good that B offers. The tax payment must be considered as one lump transaction, even if the taxpayer directs it to be spent in 500 separate divisions.


    [B]Consequences[/B]

    What results can we expect to come about due to the nature of a Pragmatarian transaction and its differences from a free market transaction? Some have been mentioned as we went along: lack of the forces of free competition, disproportionate power for B and weakness for A, lack of ability to take into consideration opportunity cost external to the transaction, etc.

    Another interesting dilemma is that Party A is no longer able to ordinally rank discrete units of goods in terms of their value to him. This means that the forces of the diamond/water paradox will be in full swing. What is the diamond/water paradox? If given the choice between water or diamonds in an absolute sense, everyone would choose water. Water is fundamentally essential to life; diamonds are mere frippery. Yet diamonds are very expensive, water is virtually free, indicating that diamonds' value is high, while water's value is low. Why? Only considering goods in term of units can this be solved. You may prefer all the water in the world to all the diamonds in the world, sure, but we never make that choice. We choose between units, between this particular gallon of water and this particular diamond ring. And in that case, since we already have 10,000 gallons of water a month, it might indeed be more valuable to us to have a diamond ring rather than another 500,000 gallons of water. But what happens if we are artificially flung into a bizarre system wherein we must choose between diamonds and water as pure concepts, with no units? If everyone knows that water is more important, will anyone ever choose diamonds?

    The perverse incentive problems of the state are still in full swing as well. A good way for a division to get more funding will be to fail horribly at its given task. Then people, wanting the service, will have no choice but to earmark more taxes to that division. This perverse incentive for failure and incompetence will be stronger the more indispensable the the division's services are (or are perceived to be).

    The Pragmatarian system lowers the transaction cost of participating in the auction of government largess. It essentially is a program which makes it easy and effortless to "be a lobbyist from the comfort of your own home." I will draw a parallel between it and the negative income tax. The negative income tax (or guaranteed minimum income) is the idea that people with incomes less than such-and-such just receive a check, automatically. No bureaucracy, no hassles, no case workers, no filling out applications and getting approved. You just get money. Seems like it would be an improvement over our current convoluted welfare system, right? I do not think so. I think the bureaucracy and the hassles of the current system is its only saving grace preventing it from destroying the poor even more rapidly and thoroughly than it already is. The red tape and the hoops you've got to go through and the whole demeaning process is a barrier to entry which prevents many people from going on welfare. The hassle is a transaction cost. Remove all that and yes, the system would be more efficient, but when the system is destructive, is efficiency really what you want? Likewise the Pragmatarian trumpets his system's "efficiency." It may be more efficient, but more efficient at what? It will be more efficient at allowing extremely large numbers of people to have control over the disposition of state largesse. It lowers the transaction cost of participating in that great auction that is state spending. Pragmatarianism makes it easy to be a consumer of tax dollars. No longer must you be a professional lobbyist and move to Washington. No longer must you represent an interest at least large enough to support such a professional lobbyist. Every interest group, no matter how small, can now have a say, and an incontestable say, in how tax dollars are spent. Only .01% of the population might want to spend money on Urban Giraffe Attack Wargames, but if they check that box on their Pragmatarian tax forms, ain't nothin' nobody can do to stop 'em. The giraffes are going to be coming to a street near you.

    Can we make any predictions as to what kind of "purchases" people will make, given that:

    The transaction is a given, as is its size -- A has no choice but to spend the money.
    With the greatest of ease, A can choose to spend it on whatever he wants.

    Pragmatarianism doubtless puts some sort of restraints on what type of things can be purchased. I do not know what specific rules and constraints any given implementation of Pragmatarianism will have. But I can predict that one of the major behaviors these rules will seek to prevent is that of somehow earmarking the money back to oneself. If everyone is earmarking what their tax bill is going towards, they will, naturally, earmark those things which will benefit themselves the most. If permitted to, they will earmark money for upgrading the road in front of their home, but none for the road across town. Within the education division, we can expect to see (proportionally) more continuing adult education and less children's education, as the extremely numerous childless adult households earmark the funds in a self-interested way. One man will earmark money for a water-slide in the state pool he frequents, another for the library he loves. This brings up the question of the granularity of the earmarking system -- will A be able to earmark funds for particular books, or only for a particular library, or only for the library system in general? This is a question which I have never seen a pragmatarian address, but then again it is a mere question of implementation. There are many such questions, many potentially problematic, but my focus in this essay has been to focus on the economic effects of Pragmatarianism, assuming it could be implemented somehow. In that context, we can only draw the conclusion that A's earmarking will be such that -- limited by whatever rules exist -- it comes as close as he can possibly get to simply writing a check back to himself.[/QUOTE]
  19. Hitman83's Avatar
    I'm new to RSS feeds, so I just downloaded a basic RSS app to my phone. Do you have an app that allows you to separate the feeds into categories like you show?
  20. PierzStyx's Avatar
    *NOTE: All this si an excellent post by Christopher David. It is NOT my original work.*
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