RETURN OF THE ROBBER BARONS 3.0

THE POLITICIAN WILL HAVE TO DISGUISE HIMSELF

Non-Partisan Leader Cartoon 1917

https://digitalhorizonsonline.org/digital/collection/ndsu-npl/id/45/rec/68

The Non-Partisan League was formed by the farmers of N.D. because neither the Republicans nor the Democrats of that time were serving their interests. The League would go on to establish the public Bank of North Dakota in 1919 which serves the people of N.D. to this day.

Americans are frightened and appalled by the current assault on traditional federal programs by the Trump Administration, but it is critical to take a historical perspective. President Trump is a bipartisan creation – the outcome of the abandonment of average working Americans in favor of the ultra-rich by both political parties since Ronald Reagan began denigrating all things government, all things public. A quote from Thomas Frank, author of “Listen Liberal,” “The Wrecking Crew,” and several other books states this reality:

“Clinton had five major achievements as president: NAFTA, the Crime Bill of 1994, welfare reform, the deregulation of banks and telecoms, and the balanced budget. All of them — every single one — were longstanding Republican objectives.” All were goals of the wealthy.

George W. Bush would go on to pass major tax cuts for the rich, and a decade after Clinton, Obama bailed out criminal Wall Street Bankers at the expense of millions of working Americans who lost their homes as victims of these monied predators. The bipartisan support of rule by the rich has simply come to full fruition under President Trump. This sets the stage.

For years Americans have been told that government spending is out of control, that government debt will destroy us, that government is inefficient and can do nothing right, and the clincher – to rescue us, all government services must be privatized. To lead us down this primrose path we now have the billionaire South African, Elon Musk, running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). With few exceptions (e.g. Bernie Sanders), Congress is mute as programs created over many decades to provide a decent life for the people of America, are gutted.

The Veterans Administration, the Department of Education, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, The Postal Service, are all being decimated by DOGE, and the insidious message quietly being repeated – all must be privatized. Wall Street “investors” salivate.

This brings us to the crux of the matter. Even though America has all of the physical, intellectual and human resources needed to repair our aging infrastructure, to provide public healthcare for all, to provide excellent care for our veterans, to provide fully for the physical needs of our aging citizens, to provide free education for our youth through the college level, etc., we’re not allowed to use these resources because our government doesn’t have any money! Our government is in debt!

This absolutely begs the question – – – since money doesn’t exist in nature, who creates our money? Where does money come from and why do the billionaires have so much of it while our government is in debt? If we ever hope to escape the oligarchy (rule by the rich) that our political parties have led us into, we must answer this question.

This leads us to the Constitution. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5 states:

“Congress shall have the Power:

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”

There it is – quite straight forward. Congress, our federal government, has the power to create our nation’s money. Additionally, Supreme Court decisions over the years have stated this includes every form of currency: Coin, paper, and by extension, digital. Furthermore, Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution prohibits the States from coining money, and the Supreme Court has recognized Congress’s coinage power to be exclusive. In other words, only our Federal Government (Congress) has the Constitutionally authorized power to create our nation’s money.

Questions should be racing through everyone’s head at this point. If our federal government is the creator of our money, why would our government ever borrow money? Why is our government in debt? What’s going on here?

To answer these questions, we must travel to an ultra-exclusive resort on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia. It was here in 1910 that a small group of the nation’s richest bankers and a few complicit legislators secretly met to write the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 whereby Congress ceded control of money creation to private banks.

It takes time to digest all of this, but the net result is that instead of our Federal Government creating its own money, debt and interest free, it is forced to borrow what constitutionally should be its own money, from select Wall Street Banks. Simplistically the process goes like this:

Congress approves a spending bill for something
The Federal Reserve creates the required money out of nowhere (nowadays on a computer screen)
This money is then transferred to select Wall Street banks at very low, or no, interest
The bank then lends the money to our government at a higher interest rate by purchasing U.S. bonds or treasuries
Our government now has the money to spend as directed by congress, but must pay this money back to the banks with interest

This is the rigged predation that has created our so-called government “debt” the billionaire class is now using to justify gutting, looting, and privatizing all that we as citizens cherish as contributing to a decent, healthy life for ourselves, our kids and our grandkids.

President Trump is the culmination of the purchase of both political parties by the robber barons of today – the billionaires who are transforming what is left of our democracy into an oligarchy. It is to be rule of, by, and for the rich. We, the average working people of American, must end the divisive partisan bickering that is deliberately fostered to tear us apart, and join together to overcome our real enemy.

To learn more about returning the money creation power to our Federal Government:

The Alliance For Just Money: https://www.monetaryalliance.org/

The National Center for Constitutional Studies: https://www.slawson.org/radio/images/How%20the%20Federal%20Reserve%20System%20Operates%20and%20why%20it%20has%20failed.pdf

The Kucinich Report: https://kucinichreport.substack.com/p/breaking-the-debt-chains-exposing?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=phhbw&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email