How To Make America Great Again

by James Turk, FGMR:

If I were advising President Trump, here are the recommendations – with the supporting analysis – I would offer to him to Make America Great Again. To achieve this laudable goal, which would secure for him a pre-eminent place in history, a return to the fundamental principles that made America great is needed.

As numerous polls reveal, the American people recognize that their country is headed in the wrong direction. To correct its course, the rash changes wrought by the Progressives in the last century need to be reversed. They have caused government to become overly involved in people’s lives by disrupting the checks and balances of the American political structure.

TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

America began an unsound path with the ill-advised tinkering to key provisions of the Constitution with the 16th and 17th amendments ratified in 1913. Both need to be repealed as occurred with the 18th amendment (ratified 1919, ended in 1933). The 18th was the Progressives ill-fated attempt to control social behaviour by the autocratic prohibition of alcoholic beverages, an un-American restriction eliminating free choice.

Government in America

After the former colonies won their independence from Great Britain and became sovereign states in 1783, their leaders recognized the need “to form a more perfect Union” than provided by the wartime confederation. Seemingly intractable problems plagued the 13 new independent states.

Britain was seen as an ongoing threat with its presence in Canada and the Caribbean. The economy – even though largely self-sufficient and agricultural – was suffering from the consequences of war and perhaps most telling of all, because the continental – their fiat currency – collapsed in a whirlwind of hyperinflation.

To address these problems the Constitution emerged from Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in the summer of 1787. The states relinquished 17 of their sovereign powers by delegating them to a new federal government that would provide for the general welfare of their Union and “secure the Blessings of Liberty” for each state’s citizens, an objective eventually achieved with the 13th amendment. The document – written to make certain its permanence – provided carefully crafted check-and-balance mechanisms to harmoniously ensure the federal government did not encroach on the sovereign powers each state retained, or the states did not interfere with the tasks they delegated to the federal government. In response to the concerns of thoughtful citizens, the states then added ten amendments, the Bill of Rights. They reinforced the underlying governing principle that citizens are the ultimate supreme power in America.

To reinforce the separation of powers visually, the new federal government would operate outside of state boundaries from federal-owned territory called the District of Columbia. Virginia and Maryland vacated control of 68 square miles, geographically highlighting the separation of state and federal power that is a fundamental element of the Constitution. The 9th and 10th amendments then ring-fenced the federal government’s authority to the 17 delegated powers, with any power not specifically stated in the Constitution being reserved by the states or the American people.

This venerated document established a Union – a term I use purposefully but found infrequently now. It was the Union that President Lincoln sought to preserve, putting into clear view the political structure of America prior to the Progressive era and its relentless march toward centralization of political power and quest for absolute control by a federal ruling elite. The Constitution set up a framework for:

a common defense, with each sovereign state providing a militia to protect the Union’s borders should any state be invaded,
a common market, much like Europe set about forming after the Second World War, to facilitate unimpeded commerce among the several states of the Union,
a common currency for the Union, with Congress given the power “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof…”

America advanced and prospered because these ideals were achieved. Responsibility for them rests with the federal government. Every other governmental matter rests with each state, all of which had constitutions protecting for its citizens the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and private property, which together make possible the pursuit of happiness. The limited tasks of the federal government were clear, and its power was contained until the Progressives began their campaign of change, for which money requires special attention.

Money and the Constitution

While the words “coin Money” and the action they intend are explicit, the confusion today about the phrase “regulate the Value thereof” disappears when this entire power given to Congress is read as one. The phrase recognizes that the value of assets – in this case, gold and silver – fluctuate in relation to each other. As a purely practical matter, Congress would need to occasionally adjust the ratio of gold and silver to ensure a sufficient quantity of both metals in the country for coining. The Mint Act of 1792 – one of the first bills presented by Congress to President Washington – set the ratio at 15.4 ounces of silver to one ounce of gold. In the 1834 Congress adjusted it to 16-to-1, which became the famous rallying cry of silver advocates late that century as paper currency became more widespread and inflation rose.

A different monetary provision of the Constitution impacts the states. Because they had delegated to Congress their sovereign power to coin money, no state is permitted to “coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts”. Thus, each state can only use constitutional money, which perforce is gold and silver – and not today’s ‘dollar’. A dollar bill in one’s pocket by its full label is an unconstitutional dollar Bill of Credit and entirely different from a constitutional silver dollar coin.

As noted above, hyperinflation was a factor causing the unfavorable economic conditions in the 13 newly independent states. This backdrop adds significance to the power given to Congress to “coin Money”. It is obvious that neither Congress nor any other branch of the federal government has the power to ‘print’ currency. Because it only has the powers delegated to it, Congress cannot grant the power of printing currency to the Federal Reserve – another 1913 intervention of the Progressives – from which we can conclude that the forced circulation of the dollar fiat currency it issues is unconstitutional.

Read More @ FGMR.com

Originally Posted at https://www.sgtreport.com

zerohedge
Economics , News , Politics , Science
December 7, 2024
2 views

The Miserable Cost Of An Open Border

Authored by Seth Barron via RealClearPolitics,

The Biden-Harris experiment in dissolving the U.S. border has wrought massive changes to American society, most of which will not be understood for years, if not decades. Since 2021, U.S. border officials have had at least 10 million “encounters” with migrants, many of whom were allowed to enter the country. There is no telling how many more aliens entered the country without encountering enforcement agents. The population of the United States may have increased by as much as 15 million people in just a few years.

This massive flow of humanity crosses multiple national borders, involves every mode of transportation, accounts for billions of dollars paid in fees to smugglers, and describes a fantastically complex economy of suffering and hope. In an effort to get a handle on this human tide, noted muckraker James O’Keefe – known for his hidden camera “gotcha” interviews with abortionists, media executives, progressive nonprofit executives, and other degenerate types – traces the migrant onrush from its source, and seeks to trace the machinery of profit and influence that is conducting it from great removes.

“Line In The Sand,” the resulting documentary, is a remarkable and humane exposition, revealing perspectives and images American audiences have mostly been prevented from seeing. O’Keefe and his intrepid team begin on the U.S. side of the Mexican border, where we witness migrants crossing the border through holes that their guides have cut in a fence that serves as a target as much as a barrier. Infrared cameras show dozens of illegal aliens streaming toward “pick-up” vehicles on the U.S. side while smugglers – presumably cartel members – a few feet away taunt O’Keefe and his group. “What if I were to run up to them right now, what would happen?” O’Keefe asks his guide. “I would highly advise you against that,” he is told, in a classic understatement.

The fact that coyotes and other human traffickers are paid to assist northbound migrants with their passage is no scandal; we all know what their motivations are and why they are doing what they do. But O’Keefe documents multiple examples of U.S. Border Patrol agents standing idly by while illegal aliens cross, virtually under their noses. “Why aren’t you doing anything?” he asks. “Have a good day, guys,” a border agent desultorily responds before driving off in the general direction of the episode. Later, a migrant stands in front of a Border Patrol truck, clearly trying to alert the agents of his intention to surrender, but is studiously ignored until O’Keefe and his team call their attention to him.

There is a kind of sad comedy in the operations of U.S. border security, and O’Keefe is not unsympathetic to the absurd position that border agents have been put in. Trained to defend the national border and to serve as the first line of defense of American soil, these agents have been recommissioned as a perverse Welcome Wagon for illegal aliens, charged with making their undocumented and uninvited entrance to the United States as commodious as possible.

Looking to get deeper into the heart of this migratory avalanche, O’Keefe went deep into Mexico, to the city of Irapuato, about 150 miles northwest of Mexico City. Irapuato is a popular railway junction where thousands of migrants climb aboard “La Bestia,” or “The Beast,” a cargo train that chugs northward toward the United States. In the film’s most remarkable footage, O’Keefe and his team join with migrants, mostly from South and Central America, to ride The Beast, also known as “el Tren del Muerto,” or the Train of Death. O’Keefe talks to the migrants without condescension, asking them their destinations and what they plan to do when they get there, and their concerns about the perilous nature of the journey. We see the film crew race to jump on a moving train and clamber on top to sit in a pile of coal; O’Keefe is shocked at how truly dangerous this small element of the trip is and sympathizes with the migrants’ difficult choices. These scenes are among the film’s most affecting, along with the crew’s random encounter with a little girl who had just crossed the border after journeying from Guatemala by herself. There is a human dimension to illegal immigration, and O’Keefe does not ignore it.

However, there is also an impersonal dimension to this massive population transfer, and O’Keefe determinedly aims to uncover it – to put a face to the institutions and administrators that benefit from the rough injection of millions of people into American society. From government agents to bus companies to nonprofit resettlement groups to private contractors running huge, walled compounds housing thousands of children, O’Keefe doggedly tries to penetrate the mechanics of a system that resolutely hides itself behind a screen of silence, usually in the name of “safety” and “privacy.”

Some of the film’s more comical moments pertain to these segments, such as when the team follows some just-arrived Chinese migrants in San Diego to an employment agency, where other Chinese aliens, already in the country for several months, complain that it’s much harder to live in the United States than they had imagined. O’Keefe tries to sniff out a connection between the owner of the agency and more powerful actors, but it emerges that there really isn’t much going on; in fact, the owner asks O’Keefe if he knows of a way to apply for government grants.

Elsewhere, O’Keefe tries to get information about the operations of several huge residential centers for unaccompanied minors and tries to spin their refusal to give him access to the centers or submit to interviews as evidence of the existence of vast, government-funded child sex trafficking networks. But it seems more likely, though no less troubling, that the open borders policy of the last four years has created a tremendous humanitarian crisis of alien children roaming the continent by themselves, and the government is probably trying to keep them from becoming prey to sex traffickers while they sort out where to send them. Though O’Keefe does not uncover a salacious network of child predators, his vigorous pursuit of the truth does reveal the existence of a large, shadowy, government-funded, and lucrative system of child “welfare.”

So, “Line In The Sand” is correct in the larger sense that billions of dollars are being spent managing this human flow, and many people are getting rich off of it. The last thing these parasitical administrators of the nonprofit industrial complex want is for the border to close. O’Keefe does a great job of capturing in real time the corruption of a local New York City nonprofit called La Jornada, whose leader, Pedro Rodriguez, evidently perpetrates fraud, demanding fees for services that the city provides for free. O’Keefe also sends a Spanish-speaking reporter undercover into the Roosevelt Hotel, New York City’s main processing center for newly-arrived migrants, which offers him free housing, medical care, and even airplane tickets, even though the reporter explains that he has no identification of any sort. How, O’Keefe asks, in our post 9/11 security-obsessed era, are we to make sense of a system that admits millions of unvetted foreigners into the country, and then offers to fly them anywhere they care to go?

“Line In The Sand” is rough in parts, but intentionally so. Its subject is so sprawling and tangled that a neat and clean representation would be a lie. Even with a nine-figure budget – which this film assuredly did not have – a documentary about the border and the 30 million-footed human swarm that has crossed it would be messy and incomplete. But James O’Keefe and his small team have done something remarkable. They have taken on the decade’s biggest story, given it form, and preserved the humanity of its subjects. It is worth watching.

Seth Barron is a writer in New York and author of the forthcoming “Weaponized from Humanix.”

Tyler Durden
Sat, 12/07/2024 – 17:30