Consider This

Chris Powell of the Gold Anti-Trust Action or GATA has just recently released this interesting piece regarding a letter from the US Treasury Department.

From the link:

Further, there is no requirement in the law that the targets of the government's interference must have some connection to the declared enemies of the United States, nor even some connection to foreign ownership. Anything that can be construed as a financial instrument, no matter how innocently it has been used, is subject to seizure under the Trading With the Enemy Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Having just gone through a controversy about a Supreme Court decision about government's power of eminent domain, most Americans may be surprised to learn that the Trading With the Enemy Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act could expropriate them instantly and far more broadly without any of the due process extended to parties in eminent domain cases. All that is needed is a presidential proclamation of an emergency of some kind -- and of course Americans lately have been living in a state of perpetual emergency.

And this:

The government's authority to interfere with the ownership of gold, silver, and mining shares arises, Thornton wrote, from the Trading With the Enemy Act, which became law in 1917 during World War I and applies during declared wars, and from 1977's International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which can be applied without declared wars.

All of this is particularly interesting given that the current chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan wrote here

"This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the "hidden" confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard."

Today, an individual with an IQ slightly above a sea cucumber can realize that once people "rise" to the level of "public servant", they readily lose all grasp of the concept of serving the citizens that elected them.

I've worked for a state government as a contract software engineer for several years. During that time in that capacity, I have adopted a peculiar philosophy. There is the "trough" and the "barrel". And I have to say, I'm not alone in this discovery as other contract personnel I work with agree.

The "trough" is the government largess that is available to those who want to get a piece of it (at the taxpayers expense of course). They do so through all of the government programs designed to redistribute wealth i.e. tax dollars, from those that have it to those that don't. The perpetrators aren't just the welfare seekers but also include the government employees who just show up but do little or nothing to collect their check.

I can relate a personal experience where a project that cost the tax payers half a million dollars (funded by the CDC) and is overwhelmingly successful beyond all expectations is in jeopardy simply because a low-level state government paper pusher doesn't like the results but perhaps I'll leave that for another post.

The barrel, i.e. "pork barrel", on the other hand, is a higher level of largess. The barrel is closely guarded and controlled by our elected officials and, of course, financed by you, the tax payer. Those who grovel at the "trough" dare not aspire to gain access to the "barrel" because the "barrel" is mostly for corporations.

Our lofty, elected, public servants hold tight reign over the "barrel" and only through lobbyists does one gain access to the "barrel".

Note that the concept of lobbyists is guaranteed in the first amendment of the constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I would think that "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" applied only to U.S. citizens as did those who formed the amendment in 1791.

So why is it that entities outside of the U.S. can hire lobbyists to petition our government for their interests? I'll leave it to those interested to research the numerous examples but, truth be told, our congressmen are inundated by lobbyists paid to articulate and promote the interests of foreign entities. My question is: what right do they have to "petition the government for redress of grievances"?