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Robert Fitzpatrick offers this class for parents and teachers who want to tell the whole truth about multi-level marketing schemes, or "direct selling."
embedded audio- 21:55 runtime
embedded comedy video about door to door selling
also on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3eD0imnhQ&t=6s
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Listen to this free audio Lesson 1
https://www.ponzinomics101.com/episodes/directselling
Ponzinomics 101
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Ep. 1 - The First Lie: What is Direct Selling?
Whether it’s selling leggings, make up, or knives, we hear about business opportunities to make full time pay for part time work. Are they too good to be true? Multi-level marketing companies such as LuLaRoe, Mary Kay, and Cutco Knives claim to be direct selling opportunities. What exactly is direct selling?
Listen to full episode :
Scroll down to read this episode’s transcript.
Resources:
Robert’s book: Ponzinomics
Robert’s Website: Pyramid Scheme Alert
Melissa’s Podcast: The Teacher As
The Teacher As… Episode 66: The Teacher As Anti-MLM Advocate
Transcript:
Robert FitzPatrick 0:16
Welcome to Ponzinomics 101. I'm Melissa Milner. I'm a 30 year veteran teacher and host of The Teacher As... Podcast.
Robert FitzPatrick 0:24
And I'm Robert Fitzpatrick, author of the book Ponzinomics, the Untold Story of Multi-level Marketing.
Robert FitzPatrick 0:31
We are hosting Ponzinomics 101, a monthly educational podcast, for anyone who would like to learn more about multi-level marketing and why it should be avoided.
Robert FitzPatrick 0:41
We hope this podcast will be a resource for teachers and parents and provide valuable information that is not currently being taught in our public schools, colleges and universities.
Robert FitzPatrick 0:54
If you are a teacher who has created lessons about MLMs, and you're willing to share your work with other teachers, please go to our website, ponzinomics101.com to contact us. If we get enough lessons from teachers, we may start a Teacher Resources tab on our site to share the great work we are all doing. In addition, if you use Robert's lessons from this podcast, in your classroom, or with your own child, and you might have even tweaked his lesson, we would love to hear from you to know what you did with the lesson and how it went.
Robert FitzPatrick 1:27
The best defense is awareness. Be informed, think, question everything and keep your mind engaged.
Melissa Milner 1:37
You and millions of others are being invited to join multi-level marketing (MLM) companies to sell products, to become self employed, be your own boss, and to have unlimited opportunity. Everybody, teachers, parents and students all get the same invitation. And millions are accepting to become quote, direct sellers. What is it all about? Robert explains direct selling in this lesson. On the Ponzinomics 101 website, we have the transcript of this episode and other resources. We hope parents and teachers will share this lesson at home or in the classroom. It can be linked in a Google Classroom assignment, or whatever digital platform your school uses, with pre-listening questions and post-listening questions for students to complete that could lead to discussions in groups. Another teaching option would be the whole class listens together, and the teacher stops at a few key moments for turn and talk opportunities. Part of your prep could be to listen to Robert's lesson and maybe print out the transcript for the lesson and highlight and annotate your turn and talk moments and discussion questions. I absolutely see this lesson as a resource for concerned parents as well to share with their child who is maybe in high school or college. Until this is taught in all schools everywhere. Parents are the main source of teaching our youth about the dangers of MLM. Here's Session One, invitation to quote direct selling.
Robert FitzPatrick 3:11
So, this discussion begins at the very beginning, which is about the term direct selling. Whatever the multi-level marketing product is cosmetics, vitamins, supplements, clothing, life insurance, hobby supplies, weight loss powder, and whatever the income promises by the multilevel company, whether it's you can become a millionaire, or it's a side hustle, extra money gig. However it's portrayed, it's always presented as direct selling. Multi-level marketing describes itself as a type of direct selling. So before MLM can be understood, we need to know what direct selling is. It's been around forever. It sounds simple. Most of us sort of assume we know what it means. But do we know what it involves? And what it requires when we say yes to the invitation to do direct selling? So first, we start with questions.
Robert FitzPatrick 4:22
The first question is the most obvious one, even before you get into the actual nuts and bolts of direct selling is the word selling. Are you experienced and knowledgeable in the business and the work of selling? Many people are averse to selling or have never done it? And so this is a valid question and maybe the most important question even before you knew what all was involved is would you even be interested and qualified to begin with? Is this an area of work you're particularly interested in or considering as a life career or a career change? Do you know what the costs are, time requirements, the profit potential, or the needed skills for success in direct selling? That's what we're going to look at now. What's direct selling? Well, the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, actually offers a very simple definition. Direct Selling, according to the FTC, is person to person selling in locations other than a retail establishment, such as social media platform, or in the home of the salesperson, or the prospective customer. So it's selling, but not in a store, and not with mass advertising and ordering. It's one on one, you and the customer, one sale at a time. That's direct selling.
Robert FitzPatrick 5:49
So the second question, I think anybody would ask him on any kind of a business proposition, because these invitations to multilevel marketing are business propositions, "How do you get paid? How do you get paid and direct selling?" Well, like in any other work, you would need to know before you get started, how you get paid. In direct selling, it's not with a salary, or wages, it's take home profit. Take home profit is the money received from customers, when they buy your product, minus the cost to you as a salesperson to acquire the product you're selling. Then subtracted from that are all the costs you incurred in doing the work and making the sale. That might include your computer, car, your telephone, marketing materials, advertising, internet costs, meals, it might also include childcare, travel, training, tax prep. After these costs are deducted, that's what you get to keep to live on and spend as you wish, after doing all the work. That's take home profit. What are the requirements, in direct selling to take home profit? What's required for you to be able to make this successful? That would start with you. Do you have skills, the aptitude and the knowledge, any work would have the same first requirement. And there are thousands of books offered on the special skills for selling. The type of personality best suited for it, the special attitudes and mental habits that support selling. Most people are not in sales because they don't have the specialized requirements or they don't want to have them. So they're not in sales. But there are these special skills, aptitude and knowledge that are required.
Robert FitzPatrick 7:48
Then there's the product. For direct selling, you need a product that is already needed and wanted for something or something new, that meets a special need, and that not everyone else is also selling. Something unique or unusual or available only from you. And maybe only a few other salesmen like you. You're out there by yourself. You're selling from your house or your apartment. You can't just sell what everybody else sells, you need something different. And after that the product that you have that special or different or new and that people already need or want, it has to be competitively priced. If somebody could get the same or similar product at a lower price, or even the same price as you're selling it for, you're at a disadvantage, a special product at a competitive price.
Robert FitzPatrick 8:42
And then you need a profit margin. Now, this is something if you've not been in sales you might not think about or know about. But the margin we're speaking about here is the margin between what you buy the product for as a salesperson, and what you sell it for. That margin is what will cover all your time and costs and then leave enough to make your time and effort worthwhile. The profit margin in direct selling needs to be very high because the costs of selling and the time requirements are very high. They don't have to be high in a department store or a grocery store because the customers already come in and they're coming in and huge numbers and so on. But if you're going to the customer one at a time, you need a very large profit margin per sale to cover all your costs and all your time and to make it all worthwhile to you. You have the skills, you have the product, it's competitively priced, and there's a big enough margin for you to go out and spend that much time finding people now you need ways to find enough customers because a lot of prospecting is required to find enough customers who will buy over and over again from you. This might be done with advertising, your advertising. It might be done by just playing knocking on doors, social media promotions, staying in regular communications with each new customer. All of these will be involved in finding and keeping customers. So you need good ways, economical ways, efficient ways to find enough customers for you to sell enough product to make this worthwhile.
Robert FitzPatrick 10:34
Then you need some protection because you've now invested a lot you've bought product, you've cultivated customers, maybe you've leaned on friends and family to become your customers. You're putting in a lot of effort. You've committed yourself. You need protection because the customers you find you need to keep. This might involve a territory of your own, or a product that no other salesman like you has, so customers will come back to you. This protection requires an agreement with whomever you're buying your product from, your supplier, that guarantees restrictions on the number of salespeople, or granting you complete exclusivity in an area. That way, the money, the time that you invest will keep coming back to you. And then you need something that you may not see in business school. So you need something that is often called tough skin. Because, truth is, selling is going to involve a lot of rejections, even insults, or just being ignored. Beyond skills, there is a kind of personal ability and willingness that's needed to take rejections. Not everybody is set up for that. For every sale, there's going to be a lot of "NO"s. And if "NO"s are something that are particularly abhorrent to you, upsetting, that's going to be a problem for selling. So tough skin against rejections, insults, or just being ignored. Remember, as we said this is take home profit. This is you, in your home, on your own, by yourself, independent, with a product, selling one at a time. You need the ability to just do it. Day after day. Self initiative each day to do prospecting, selling, managing costs and products and promoting yourself. There's no boss, nobody's watching. Nobody cares. It's just you. You have no personal manager. There's no clock to punch. It's just you doing it day after day. That's a skill. That's an ability. Not everybody has it. It's an aptitude. And it's a requirement.
Robert FitzPatrick 10:34
So now we know a bit about what direct selling is. We know its definition. And we've got an idea of what's required for it to work. Let's go a little further about direct selling. What is it? How do people think about it? You're going to be a direct seller. What does that actually mean? You're not a teacher, you're not a lawyer. You're not a civil servant. You're a direct seller. How is that seen by other people? It does have a history. It's been around for a long time. And I think it's proper to say this that direct selling has always been understood as one of the toughest of jobs, on a personal level, for the reasons we just walked through. And financially, it is regarded as one of the most difficult to make money in, for the reasons we just walked through. The biggest obstacles are insecurity. You don't make a sale, you don't get paid. And the personal initiative requirement, it's all up to you. And then there are these costs. And they're often unknown as you begin. The cost to find customers, and then to maintain protection from competition. All of this goes into why direct selling has this reputation of being very tough, tough on the person and tough to make money on. I think it's also fair to say this, that those who knock on doors and personally try to get us to buy stuff are often depicted negatively. There aren't too many sales people heroes in literature, in plays. Think of descriptive terms. Like it looks like a salesperson making a pitch, the fake smile. That's the reputation. The work definitely requires special determination and independence, not to get discouraged by difficulties, by the high risk and the poor reputation.
Robert FitzPatrick 12:59
So there's some other things to look at too if you've received this invitation. Somebody telling you, "Don't you want to become a direct seller at this great opportunity." There is some history behind direct selling too. In the United States, it mostly disappeared when big box stores emerged and retail stores were everywhere. There was a time in the United States when many products were simply not available to everybody everywhere. So salespeople provided a tremendous service. They came to you with these various products. People used to buy from catalogs for the same reason. The store wasn't in their area. But now, big box stores are pretty much everywhere. And on top of that is online selling, you don't even have to get out of your house. And virtually anything you could ever want, comes right to you. That affects direct selling. Notice there are no door to door salespeople. Have you seen one lately? They used to be around? You don't see them now.
Robert FitzPatrick 15:10
And then the question that is again, a common sense question that many people when solicited or invited to multi-level marketing, don't think to ask. What products are still sold by direct selling. In other words, what products are best sold this way, as opposed to being in a big box store or online? Are there any, in the home, one on one? Which is what you're going to be doing as a direct seller. There are some: home improvements, for example, siding, roofing, solar energy, landscaping, these are often sold directly by the person doing it comes to you talks to you. And then there are a few financial products, insurance for examples. But this is often going online now as you see all these constant advertisements for insurance. Some of them are very funny on TV. You don't need a salesperson you're already sold, you can go online and sign up. And financial services, investment, stocks, often there's an agent that will come and talk to you. But even that you can do online, you don't really need salesperson for that either.
Robert FitzPatrick 17:36
One more thing, we should probably bring it up to date, what's the current status really of direct selling of the selling we've just described? You don't need data here, or special research on this question. These are common sense questions I would call them. Yet in the pitch that is often made for multilevel marketing, people don't ask them and don't think to ask them. Let's put a few of them out there that keep you engaged in in determining what's best for you here. When did you last buy something directly from a personal salesperson offering a product or service that you couldn't have gotten more easily in a store or online? In today's time, who has time anymore for personal sales, presentations, when the information needed is available online? Even YouTube? Can you get online to get a complete presentation offered to you or a demonstration on YouTube? So who has time for some to make an appointment and have someone come to you? How many people are even at home enough to listen to salespeople? How many people would let a person, a salesperson into their home these days, unless they already know them or even know them well. So you can see that direct selling has a reputation from a past era, that in today's time, where people are often not at home, don't really want to hear from a salesperson for a product they don't need them for, or if they are at home they just don't have time to dedicate to this.
Robert FitzPatrick 19:13
And perhaps another final factor might be this. We are inundated, all of us, with commercial messages day after day after day. Advertising. It starts when you're a child and never ends. Now someone invites you to become a direct salesperson and engage in direct selling. That's what you're going to be doing for money now. Not whatever else you're doing, or in addition to all that this is what you're going to be doing. And you might ask that question, "Who even wants to hear from salespeople today?" I mean, "Is this really a viable thing?" That's what all of these questions come down to? You need to know what direct selling is long before they get into how much money you can make, how wonderful the product is and so on, these basic questions, but maybe it would begin with who even wants to hear from salespeople these days, but that's what you would be invited to go and do.
Robert FitzPatrick 20:11
So we'll end with that. As an intro, it's enough for a person if they got this far, they would be so well armed to make a decision for themselves properly. If they didn't ask these questions, they might have gone forward either without information or with misinformation with an impression based on the past, or an impression that simply doesn't even exist and never existed. I hope this first session here can equip you to begin your thought process so that when these solicitations come in, or to some member of your family, you're ready to critically examine them and come up with the right answer for you.
Melissa Milner 20:57
If direct selling is so difficult and risky, and it requires rare personal attributes of self starting, persistence, communication skills, and ability to take rejection, plus management of time, accounting, and other business factors, and if it has been mostly replaced by stores, advertising, and online selling, why do millions of people sign up for multi-level marketing, which describes itself as direct selling? Is MLM direct selling or something else? If it's not direct selling, what is it? Robert will teach about this in our next episode?
Melissa Milner 21:37
Please remember to check us out on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @ponzinomics101 and check out our website www.ponzinomics.com. We hope you spread the word about this podcast because the best defense is awareness. Thanks for listening
Go to the link and pick up Lesson 2 as well HERE
https://www.ponzinomics101.com/episodes/realitycheck
https://static-3.bitchute.com/live/c...NS_320x180.jpg
https://www.bitchute.com/video/upjJ8reHAKNS/
The Raw Deal (29 July 2022) with Michael Ogden
1:56:11 video runtime
First published at 13:16 UTC on July 30th, 2022.
channel image
Jim Fetzer
Begins with discussion of the Alex Jones' trial for damages and why Jim thinks he may be throwing the case. When Jim' name was mentioned, the witness (who appears to be one of Alex's producers) said he was a professor at the University of Minnesota, who had written a book, Nobody Died at Sandy Hook. When asked if anyone else contributed, she said "James Tracy" and they turned to James Tracy. But if he wanted to show that his statements that Sandy Hook was a hoax were reasonable, she should have explained that he brought together 13 experts (including 6 Ph.D.s) who concluded the school had been closed since 2008, that there were no students there, and that it was a FEMA drill for which they even found the exercise manual, which was published in the book. That would have knocked the socks off the jury! Not good. And Jim's blog has been taken and his bio-sketch page on amazon used to smear him at a time when many who are following the trail may want to know more about him and his research on Sandy Hook. Guest today Michael Ogden has a book, A World of Lies, Collusion and Conspiracy, which covers a wide range of controversial subjects, on most of which Jim agrees. But he also defends Flat Earth and denies the reality of nuclear weapons, so Jim is bringing him back on Monday to discuss these topics especially with two experts. Look forward to the fireworks!
__________________
Dachsie comment:
Guest today Michael Ogden has a book, A World of Lies, Collusion and Conspiracy, which covers a wide range of controversial subjects, on most of which Jim agrees.
The first part of Mr. Ogden's presentation was very good. He explained how the same kinds of deceptions such as related to false flag events was going on in ancient times as well and he gives the basic reasons why these manipulations and deceptions work.
But in the second half things got very rough due to the main Revolution Radio ad break in the middle that the guest was disoriented by and not told about before the show, so this created a rough interruption and stopped the smoothness of this man's presentations. Also I felt like Dr. Fetzer was interrupting and argumentative while he was telling the guest that he was free to go forward and not worry about the time and that his show was a free
speech platform.
The show fell apart when Mr. Ogden's revealed his beliefs in "flat earth" and "nukes do not and never have existed" and then went on to refute "Darwin."
Dr. Fetzer is going to have Mr. Ogden back very soon on his show to "discuss" those three controversial theories. I will not watch that show because it just will be raised voices and a disharmonious experience for all.
I had thought I wanted to hear more from Mr. Ogden but not so much anymore. He laid the groundwork in the first part of his talk but for the specific purpose of dropping the flat earth and no such thing as nukes ideas that do not at all flow from the true ideas he set out at the beginning and I think, in fact, contradict those true sounding concepts.
I guess because I am on the "receive notifications" for Joshua Phillip "Crossroad" show, though I am not currently a paid subscriber to Epoch Times. (I was for a one month trial in the past and decided to drop the subscription.)
https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-re...ent=07-26-2022
Anyway I was sent a link to the FULL January 6 documentary that everyone is praising so that is it.
Hope it works for you.
Full runtime of Jan. 6 documentary is 1:42:17
I am watching now. Very high quality production value. I think this film could be a major game changer against the Deep State perpetrators of the evil January 6 event.
It is amazing to me how the Capitol Police showed themselves to have turned in to brutal tyrannical unprofessional thugs, like overnight. I've always respected police but not so much after watching this movie. If it is possible for every one of those Capitol Police to be identified, then I think each one of them ought to be fired from their job and blackballed so they never work again in legitimate employment ever again, if not put in prison for a very long time.
We have to just pray to bring down this corrupt entity that took over our country. This is true Satanic wickedness in high places referred to in Ephesians 6.
Eucharistic miracle in Guadalajara, Mexico
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=747s-WgS7a0&t=0s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=747s-WgS7a0&t=0s
5:48 video runtime
Heart Beating Eucharist, Mexico! Further Analysis Reveals Amazing Similarity to Heart Ultrasound
Mother & Refuge of the End Times
79.6K subscribers
Viral video of the miraculous heart beating Eucharist is photographically analysed and compared to ultrasound of heart beating. The results are staggering! It seems as if the heart beating Eucharist is portraying blood pumping through the valves within the chambers of the heart! Further scientific analysis needs to be done!
The miracle took place on the 24th of July, 2022 in Mexico.
_
John 6:51
This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.
51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.
This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM9gC2Ssf9A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM9gC2Ssf9A
Mic'd Up — Catholic Perspective on Aliens
52:51 video runtime
In this week's free Mic'd Up, David Gordon interviews Dr. Paul Thigpen, author of Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Catholic Faith: Are We Alone in the Universe With God and the Angels?
Check out Dr. Thigpen's book here:
https://www.churchmilitant.shop/?prod...
Church Militant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeQAxtRZYJA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeQAxtRZYJA
FrancisChurch Is Not the Catholic Church! Don't Let "Pope" Francis Fool You!
Jeremiah Alphonsus (This YouTube reposted this What Catholics Believe show in the last few days of the month of July 2022)
1:57:15 video runtime
Nothing is wrong with the actual Church, as the actual Catholic Church is the Mystical Body of Christ and thus spotless. But everything is wrong with the New Order (Novus Ordo) religion, the counterfeit church founded at V2 and now led by the diabolical Francis. Understand: Popes must be Catholic. As a manifest heretic, Francis is not an actual Catholic. Therefore Francis cannot possibly be an actual pope. Francis is indeed a leader, but what he leads is the New Order religion. This new religion is a diabolical counterfeit of actual Catholicism, as proven anew every day, while the actual Catholic Church is once again in the catacombs.
The footage within this video is from the following:
The Crucifixion of the Catholic Church
https://youtu.be/5e1qRzoGoZw
Modernism’s Legacy of Perversion
https://youtu.be/EFBvAboXuUw
From this channel:
What Catholics Believe
https://www.youtube.com/c/WCBOhio/videos
The latest episodes are to be seen at:
https://rumble.com/user/WCBOhio
They got too real for Youtube, hence new episodes are only there.
Also see:
https://wcbohio.com
Along with:
The Popes Against Modern Errors: 16 Papal Documents
https://www.amazon.com/Popes-Against-...
Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century
https://www.amazon.com/Iota-Unum-Chan...
The Rhine Flows into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II
https://www.amazon.com/Rhine-Flows-in...
Also see all of the following:
Traditionalists, Infallibility and the Pope http://www.traditionalmass.org/images...
Resisting the Pope, Sedevacantism and Frankenchurch http://www.traditionalmass.org/images...
Resistance And Indefectibility http://www.traditionalmass.org/images...
The Loss of Ecclesiastical Offices – Part I: Is Holy Church Unprotected? https://wmreview.co.uk/2022/02/23/los...
Sedevacantism: How to Tell Aunt Helen http://www.traditionalmass.org/images...
Is Sedevacantism Really "Untenable"? https://youtu.be/WL5Ef7Zgro0
20 Comments
A word from Bishop Williamson
https://5g34l.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk...IP6B56fJ_qL2GT
https://img-cache.net/im/3092419/7a1...OM3GjWR3ibQnm1
ELEISON COMMENTS DCCLXXXV (July 30, 2022) : SOCIODYNAMICS QUESTIONED
If “sociodynamics” is not yet a word to be found in any respectable English or American dictionary, it is nevertheless a reality parallel to aerodynamics. For just as there are objective laws of aerodynamics which must be carefully observed if any new make of aeroplane is not to crash immediately after it first takes off, so there are objective laws for the launching and survival of any society of human beings if that society is to survive and not crash to the ground. Now Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was a brilliant American lawyer who played a leading part in the founding of the new nation of the USA in 1776, and, unless it is a spurious quotation, he said how new that nation was going to be – “We are going to show the world that it does not need cardinals or kings.” In other words, men can rule by themselves without divine authority, religious or civil, to back them. In brief, human government does not need God.
Thus at the heart of the new nation’s Constitution was the principle of dividing its government into its three branches, legislative (making of laws), judicial (judging by courts) and executive (applying the laws), so that, in the absence of a Higher Being to control government activity, each of the three human branches of government could act as a check upon the other two. Now from 1776 onwards, it cannot be denied that the new nation was so flourishing and prosperous that the 20th century has come to be called by many “the American century”, meaning to say that the USA then emerged as the leading nation of the world by its economic and political power, admired and imitated all over the world. Yet in the 21st century few serious observers can deny that in 2022 its President is essentially inapt for his high office, having been elected by a stolen or fake election. And that nation is on the brink of civil war. What went wrong ?
A number of friends of the USA are asking themselves the question. For instance in an interesting article by Jeffrey Tucker https://www.theepochtimes.com/suprem..._medium=search ,
Supreme Court Targets the Real Enemy
there has been emerging inside the USA a fourth branch of government, growing in size, scope and strength, taking on a power of its own. It is now, he says, an unelected bureaucracy with some 432 agencies, employing nearly 3 million people who cannot be fired or controlled. For Tucker, the existence and harmfulness of this bureaucracy has been highlighted by a recent decision of the Supreme Court against one of the bureaucracy’s agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency, which the Court decided was overreaching its powers.
For Tucker, this was an admirable case of the nation’s judicial power holding in check its executive power, fully in line with the nation’s Constitution. However, as another example of an agency of the same kind, escaping unduly from Constitutional control, he quotes no less than the Federal Reserve, legislated into existence in 1913 by Congress, but coming since then to govern the entire economics and politics of the USA (see these “Comments” for March 7 and May 23, 2022). Does Tucker realise what he is saying ? If he is right about these unConstitutional agencies, then for more than a century the main life of the USA has been doing an end-run around the Constitution of 1776, to evade its famous “checks and balances”.
But is that surprising after all ? Scripture says, “Better a live dog than a dead lion" – Ecclesiastes IX, 4.
All the more: better a pack of live dogs than a piece of paper. It was live judges on the Supreme Court who in 1973 discovered in the USA Constitution the “right” to abortion, live judges who in 2022 found that it is not there after all. It all comes back to live human beings. Who has the power to hold them in any real kind of check or balance ? “One Nation under God” used to appear on American coins. It is from God that came whatever once made the USA great, in any real sense in which it was truly great. And if the USA, or any other country, will not turn back to God, its human beings will tear it apart.
Kyrie eleison.
The rule of cardinals, kings may fail, of course, But human authority must have in God its source.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ySoi3WpvzU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ySoi3WpvzU
They are now having to face the reality: Art Del Cueto
Fox Business
1.93M subscribers
National Border Patrol Council Spokesperson Art Del Cueto discusses how Washington DC Mayor Bowser is asking for the National Guard to handle the migrant surge on ‘Fox Business Tonight.’
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-...tm_source=push
The Lockdowns Kicked Off this Depression
The Lockdowns Kicked Off this Depression
By Jeffrey A. Tucker August 1, 2022 Economics 6 minute read
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If you were on vacation last week, good for you. You missed one of Congress’s greatest-ever scams. They just approved some $750 billion (do these numbers even mean anything anymore?) to “transition” us from fossil fuels and coal over to reliance on the wind and sun, and also to subsidize a bunch of chip manufacturers because American companies screwed up their inventory control two years ago.
The worst of the two bills is called the Inflation Reduction Act. Shameless!
The details of this don’t matter as much as the big picture. What you have in Congress and the presidency right now is exactly what one might expect from an empire in decline. Special interests are tapping the petty racketeers in political power to pillage as much of American prosperity as possible before they are swept out of office in November.
Think of a criminal band that has entered a majestic home. They are grabbing as much as they can before the owners come home. If it is not nailed down, it is going straight into the satchels and put on the truck to be carted away.
Actually, it is worse than that. What Congress is doing today with its out-of-control trillions in spending is robbing generations hence of a chance for prosperity. We will be left holding almost nothing to hand on to our kids and grandkids. Most of all, what’s being stolen is hope for the future.
The last two days have been consumed with a discussion about whether we are in a recession or not. They want to change the conventional definition, just as predicted. The only piece of data to which they can point is the low unemployment rate while failing to indicate that labor participation itself has not recovered from 2020 and continues to fall dramatically.
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It appears as if we’ve lost 40 years of progress in a mere two and a half years. This is not an exaggeration: real personal disposable income has been falling since May 2021, the longest period of decline since the Second World War. It follows an explosion in printing-press faux wealth in 2020 that went as quickly as it came.
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What is the effect of this? Sure, it could pull back the rate of inflation a bit, maybe. Mostly, however, it further wrecks the abysmal bond market which has been performing worse than at any point since the Civil War. That is what one might expect from a Fed policy moving from zero or negative rates to positive rates. It’s time for a return to reality.
It has also locked up the consumer end of the housing market. People only a year ago were flipping houses like crazy, driving up prices as never before and absorbing vast amounts of upside inflationary potential. But now 2% rates on 30-year mortgages are soaring to 6% and higher, meaning that no existing owner can afford to sell and buy without taking a huge haircut. As a result, we are facing a massive supply curve shift to the left: soaring prices plus falling demand. The industry is in quite a panic.
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But that’s just the start of it. Credit card debt is up and defaults also, as real incomes are falling dramatically. Business investment is down. Consumer confidence has crashed to lows never before seen, even as trust in government will soon be in the single digits.
Very crucially: the last time the Fed squeezed the life out of easy-money policies in the late 1970s, we also had a new emphasis on economic growth. Yes, a recession resulted but under the influence of pro-growth economists, the whole country embarked on a different path. That was the path of growth and hope.
That is NOT happening now. On the contrary, the Fed is driving the recession at a time when the ruling class has decided that the rest of us should be poor and hungry, driving Flintstone cars and foraging for food. The result, for now, is shocking stagflation. But we don’t even have a word yet for what might be coming. Depression is already used. How do you describe high inflation plus a manufactured depression?
Let’s go with the White House term: transition.
Still, the New York Times assures us that this massive spending bill will help the government achieve its great climate goals. After all, they say, the average temperature has risen by 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 100 years, which, they further assure us, is the fault of industrial prosperity. To be sure, the average person only lived 30 to 40 years in 1800. During the same century that these people claim we’ve been burning up the planet, our average lives lengthened from 40 to 75 years.
Even granting the sketchy claim that your day trip and barbecue grill are causing the planet to overheat, one might suppose that life extension would be celebrated as a good thing rather than a climate catastrophe that cries out for the wholesale dismantling of industrial civilization. And what happens if the plan to lock down every two years in order to save the planet doesn’t work out as planned? Who will pay the price?
But truly, there is no making sense of these people anymore. They are ready to shell out hundreds of billions to take over arable acreage with solar panels even as we face a food crisis, and festoon the countryside with bird-slaughtering windmills rather than permit more pipelines and refineries to open.
The emergency of our times is undeniable, as is the solution of putting a hard stop on the insanity of government spending, money printing, mandates, controls, and impositions that are killing economic growth and shortening life spans. But it is no longer clear whether the current regime has a connection to reality at all. The current plan seems to be to wreck as much as possible before they are all swept out of office.
Putting it all back together again will require herculean efforts, an about-face on policy we’ve never seen in our lifetimes.
It was all kicked off by the most draconian and destructive public-health policy on record, one that utterly shattered the liturgy of life, took away education for the kids who were forced to learn alone with masks, shuttered churches and civic meetings, mandated shots on an unwilling population, demoralized the labor markets as everyone was forced to take their place as essential vs nonessential, broke long-established market relationships, blew the federal budget many times over, and generated a savings-wrecking inflation that has utterly transformed expectations for prosperity and progress.
Many of us despaired in the dark days of March 2020 concerning what could be coming. We could not have imagined half of it. Even now, even as mainstream media reports are starting to report on the overdoses and educational losses and collapsed public health, and economists are sounding the alarm about the future of enterprise itself, few are willing to admit the root cause. The lockdowns kicked off this hell.
Jeffrey A. Tucker