Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal appeals court on Thursday has put a stop to a special master’s external review of the thousands of documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

The ruling comes after a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit heard from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Trump’s lawyers on Nov. 22 regarding the government’s motion to remove U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie as special master.

This appointment of a special master by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, barred the DOJ from getting their hands on the documents as they pursued a criminal investigation into Trump “pending resolution” of the review.

The federal appeals court ruled that Cannon had no jurisdiction to exercise what’s known as equitable jurisdiction—or the authority of the court to act in the interest of fairness—in this scenario where an indictment hadn’t been announced and without showing that the seizure of documents was unlawful.

Exercising equitable jurisdiction should only be “exceptional” and “anomalous,” the judges said. They noted that legal precedent had limited this jurisdiction with a four-factor test. Trump’s jurisdictional arguments “fail all four factors,” they said.

In their opinion, the judges said they had considered their options: either “drastically expand” the availability of equitable jurisdiction for every subject of a search warrant, carve out an “unprecedented exception” in the law for former presidents, or apply their usual test.

They chose to apply their usual four-factor test, noting that only the “narrowest of circumstances permit a district court to invoke equitable jurisdiction” and that this was “not one of them.”

The appeals court judges remanded the district court to dismiss Trump’s civil action originally calling for the special master.

“The law is clear,” the appeals court judges wrote in their opinion (pdf). “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”

“Either approach would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations,” the opinion continued. “And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”

Jack Smith, a recently appointed special counsel, tasked with leading the investigation into whether the former president violated the Espionage Act and other federal laws through the handling of certain records, including papers with secret markings, brought the appeals court challenge.

The DOJ is looking into any obstruction of justice by Trump, as well as any legal violations involving the removal of White House records.

Read more here…

In a greatly anticipated Friday night drop of what has was expected to be a cache of information involving the censoring of Hunter Biden’s notebook story days ahead of the 2020 presidential election, moments ago Elon Musk – who worked in collaboration with the notoriously independent gonzo journalist Matt Taibbi of “Vampire Squid” fame – has published the “Twitter Files.”

Shortly before their release, Matt Taibbi sent the following email to his substack subscribers:

Dear TK Readers:

Very shortly, I’m going to begin posting a long thread of information on Twitter, at my account, @mtaibbi. This material is likely to get a lot of attention. I will absolutely understand if subscribers are angry that it is not appearing here on Substack first. I’d be angry, too.

The last 96 hours have been among the most chaotic of my life, involving multiple trips back and forth across the country, with a debate in Canada in between. There’s a long story I hope to be able to tell soon, but can’t, not quite yet anyway. What I can say is that in exchange for the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to agree to certain conditions.

Those of you who’ve been here for years know how seriously I take my obligation to this site’s subscribers. On this one occasion, I’m going to have to simply ask you to trust me. As it happens, there may be a few more big surprises coming, and those will be here on Substack. And there will be room here to to discuss this, too, in time. In any case, thanks for your support and your patience, and please hold me to a promise to make all this up to you, and then some.

Moments later Elon confirmed that he did, in fact, work with Taibbi:

Here we go!! https://t.co/eILK9f3bAm

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2022

And this is what Taibbi has been tweeting in the past few minutes (link here):

1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES

2. What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.

3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.

4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.

5. In an early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”

6. As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters.

7. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly.

8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another:  “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”

9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party:

10.Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:

11. This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right.

12. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives.

… Okay, there was more throat-clearing about the process, but screw it, let’s jump forward

16. The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story

17. On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published BIDEN SECRET EMAILS, an expose based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop:

18. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.

19. White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least pretend to care for the next 20 days.”

20.This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams:

21. Strom’s note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed for violation of the company’s “hacked materials” policy:  https://web.archive.org/web/20190717143909/https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hacked-materials

22. Although several sources recalled hearing about a “general” warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story. In fact, that might have been the problem…

23. The decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.

24. “They just freelanced it,” is how one former employee characterized the decision. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”

25.You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes, “I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe”:

26. By this point “everyone knew this was fucked,” said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of… continuing to err.

27. Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?”

28. To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted”:

29. A fundamental problem with tech companies and content moderation: many people in charge of speech know/care little about speech, and have to be told the basics by outsiders. To wit:

30. In one humorous exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the “backlash re speech.” Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern.

31. Gadde replies quickly, immediately diving into the weeds of Twitter policy, unaware Khanna is more worried about the Bill of Rights:

32.Khanna tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files:

33.Within a day, head of Public Policy Lauren Culbertson receives a ghastly letter/report from Carl Szabo of the research firm NetChoice, which had already polled 12 members of congress – 9 Rs and 3 Democrats, from “the House Judiciary Committee to Rep. Judy Chu’s office.”

34.NetChoice lets Twitter know a “blood bath” awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it’s a “tipping point,” complaining tech has “grown so big that they can’t even regulate themselves, so government may need to intervene.”

35.Szabo reports to Twitter that some Hill figures are characterizing the laptop story as “tech’s Access Hollywood moment”:

36.Twitter files continued:  “THE FIRST AMENDMENT ISN’T ABSOLUTE” 

Szabo’s letter contains chilling passages relaying Democratic lawmakers’ attitudes. They want “more” moderation, and as for the Bill of Rights, it’s “not absolute”

37. An amazing subplot of the Twitter/Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get “unfucked” (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in.

38. While reviewing Gadde’s emails, I saw a familiar name – my own. Dorsey sent her a copy of my Substack article blasting the incident

39. There are multiple instances in the files of Dorsey intervening to question suspensions and other moderation actions, for accounts across the political spectrum

Developing

*  *  *

The release was telegraphed one week ago, when Musk acknowledged that revealing Twitter’s internal discussions surrounding the censorship of the New York Post‘s Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 US election is “necessary to restore public trust.”

This is necessary to restore public trust

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2022

Recall that the Post had its Twitter account locked in October 2020 for reporting on the now-confirmed-to-be-real “laptop from hell,” which contained still-unprosecuted evidence of foreign influence peddling through then-Vice President Joe Biden – including a 2015 meeting with an executive of Ukrainian gas giant Burisma.

Users who tried to share the link to the article were greeted with a message saying, “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.”

Then, days after Musk’s tweet, Twitter’s former head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, admitted it was a ‘mistake’ to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story.

In his first public appearance since becoming an ex-employee, Roth suggested that the Hunter Biden laptop story was simply ‘too difficult’ for Twitter to verify. Alternatively, the company could have perhaps simply trusted the Post, one of America’s oldest publications that doesn’t have a reputation for fabricating bombshell stories – like Twitter does with countless anonymous bombshells from other major publications.

“We didn’t know what to believe. We didn’t know what was true. There was smoke,” Roth said during an interview at the Knight Foundation conference, as noted by the Epoch Times. “And ultimately for me, it didn’t reach a place where I was comfortable removing this content from Twitter.”

“It set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 ‘hack and leak campaign’ alarm bells,” he said, referring to a notorious team of cyberspies affiliated with Russian military intelligence. “Everything about it looked like a hack and leak.”

When asked whether if it was a mistake to censor the story, Roth replied, “In my opinion, yes.”

Would Roth have suppressed the story if it was a Don Jr. laptop full of incriminating evidence?

* * *

Finally, it will be very interesting to see which “independent”, “impartial” and “objective” members of the Mainstream Media cover the Twitter Files, which unlike all that Russia collusion bullshit, was a real and actionable attempt to interfere with US democracy by covering up one of the most explosive political stories of a generation, not to mention an event that would have swayed the 2020 presidential election. 

Between 2016 and 2016, Los Angeles County experienced a 1,280% spike in overdose deaths from fentanyl, according to a recent report from the county Department of Public Health.

In a joint statement, the LA County District Attorney’s Office (which regularly refuses to charge drug dealers) and the health department announced the creation of a working group to address the situation “through prevention, education and enforcement.”

The ‘enforcement’ part will of course mark a radical departure from DA George Gascón’s ‘catch-and-release’ policy when it comes to criminals.

According to the health department, there were 104 deaths in 2016 attributed to fentanyl, which ballooned to 1,662 in 2001.

According to City News Service, black residents had the highest overdose rate based on the population, at 30.6 per 100,000 residents. White residents are overdosing at a rate of 22.5 per 100,000, while Latinos are at 11.1 per 100,000 residents.

The overdoses also occurred much more frequently in less affluent areas – which came in at 38.4 deaths per 100,000 vs. 12.3 per 100,000.

“Fentanyl overdoses are a significant and growing public health problem across the United States and in [the county], across sociodemographic groups and geographic areas,” reads the report, which adds “The increases among youth and the widening inequities between under-resourced and more affluent groups underscore the need to target prevention efforts to those at highest risk to decrease fentanyl overdoses and advance health equity in [LA County].”

Gascón, acting like he isn’t a huge part of the problem, said in a statement that the working group is “bringing together the county’s public health experts, education leaders, community advocates, and law enforcement professionals to support and utilize evidence-based and effective approaches to stopping the toll fentanyl is taking,” Gascón said in a statement.”

Authored by Brad Jones via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Six of 11 alleged assailants connected with Antifa, a far-left extremist group, have taken plea deals and pled guilty to charges related to violent attacks on supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump at a “Patriot March” in San Diego shortly after the 2020 election.

Five defendants pled guilty on Nov. 18, just over a week after Erich “Nikki” Louis Yach was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison for his role in the violence near Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach on Jan. 9, 2021. Yach was the first of the 11 to be sentenced.

Yach earlier pled guilty to charges of conspiracy, assault, and the unlawful use of tear gas.

At his sentencing hearing, GG Hubbard, Yach’s spouse, urged the court to send Yach—a biological male who identifies as female—to a women’s prison. Yach has spent nearly the last two years in a men’s prison and will be credited for time already served.

“I want to make sure she gets put in the correct facility according to her gender,” Hubbard told the court.

Hubbard claimed Yach is “not violent” and said incarceration in anything but a women’s facility was “violating the law” and “political and fascist nonsense.”

San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan announced in June that a criminal grand jury had two weeks earlier delivered 29 indictments against all 11 defendants, including “conspiracy to commit a riot, use of tear gas, assault with a deadly weapon, and assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury.”

“Antifa uses force, fear, and violence to further their interests and suppress the interests of others. The objective of this conspiracy was to incite and participate in a riot,” the district attorney’s office said at the time.

The defendants named in the indictments are from Los Angeles and San Diego counties and are all “affiliated with Antifa” according to a statement from the district attorney’s office last December. The named are Alexander Akridgejacobs, Jesse Merel Cannon, Brian Cortez Lightfoot Jr., Christian Martinez, Luis Francisco Mora, Samuel Howard Ogden, Bryan Rivera, Faraz Martin Talab, and Jeremy White.

Antifa supporters posted on social media on Jan. 2, 2021 calls for a “counterprotest” and “direct action” against Trump supporters, and then a week later gathered with other “uncharged co-conspirators” dressed in black garb with Antifa insignia to confront those participating in the Patriot March, the office stated.

According to the district attorney’s office, such alleged action included “assault, battery, assault with deadly weapons, arson, and vandalism.”

Videos posted online showed one of the masked, black-clad protesters carrying an “Antifascist Action” banner and another with a sign saying “No Nazis in PB”—a reference to Pacific Beach—as the group of about 100 shouted “Racists go home!” at Trump supporters.

“Antifa uses force, fear, and violence to further their interests and suppress the interests of others. The objective of this conspiracy was to incite and participate in a riot,” the district attorney’s office said.

The indictments accused the Antifa-affiliated group of planning the attacks and using a baseball bat, flagpole, stun gun, and tear gas on their victims. They were also accused of throwing a wooden lawn chair at a woman.

Prosecutors also allege some Antifa members in the crowd chased down several minors whom they thought were part of the Patriot March, sprayed them with mace, and pushed one to the ground. The victim was later transported to a hospital for treatment of a concussion.

Other “victims included a journalist [taking] photos, a dog that was maced and a business that was also vandalized,” prosecutors said.

The San Diego Police Department reported a total of 16 separate attacks on eight people.

The Antifa rioters allegedly threw eggs, rocks and bottles and sprayed mace at officers after police declared the dueling protests an unlawful assembly and tried to disperse the crowd.

All the defendants pleaded not guilty in June.

None of the Trump supporters or other bystanders were charged with any crimes.

“Video evidence analysis shows that overwhelmingly the violence in this incident was perpetrated by the Antifa affiliates and was not a mutual fray with both sides crossing out of lawful First Amendment,” the district attorney’s office stated in June.

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

The city of Minneapolis on Wednesday reached a $600,000 settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota (ACLU-MN) over alleged police mistreatment of protestors following the death of George Floyd.

The lawsuit was filed in 2020 by ACLU-MN, Fish & Richardson P.C., and Gustafson Gluek PLLC on behalf of 12 protesters who were injured when they took to the streets to peacefully demonstrate.

According to ACLU-MN, the class action lawsuit awards a $600,000 payment, to be split among the plaintiffs, and includes “numerous reforms.”

Specifically, it bans the city from “arresting, threatening to arrest, or using physical force,” which includes the use of chemical agents, flash-bang or concussion grenades, and foam-tipped bullets to stop people from engaging in lawful protests or demonstrations.

It also limits police use of chemical agents to disperse peaceful protests and requires that officers deployed to protests are wearing body cameras that are recording and are “unobstructed.”

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit claim to have suffered an array of injuries, including bruising, “lingering respiratory issues from tear gas, and psychological trauma “due to Minneapolis police using “unnecessary and excessive force” to suppress the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights to protests, including tear gas and rubber bullets.

A police officer stands amid smoke and debris as buildings continue to burn in the aftermath of a night of protests and violence following the death of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, Minn., on May 29, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Protesters face police as the latter move in with tear gas to take over the chaotic streets outside the Minneapolis Police 5th Precinct during the fourth night of protests and violence following the death of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, Minn., on May 29, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

They also alleged that officers often fired without warning or orders to leave.

The plaintiffs claimed that the psychological trauma they suffered as a result of this “excessive force” had quashed their desire to protest in the future.

Peaceful vs. Violent Expression

Demonstrators gather for a rally in memory of George Floyd and Daunte Wright outside Cup Foods in Minneapolis, Minn., on April 18, 2021. (John Minchillo/AP Photo)

Wednesday’s agreed settlement and injunction resolve two lawsuits filed in 2020 against the City of Minneapolis, Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, and various Minneapolis Police Department officers. Those lawsuits were later consolidated into one lawsuit.

The settlement dismisses claims against individual officers.

“People who are demonstrating peacefully should never be met with police violence as they were in Minneapolis during protests over MPD’s murder of George Floyd,” said ACLU-MN Legal Director Teresa Nelson in a statement.

“Tear gas, foam bullets, and pepper spray became weapons for intimidating and hurting protesters, making it dangerous for people to exercise their First Amendment rights. We hope this settlement sends a message to law enforcement across Minnesota that this violation of our constitutional rights will not be tolerated.”

A poster with George Floyd’s picture and a sign reads that “I Can’t Breathe” hang from a security fence outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis, Minn. on March 31, 2021. (Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images)

Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was killed in May 2020 by then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin during an arrest after Floyd allegedly tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill to purchase cigarettes.

Chauvin held his knee against Floyd’s neck and back for approximately nine-and-a-half minutes as Floyd lay handcuffed and face-down on the pavement while, another officer, Thomas Lane, restrained his lower body and J. Alexander Kueng knelt on Floyd’s back.

Video of the incident quickly went viral online, sparking protests across the country, in which thousands of peaceful protesters but also many non-peaceful rioters participated, resulting in damage to some businesses from looting and arson. Many of the protests continued into early 2021 and prompted calls to defund the police.

A destroyed building still smolders near the Minneapolis Police 3rd Precinct the day after it was attacked and burned by rioters following the death of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, Minn., on May 29, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

State Police stand guard as smoke billows from buildings that continue to burn in the aftermath of a night of protests and violence following the death of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, Minn., on May 29, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

According to a report from Axios, the destruction that occurred as a result of the demonstrations was estimated to see at least $1 billion to $2 billion of paid insurance claims.

Chauvin was convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter charges in Floyd’s death in April 2021, and sentenced to more than 22 years in prison.

The Epoch Times has contacted Minneapolis Police for comment.

California taxpayers may be on the hook for as much as $223,200 for each descendant of slavery living in the Golden State, in order to compensate them for “housing discrimination,” according to the New York Times.

The nine-member Reparations Task Force, formed by California Governor Gavin Newsom, has been focusing on ways to counter the claimed housing discrimination. Overall reparations would cost approximately $569 billion to compensate the roughly 2.5 million black Californians for ‘setbacks’ between 1933 and 1977 – eclipsing the state’s $512.8 billion expenditure in 2021.

“We want to see the land and economic wealth stolen from Black families all across this country returned,” said activist Kavon Ward.

The panel is still mulling how payments should be made – with some suggesting tuition and housing grants, while others are suggesting cash. Final figures will be released in a 2023 report, which would then be up to the state Legislature to act upon the recommendations and figure out how to fund them.

They have also identified four other reasons for reparations – mass incarceration, unjust property seizures, devaluation of black businesses and health care. The $223,200 figure only applies to housing discrimination.

“We are looking at reparations on a scale that is the largest since Reconstruction,” task force member Jovan Scott Lewis, a Berkeley professor, told the Times.

Every year for almost three decades, Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan introduced legislation that would have created a commission to explore reparations, but the measure consistently stalled in Congress. After Mr. Conyers retired in 2017, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas began championing the measure, which passed a House committee for the first time last year, but stalled on the floor.

Underscoring the political hurdles, opinions on reparations are sharply divided by race. Last year, an online survey by the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that 86 percent of African Americans supported compensating the descendants of slaves, compared with 28 percent of white people. Other polls have also shown wide splits. -NYT

The Times points to Russell City, California as an example of housing discrimination. The city, once home to many black families who fled racial terror, was bulldozed and repolaced with an industrial park. Former resident Monique Henderson-Ford told the Times she was paid $2,200 for her home – less than 1/3 of what she paid.

“Imagine if the houses were still here,” she said, adding “We would all be sitting on a fortune.“

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.” – Aldous Huxley – Letter to George Orwell about 1984 in 1949

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution” ― Aldous Huxley

When I step back from the day-to-day minutia and trivialities flooding my senses from all directions and media devices, it almost appears as if I’m living in a highly scripted reality TV program where the characters and plots are designed to create passions and reactions to support whatever narrative is being weaved by those directing the show. Huxley really did foresee the future as clearly and concisely as anyone could, decades before his dystopian vision came to fruition.

Orwell’s boot on the face vision is only now being initiated because a few too many critical thinkers have awoken from their pharmaceutically induced stupor and begun to question the plotline of this spectacle masquerading as our reality. The mass formation psychosis infecting the weak-minded masses; relentless mass propaganda designed to mislead, misinform, and brainwash a dumbed down and government indoctrinated populace; and complete control of the story line through media manipulation, regulation, and censorship of the truth; has run its course. As Charles Mackay stated 180 years ago, the masses go mad as a herd, but only regain their senses slowly, and one by one.

My recognition that the world seems to be scripted and directed by Machiavellian managers, working behind a dark shroud, representing an invisible governing authority, molding our minds, suggesting our ideas, dictating our tastes, and creating fear, triggered a recollection of the 1998 Jim Carrey movie – The Truman Show. The movie, directed by Peter Weir (Gallipoli, Witness, Dead Poet’s Society), had the surreal feel of Forest Gump, while beckoning the horrendous introduction of reality TV (Big Brother, Survivor), which poisons our shallow unserious society to this day. The plot of the movie focuses on individuality versus conformity, consumerism, voyeurism, reality versus manipulation, false narratives, the truth about the American Dream, and the dangers of surveillance in a technologically advanced society.

Truman Burbank is the unsuspecting star of The Truman Show, a reality television program filmed 24/7 through thousands of hidden cameras and broadcast to a worldwide audience. Christof, the show’s creator seeks to capture Truman’s authentic emotions and give audiences a relatable everyman. Truman has been the unsuspecting star of the show since he was born 30 years prior. Truman’s hometown of Seahaven Island is a complete set built within an enormous dome, populated by crew members and actors who highlight the product placements that generate revenue for the show. The elaborate set allows Christof to control almost every aspect of Truman’s life, including the weather. The picture-perfect home, with picket fence and plastic people, is an attempt to convince Truman he is living the American Dream rather than in an inescapable dystopian techno-prison.

To prevent Truman from discovering his false reality, Christof manufactures scenarios that dissuade Truman’s desire for exploration, such as the “death” of his father in a sea storm to instill aquaphobia, and by constantly broadcasting and printing messages of the dangers of traveling and the virtues of staying home. One cannot but acknowledge the plotline to keep Truman under control, obedient, and locked down in his controlled environment, with no escape hatch visible, as exactly the plotline used by our overlords during the Covid scam. Using fear to regulate your subjects is a familiar theme used by those controlling the narrative and pulling the strings behind the scenes of our glorious democracy of dystopia.

The first task was to instill fear into the masses through fake videos, fake medical experts spewing fake “facts”, denying the reality masks, social distancing, and locking down the world did not stop a microscopic virus, while suppressing treatments which were clearly safe and effective (ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine) and forcing Fauci’s remdesivir and ventilators on patients – insuring their deaths. Truman’s life was built upon lies, deception, and fake narratives, controlled by a tyrannical director putting on a show to please his bosses and maximize profits. We are experiencing the same reality today.

Since March 2020 we have been trapped in a dystopian reality show based on lies, deception, and fake narratives about a weaponized virus created in a lab funded by Anthony Fauci and utilized to further the totalitarian Great Reset agenda of Schwab, Gates and their ilk, while maximizing the profits of Pfizer, TV networks and filling the pockets of politicians, shills, and apparatchiks willing to sellout the people of our country for thirty pieces of silver.

As the Truman Show approached its 30th anniversary, Truman began discovering unusual elements, such as a spotlight falling out of the sky in front of his house and a radio channel that precisely described his movements. He began to awaken to the fact he was nothing but a peculiarity trapped in a cage and constantly deterred from escaping at every turn, for the good of the show. He lived in a scripted world of conformity, where questioning the plot was not allowed, and the masses just played their parts.

This is exactly how a dictatorship without tears uses technology, pharmaceuticals, and psychological manipulation to convince the masses to love their servitude. This is the reality show we have been living in during this 21st Century dictatorship dystopia of dunces. But this psychological phenomenon is not new to mankind, as Plato described an ancient Truman Show analog in the 6th Century with his Allegory of the Cave. The nature of human beings has not changed across the trials and tribulations of history.

In the allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained in a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners’ reality but are not an accurate representation of the real world. An enlightened man is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand the shadows on the wall are not reality.

The ignorant inmates do not desire to leave their prison/cave, for it is the only life they know, and they fear reality. The fire and the puppets, used to create shadows, are controlled by artists. Plato indicates the fire is also the political doctrine taught by a nation state. The artists use light and shadows to indoctrinate the masses with the dominant doctrines of the times. Few humans ever escape the cave. Most humans will remain at the bottom of the cave, with a small few elevated as major artists, to project the shadows keeping the masses disoriented, confused and fearful.

“Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.” ― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

“Most people are not just comfortable in their ignorance, but hostile to anyone who points it out.” ― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

The State is run by an eager group of psychopaths who are hell bent on destroying our civil society and common culture on behalf of globalists attempting to implement their Great Reset agenda, and enforcing it through technological surveillance, mind control through propaganda messaging, and strict management of the daily plot via mainstream media and social media censorship of the truth. As Plato contemplated fifteen centuries ago, most men will remain in their cave, believing shadows presented by their overlords is reality, never questioning their servitude or seeking the truth.

Never has this fact been truer than during this covid pandemic reality show directed by our Christof – mass murderer Anthony Fauci. The willful ignorance of the masses was assumed by the covid controllers who cast shadows of fear and death on the cave walls of the locked down extras in this well-orchestrated reality show. Using a purposefully misleading PCR test to vastly overestimate “cases”, paying hospitals to classify all deaths as covid, and having the propaganda professionals at CNN, MSNBC and Fox showing Covid Death Counters on their screens 24/7 to terrify the masses into compliance was the Covid Show.

Once the fear level was ramped to eleven on the control dial, the producers of this show introduced the miraculous Big Pharma vaccine antidote to save the day. Their script was so believable they were able to convince over 5 billion members of their captive audience to inject themselves with an untested, unproven genetic therapy, that didn’t prevent you from catching, transmitting, getting sick, being hospitalized, or dying from the Fauci funded Wuhan lab produced virus. But, as a dramatic twist to the tale, it seems the “vaccine” causes myocarditis, blood clots, infertility, miscarriages, heart attacks, cancer, and sudden death.

Despite the obvious dangers and failures of these “vaccines”, those bullied into getting jabbed became so comfortable in their ignorance, they were easily persuaded to hate the unjabbed and wish for their deaths. Orwell’s “Two Minutes of Hate” was extended for over a year and continues to this day. Rather than think critically and question why annual flu cases averaged 35 million per year prior to 2020 but dropped to near ZERO during the covid “emergency”, the cave dwellers lashed out in anger at anyone questioning the plot, because to admit they were duped would destroy their self-esteem and decrease their virtue signal credits.

The annual flu didn’t disappear. Covid was the annual flu, with a multi-billion-dollar marketing campaign. This wasn’t a pandemic, but an IQ test, and most people failed miserably. But the critical thinking unvaxxed are still considered the enemy of the state, especially since they have been proven right.

Whether we are trapped in an artificial world produced in a dome, cave, or our current technologically advanced surveillance propaganda state, the goal of those controlling our false reality is to take away our freedoms, crush dissent, keep us ignorant of the truth, and treat us as plebs to be taxed and molded. Christof, whose name is supposed to invoke him being a god-like figure ruling over Truman’s world, declares Truman could discover the truth and leave at any time, while using every diabolical trick to keep that from ever happening, because his show generated revenues exceeding the GDP of a small country.

Truman and ourselves are essentially prisoners in a vast production, and our overlords believe it is their duty to convince us to love our servitude and prefer our cells, because it is financially beneficial to the overlords and their crew.

Our world is not fake, but it is tightly controlled by those running the show. Seemingly random events, plots, and subplots are manipulated to generate specific emotions and reactions by the public in order to achieve the objectives of those benefitting from the various storylines. They are molding our minds and forming our tastes through psychological and technological manipulation of our daily existence. Christof explained why most rarely discover the truth or question the world they live in – “We accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented. It’s as simple as that.”

We have allowed men we have never seen to dictate how we live our lives, the choices we make, and which politicians and “experts” to believe, without ever putting in the effort to understand why we are being prodded to do so. We are locked in a self-imposed prison of desires, emotions, and needs through mass media messaging and a constant barrage of advertisements. Conformity and obedience are the desired traits sought by the ruling class, while individuality and skepticism are frowned upon and punished through social ostracism.

We are conditioned from birth to believe what they tell us to believe. Government school indoctrination and mass media misinformation does the trick. Distracted by our techno-gadgets and ignorant of truth is how the globalist oligarchs methodically implement their Great Reset agenda. They are so convinced of the ignorance of the masses they openly proclaim their depopulation and techno-prison schemes with no fear of push back or retribution.

The ending of the Truman Show is a lesson in resistance, persistence, and the strength of the individual, even in the face of a technologically advanced Big Brother state. It offers a message of hope, no matter how powerful our overlords appear to be. Refusing to obey or conform by one individual can inspire others to do likewise. Once Truman ‘awoke’ to his plight as a lab rat in a scripted show, he began to plot his escape. Using a makeshift tunnel in his basement, out of view of Christof’s cameras, he disappeared and forced the suspension of the broadcast for the first time in thirty years.

Christof discovers Truman sailing away from Seahaven in a small boat, as he has overcome the fake conditioning of fear instilled in him by the man who supposedly loves him but traumatized him about the sea by faking his father’s death while at sea. Christof chooses to almost drown Truman by creating a violent storm to deter him from discovering the truth. Ultimately the storm ceases and his boat strikes the wall of the dome.

This is exactly how our controllers treat the ignorant masses. They feed us stories designed to make us fearful and compliant to the exhortations of their paid experts. Paid to lie. Paid to misinform. Paid to persuade people a dangerous concoction is “safe and effective”. The evilness of using Sesame Street characters to convince four-year-old children they need this Big Pharma gene altering toxic brew, even though essentially ZERO children on earth died from covid, is a testament to the greed and malevolent impulses of those in power. Vast amounts of ever-increasing advertising revenue are what kept The Truman Show on the air for thirty years.

The covid advertising campaign will never be topped, as Hollywood stars, top athletes, famous writers, rock legends, supposedly impartial journalists, and all the major networks said SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!! Everyone was for sale, and all they had to do was lie and say the jabs were “safe and effective”. Product placement was the money-making formula for the Truman Show, while hard selling a Big Pharma phony cure over the airwaves 24/7 using the tax dollars of the victims was the final solution of the Great Reset Cabal.

The grand finale is a clash of the philosophies of reality versus false reality, as Truman discovers a staircase leading to an exit door. Christof speaks to Truman, claiming there was no more truth in the real world than in his artificial world, and he would be safe, with nothing to fear, in a world controlled by men invisible to him assuring him they have his best interests at heart. Truman chooses individuality, truth, risk, living a real meaningful life, and seeking honest relationships over a safe existence in a bubble where all decisions were made by others. Truman bows to the audience and exits, leaving Chistof to mourn the loss of his star and the revenue he generated. The ignorant masses watching the show cheer his escape and then ask, “what’s on next?” Plato captured the uncertainty and bewilderment Truman must have felt as he walked into the light.

“Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light” ― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

This world of manufactured dystopian pleasure harkens more towards Huxley’s Brave New World, where pharmaceuticals and conditioning would keep the public seeking pleasure, pre-occupied with trivialities, distracted by materialism, unable to think critically, and reduced to passivity and egoism through the control of messaging by their controllers. Our efficient totalitarian state has gained complete control by convincing the masses to love their servitude and beg for more rules, restrictions, and reduction of liberties in the name of safety and security.

Smart phones, smart cities, and smart streets are nothing more than code for spying on you and controlling you. Truman finally understood his liberty was his to choose and not Christof’s to give. There is a small minority of Americans who are realizing the same thing after two years of totalitarian measures designed to take away our freedoms and liberty. The question is whether enough will exit this tyrannical government produced show to make a difference. The future of mankind literally depends on the answer to this question.

“Liberties aren’t given, they are taken.” ― Aldous Huxley

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Just as those controlling the Truman Show were not doing it for Truman’s benefit, but for their enrichment, those controlling the puppet strings of our society today had no interest in our health over the last two years, our financial well-being, our psychological well-being, or the peaceful rational functioning of our civilization. They have no interest in securing our border, reducing crime, holding fair elections, promoting peaceful solutions to global conflict, or allowing the truth to reach the masses. Their agenda has been and continues to be, the destruction of our civilized society, obliteration of our core standards and norms, depopulation of the planet, confiscation of our wealth, and ultimately our enslavement through technological shackles and chains.

As Huxley noted decades ago, technology has just provided our civilization with a more efficient means of going backwards. Technology is being used by our controllers to monitor our movements, communications, and to surveil, distract, and amuse us to death. It is no longer a force for good, but a means to control us. They plan to use technology to disarm their citizens through increasingly authoritarian regulations, sold as keeping us safe from mass shooters.

Their climate agenda isn’t about the climate, but about complete control of the masses. When government and their social media attack dogs monitor the citizens for “hate speech and misinformation”, and dole out retribution at their whim, our system is profoundly broken and extremely warped. They are supposed to answer to us. But these megalomaniacs have much bigger agenda.

We’ve lost all sense of reality, reason, and truth in a profoundly abnormal world, created by those we allowed to ascend to power through the control and influence of shadowy globalist billionaires operating as an invisible government, with Deep State apparatchiks doing the dirty work. Schwab, Gates, Soros, the World Economic Forum, and whoever hides in the shadows behind these psychopaths, intend to control the entire world and steal all the wealth because they believe they are smarter, more ruthless, and know what’s best for the lowly peasants polluting their satanic playground planet.

They know facts can be ignored when they’ve conditioned the masses to be willfully ignorant. They know they can lie without implications, but even more powerful, they can stay silent about the truth through censorship, suppression, and cancellation of truth tellers. The adaptation of the masses to this abnormal society, created by evil power-seeking men, is a form of mental illness – or as documented by Mattias Desmet in his book The Psychology of Totalitarianism – Mass Formation Psychosis.

 “The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

I know I will never adapt or adjust to this abnormal society. We certainly can’t change a system, so thoroughly rigged and controlled (e.g., 2022 Arizona election and the 2020 presidential election), through traditional means. Those in control can easily buy-off our politicians, scientists, doctors, academics, TV personalities, and journalists to spin whatever web they choose, enabling their despicable anti-human agenda of deviancy. The only viable solution is the individual solution of walking away from this phony world like Truman.

Armed revolution is a non-starter, as the oligarchs have far more firepower, and the dissenters are unorganized and scattered. A form of ‘Irish Democracy’ where a silent dogged resistance, marked by the withdrawal from society, belligerence to authority and non-compliance with government dictates by millions of ordinary people would accomplish far more than rioting and armed revolution. Millions have already practiced a form of Irish Democracy by not masking, not social distancing, not getting jabbed, and taking control of their own health decisions.

They have almost sealed the escape hatch in this dystopian paradise of pleasure and pain. They know their techniques of control through fear work like a charm. Their final task to achieve total control is central bank digital currencies (CBDC), where everything we buy and sell is tracked digitally, so taxes can be levied, your life tracked, and if you choose to dissent from government directives, your ability to utilize CBDCs will be turned off. Micro-chipping us is next on the agenda.

We need to reduce our tax and digital footprint now. It might seem hopeless in going to battle against these vile, vindictive vermin, but the solution is to not play. Many have already walked away from the modern world, taking to the country – farming, homesteading, bartering, and only giving to Caesar the bare minimum. They’ve chosen a hard, but a far more fulfilling life.

The more people who disassociate from their fake world, the weaker they get. As their hold on our lives weakens, they will lash out. This is why it is important to be armed. Direct armed confrontation with the establishment’s forces is foolish, but guerrilla tactics on land you know would start to eat away at the morale of the paid police thugs sent to enforce their dictates. The beast isn’t as strong as it portrays. It’s broke and its empire of debt is crumbling.

If millions walk out the exit door, the beast will begin to starve and eventually die. Maybe a new, less complex, smaller, more community-oriented society could be born from the ashes. Tribe up with like-minded individuals with different skills, if possible. There is hope if enough patriots decide to regain their senses and walk away from this abnormal society, leaving our totalitarian Christofs to wallow in their failure to control the truly awoken.

“Do not let the hero in your soul parish, in lonely frustration, for the life you deserved but never have been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.” ― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

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Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said that former President Donald Trump’s team is making significant changes to his Mar-a-Lago’s vetting process following his meeting with rapper Kanye West and Nick Fuentes.

Greene told reporters Tuesday that “Trump had no idea [Fuentes] was even coming” and described the incident as “unfortunate.” Over the weekend, Trump confirmed on Truth Social that West, also known as Ye, and Fuentes met with him at his Florida resort.

Following last week’s dinner, Trump is now making “big changes over who can come in and the vetting process, which I think is smart,” Greene said, according to The Hill. “Any former president should have that in place.”

Greene told reporters that she spoke with the former president and talked to his staff about the incident and changes to the vetting process. Alleged anonymous sources within Trump’s campaign also told The Associated Press that his team is putting new protocols in place to ensure that those who meet with him are fully vetted and approved.

A Trump spokesperson has not returned an Epoch Times request comment. Neither Trump nor his campaign have publicly commented on Greene’s statement to reporters Tuesday.

While news outlets and the Department of Justice have described (pdf) Fuentes as a “white nationalist,” he’s denied that label. In a statement, Fuentes said Sunday that “I reject all labels other than Christian American.”

Earlier this year, Greene appeared at a Fuentes event and spoke, although she later distanced herself from Fuentes. When speaking to reporters, the Georgia Republican said that she doesn’t regret her message to those in the audience.

“I don’t regret talking to the kids that were there because I don’t understand why they follow him. But would I have gone to his event? No,” Greene said Tuesday, adding, “I don’t want to have anything to do with him.” Greene then wondered who is funding Fuentes and whether West is paying him.

Trump Post

Over the weekend, Trump explained that he wanted to “help” West, whom he described as “a seriously troubled man,” coming more than a week after he announced he’s embarking on a third bid for the White House in 2024.

Amid a surge of reports and critical statements made by Republicans, Trump added Saturday that “Fake News went CRAZY!” over the meeting. On Tuesday, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) both denounced Fuentes and West during an event with reporters.

“So I help a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black, Ye (Kanye West), who has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else, and who has always been good to me, by allowing his request for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, alone, so that I can give him very much needed ‘advice,’” Trump wrote on Saturday.

West showed up at his resort “with 3 people, two of which I didn’t know, the other a political person who I haven’t seen in years. I told him don’t run for office, a total waste of time, can’t win,” Trump’s post said. He added that “our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about.”

During an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Trump stated again that he had “never heard of” Fuentes. “I had no idea what his views were and they weren’t expressed at the table in our very quick dinner, or it wouldn’t have been accepted,” he added.

Since then, the former president has not commented on subsequent reports about the meeting, including anonymously sourced articles alleging that former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos was seeking revenge against Trump.

Read more here…

While FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried continues to make lawyers cringe every time he opens his mouth, US authorities are seeking information from investors and trading firms that worked closely with the company.

According to Bloomberg, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) has recently sent out a flood of requests seeking information on a list of FTX employees and associates.

Recipients include firms that frequently traded on FTX and may have had conversations with platform executives or hold other information that might help the criminal investigation, the people said. Such requests are often used to start tapping into potential sources of information held by witnesses, investors or customers without seeking grand jury subpoenas. –Bloomberg

In a parallel investigation, attorneys from the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division have sent similar requests for information to companies which traded or invested in the crypto platform in an attempt to learn more about the relationships they had with the imploded cryptocurrency exchange – as well as communications with top officials from FTX and Alameda Research, SBF’s investment arm headed by Caroline Ellison – who Sam was banging.

The SEC also wants to know what FTX representatives told investors, and whether they misrepresented anything that would violate securities laws, according to the report, which suggests that “The moves show authorities are casting a wide net as they embark on their investigations into FTX’s collapse.”

In a Thursday interview with Bloomberg Television, Galaxy Digital Chief Executive Officer Mike Novogratz – whose firm had a $76.8 million exposure to FTX, said that authorities have been contacting firms which had relationships.

“Broadly, yes,” he said when asked if the SEC, CFTC or DOJ had been reaching out to FTX clients.

“Regulators have some egg on their face,” he said. “Sam was very far along at pitching to be the cash Bitcoin market here in the US, both with the SEC and CFTC.”

FTX, Alameda or any of its former top executives haven’t been accused of any wrongdoing by US authorities. The opening of criminal or civil investigations doesn’t necessarily mean that they will press charges or take other actions.  

The probe would start wide, focusing on customers and trading partners that had a lot of contact with FTX before narrowing down onto the crypto platform’s key figures. -Bloomberg

According to former prosecutors who spoke with Bloomberg anonymously, investigators will look for material false statements by SBF and his allies.

Slow Burn?

And in what should be a surprise to nobody, the investigation will likely take a very long time.

“While the crypto industry is evolving, the statutory enforcement tools really aren’t,” said former acting US Attorney in Brookly, Seth DuCharme, who added that investigators will use “blunt, well-established powers to determine the extent of any criminal wrongdoing,” such as laws that govern wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy.

“You can lose a lot of money and no one may have done anything intentionally wrong,” he continued, adding “Mistake is a defense to a crime.

The fact FTX was run out of the Bahamas and its founder still lives there adds a layer of complexity to the investigation.

If they need to act fast, prosecutors can seek a provisional warrant and request that Bahamian authorities arrest Bankman-Fried. The US then has 60 days, according to an agreement between the two countries, to file a formal extradition request through diplomatic channels.

Raise your hand if you think nobody of import will see the inside of a prison cell.

There it is pic.twitter.com/BRhQD9XMWz

— Merissa Hansen (@MerissaHansen17) December 1, 2022

Authored by George Ford Smith via The Mises Institute,

There’s an idea rooted among some libertarians that the Federal Reserve was originally a sound institution but has grown corrupt. As a bankers’ bank, it was fine, they believe, but not as the monster it has grown to be. If we could only go back to the Fed’s founding charter, all would be well.

I’m thinking of two well-known financial analysts who are unsurpassed in their analytical brilliance and knowledge of markets and who rightly regard the bureaucratic Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) as the father of bubbles, busts, stagnation, and market privilege. In their articles, Peter Schiff and David Stockman hammer the Fed relentlessly and rightfully for its cluelessness, corruption, and threat to our material and spiritual well-being. They have authored engaging bestsellers on the state of the economy and place blame where it belongs, on the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve.

Yet, strangely, their recommendations stop short of eradicating the cancer altogether. They want the Fed reformed, not abolished. In each case they believe the Fed in its infancy was an institution compatible with free markets. Peter Schiff writes:

The role of a central bank is limited: to control the currency so as to keep prices and interest rates fairly stable. . . . This sort of central bank is one I could have supported. But the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States never functioned this way, and it probably was never meant to. . . . We never should have trusted the Fed to respect its boundaries.

He adds,

The ultimate destroyer of the U.S. dollar was the Federal Reserve System, which was supposed to be the guardian of the currency. As I discussed in chapter 2, the original idea of the Fed was a good one: providing a uniform currency backed by gold.

In The Great Deformation, David Stockman tells us that “the Federal Reserve System, therefore, was intended to be a ‘banker’s bank,’ not an agent of national economic management. This founding charter has been literally blotted out of modern day discussions.”

In his closing chapter, Stockman lists various steps he believes will avoid the worst possible catastrophes. He begins with the restoration of the Fed as a banker’s bank and the adoption of sound money, by which he means a gold-backed dollar.

Why Was the Fed Created?

Before the Fed, the number of nonnational banks was growing steadily, as was their percentage of total bank deposits. By 1896 the number of nonnational banks had grown to 61 percent and their share of deposits to 54 percent; by 1913 those numbers had increased to 71 percent and 57 percent, respectively. Thus, Wall Street power was waning. It was also being diminished by a new trend in which businesses financed growth from profits rather than borrowed funds. Bank interest rates were too high for many ventures.

Then there was the long-standing problem with depositors. They would leave their money with a bank, believing it was available on demand, and the banks would turn around and loan it out. If enough customers lined up to withdraw their money, the bank could only close its doors (or get an exemption from government).

So, from Wall Street’s perspective, there were the problems of competition from nonnational banks, industry’s preference for thrift over debt, and the public’s irritating tendency to panic and run on banks.

To address this situation, four representatives of J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Kuhn, Loeb, along with Senator Nelson Aldrich and assistant secretary of the Treasury A. Piatt Andrew, met secretly at Morgan’s retreat on Jekyll Island, Georgia, in November 1910. The bankers accounted for an estimated one-fourth of the world’s wealth. 

Led by Paul Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb, they devised a banking cartel that was written into law in late 1913. The money powers—Wall Street—sold the plan to the public as a means of controlling the vast power of Wall Street.

How was Wall Street shackled? It wasn’t. By appointing Wall Street bankers to the Federal Reserve Board and to the most important post in the new system, governor of the New York Fed, they increased Wall Street’s influence.

The original manifestation of the Fed included these developments:

1. The Fed monopolized the issue of all banknotes; national and state banks could only issue deposits, and the deposits had to be redeemable in Fed notes and gold.

2. All national banks were drafted into the Fed, and their reserves had to be kept as demand deposits at the Fed.

3. As banks around the country sent their depositors’ gold to the Fed, they received Fed notes in return. Thereafter, when the public made withdrawals, they were handed Fed notes instead of gold coins. The disuse of gold coins not only encouraged inflation, but it also made confiscation easier later on.

4. With the centralizing of gold and bank reserves, the Fed doubled the inflationary power of the banks by reducing the reserve requirement from 5:1 to 10:1. With more credit available, the banks could lower their interest rates. 

Banks Violate Their Depositors’ Property Rights

As I note in chapter 5 of The Jolly Roger Dollar, the key to the success of free markets is the establishment and defense of property rights. Government law has never recognized the right of depositors to their property, meaning their deposits. Alan Greenspan in his famous 1966 essay writes:

Since it is rarely the case that all depositors want to withdraw all their gold at the same time, the banker need keep only a fraction of his total deposits in gold as reserves. This enables the banker to loan out more than the amount of his gold deposits.

Observe the language: “the banker need keep only a fraction of his total deposits.” How different the impact of that sentence would be if Greenspan had said: “The banker need keep only a portion of his customers’ property, which they entrusted to him for safekeeping”:

As Rothbard observed, a bank that fails to meet its deposit obligations is just another insolvent, not an embezzler. Following the British ruling in Foley v. Hill . . . in 1848, U.S. courts consider that money left with a banker is, “to all intents and purposes, the money of the banker, to do with as he pleases.” This holds even if the banker engages in “hazardous speculation.” Thus, according to the state there can be no embezzlement because the money belongs to the bank, not the depositor. (The Jolly Roger Dollar, chap. 4)

A “Banker’s Bank” without Government

The desire for a banker’s bank is not misguided as long as it’s disconnected from the government:

In the interval between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, banking was de-centralized into state-chartered banks issuing banknotes redeemable in gold or silver coins. One of the highlights of this period was the development of a clearinghouse in Boston called the Suffolk Bank.

Formed by prominent merchants, the Suffolk System allowed New England banks to accept the notes of other banks, including country banks, at par with specie. Members of the system had to keep a sufficient reserve of specie at Suffolk to redeem all the notes it received. Suffolk could not keep banks from inflating but it could remove them from the list of approved banks and cause their notes to trade at discount.

Conclusion

The Federal Reserve was not a sound institution that became corrupt. It was always a corrupt institution and has only grown more corrupt.

Ron Paul has the right approach—End the Fed. Get it out of our lives and restore monetary freedom—the right to choose a medium of exchange.