Politics

Senate minority leader and Kentucky Republican claims one of its meetings was bugged. It sounds like Watergate without the outrage. Of course, it could have been an inside job. McConnell attacked for smear.

The consequences of the American empire.

"In 1939, President Roosevelt said of President Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, "Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." That does a good job of expressing the spirit of the whole US Empire. The US Empire could be the most powerful force affecting investment markets and practically everything else. Before we go further, I'd like to make a special point. I think the United States of America is a wonderful country and I would not want to live anywhere else. But the country and the government are not the same thing. That's extremely important. Nothing I say should be taken as a criticism of America or of the principles on which America was founded. But the government, I believe, is the most dangerous enemy. The federal government has gone renegade, and if it is not returned to the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, the country will be destroyed."

Our government is rapidly destroying our country.

"My investment model is very simple. Buy things that do well during wartime and currency debasement. As you can imagine, it's been working wonderfully as a long-term strategy."

I'm sure it's been great so far, but the wars will not last.

"Politics isn't so much about ballots as it is about bullets. The typical American doesn't have the foggiest idea what the US government is really doing in other countries."

No doubt.

"I was a public school teacher for four years, and I was also hired by a major textbook publisher to write an economics textbook for high schools. I know how much government-approved books are censored. By no stretch of the imagination are children getting the knowledge they need to make them savvy about the real world."

Not in government schools. Control of information makes your children become employees for their children.

"Daily Bell: In the minutes leading up to this interview you were mentioning that it's important for people to ask: Why is a free press a good thing?
Richard Maybury: Yes. What's so important about it? Well, we don't want our minds to be in the hands of the government. We want lots of other people giving us information to help us have open minds and to be able to think for ourselves. That's why a free press is sacred in a free country. So, what's the point of handing the minds of our children over to the government? If a free press is a good thing, then why not let the children's minds be free, too? Why let the helpless little ones be programmed by followers of Dewey?"

That's an excellent critique of government schools I hadn't seen before. Liberals love free speech, but it's incompatible with government schools.

"Daily Bell: What do you think about a war with Iran?
Richard Maybury: I think it's a definite possibility because both governments would benefit from it greatly. It would be another wonderful opportunity for them to acquire more power over their populations. There's nothing like an international emergency to cause people to just throw up their hands and say, "Do whatever it takes to protect me even if it means putting chains on me!" I think in the United States a war would be another chance for the federal government to burn more of the Constitution. And the Iranian government, too, wants to acquire more power just as much as the US government does. A war would constitute a wonderful partnership between the two."

Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi might disagree. I doubt the Mullahs want to go to war with the US.

"A general answer to all those sorts of questions is that if a person is in the federal government, either as a politician or a high level bureaucrat, then that person is clearly a power seeker, and there is no more satisfying use of power than military force. There's this automatic tendency among people who want to get into the government to want to fight. Power seekers want to use their power. And I think with that observation alone you can explain at least half of any war Washington is in."

That's a nicer way of saying it than I use, but it's true. Especially since we elect people to force their will on others. Whether we elect them to solve problems with warfare or welfare, we're electing them to use violence against people ostensibly to solve problems.

"As for generalized war, I think that's likely. The government can get away with so many secret activities in other countries now that top officials can steer the population into anything they want. As for the economics, all wars are economic in the sense that the military needs bullets and beans in order to fight, and they've got to be able to buy those bullets and beans. Now, a lot of people conclude, economics is causing war. I have never seen a case where that was so. War is the most expensive thing humans do, so economics always argues against war. Any alternative is cheaper.
So in a sense, no war is ever economic because the economics always argues against it. But economics is used as an excuse. Leaders are constantly pointing to various economic factors and calling those "vital interests" and then arguing that the US should go to war over these "vital interests". What they're really saying is that your son or daughter's life is not as valuable as a barrel of oil so they're willing to expend that life in order to steal the oil. It's propaganda and completely insane. Again, I'm speaking as someone who was there on the inside."

I don't know about that. Many wars were fought over plunder. Many are fought over control of productive territory. Trading is more economical, but government force is always used to plunder, and that's an economic motivation.

The invasion of Mali failed to boost the French president's poll numbers.