By Nick Giambruno
Over 3,000 millionaires have fled Chicago in recent months. This is the largest outflow of wealthy people from any US city right now. It’s also one of the largest outflows of wealthy people in the world. But it’s not just millionaires… Every five minutes someone leaves Illinois. In a recent poll, 47% of people in Illinois said they want to leave the state. Over the last decade, more than half a million people have done just that. This is the largest outflow of people from any state in the country. The people who leave are generally better educated, more skilled, and earn more money than those who stay. Entire towns of affluent Illinois refugees have sprouted up in Florida, Arizona, and other states. Illinois is bleeding productive people. This is a major warning sign.
Wealthy people are often the first to leave a bad situation. They have the means to simply get up and go. And when they do, they take their money and their businesses with them.
This hurts the local property market and the rest of the local economy. Many of Illinois’ millionaires own businesses that employ large numbers of people. As they leave, there are fewer people and businesses left to shoulder the state’s enormous and growing financial burdens. Many of these people are leaving for one simple reason: rising taxes. Illinois’ leftist tax-and-spend politicians are continuing to increase all sorts of taxes, which were already high in the first place. The state just passed a 32% income tax hike. Rising taxes are pushing more and more productive people to make the chicken run… and at the worst possible moment for the state’s coffers. Illinois is the most financially distressed state in the US. Every month, it spends $600 million more than it takes in. It’s now $15 billion behind on its bills and counting. Illinois is about to become America’s first failed state. Even its governor has described it as a “banana republic.” Today, Illinois can’t pay contractors to fix the roads. It doesn’t have enough cash to pay lottery winners. (What happened to the money it collected selling lottery tickets?) The state can’t even afford food for its prisoners.
By Chris Rossini
Governments have been the biggest murderers in mankind's history. No private gang, club, organization, mafia, or cabal can possibly come close. A major reason for this is the fact that government legally steals its revenues. So there really is no choice for taxpayers in financing government's wars. You may not like government invading Iraq, or Syria, or Libya, but you're paying for it nevertheless. We can't say: "I'm not paying my taxes because I don't want it used to destroy innocent people". What we want, like, or think has no bearing...We're paying. Private institutions have no legal power to steal (unless they join up with the government, which many do). But on their own, private organizations can only get our money if we voluntarily give it to them. If a private institution heads in a direction that you disapprove of, you have the power to withhold your money. You're not forced to finance them against your will. What you want, like, and think *does* matter.
Keeping this in mind, it's probably a good idea for people to know just how destructive government can be. If governments have been the biggest perpetrators of murder in the world, that's really important information for people to know. Right?
Well, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, professor at Loyola University Maryland, recently gave a wonderful talk titled: Ten Things You Should Know About Socialism at The Mises Institute. He provides some sobering news as to how kids can reach the university level without knowing that *anyone* was ever killed by communist governments. The 20th century was the heyday of socialism, and the amount of dead bodies that socialist governments piled up boggles the mind. And yet, today in America, it has been whitewashed. DiLorenzo says: The essence of socialism is a government plan, or set of government plans, that will replace people's own private plans for their own lives.
There's a reason why governments want monopoly control over schools. They cherish that monopoly probably more than any other.
Next important is an FCC-licensed mainstream media. The media picks up where the schools leave off. You graduate from your socialist professors, and CNN and Fox News take over from there. It all starts with thinking. If Americans have no idea about the deadly ideology of Socialism, and the destruction that it wrought a mere half century ago, what are the odds of those horrors being repeated again?
Yesterday's nuclear brinkmanship between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un may have terrified much of the rest of the world, but the military industrial complex rubs its hands with glee. Profits are way up since the first Korean long-range missile test in July.
By Liberty Report Staff
We can't steal ... but government calls it an "income tax" and steals with reckless abandon. We can't counterfeit ... but government's monopoly bank calls it "Quantitative Easing" and destroys the purchasing power of the currency. We can't kidnap ... but government institutes military drafts whenever it sees fit. We can't murder ... but government commits mass murder just about every single day. There's something very screwy about this double-standard. Tom Woods recently gave a stirring speech at The Mises Institute in honor of the great economist and historian Murray Rothbard. Here's a taste of what can be found in this talk:
If you're interest is piqued...be sure to watch the whole thing here.
Either way, get to know the works of Murray Rothbard. His books are all available in digital format for free right here. You won't regret it.
The UN Security Council resolution putting more sanctions on North Korea over the weekend is fueling the flames of neocon dreams of pre-emptive war. Will they actually be so insane? Bet on it.
By Liberty Report Staff
"Tax The Rich" is always a popular slogan. Ironically, politicians themselves are often very rich, and they're put into office and financed by others who are also very rich. Take a drive around the Washington, DC suburbs and surrounding areas and you'll quickly notice that government is the ultimate "get rich quick" scheme. Perhaps it's time to get the schemers off our backs instead of looking for them to "tax the rich". Ron Paul on NYC subway financing below:
Press Play to hear Ron Paul deliver his Weekly Update:
By Ron Paul
Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently ordered the Justice Department to increase the use of civil asset forfeiture, thus once again endorsing an unconstitutional, authoritarian, and increasingly unpopular policy. Civil asset forfeiture, which should be called civil asset theft, is the practice of seizing property believed to be involved in a crime. The government keeps the property even if it never convicts, or even charges, the owner of the property. Police can even use civil asset theft to steal from people whose property was used in criminal activity without the owners’ knowledge. Some have even lost their homes because a renter or houseguest was dealing drugs on the premises behind the owners’ backs.
Civil asset theft is a multi-billion dollar a year moneymaker for all levels of government. Police and prosecutors receive more than their "fair share” of the loot. According to a 2016 study by the Institute for Justice, 43 states allow police and prosecutors to keep at least half of the loot they got from civil asset theft.
Obviously, this gives police an incentive to aggressively use civil asset theft, even against those who are not even tangentially involved in a crime. For example, police in Tenaha, Texas literally engaged in highway robbery — seizing cash and other items from innocent motorists — while police in Detroit once seized every car in an art institute’s parking lot. The official justification for that seizure was that the cars belonged to attendees at an event for which the institute had failed to get a liquor license. The Tenaha police are not the only ones targeting those carrying large sums of cash. Anyone traveling with "too much" cash runs the risk of having it stolen by a police officer, since carrying large amounts of cash is treated as evidence of involvement in criminal activity. Civil asset theft also provides an easy way for the IRS to squeeze more money from the American taxpayer. As the growing federal debt increases the pressure to increase tax collections without raising tax rates, the IRS will likely ramp up its use of civil asset forfeiture. Growing opposition to the legalized theft called civil asset forfeiture has led 24 states to pass laws limiting its use. Sadly, but not surprisingly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is out of step with this growing consensus. After all, Sessions is a cheerleader for the drug war, and civil asset theft came into common usage as a tool in the drug war. President Trump could do the American people a favor by naming a new attorney general who opposes police state policies like the drug war and police state tactics like civil asset theft.
Rep. John Duncan, Jr. was one of just three Members to vote against the new Russia/Iran/North Korea sanctions bill. He's also the last Republican in the House who voted against the 2003 Iraq war. Doesn't being conservative mean being pro-war ? Not at all, as Duncan explains in today's episode...
By Thomas DiLorenzo
How apropos that on the weekend of the annual convention of Democratic Socialists of America taking place in Chicago the socialist government of Venezuela is demonstrating yet again the inherent incompatibility of socialism and democracy. It was not just a coincidence, in other words, that twentieth-century socialism was defined by tyranny, dictatorship, and oppression – and not democracy. Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek explained how socialism destroys democratic institutions in his 1944 classic, The Road to Serfdom. Socialism involves the forceful substitution of governmental planning for the individual plans of all the citizens of a country, Hayek explained. Such a system attracts as its political leaders some of the most immoral and unethical people in society – those with the fewest qualms about abusing their fellow citizens in the name of achieving a socialist utopia.
Once the socialist plans are put in place, they inevitably fail. Without capitalism’s market feedback mechanism that rewards good customer service with profits and penalizes poor service with losses, there is little incentive for efficiency. Socialist price controls create nothing but chaos, usually by imposing prices so low that it is impossible for a farmer or a merchant to make a living. The result, which is on display today in Venezuela, can be economically catastrophic. If the world has learned anything from the history of socialism, it is that it is economic poison.
The rulers of a socialist government, Hayek further explained, would “soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure.” This is true, I would add, whether the government is an elected, democratic one or a dictatorship. This in turn will lead to “the suppression of democratic institutions” and public demands for a “strongman” or “strongwoman” who “can get things done” without the inconvenience of democratic institutions. (Hence the dozens of “czars” appointed by every American president). The socialist mindset also accepts or even celebrates “intolerance and brutal suppression of dissent” in the name of “the common good,” the rallying cry of socialists everywhere. Just use the words “common good,” and all forms of oppression are “justified.” Hayek wrote these things in the 1940s but he could be describing the rulers of democratic socialist Venezuela today. After utterly destroying one of the most prosperous, oil-rich economies in Latin America with the nationalization of industries, price controls, a gigantic welfare state, oppressive taxation, and pervasive regulation of economic life, the Venezuelan government became more and more dictatorial. Its Supreme Court was packed with left-wing political hacks (something that FDR famously attempted); opposition lawmakers were barred from holding office; politicized judges overturned laws opposed by Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicholas Maduro; the Supreme Court ruled in favor of disbanding the national legislature; two opposition leaders were recently kidnapped and imprisoned; and a new political body, the “constituent assembly,” was created that, according to the New York Times, would “grant virtually unlimited authority to the country’s leftists.” This “assembly” is in the process of replacing all non-socialist governors and mayors; writing a new socialist constitution; and responding to the catastrophic failures of socialism with promises of even more of the same but on a grander scale. It is little wonder, then, that when Bernie Sanders was asked by a television reporter during the 2016 presidential primaries if he had an opinion about the economic situation in Venezuela, he had “no opinion” for the first time in his political life. Meanwhile, the Democratic Socialists of America are studiously ignoring history and reality this weekend at their convention as they boast of a tripling of their membership (from 8,000 a year ago) thanks to the election of President Trump and the popularity of the Don Quixote of their movement, Bernie Sanders.
This article was originally published at LewRockwell.com
By Liberty Report Staff
Hermann Goering was Hitler’s Reich Marshall. He was captured and jailed. While in jail, Goering was interviewed by U.S. Army Captain Gustave M. Gilbert. Gilbert would publish this interview in his book "Nuremberg Diary." There's a key excerpt from this interview that should really strike a chord with the American people: Goering: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece.
If you're an American, do you feel that you have "some say" in the government going to war?
Most likely your answer is "absolutely not." Congress is legally and constitutionally supposed to declare war, but they haven't done so since World War II. So that's out too. That means, no say for you, and no say for your "representative(s)." It's become very clear that even President Trump himself is being maneuvered and checkmated into war. What are we being dragged into? |
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