If significant inflation of the dollar occurs and Barak Obama allows its buying power to devalue so that the 2010 dollar is worth just six  or seven cents of the 2008 dollar’s value, a distinct possibility . . . the effect upon the world will be drastic and upon American citizens, worse yet. 

                As a boy, Rajjpuut lived in Germany and well remembers collecting thin paper stamps from Germany’s Weimar Republic whose nominal value on the face of the stamp had been crossed out once or even twice during the minting/printing process with a much higher finalized cost required when the stamp was ultimately sold. Even then, several decades after the fact, the older Germans well remembered when a Billion Deutsch Marks would buy you a scraggly dried handful of turnips; when workers demanded their pay once a day – and then twice a day – and at the end three times daily, so that they might immediately spend it and get some value from the money before the constant erosion of value left it virtually worthless. Ol’ Rajjpuut also remembers his shiny mint quality Adolf Hitler stamps issued just a decade later with their incredibly low denominations . . . it takes no imagination at all to realize that the Weimar Republic’s runaway inflation led step by step toward the country’s abyss and Der Fuehrer’s rise.

                For those of you interested in your own fate financial and otherwise, should Obama’s probable dollar devaluation occur and other present trends continue, Rajjpuut recommends Eric Maria Remarque’s novel “The Black Obelisk” for a play-by-play of survival during those crucial times in Germany. Remarque, best known for his two novels, “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “The Spark of Life,” captures our own potential fate quite vividly and compassionately.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

The story was a bit different for the mightiest of all empires, Britain, (“the sun never sets on the British Empire”) which actually stood alone against the combined forces of Italy and the mighty powers of Nazi Germany and Japan for over two full years and then continued to fight with America as its prime ally for another four to help secure the victory . . . and then surprisingly, theBrits called up Harry S. Truman one day less than two years later to let him know their empire was dead. They no longer had the resources to stop the Soviet Union’s wild land-grabbing in eastern and south-eastern Europe and were kind enough to inform the United States that the baton of freedom was in our hands like it or not . . . .

An incredible day in world history that February 21, 1947, but of course it’s not mentioned in today’s textbooks too busy telling the glories of Red China without mentioning that Mao and his successors have deliberately killed more people than Stalin and  Hitler combined (even before listing massive state-ordered deliberate abortions and the mandated one-child policy). That was the day the British realized they could no longer afford to be a world power and withdrew simultaneously from Greece and Turkey, not to mention NOT standing up to the Soviets in the remainder of the Balkans, etc. America became the heir apparent holding the baton of freedom and thank GOD it did!

After sixty plus relatively peaceful years (no major wars and the missiles withdrawn from Cuba) that saw the winning of the Cold War, America’s likely demise comes gift-wrapped courtesy of Barak Obama’s seemingly total ignorance or total willful stubborn denial with regard to economic reality.   Within four and a half months he doubled the national debt which had required 231 years to accumulate. His chief financial conspirator, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke with Obama’s urgency set the money printing press at full gallop so that today we have fifteen times the paper circulation in the country we did a year earlier. The rising world powers have for the most part, all called for the removal of the American Dollar as the “world’s reserve currency.” The all-important dollar index (USDX) which reached a peak (157) during the Reagan years now stands  (76) at 49% of that level and with willful inflation courtesy of Obama and the Federal Reserve Bank poised to take over . . . cannot be worth much more than six or seven cents in 2008 buying power or roughly 4.5 or 5 on the USDX. Only tradition keeps the fiction of a valuable dollar alive and tradition is poor recompense if a run on the dollar takes place within the next 12 or 15 months. Think of it as “death by a thousand cuts.”

Before the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913, the dollar was surely the strongest currency in the world. The 2008 dollar compared to the 1913 gold-backed dollar had the buying power of roughly six cents from the 1913 buck. But our 2009 dollar IF PROPERLY PRICED ACCORDING to PAPER BILLS IN CIRCULATION would have the buying power of significantly less than one-half cent from the 1913 gold dollar. The two biggest blows were Obama’s policies today and the 43% overnight inflation created by Franklin Roosevelt’s confiscation of all gold currency in 1934. Just as FDR’s insanity took a recovering economy (the bottom was July, 1933) and threw it willy-nilly into a twelve-year-plus full-blown DEPRESSION . . . expect the Obama villainies to not only dramatically and painfully extend our nation’s financial woes, but to actually sound the death knell to American power, prestige and greatness. Yes, folks, it’s every bit that bad . . . .

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

The worse news is that in actuality the present national debt when adjusted both for inflation and the rate of interest and when also adding in obligations like Medicare and Social Security which are not considered debt, but should be, really amounts to about $92 TRillion in debt or obligations (for example Medicare right now has $34 TRillion in obligations it can never meet) coming due by 2020.

U. S. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner Wednesday attempted to sell $43 billion in new U.S. Treasury notes on the market which, if successful would be a single-day record for borrowing. On Thursday and Friday the treasury will attempt to unload yet another $69 billion.  So the United States is hoping to borrow $112 Billion in just three days, quite a pace! On an expanded basis that would amount to roughly $900 Billion per month or $12.8 TRillion yearly. It wasn’t that long ago that Ol’ Rajjpuut remembers less than $100 Billion per year being the nation’s entire borrowing. Now we’re panhandling 12% more in a mere three days  . . . if you didn’t understand the extent of America’s economic troubles before, hopefully now you do.

Secretary Geithner has already borrowed $1.41 TRillion this year, roughly 2.7 times more than the borrowing for the full year in 2008.  Obviously in recent days, the pattern of borrowing has increased markedly. Geithner and Obama’s  third partner in crime: Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has been running the money printing presses day and night so that we now have fifteen times as many paper dollars in circulation than we had in 2008. The value of your money is shrinking overnight as a result of Washington’s actions since the onset of the Obama administration. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) by 2020 the National Debt should reach 24.5 TRillion. But the facts are a lot scarier than all that . . . .

It appears definite that the American dollar’s place in the world economy as the World’s Reserve Currency is tenuous at best. IF, or when the dollar loses its place as the world’s reserve currency there is no reason to believe it will keep anything but a miniscule part of the present value which is  now 76 on the USDX scale.     If for example, Bernanke’s 15/1 on circulating currency is realized, the possibility of a 2010 American dollar wielding seven cents of the buying power of today’s dollar and hitting 5 on the USDX. If this is to be our economic future: it is bleak.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

                Had a friend chide Rajjpuut in an e-mail for saying that Social Security would be bankrupt in 2018. “The accurate date” he said “is 2037.” Rajjpuut stands by his original figuring. Here’s why. The 2018 figure would be true if constant dollars were employed. When you’re using dollars that are worth 6 ½ cents compared to former dollars: you may be paying out benefits but you’re really a bankrupt organization: oh, but then let’s add in COLA: cost of living adjustments. Yikes, well theoretically, if you run the country deep enough into hyper-inflation then Social Security would never go bankrupt: that’s comforting, no? But of course when an $85,000** social security monthly benefit is worth only about $212, if you’re the recipient, what would you think of your government controlled retirement plan then?

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

** My friend would say, “C’mon, Rajjpuut, pull your head out, that’s exactly what COLA is all about, to keep up with inflation.” Actually, Buddy, that’s not how it works when people need to be paid three times daily just so they can immediately buy anything for sale anywhere rather than having their money deteriorate into the ether . . . then social security and other “fixed income” vehicles cannot keep up and chaos is the manager of all systems

                Since 1933, the liberal Democrats answer in every instance has been “. . . through the wall, of course . . .” The upcoming bankruptcies of Social Security in 2018 and Medicare in 2016 are wall-penetrating results. The aim at present is to create Obamacare to “rescue Medicare" and then take on a life of its own, lest the American public find out that Bernie Madoff has nothing on their tax and spend liberal legislators. Hide the $34 TR illion problem, hide their shame and rape your unborn children’s and grandchildren’s future.  Oh, and then let's take care of Social Security with some more sleight of hand . . . .

                FDR took us off the gold standard in 1933. The loaf of bread that was nine cents in 1933 can be had at Sam’s Club on rare occasions at two for $5; it’s $4 per loaf elsewhere. The 1933 dollar had shrunk to 2 1/3 cents by 2008. Ben Bernanke has just printed fourteen phony new dollars for every old one circulating in the country . . . release of that much currency could soon mean the 2008 dollar had become worth 6 ½ cents and the 1933 dollar would become worth less than 1/6 of a penny. That is an enormous amount of wealth and savings and hope up in smoke. It’s a little late, but perhaps we ought to tell Nancy, Ben, Barak and Barney to please find it in themselves to use the door???

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

Platinum Fleecer Award

July, 2009

To honor the memory of the Last Great American Statesman, William Proxmire (Wisconsin Senator for 32 years whose “Golden Fleece Awards” uncovered shameless pork barrel projects and focused media attention on all manner of self-serving, waste, and corruption in the United States government), Rajjpuut has as of June, 2009, begun to award the “Platinum Fleecer” to the elected or appointed official or private citizen most deserving of the title.

The July, 2009 Platinum Fleecer WINNER is: 

Barak Hussein Obama

Barak Obama has earned back-to-back Platinum Fleecer Awards not only for his outrageous spending and inflationary policies but also for the pure chutzpah of his public discourse. Last week President Obama was on Capitol Hill scolding Democratic congressional bedfellows to help him control spending by enacting “pay as you go” legislation. “The reckless fiscal policies of the past administration have left us in a very deep hole,” he said. Mr. Obama has conveniently left out two crucial facts about that “very deep hole”:

                Just as Adolf Hitler created a scapegoat by burning down the Reichstag and blaming it upon the Communist Party in Germany and, of course, always had the Jews to blame all the country's problems on, it appears that Gordon Brown operatives are tightening the screws in Northern Ireland trying to create a backlash of violence that will take the eyes of the United Kingdom off the shipwreck he’s brought to their economy; recent attacks on the ultra-leftist Labour Prime Minister have gone way beyond scathing:

http://townhall.com/blog/g/ef5c233c-7c34-4acb-b002-ad872d90c161

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

            As financial advisor Jimmy Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings  puts it: “This guy Geitner’s been wrong for fifteen straight years.  Bernanke? He’s been wrong for 350 consecutive weeks. They really have no idea.  Obama’s got us printing money hand over fist. I can’t say the fundamentals of  Citibank or GM are getting better. No one can get a loan, so manufacturing is stagnant and prices are going up as supply goes down.”   Inflation too will soon make prices jump.

           “Washington is increasing taxes on capital gains and energy, in a recession?  Can you believe it? They’re destroying the economy.” Rogers said the “rally in the dollar” was mind-boggling, “it’s not a stable currency.”

            “We must stop fouling our own nest!” A great point, clearly, which is part of the “warm and fuzzy” feeling many folks associate with environmentalism. The environmental movement is accepted by many, if not most folks, as a positive thing sort of like the “global sanitation department” which Ayn Rand referred to in her book “The Return of the Primitive.”  Of course the “great” environmentalists like Al Gore and Ted Kennedy have also been known to leave behind their own humongous personal carbon footprints while preaching minimalism for the rest of the planet. 

Chappaquiddick Teddy, even decided that the goals of a “green” program called “Cape Wind” to build 130 windmills and a tide generator in his own (Martha’s Vineyard) neighborhood and reduce area electricity needs by 75% was inappropriate because of “visual pollution,” “disruption of seabird habitats” and even “desecration of Indian burial sites.” When the protests of Kennedy and his plutocratic friends failed to bring about the project’s demise one wag’s wonderful headline read: “Ted Kennedy Tries Mightily, but Fails to Break “Wind!”

            Rajjpuut guesses that maintaining 40,000 square foot homes and a pristine view from one’s yacht would classify as rank hypocrisy for a “green advocate.” But it gets seamier. 

Item: A few years back a couple hundred SUV’s around the country were deliberately lit afire.  

Item: In 1998 eco-terrorists destroyed a restaurant and caused $12 million worth of damage at Vail Mountain ski resort in Colorado – something about trying to stop expansion into “lynx territory.”  

Item: several other ski areas have been hit around the nation, and a group called “Earth Liberation Front”  (ELF) has taken credit for the arson damage, etc.          

Item: After ELF set fire to 20 Hummer H2’s in 2004 at a California Dealership. Environmentalists responded to the natural outcry by calling the protesting voices: “property rights extremists.”

Item: ELF and other unnamed terrorists get credit for driving spikes in timber so that lumberjacks using chainsaws will be maimed or killed in the normal course of doing their jobs.

Item: ELF, “Earth First” and other extremist environmental “protectors including the hitherto well-respected Green Peace have been repeatedly accused of laundering money for eco-terrorist purposes. In any case, all three groups have praised the “activists” daring attacks in the five items mentioned above.

So what exactly motivates an environmental terrorist?  Whether it’s the lynx, the snail darter (a fish), the spotted owl,  the black-footed ferret, Preble’s Mouse, the northern pocket gopher, maintaining unblocked rivers, wide expanses of forests, or clearing the air of carbon dioxide: the environmental extremist values animal lives, plant lives, wilderness, clean water and clean air above human life, human property or human decency. To the environmentalist judge, jury and executioner no action is too extreme to be unjustified for their “pure ends.”

It took one of the great writers of our time, Michael Crichton, (most famous for his novels of technology-gone-amuck such as “The Andromeda Strain,” “Jurassic Park” “Timeline” and other techno-thrillers) to truly captured the fanatic devotion to nature and absolute hatred for mankind of the eco-terrorist in his great novel “State of Fear.” Rajjpuut recommends it highly. 

The novel reflects the science found in the Nobel Prize winning IPCC report (but not the pseudo-science of Al Gore) as well as the profound depth of up-to-date climatological knowledge shown in the History Channel DVD “Little Ice Age, Big Chill” as well as a real understanding and empathy for the environmentalist mindset. Mr. Crichton researches his subject like no other American author. Just like Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” (not the Hollywood corruptions) it’s actually pretty easy to feel empathetic for the dastardly villains of Crichton’s book. But while Crichton’s novel captures the conflict of ideas in its most exciting form, the Obama Congress is ready to pass “ACES-A” (American Clean Energy and Security Act) which is in effect an energy tax footed by every man, woman and child in the nation.

While the hidden tax of inflation and the probable environmental taxpayer rape called ACES-A are the two most immediate threats to American property rights no alert American should overlook the growing danger of eco-terrorists.   The potential evil from fanatics willing to risk human life and property for the benefit of a mouse or fish is not to be underestimated.

Live long, strong and ornery,

Bob

            Barak Obama loves America so much that in a mere 150 days, he’s already changed the country so dramatically as to be virtually unrecognizable to free market advocates.

            Item: Obama’s severe criticism of the $450 Billion Bush deficit was greatly applauded by many Americans . . . to date his administration’s actions have created an annualized deficit of $1.75 TRillion almost four times Bush’s deficit. Helping him out, the congress has passed a $5.3 TRillion federal budget of fiscal year 2010 and programs generating projected deficits by 2019 well beyond $10 TRillion roughly 22 times larger than the deficits created over the first 230 years of American history.

            Item: The words “too big to fail” have become part of our new vocabulary. The Federal government under Obama now totally runs the nation’s banking system; its mortgage companies, the one-time largest insurance company in the world; and two of the three American car makers. The government has fired the CEOs of both Chrysler and GM and replaced them with men with no automotive manufacturing experience. Obama has also created a Czar who monitors and controls the salaries and compensation for the top 100 executives of many of the biggest financial companies in the countries.

Ya'all live long, strong, and ornery,

If you explored “hiccups” on the internet, you’d find tens of thousands of old wives’ cures and home remedies claiming to “stop hiccups.” One site I saw listed 250 such treatments. Of course, the very volume of all this speaks to ignorance. If you contract strep throat you go in and get a shot of antibiotics and barring a super-mutant strain of strep on steroids, that ends the problem. Not so with hiccups. 

 Ignorance truly is bliss sometimes, except, of course, when it is a curse. I was talking to a psychologist friend of mine the other day. He occasionally tells me about “creative treatments” for various little mental aberrations he sees from time to time and I give him the straight skinny on things like fitness and longevity from a health educator’s point of view.  On this day, James mentioned that three times in the last five years he’d encountered patients with a “hiccup phobia.” It seems that all three patients were already seeing him for relatively minor neuroses but had later stumbled upon a copy of the “Guinness Book of World Records” and become so obsessed with the possibility of developing “life-threatening hiccups” that full-blown phobias had developed. The case of American Charles Osborne who hiccupped from 1922 to 1990 documented among the world records and the sad case of a girl whose hics could be heard half a mile away seem to have struck a resonant chord with his clients and he told me his patients were not an isolated incident, but rather he and his colleagues had discussed several other such cases. 

As resident know-it-all, I told him that because I was in possession of 100% effective knowledge about how to cure hiccups with 100% effectiveness, I thought that, imparting that knowledge for him to impart to his patients could immediately

alleviate their fears:  case solved. He scoffed, as learned men are wont to do. “Don’t give me that crap, Bob, everybody has a pet way to cure hiccups. None of them work all the time.”

            I demurred, telling him, not only did I know how to clear up hiccups 100% effectively, but he did too. “Go on,” he said.

            “How would you treat a socialite who feared that her perspiration was obnoxious and had developed such a phobia of sweating in public that she truly suffered from an easily measurable excessive perspiration?”  Slyly I'd given him the rough outline of a case he'd mentioned to me fifteen years ago.

            He laughed, “No-brainer. We have her shower but apply no deodorant or anti-perspirant, then wear a sleeveless-backless gown and when she attends the next function she is to make every deliberate effort to “stink them all out” and pump out a river of sweat to drown everyone else at the party. When she emerges dry as the Sahara Desert, she’s cured.”

            “Hiccups are the same,” I claimed.

            “Son of a b____!” my learned friend said.

            And so it is.  Hiccups and perspiration, body temperature and chemical balances, pulse and digestion, respiration and salivation, eye blinks and toenail growth are all under the control of the autonomic nervous system. Left alone they are virtually infallible in carrying out their vital jobs well below the level of conscious effort, but try to control them for very long and you can do yourself a world of hurt because it’s “not nice to fool Mother Nature.”   

Despite my constant efforts, after detecting my first “hic,” to break Mr. Osborne’s world record . . . . I rarely get out a second one. When I do, then I pump my fist in the air a few times and yell, “Yes, yes, yes and strive powerfully for a quick string of five hics in a row. To date my personal record is a pathetic six hics in a row lasting perhaps 20 seconds. I am mightily ashamed I tell you. Now, you ask

“What in the world has that story got to do with anything?” What, indeed?

            As I mentioned earlier, hiccups certainly do NOT compare to weightier matters like the health care crisis, galloping socialism, inflation, the rape of the taxpayer, our new president’s interference in the free market, the rape of the taxpayer and the imminent inflation that’s been created, the choice of a shoot-from the hip judge as a Supreme Court nominee, the failure of today’s journalists to upheld their trust by keep the voting public informed through unbiased presentation of the facts of American life, etc., etc. However, perhaps we can apply the humble “Hiccup Parable” to each and everyone of those more serious subjects?

            Perhaps you would NOT be shocked to know that medical doctors here in the United States have occasionally treated “runaway” hiccups for weeks or even months at a time. The lesson that I would draw from that is to “never go where you don’t belong.” The lesson applies equally for doctors treating hiccups and presidents wasting obscene amounts of taxpayer money on bailouts instead of letting normal bankruptcies alleviate matters. What is the end result of the auto bailouts?

            Two bankruptcies, in fact, if not in name, and $100 billion in taxpayer funds wasted. What would have been the result without Obamanomics . . . two bankruptcies and not one red cent of taxpayer monies wasted.  On a more humorous personal note, three decades after the original Chrysler bailout, Lee Iacocca, the former Chairman of Chrysler in 1979 who engineered that bailout, just lost much of his pension and benefits with the recent bankruptcy of the the firm.  Talk about poetic justice, it warms the very cockles of my heart and soul.

            Those same “hiccup” doctors, never fail to charge the patients they can’t cure and don’t cure for . . . office visits and examination fees and then, of course if and when nature takes its course and the patient loses the hiccups, would you be surprised if the doctor didn’t take credit for the cure? Doctor Barak is using the “tried and true methods of the New Deal today. The economy under Roosevelt didn’t cure itself until World War II brought an economic boom and all his interferences actually heavily prolonged the stock market panic into three separate stock market crashes. Despite the fact that the figures say the bottom of the Great Depression was mid-July, 1933, 140 days after FDR took office. Roosevelt’s Depression lasted roughly nine years. 

            If perchance, the medicines the doctor’s prescribe for hiccups bring about an adverse reaction . . . unlikely, you say. Ah, well . . . did you know that an American is ten times more likely to enter the hospital for an adverse reaction to prescribed medication than for an automobile accident? He is also four times more likely to die from that very same drug reaction than from injuries in a car crash.   Extending the parable into presidential policies again . . . Doctor Barak is prescribing medications for the country that are 100% likely to bankrupt future generation and debase the American dollar through runaway inflation. As you know, some cures are much worse than the underlying problem they’re prescribed for.

            Any politician like Nancy Pelosi who has not read and understood Leonard Read’s delightful little essay, “I, Pencil” is like an M.D. who has neither read nor understood the Hippocratic Oath “First, do no harm!”) I invite all Americans to understand what makes the Free Market work and indeed, what makes civilized human societies possible:

When asked by an eastern journalist about one of his more flamboyant western cavalrymen, President Ulysses Grant answered off the record and in a circular fashion . . . “I categorize my officers by two standards: Effort and Ability. Obviously, the bulk of the higher staff officers come from the ranks of the Industrious-Competents; but surprisingly some of my greatest generals, while very Competent are actually quite Lazy; and even more surprising, often quite inspired use can be made of Lazy-Incompetent men in leadership positions,” and here Grant is reported to have sighed deeply and shook his head. “However, the 'Industrious-Incompetent' is very dangerous and must be gotten rid of.”

Grant tried to get rid of the "Industrious-Incompetent" officer in question, a man who’d graduated dead last in his class at West Point and twice faced court-martials. But because some of Grant’s own relatives were suspected of involvement in a scandal in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the man in question had suggested Grant’s personal impropriety:  dismissal was not an option. In a matter of months, however, Grant’s judgment was upheld. In a sense, Grant’s description of George Armstrong Custer seems quite apropos for both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his would-be protégé: Barak Obama . . . hard-working and totally incompetent, hence very dangerous.

Like his political hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Barak Obama is largely ignorant when it comes to economics and willing to try almost anything to “stop the bleeding” he perceives in the American economy just so long as it involves greater government involvement and control of the free market.

Thanks to enormous public ignorance and a great distaste for Herbert Hoover (a man the journalists never warmed up to), FDR is almost universally considered the second greatest of our American presidents trailing only Abraham Lincoln in the minds of historians and the general public. Certainly no man more inept ever before garnered such public esteem. His lapses at Yalta put Stalin’s Soviet Union in a position of such strength that the Cold War that followed has sometimes been called “FDR’s Folly.” On the other hand, Jim Powell’s 2003 book subtitled “How Roosevelt and his New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression” also bore the main title “FDR’s Folly.” Flip a coin as to which of Franklin Roosevelt’s mistakes was the more serious . . . .

He couldn’t know it then, but roughly four and a half months after FDR was inaugurated on March 4, 1933, the stock market and the economy ended forty-five gloomy months and began to rebound in mid-July, 1933. This was the absolute bottom of the recession that began when stock prices disintegrated on October 24, 1929. Unfortunately, Roosevelt and his New Deal had been very active already making things much worse than they already were.

Some people waving their gold certificates, the paper money of the time, demanded that the government honor the commitment to redeem them for gold. FDR moved quickly but ineptly. The U.S. dollar in early 1933 was defined at a value of 23.22 grains of gold. With 480 grains of gold in a troy ounce, gold was worth $20.67 per ounce. A $20 gold certificate was according to its legend (“This certifies that there have been deposited in the Treasury of the United States of America Twenty Dollars in Gold Coin payable to the bearer on demand”) redeemable for a little bit less than one troy ounce of gold.

Less than 48 hours after his inauguration Roosevelt ordered a Bank Holiday closing the nation’s banks for three days because of “a national emergency. He claimed that people were “hoarding gold and currency and endangering the nation’s recovery efforts. The day before the banks were to open, “The Emergency Banking Act” was passed requiring every citizen to relinquish all but $100 of numismatic (collectible) gold in exchange for paper

The very next day, as the banks reopened, March 10, Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 6073, forbidding citizens and others in the country from sending gold overseas and forbidding banks from redeeming paper money for gold or silver.

Gold was made a controlled substance on April 5, when Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 6102, to confiscate the gold. It commanded everybody to deliver their gold and gold certificates to the Federal Reserve banks, where they would be paid in paper money.   Any coins above $100 were illegal in private possession. Possession was punishable by fines up to $10,000 and imprisonment up to 10 years. Later the dollar was declared legally worth only 13.71 grains of gold. 41% of the value of the paper money people had redeemed their gold for disappeared overnight. This not only worked a huge hardship on the American citizen, but now everyone holding American dollars in the entire world had just lost 41% of their holdings. Thus the Great Depression became a global nightmare impoverishing millions of Americans and millions more foreigners. The good name of the United States was ruined and the dollar was no longer trusted; and it wasn’t until after World War II that foreign investment in American treasury notes became once again popular.    

I’ll start out talking about baseball, and later get to Custer (America's first “media personality"), Franklin Roosevelt and our sitting president.

The influence of the media in all aspects of our lives is pervasive. One of the most famous, enduring, and poignant examples, however, is from sports.   The marvelous Canadian online magazine “The Walrus” ran an excellent piece on Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak just yesterday.   

walrusmagazine.com/articles/2007.10-joe-dimaggio-56-games/2/

First a little background: the Modern Baseball Era, with the American and National Leagues pitting their champions against one another in the World Series was less than 40 years old, when “Joltin’ Joe” set his incredible record back in the summer of 1941. However, that streak has always had numerous detractors. Based upon DiMaggio’s .325 career batting average and early career .342 average, several mathematicians have flatly stated that of all the records in baseball, only DiMaggio’s streak is unexpected, improbable even “apocryphal.” 

In one estimate I read several years back, hopefully my memory serves . . . if baseball were played five thousand years, it’s improbable that a hitting streak the length of DiMaggio’s would have occurred.   For that matter Tommy Holmes’ 37-game Modern Era hitting streak that Di Maggio broke, mathematically speaking was quite improbable itself and could only be expected to happen once every 200 years. If Roger Maris deserved an asterisk after his 61^st home run in the first 162 game season, then mathematically speaking , Joe DiMaggio deserved 125 asterisks after his record. To his credit, Joe D., a humble man and a great humanitarian, admitted as much several times, saying simply and repeatedly, “I had a little help from the scorer.”

Since the 1960’s Major League Baseball has expanded repeatedly from its two league/sixteen-team beginnings up to its present six division/thirty-team format.  MLB also went from a 154-game season to its present 162-game season. In all that time, Tommy Holmes’ old record has been breached exactly one time by Pete Rose when Rose broke Holmes’ Modern Era record and tied the 1897 single-season hitting streak of Wee Willie Keeler with hits in 44 consecutive games (Keeler actually got a hit in his first game in 1898 to push the then all-time hit record to 45 over two seasons). Facing anything like the standards of today’s official scoring, however, it appears certain that Joe DiMaggio would have actually had: a 1-game hitting streak before a hitless game; then a 27-game hitting streak; followed by two hitless games and a 24 game hitting streak; and after the “56-game streak” was ended, a further 16-game hitting streak after one hitless game. So exactly what are we talking about here? 

Baseball didn’t used to have league employees called “official scorers.”  The scorer for the games was an employee whose main job was usually with the Public Relations Department of the home team. In this case, the scorer drawing the most suspicion for prolonging DiMaggio’s streak was Dan Daniel, in his 33^rd year of covering baseball and a good friend of DiMaggio’s and virtually all the Yankee players and staff. By modern standards, Daniels was NOT a journalist at all but a travelling press secretary, not just a reporter, but actually part of the team. According to the Walrus article, he had all of his expenses paid for by the baseball club itself. In particular Daniels’ scoring of hits on three almost certain Luke Appling errors during the streak was highly suspect. Indeed, the Yankees and White Sox played a dozen times during the streak and Appling (a Hall of Fame SS mainly for his tremendous bat-work who was a terrible fielder) during those twelve games was three times less error-prone than his lifetime .948 fielding average would predict.

Daniels was so influential with the eastern media that Ted Williams, who batted .406 and led the league in home runs, lost the 1941 MVP trophy to DiMaggio and then later won the 1942 AL Triple Crown (Williams, that is) with no players close in any of the three categories but was beaten by one vote for MVP by the Yankees Joe Gordon who led the AL in grounding into double-plays. Of course it didn’t hurt Daniels’ efforts that Ted Williams was a guy that the eastern media truly loved to hate. And, after the 1942 MVP vote, Williams was a confirmed media hater all his life.

So what, you ask, is the point here? Let’s switch from baseball history to U.S. History. George Armstrong Custer travelled with his own reporter, Mark Kellogg. Kellogg’s glorification of the 7^th Cavalry’s exploits and his single-handed creation of the “heroic invincible Custer” legend hid a lot of ugly facts for a long, long time. Many Americans, to this day, do not the truth about the Indian Wars, names like Tecumseh go unspoken in our history classes, but virtually every American has at one time or other heard the phrase “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.”   Rightly or wrongly, both Kellogg and Custer believed that Custer was just “one major Indian victory” from winning the nomination for President.  Grant and Custer detested each other and Custer expected to run as a Democrat against Grant’s Republican nominee successor and defeat him.  Who knows what might have happened to the United States if Kellogg and Custer hadn’t gotten their comeuppance on June 25, 1876 at the Battle of the Little Big Horn (Kellogg’s was the most famous journalistic “death in the line of duty” until 1945 when Ernie Pyle was killed late in World War II). That is the power of the press exemplified. When taken to the level of propaganda as it was with both the vainglorious Custer and loveable, humble Joe DiMaggio its power to distort history is almost unimaginable.  This potential for a media personality to dominate his times reached its early 20^th Century apex in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, even Hitler with a state-owned press and a minister of propaganda working for him was not nearly so loved as FDR by his people.

The eastern press still dominates sports and the national political scene today. In sports, Pete Rose was vilified by the eastern press and Pete Rose is not in Cooperstown today. My favorite baseball player from 1956 when I was eight years old was Hank Aaron, then of the Milwaukee Braves. I’m totally aghast at what happened during the “steroid era” in baseball and will never forgive MLB Commissioner Bud Selig for wringing his hands for six years and doing nothing thus allowing Barry Bonds to steal Hammerin’ Hank’s lifetime home run record. I’m quite sure the eastern press will keep Barry Bonds out of the Hall of Fame just as they’re doing with Rose. But frankly, when it comes to the pure legality of it all, thanks to Selig’s ineptitude, Barry Bonds did nothing wrong and on a purely legal basis should wind up in Cooperstown. But Barry Bonds is considered 100% UNlovable by the eastern establishment. I doubt he’ll ever get in and I have very mixed feelings about that.

It’s often said that the winners write history, but that’s not always true. If you saw Steven Spielberg’s monumental and historically accurate mini-series “Into the West” you witnessed the reporters “on the scene” glorifying once again the efforts of the 7^th Cavalry at the “Battle” of Wounded Knee (actually just another needless unprovoked army attack like the Sand Creek Massacre; and Custer’s own Washita River Raid on a sleeping Indian camp eight years before the Little Big Horn). So, yes, the winners often get to record history in their favor, but sometimes if the propaganda is strong enough and stirring enough you can actually rewrite even the outcome of history itself. So it was with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and so Barak Obama’s propagandists are preparing it to be for him.

            It is incredible to me that one of the most inept men in the history of our nation’s presidency, is routinely acknowledged by historians and the general public as the second greatest American president following only Abraham Lincoln.  What is the truth and how did all the lies survive it? And why, right now, is it so crucially important to know and understand that truth?

            I’m a Libertarian and quite frankly believe both the major parties have practically destroyed the American economy and repeatedly spit on the U.S. Constitution. The acceleration of the spitting done by our sitting president, Barak Obama, however, has now reached tragicomic proportions.   On top of everything else, the Democrats hope that their propagandized version of U.S. history (the years of FDR and Truman) repeats itself. You see, despite five consecutive terms in office from 1933 to 1953, the Democrats did not hold the presidency for a majority of the 20^th Century. Those five consecutive terms were their glory years and now smelling blood, they hope to repeat that sweet past successes based upon the current economic debacle. How do I know that? What proof do I have?

            Consider this piece of arrogance: by January 6, 2009, two full weeks before Obama’s inauguration as 44^th President of the United States . . . New York Representative, Democratic Jose` Serrano began pushing to introduce a bill that would repeal the 22^nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and allow Barrack Obama to be elected to more than two terms as president. The Democrats and virtually all Americans have misread history and by pushing for that bill the Democrats are positioning themselves to benefit from everyone’s ignorance.

            What is the truth about the FDR legacy?

            What indeed? First some brief historical background:  after World War I, the United States was the most powerful nation on earth militarily and most importantly economically. We had endured numerous “panics” or recessions in our 140 year history and typically they lasted from 30-40 months when the free market re-established itself after all the excesses had run their course. Since Martin Van Buren’s days, however, the east had never born the brunt of the economic disaster. On top of that, our sitting president, Herbert Hoover, in 1929 was a comparatively “blah” personality that the media never did warm up to. He was unfairly characterized as “uncaring and do-nothing” after the Black Thursday crash on October, 24^, 1929 and the quick stock market meltdown that followed.

In contrast, the eastern media loved FDR as it loved his uncle Teddy before him. Though of different parties, both men were larger than life New Yorkers who, like Custer, were true media personalities. FDR was also the first man to truly use the new medium of radio to personally dominate the politics of his age. The political differences between the two Presidential Roosevelts were substantial; and the differences in perceptions of the American public toward FDR and Herbert Hoover could not have been greater.   The FDR’s legacy lives on virtually entirely based upon lies that the media propagated in his behalf and the truths it covered up for him. To make FDR seem powerful, the media conspired, one photographic decision at a time, to never show his picture with crutches or in weak looking postures – the man was crippled by polio and yet a lot of Americans were blissfully ignorant of that fact.   Harmless stuff? Perhaps.     

But the propaganda about Roosevelt’s savvy as a political leader reached epic proportions and it was based upon greater lies. In many people’s eyes he came to be looked upon as both a father figure and a savior.  In retrospect, the huge recession triggered by the stock market collapse in October, 1929, bottomed out in July 1933 . . . just six months after Roosevelt’s inauguration. His policies so crippled the nation, however, that we endured two more major economic collapses and we were still in the grips of the “Great Depression” he created until Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor brought the nation out of the doldrums. And even despite his policies toward Stalin at Yalta amounted to the great-give-away that single-handedly created the Cold War, FDR is beloved as no other president in the 20^th Century.

            “What policies?” I can hear you ask, “What policies crippled the nation?”

            I’ll only deal with only one, it is enough. It ranks as one of the greatest betrayals in history but people went along with it and it kept us in an economic abyss for almost nine full years. We made the first steps toward socialism under FDR but that is not nearly so crucial. The United States was still on the gold standard in 1933. Citizens held both paper and gold dollars: quarter eagles; half eagles; eagles; and double eagles ($20 gold pieces) as well as paper money redeemable in gold or silver. Roosevelt decided the gold standard (an ounce of gold was pegged at $20 and the double eagle reflected that) made it impossible for him to move in the directions he wanted to go.   With the full backing of the Democratic house and senate FDR had legislation passed that authorized the government to confiscate all gold coinage and made it illegal for American citizens to hold gold other than collectible coins (no bullion and no spendable gold). All gold coinage was, by law, to be traded in for paper money.

            Americans loved their gold coins and only begrudgingly cooperated but by the deadline, it was estimated that 92% of all the gold coinage had been confiscated and it was all melted. Then FDR pulled the rabbit out of the hat! He immediately had a law passed that pegged the price of gold at $35 per ounce where it stood for roughly the next 40 years. The paper money that people had received for their gold coins only yesterday was now worth 42% less than it was only days before. This was the fastest and most incredible inflation in American history and FDR was such a media favorite that very few editorials decried his betrayal. Certainly the journeymen journalists did not cover the story with any enthusiasm. And the result, investors all over the world who had in one fell swoop lost 42% of their money, refused to invest in America and the United States continued to suffer economic misery for FDR’s two first terms and much of the first year of his third term. Second greatest American president, my democratic donkey (my _ss).