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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (23053)	7/23/2003 2:09:55 PM
From: Mannie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Weimar Republic I have a theory that nations are like individuals. Those whose leaders are smart, strong and lucky prosper, and those whose leaders are stupid, weak and unlucky suffer or perish. That's why it matters which leaders we choose. There are relatively few people in the United States who actually have the power to make important decisions. The Constitution, for example, vests 100 percent of the power of the federal government in only 537 individuals — one president, one vice president, 435 members of the House and 100 members of the Senate. Everybody else in the entire federal government operates on authority delegated to them by these 537 individuals. Actually, since most matters can be decided by a majority vote, a mere 269 individuals (51 senators, 218 representatives) can make most of the decisions. Bald fact: If these people are idiots, a country can go to hell in a hurry. Key question: Does our present political system, in which leaders are chosen in campaigns dominated by money and marketing experts, provide us with the opportunity to choose wise leaders? Given the present situation, I fear not. The universal franchise in which any moron, no matter how ignorant, is given the right to vote is a prescription for disaster. We are looking more and more like the Weimar Republic of Germany that collapsed morally and economically in the 1920s and gave rise to Hitler and his Nazi Party. If this happens to us, it will be consistent with the predictions of Oswald Spengler, who, in his book "The Decline of the West," predicted that what he called an age of money would be replaced by the age of Caesars just about around the turn of the century. He made that prediction prior to 1918. We today are living in the time frame of his predicted transition to dictatorships. The quickest way to ruin a country is economically. Those dollars in our wallets are pieces of paper tied to nothing. They are a medium of exchange. What matters is not what the number is on the piece of paper, but the amount of goods and services that piece of paper can be exchanged for. That's called purchasing power. Inflation, whether gradual or hyper-, reduces the purchasing power and thus impoverishes everyone. It is the way that governments have historically robbed the people. In 1967, $1 would buy four or five gallons of gasoline; today, it won't even buy one. It isn't that the price of gasoline has gone up, but that the purchasing power of the dollar, eroded by years of inflation, has declined. Hyperinflation would mean it would take a wheelbarrow full of currency to buy a loaf of bread. It would mean the ruin of practically all Americans, especially the middle class. All of sudden, a family's entire life savings wouldn't pay a month's rent. Massive poverty and even starvation would descend on the nation, and desperate people would start looking for a savior. Survival would become more important than democratic processes. Now, here's a scary paragraph from an article by John Berthelsen in Asia Times. You can find it at www. atimes.com. He quotes an analysis done by an expert with Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia in Hong Kong by the name of Christopher Wood: "Wood predicts that by the end of the decade there will no longer be a possibility that the world's central banks can control the situation, and there will be a truly massive devaluation of the dollar. 'The view here is that the U.S. dollar will have disintegrated by the end of this decade. By then, the target price of gold bullion is U.S. $3,400 an ounce.'" This is predicted because of the massive trade deficits, massive federal deficits and massive personal debt that stupid politicians and citizens have accumulated. Since the target date is only seven years from now, we have only the 2004 elections to replace idiots with some smart people who might be able to head off this disaster. reese.king-online.com