Tag Archives: Trump

Since his return to office in January, President Donald Trump has called on Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell to cut interest rates which Powell and the Fed’s Board of Governors have refused to do. In typical child-like behavior when he doesn’t get his way, Trump has hurled insults at Powell calling him a “stupid person,” “too late Powell,” and a “numbskull.”

Trump’s juvenile attacks, although misplaced, have been quite humorous and a welcome change in tone to the respect, reverence, and almost deification that previous Presidents, Congressmen, and the financial press heap on Federal Reserve Chairmen.

Unfortunately, as with all his policies, Trump’s megalomania is on display. After the Fed’s June meeting when it once again decided to leave rates unchanged and indicated that there might be only one rate cut in 2025, Trump again slammed Powell and suggested that “Maybe I should go to the Fed. Am I allowed to appoint myself to the Fed.?” *

While Trump’s ridiculing the head of one of the sacred cows of America’s ruling establishment is welcomed, his crazed notion of putting himself, and presumably future presidents, in charge of monetary policy does not offer any viable alternative to the debt crisis that is staring the nation in the face with the U.S. in the hole in excess of now some $37 trillion.

Although Trump’s blasting of Powell has provided some comic relief from the dire economic conditions which confront the U.S., in reality both the president and the Fed Chair are wrong over interest rate policy although, in this case, Powell is less wrong. Like most of Trump’s kooky ideas – taking over Greenland, making Canada the 51^st state – not only is the slashing of interest rates counterproductive, but the idea of giving the executive branch of government control of monetary policy would turn the nation into a complete dictatorship.

Powell, too, has been mistaken in his policy of holding rates steady. Interest rates, in fact, are too low and need to be higher. At current levels, rates are too “accommodative” as price inflation remains above the Fed’s 2% target. Of course, in reality prices are rising at a much briskier pace than official government estimates.

Hiking rates would encourage savings and discourage consumption both of which would put downward pressure on consumer prices. If Trump wants to achieve his goal of a reindustrialized America, there needs to be an increase in savings. Production of goods takes place over time and without savings to fund the construction of factories, the purchase of machines and equipment, and the payment of wages, there can be no economic growth.

Trump wrongly believes that lower rates will spur economic growth. Sustained prosperity can only take place through savings and investment not money creation via credit expansion which the president is a fan of.

More fundamentally, both Trump and Powell are wrong: interest rates should not be set by governments or monetary authorities, but be determined by market forces – the aggregate decision making of individuals on how much to save or how much to consume their income. Concomitant with non-state involvement with the setting of interest rates, a return to a metallic monetary standard would prevent price inflation which would make saving more attractive.

Another reason why Trump wants lower rates is that servicing the mammoth U.S. debt would be somewhat more palatable. His “big, beautiful bill,” working its way through the Senate, will need to be financed. Lower rates would reduce the government’s borrowing costs. This irresponsible argument was also made by former Federal Reserve Chair and later Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Since Donald Trump has no ideological core that shapes his world vision, his outlook and policies are more often than not based on what affects him personally or who strokes his ego or lines his pockets. The proper monetary policy for the nation is not to cut interest rates, but to raise them and reduce the national debt through spending cuts. While there would certainly be short-term pain from such a policy, eventually matters would turn around and economic activity would be placed on a sound footing.

Ultimately, if sound money is ever to return to America and the Western world, its control must be taken away from central banks and the influence of mercurial politicians. The creation of money, its distribution, authenticity, and safe keeping should be left up to a decentralized non-governmental arrangement.

*Tyler Durden, “Trump Slams ‘Stupid’ Powell: ‘I Think He Hates Me. I Call Him Every Name in the Book to Try and Get Him to Cut,’” Zero Hedge, 18 June 2025. https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/trump-slams-stupid-powell-i-think-he-hates-me-i-call-him-every-name-book-try-and-get-him

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

Big Spending Continues Under Trump

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While DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) has made almost daily headlines pointing out fraud and waste in government, the real battle over federal spending is beginning to take place. From what has been proposed, it looks like it will be business as usual in Washington.

Last week, the full House of Representatives passed the House Budget Committee’s plan (budget resolution) which specifies cuts in both taxes and spending over the next decade. The key phrase here is “over the next decade.”

In a Feb. 13, 2025 Tax Foundation article titled “House Budget Resolution Aims to Balance Tax Cut and Spending Reduction Goals,” William McBride, explains that:

The resolution caps the deficit increase resulting from

tax cuts at $4.5 trillion over the next decade and requires

a minimum of $1.2 trillion in spending cuts. Additionally,

it sets as a goal to reduce mandatory spending by $2 trillion

over the next decade, and, if not accomplished, the cap on

tax cuts would be reduced commensurately. *

The resolution calls for certain committees to implement the cuts:

Energy and Commerce Committee ($880 billion)
Education and Workforce Committee ($330 billion)
Agriculture Committee ($230 billion)

Programs that more than likely face budget reductions include: Medicaid, student loan relief, and the Supplemental Nutrition Program.

Despite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s call for an 8% yearly cut in defense spending over the next five years, the current House resolution would increase defense spending by $100 billion. There is an additional increase of $230 billion for border control and “deportation plans to be executed” according to Brett Samuels of the political website The Hill, in an article he penned titled “Trump Backs House GOP Reconciliation Bill Over Senate Version.” **

Like Trump and most of his administration, Hegseth has sent conflicting signals on defense spending. While in Germany, the defense secretary said: “I think the US needs to spend more than the Biden administration was willing to, who historically under-invested in the capabilities of our military.”

Hegseth bombastically added that he wants “the biggest most badass military on the planet,” as quoted by Dave DeCamp of news and commentary website Antiwar.com in a Feb 2025 analysis. *** So much for an America first foreign policy.

The House’s estimate for spending and tax cuts are based on a real rate of growth of 2.6%. This optimistic forecast, of course, does not account for any downturn in the economy, war, or continued uptick in price inflation. Any of these, or some exogeneous shock to the economy would lower gross domestic product and tax revenues and jeopardize any long-term projected tax or spending cuts.

In the end, the budget resolution will increase spending, which Trump vowed to curb, as Rep. Thomas Massie (KY), who courageously voted against, succinctly summarized:

If the Republican plan passes under the rosiest

assumptions, which aren’t even true, we’re gonna

add $328 billion to the deficit this year, we’re gonna

add $295 billion to the deficit the year after that, and

$242 billion to the deficit after that. . . . ****

Trump, who enthusiastically supports the budget resolution, fails to realize that without deep and significant spending cuts, the cost of living will continue to escalate. The president blamed the Biden Administration’s policies for the run-up in prices, when, in fact, it was Trump who began the present inflation cycle with the passage of the CARES Act in 2020, expanding the budget an unimaginable $2.2 trillion.

Without spending cuts, the burgeoning federal deficit ($2 trillion) and the interest on the national debt ($1 trillion) will need to be continually financed through borrowing. The borrowing by the federal government is “paid for” through money printing (the real definition of inflation) by the Federal Reserve which buys U.S. debt with money “created out of thin air” which in essence is debt monetization. The new money puts pressure on prices as it filters through the economy increasing the cost of living.

While cuts in spending and reducing the amount of dollars in circulation will lower the cost of living, it will not come without severe economic pain. The fall in prices will pop the bubble that stocks and other financial assets have been in which will result in widespread unemployment and business failures. This is necessary to cleanse the malinvestment caused by the money printing and credit expansion and is necessary if America is to be put on a sound financial footing.

Of course, no politician wants to be blamed for such misery and even though Trump will not be up for re-election, he still does not want to be holding the bag when the economy implodes. Yet, if such a scenario happens, the president should bear much of the blame for his policies ignited the present problem.

If President Trump truly wants to make America great again, cutting government spending must be undertaken no matter how painful.

It appears, however, that he will join the long list of chief executives who have spent the nation into a horrific debt spiral which will inevitably end in economic ruin.

*William McBride, “House Budget Resolution Aims to Balance Tax Cut and Spending Reduction Goals,” Tax Foundation, 13 February 2025. https://taxfoundation.org/blog/house-budget-resolution-tax-cuts-spending/

**Brett Samuels, “Trump backs House GOP reconciliation bill over Senate version,” The Hill, 19 February 2025. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5152871-trump-endorses-house-gop-strategy/

***Dave DeCamp, “Pentagon Says Hegseth’s Order Will Redirect Spending, Not Make Actual Cuts,” Antiwar.com, 20 February 2025.

****Tyler Durden, “House Republicans Advance Trump Agenda as Final Vote Looms Tonight.” Zero Hedge, 25 February 2025, https://www.zerohedge.com/political/house-republicans-advance-trump-agenda-final-vote-looms-tonight

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

Trump’s Grandiose Political Centralization Scheme Not America-First in Spirit

4 Replies

Colorful houses of the coastal town of Ilulissat in western Greenland.

Although Donald Trump is now in office, his statements since the election indicated he has forgotten his pledge to follow an “America first” foreign policy. This is what he promised during the recent presidential contest and what he pledged in the 2016 campaign, but failed to deliver during his first term. While domestic issues are what a president is mostly concerned with, the most important decisions surround foreign affairs, since they often involve war.

Since his lopsided victory over the hapless Kamala Harris, Trump has made few references about reigning in the murderous U.S. Empire, but instead has talked about buying or invading Greenland, seizing the Panama Canal, and making Canada an American state. After the resignation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump said that “many people in Canada love being the 51^st state,” according to The New York Times, Jan. 7.*

If Joe Biden or Kamala Harris said such things, the MAGA crowd would be up in arms and accuse them of moving the country in the direction of the New World Order.

Whether Trump follows through with such fanciful plans, it shows that he does not understand what lies at the heart of the social and economic problems that America and the Western world face. Trump’s ideas would create greater political centralization, as an American-Canadian or American-Canadian-Mexican-Greenland union would create a gigantic North American state.

For anyone concerned with individual liberty, prosperity, and the No. 1 social issue that confronts the U.S. – illegal immigration – a North American superstate would be a nightmare. Gone would be the vital ability of “dissenters” to “vote with their feet” and move to less burdensome political jurisdictions.

In the United States, one can see this taking place on a daily basis as Americans move from high-tax and high regulatory states to those less onerous. Of course, citizens cannot escape the federal government’s dictates unless one decides to expatriate. Students of the nation’s history know the often-overlooked Anti-federalists made this argument in their opposition to the Constitution which has, over time, proven to be quite prescient.

The idea that more political entities lead to greater freedom has been proven by history. The best example of this is pre-modern Europe which was made up of a host of kingdoms, duchies, and free states with no dominant central government that could tax without impunity. It is well accepted by historians that Europe’s rise in its standard of living was the result of its political decentralization that resulted in low levels of taxation.

A multitude of nation states allows for “competition,” where if one government becomes too tyrannical, people have an opportunity to flee to another land. In recent U.S. history, a number of draft-aged men fled to Canada instead of being sent off to Vietnam to fight in what they considered an immoral war. A colossal North American state would have ended such an option.

Although not explicitly discussed by Trump, a North American Union would more than likely mean the creation of a new monetary unit as was done with the euro when the European Union was formed. Despite the warnings of some economists, price inflation in Europe escalated for countries like Germany once they relinquished their monetary autonomy.

Currently, national currencies “float” against one another in terms of exchange rates. If one central bank inflates its currency too much, its money will lose purchasing power to less inflationary nations. While not nearly as good as a gold standard, there is a sort of a “check and balance” on central bank monetary debasement with floating exchange rates.

A single North American monetary unit would not face the kind of limit that now exists, where the Canadian dollar, Mexican peso and U.S. dollar vie against each other. A North American currency would be another ominous step to a one-world currency – a dream of New World Order proponents.

While Trump’s disappointing talk about political centralization looks like a betrayal of the principles of America first principles, there may be a glimmer of hope. In a recent Truth Social post, Trump reposted a video of Prof. Jeffery Sachs, a longtime critic of American foreign policy, criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal actions in Gaza and throughout the Middle East calling him a “deep, dark SOB.”

Since the video has been posted, Netanyahu has canceled his plans to attend Trump’s inauguration, the implication being the Israeli leader was offended by the comment.

Only time will tell if Trump will abandon his promised America-first policies or pursue a drive to a New World Order.

*David E. Sanger and Michael D. Shear, “Trump Floats Using Force to Take Greenland and the Panama Canal,” The New York Times, 7 January 2025.

Antonius Aquinas@antoniusaquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

Taxes vs. Tariffs: Which is Fairer?

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In the final days of his presidential run, Donald Trump floated the idea of eliminating the income tax and replacing it with tariffs as the means to fund federal spending. He cited the era of U.S. history when the country had no income tax:

When we were a smart country, in the 1890s . .

this is when the country was relatively the

richest it ever was. It had all tariffs. It didn’t

have an income tax.*

While Trump was correct about the prosperity at the time, it is wrong to suggest that tariffs were the reason. While there was no income tax, there was little if any burdensome regulation or government subsidy, and, most importantly, the nation was on a gold standard, which kept increasing the purchasing power of wages, all of which raised living standards to unprecedented heights.

On the surface, the idea of replacing the income tax with tariffs seems equitable. This is why many conservatives, populists, and libertarians have supported the idea.

Under the present political order, the United States is a constitutional republic that is based on the social contract theory. Government is established, in part, to protect the persons and property from external threats and internal unrest. All citizens, in theory at least, are protected by the state. It follows, therefore, that they are obliged to contribute to their defense.

Tariffs, on the other hand, are borne directly by two groups: consumers who buy imported goods, and businesses who sell imported goods and are impacted by a loss of income.

Consumers pay the tax levied on foreign goods. Therefore, those consumers who buy more expensive goods, such as a Mercedes Benz, pay a higher percentage of tax than those who buy trinkets such as Christmas tree ornaments and plastic cutlery from China.

Businesses, too, suffer from tariffs. While it is often said that the tax is “passed on to consumers,” companies will see a reduction in income, since tariffs raise the price of goods. Higher prices will cause a fall in demand, resulting in loss revenue. Moreover, businesses who deal in foreign products have to bear the bureaucratic cost of complying with the government’s ever-changing trade policies while serving as tax collector for the state.

While the income tax under social contract theory is more “equitable” than tariffs, one of its most egregious features cannot be justified. Under current law, American citizens that are living abroad or have relocated permanently are still subjected to the income tax. However, expats are no longer being defended by the U.S. government. Renouncing citizenship (which is quite costly) is the only way to avoid being taxed.

Why should Americans, who are no longer being defended by their government, still be required to pay for it? This would be a clear violation of the “social contract” that citizens have supposedly agreed to.

There are other dangers that have come with government financing through tariffs, or, as some have called for, a national sales tax. Originally, when the income tax was proposed, it was to replace tariffs. Tariffs, like all sales taxes, burden the poor and middle class disproportionately. The income tax, which at first only affected the affluent, was accepted by the public since tariffs were to be eliminated. Unfortunately, the tariffs remained after the two world wars and the income tax was levied on almost everyone.

A similar situation could occur with the expansion of tariffs or the implementation of a national sales tax. Governments rarely relinquish their taxing power.

What is being ignored in the talk about tariffs and the income tax are the exploding government deficits. Fiddling with what source of revenue the government collects is not addressing an impending financial crisis that could bring down the entire U.S. economy.

Of course, runaway debts and deficits are inherent in democratic republics as politicians are not personally responsible for the debt, unlike a monarch or king. This is another flaw in the social contract theory.

Before policy makers change the nation’s tax system, they should carefully consider the ramifications and seek to find the most equitable solution that will not burden only part of the citizenry. Cutting runaway federal spending is a first step.

*https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/26/politics/trump-income-taxes-tariffs/index.html

Many Americans Say They Will Never Retire

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A recent AARP poll provides further evidence of the deterioration of American living standards, especially for those approaching retirement age. The study contradicts what most policy makers have believed to be a “soft landing” for the economy after two years of rampant inflation.

“More than one quarter of U.S. adults over the age of 59,” the survey found, “say they expect to never retire.” One in four have no retirement savings while one third of “older adults” have credit card debt of more than $10,000 and 12% hold a balance of $20,000 or more.” The Headline of an April 25 Washington Times article by Fatima Hussein says it all: “More Than 25% of U.S. Adults Over 50 Expect Never to Retire.”*

Not surprisingly, the report conducted with the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, points out that the lack of savings is due to the rising cost of living: “Everyday expenses and housing costs, including rent and mortgage payments, are the biggest reasons why people are unable to save for retirement.”

While AARP zeroed in on rising prices as the culprit for the financial pinch that potential retirees are feeling, it did not delve into who or what was the catalyst for the increase in living costs. Neither has the financial press, which has always been a cheerleader for the Uniparty, been diligent in its duty about the ultimate source for soaring prices.

While the trend of Americans working well into their retirement years has been going on for years, the situation has accelerated under both the Trump and Biden presidencies. In concert with the Federal Reserve, the fiscal policies of the two administrations have been the primary factor for why many Americans cannot retire.

Even before the start of the hyped Covid pandemic, the Trump administration, in just one term, was on pace to become the biggest spender in U.S. history. The astronomical increase in government spending and money printing which took place in response to Covid are now being felt.

The Fed’s balance sheet before the Covid lockdowns in January of 2020 stood at $4.15 trillion. By the end of Trump’s presidency, it had nearly doubled to $7.3 trillion as the government doled out “stimulus checks” to non-working Americans and transferred billions to business favorites and cronies in an unimaginable grab of power and wealth.

Under Biden, the balance sheet had risen to a little short of $9 trillion in mid-2022 and has come down, now standing at $7.4 trillion, according to American Action Forum.**

Expanding the balance sheet means that the Fed issues more dollars it takes and buys assets (mostly government bonds). This is actually debt monetization. The increase in the money supply is the classic – and true – definition of inflation. Rising prices are not inflation, but its consequence.

At first, the new money went into financial assets increasing their nominal values. However, because of the “lag effect,” the inflation the Fed created is now pushing up consumer prices. The Fed has had to do this because of profligate government spending which must be sustained through borrowing, since tax revenues are not enough to meet expenditures.

When asked in his current re-election campaign on what he would do to solve the rising cost of living, Trump said that he would “drill baby drill.” Such a statement demonstrates again that the former president, like the current occupant of the office, does not understand the problem.

Increasing domestic oil production is certainly good in itself, which will create jobs and bring more oil to the market. But it will not address general price inflation which is a monetary phenomenon.

Rising prices can be reversed if the Fed increases interest rates, or better yet, lets rates be set by the market. Higher rates will entice people to save, which will take money out of circulation, thus putting downward pressure on prices.

Just as important, the government needs to cut spending and eliminate departments and programs which will mean less money printing by the Fed. The likelihood of this taking place in a presidential election year is next to zero.

Even if the government and the Fed took the proper steps and began to put the nation on a sound financial footing, it will take years for the damage that has been done to be rectified.

Sadly, the Uniparty has no intention of doing the right thing and as economic conditions worsen, the number of people who must work until they drop will continue to rise.

*Fatima Hussein, “More than 25% of U.S. adults over 50 expect never to retire.” The Washington Times, 25 April 2024, A7. **https://www.americanactionforum.org/insight/tracker-the-federal-reserves-balance-sheet/

President Trump’s Role in the Ukraine War

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With his usual braggadocio, former President Donald Trump has promised that if returned to the White House he would end the Ukraine conflict within hours and claims, as many of his supporters do, that the war would never have taken place had he been in office. Like most of his campaign promises during his 2016 presidential run – drain the swamp, pull troops out of Afghanistan, build a wall – very few were accomplished, despite the fact that the former president had a Republican House and Senate at the start of his first term.

Listening to Trump’s often incoherent statements on the Ukrainian imbroglio shows that the ex-chief executive has learned little from his four years in the Oval Office. While talk of ending wars in a few hours may garner popular support, translating them into actual results is a far different and, to say the least, difficult matter, as Trump should now realize after his fruitless years as president.

Trump had a chance to de-escalate tensions in the Ukraine that had been building especially after the Western-inspired coup of February, 2014 which replaced the democratically-elected government of Viktor Yanukovych. Yet, the former president did nothing to remedy the situation and, in fact, worsened matters by providing military hardware to the Ukraine, which the Obama Administration had denied.

Demonstrating a lack of understanding of the region’s geo-political realities, Trump decided to provide the Ukraine with military equipment. In December, 2017 the U.S. shipped, among other weaponry, Javelin anti-tank missile systems, with the first sale completed in March of the following year to the sum of $47 million. Reportedly, the former president was convinced by his advisors that the military aid would be “good for U.S. business.”

If one considers the military industrial complex a vibrant part of the U.S. economy and not a parasitical drain that redistributes scarce resources away from the production of useful consumer goods into the creation of destabilizing and murderous weapons of war, then – “yes” – military spending is good for business. For those, like Trump, who support such an idea are apparently unfamiliar with Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler who rightly called “defense spending” a racket:

I spent 33 years in the Marines, most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for Capitalism.*

After the provocative action of supplying the Ukraine with military hardware, the Trump Administration inflamed relations further by pulling out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) which was agreed to by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. The landmark treaty banned missiles with range between 500 and 5,500 km (310-3,400 miles).**

The U.S. accused Russia of non-compliance to the terms of the treaty, a charge that the Russians and many military analysts denied. This, of course, led to a greater level of distrust between the two nations and went against candidate Trump’s aims of lessening tensions between the two powers.

Trump, as with the pro-war Western media, is ignorant of the historical context that played into Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade the Ukraine. It is a well-established fact that the U.S. and Western powers gave assurances to Russia as far back as when the Berlin Wall came down that NATO would not expand eastward. That promise has been repeatedly broken as NATO now includes 31 nations with Sweden set to come on board in 2024.***

Making matters worse, the Biden Administration, the war mongers in Congress, and the U.S.’s NATO lapdogs have escalated matters with tremendous financial and military assistance, which has done little to stop the Russians, but has resulted in the needless slaughter of thousands and the wholesale destruction of Ukrainian territory. The introduction of cluster bombs into the fray and the promise of F-16 fighter-jets capable of carrying nuclear war heads has heightened the possibility of a general conflagration.

None of the declared Republican presidential contenders have critiqued the former president’s reckless Ukrainian policy. Some of the candidates (Chris Christie, Nikki Haley) have instead insanely called for greater support of the Zelensky regime!

The American involvement in the Ukrainian War has nothing to do with its national security, but with the interests of the U.S. Empire. The tragedy of the Trump Presidency is that things were supposed to be different. Instead of non-intervention, the Administration armed Ukraine, stationed troops in Syria, assassinated an Iranian general on a Middle East peace mission, and committed a host of other head scratching acts which went against candidate Trump’s pledge of an “America First” foreign policy that propelled him to victory in 2016.

To think that things will be different in a second go-around is clearly delusional, as the former president is now campaigning with never-ending war proponent Senator Lindsey Graham.

*See War is a Racket, Port Townsend, WA.: Feral House, 2003; 1935.

**“INF Nuclear Treaty: US Pulls Out of Cold War-Era Pact With Russia,” BBC, 2 August 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49198565

***Patrick Wintour, The Guardian, 22 January 2022 ttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/12/russias-belief-in-nato-betrayal-and-why-it-matters-today

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

The Convention of States Project: A Bad Idea

11 Replies

Similar to Patrick Buchanan’s campaigns, Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America,” the Tea Party, and to some extent Donald Trump’s presidency, the Convention of States Project* will not solve the crises that America faces. It will, undoubtedly, like most of the previous reform and populist movements be sabotaged by the ruling class if it ever gets close to accomplishing its goals.

The Project’s rhetoric is “old-style” conservative/populist-speak which seeks to “[propose] amendments that impose fiscal restraint on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of Congress.”** Some of the proposed amendments include:

Congressional term limits
Requiring a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate to increase the public debt
Restoring the Commerce Clause to its original intent and scope
Repeal of the 16^th Amendment, which gave us the income tax
Giving states, by a three-fifths vote, the power to negate any federal law, regulation or executive order giving Congress an easy means of overriding regulation

So far, 19 state legislatures have called for a constitutional convention, 34 states are needed for a convention to be called and, for an amendment to be passed, it must be approved by three quarters of state legislatures.

The state legislatures who have signed on have realized that the federal government has become omnipotent and the individual states are now merely appendages to Washington. “The states,” said South Carolina state representative Bill Taylor, “have sort of lost their voice, and all we can do now is beg from the cheap seats and say, ‘Hey, don’t do that.’”***

After the totalitarian and draconian efforts of the U.S. government and those around the world the past two years in response to the “pandemic,” Mr. Taylor’s sentiment is, to say the least, an understatement!

The fundamental problem with efforts such as the Convention of States Project is that they do not understand the nature of the crises that both America and most of the world face. For America, its current malaise can be traced shortly after its independence with the adoption of the Constitution itself.

While it has long been touted as a great document of freedom and liberty, it is anything but. The “founding fathers” knowingly created a powerful central government and decreased the sovereignty of the individual state governments which had existed under the Articles of Confederation.

In the words of Murry Rothbard, the Constitution was a coup that, for the most part, was the antithesis of the spirit and drive of the American Revolution which was a movement against political centralization and empire:

It was a bloodless coup d’etat against an unresisting

Confederation Congress. . . . . The Federalists, by use

of propaganda, chicanery, fraud, malapportionment of

delegates, blackmail threats of secession and even

coercive laws, had managed to sustain enough delegates

to defy the wishes of the majority of the American people

and create a new Constitution.****

Worse than the power grab was the establishment of an omnipotent state as Rothbard incisively continues:

The drive [for ratification] was managed by a

corps of brilliant members and representatives

of the financial and landed oligarchy. These

wealthy merchants and large landowners were

joined by the urban artisans of the large cities in

their drive to create a strong overriding central

government – a supreme government with its

own absolute power to tax, regulate commerce,

and raise armies.*****

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The celebrated “separation of powers,” and “checks and balances” within the federal system and even the Bill of Rights, so often lauded by conservative and populist commentators, have proven from the very start to be ineffectual in stopping the expansion of state power.

The Constitution itself declares that it is the ultimate authority as Article VI states:

This Constitution and the laws of the United States which

shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made,

or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States,

shall be the supreme law of the land. . . . [Italics mine.]

The massive and now unresolvable social, economic and political troubles both in the U.S. and around the world stems from a concentration of political power that is inherent in the nature of constitutional government. This power is augmented and sustained by a system of central banking which provides the nation state with seemingly unlimited financial power to implement its various social engineering schemes, conduct continuous warfare, and has the ability to crush any opposition to its hegemony.

The solution, which is all too obvious, but not attainable in the current ideological atmosphere dominated by statist thinking, is political decentralization.

The smaller political alignments under decentralization would probably coalesce around peoples with similar economic, social and religious affiliations and status and those with similar ethnic and racial backgrounds. Such a system would be truly diverse and undoubtedly lower social tensions which derive from the central state’s forced integration polices.

Once political decentralization became a reality, the natural and mutually beneficial relationships and interactions between peoples would emerge. The immense advantage of free trade – the widening of the division of labor and specialization – would be the norm between societies since smaller countries could not afford to restrict trade since doing so would lead to autarky and the resultant fall in standards of living to primitive levels.

Likewise, a universal monetary standard, most likely based on gold and silver, would arise among differing communities since a multitude of currencies would lead to monetary chaos and render economic calculation an impossibility. Since no central state could impose its currency, the only honest and sound money – gold/silver – would be quickly adopted by all.

The mass invasion of the U.S. taking place under the negligence and encouragement of the Biden Administration could also be thwarted through political decentralization. Areas where the lives and property of people are threatened by invaders have more of an incentive to effectively deal with unwanted groups than bureaucrats living often times thousands of miles away.

Each jurisdiction would make its own policies on who or how many it wanted in its territory. Moreover, each community could expel undesirables without interference from those who are not property owners or members of such communities.

While those behind the Convention of States Project and the state legislatures which have called for a constitutional convention may be well meaning, they will ultimately fail. Such efforts are a wrongheaded approach to address the myriad of problems that plague the U.S. and, for that matter, the entire world.

Instead of attempts to amend the Constitution or though the electoral process by finding the “right candidate,” the very viable and historically proven alternative of de-centralization through secession is the only pathway to ultimate success. Until the break-up of the nation state is accomplished, America and the world’s future will be considerably bleak.

*https://conventionofstates.com/

**https://starkrealities.substack.com/p/activists-more-than-halfway-to-forcing

***Ibid

**** Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty. Vol. 5, The New Republic, 1784-1791, ed., Patrick Newman. Auburn, AL.: Mises Institute, 2019, p. 306.

*****Ibid.

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com