Ron Paul: "The Same Thing Will Happen to the Federal Reserve as Happened to the Soviet Union"

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Ron Paul spoke this morning in Santiago, Chile.

Jim Rickards sent out the following tweets from the event:

A raucous, extended standing ovation for #RonPaul here in #Santiago. Paul: “It sounds like the revolution has gone international!”

One of the most attractive things about #RonPaul is his humility. Before he started speaking, he took time to introduce and thank his wife. [Note: This is genuine Ron Paul and not the “performance humility” of the new Pope-RW]

#RonPaul in #Santiago: “The same thing will happen to the Federal Reserve as happened to the Soviet Union.”

More of #RonPaul in #Santiago: “The handwriting’s on the wall; the system is failing.”

In #Chile #RonPaul: “What are they going to replace it with. It could go into a fascist state. I don’t believe we’ll work our way out of it”

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Judge: California City's Bankruptcy Given the Green Light

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Photo Credit: Justin Sullivan

A federal judge ruled Monday that Stockton is eligible for bankruptcy protection, over the objection of creditors who argued the city could come up with more money.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein said Stockton can move forward with a plan to reorganize debt. He twice stated that the creditors had acted in bad faith and had refused to pay their share of the costs for negotiations.

“The creditors got a big black eye today,” said Karol Denniston, an attorney who helped draft the legislation that guided Stockton’s mandated mediation before filing for bankruptcy protection. “Now the stage is set for the real dogfight.”

In late June, Stockton became the nation’s largest city to fail financially. At that time, all eyes were on the port city of 300,000 as experts warned the action could set off a string of similar filings among cash-strapped municipalities. Since then, a half-dozen cities have filed for Chapter 9 protection under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, including the city of San Bernardino.

During the 90-day mediation period, Stockton’s creditors refused to negotiate unless the city cut payments to the state pension plan, CalPERS.

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Court Okays Adult Teacher-Student Sex In Arkansas

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

The Arkansas Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a high school history teacher who had sex with an 18-year-old student, invalidating the state’s existing prohibition against teacher-student sex.

A guilty verdict could have landed David Paschal, the 38-year-old teacher, a 30-year prison sentence.

But because the student was over the age of consent, the relationship was not criminal, the court said in its 4-3 ruling.

“Regardless of how we feel about Paschal’s conduct, which could correctly referred to as reprehensible, we cannot abandon our duty to uphold the rule of law when a case presents distasteful facts,” wrote Chief Justice Jim Hannah, according to The Huffington Post.

In dissent, Justice Robert Brown warned that the majority opinion would cause chaos in schools.

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Teachers Who Stomped American Flag, Jesus Are Officially No Longer Teaching

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Photo Credit: public domain/government produced

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. You don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger. And, as two educators have recently learned, it’s also generally good advice to avoid stomping on Jesus and the American flag in public schools.

The Florida Atlantic University instructor who asked students to step on the word “Jesus” has been placed on administrative leave on the same day that the high school teacher in South Carolina who stomped on an American flag in front of his students way back in December finally resigned.

The incident in South Carolina first flared up when Scott Compton, an honors English teacher at Chapin High School in Chapin, S.C., was placed on long-term administrative leave after he threw an American flag on the floor and stomped on it in front of his students.

Compton allegedly repeated the unpatriotic deed three times in one day. His goal, apparently, was to teach students that the flag is merely a symbolic piece of cloth.

Compton was already fired, reports The State, a regional newspaper. However, he had been fighting his termination until Friday, when he formally agreed to resign.

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Israel Strikes It Rich: Enormous Natural Gas Field Begins Production

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Photo Credit: AP

Natural gas began to flow into Israel over the weekend from a large offshore field, ending Israel’s status as a dry patch in an oil-rich region.

The flow came from the first of two enormous gas fields discovered off Israel’s coast in the past three years. The two fields, known as Tamar and Leviathan, are sufficient to supply Israel for 150 years, according to Bloomberg Business Week.

The Bank of Israel estimated that the flow this year from Tamar, the smaller of the two fields, would contribute one percent to Israel’s gross domestic product. Overall, the bank expects Israel’s economy to grow 3.8 percent this year.

The field is located 56 miles west of the Haifa port. The Leviathan field is slated to come online in 2016. The long-term value of the fields at today’s prices has been estimated at about $240 billion. More than half of profits are to be paid in taxes to the Israeli government.

“This is the beginning of a new era,” Isaac Tshuva, controlling shareholder of Delek Group Ltd., which holds a major stake in Tamar, told Business Week. “The Israeli economy will be able to exploit natural gas environmentally, geopolitically, socially and economically.”

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White House Finally Gets the Sequester Ax: 480 Budget Office Staffers Face Furloughs

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Photo Credit: Reuters

A total of 480 employees at the White House budget office face reduced working hours as $85 billion in overall automatic federal spending cuts hit President Barack Obama’s staff, the White House said on Monday…

The staffers from the Office of Management and Budget were the only White House employees that spokesman Jay Carney would confirm as having been affected, though he acknowledged, “within the Executive Office of the President, several offices have sent furlough notices to their staff.”

The $85 billion in cuts kicked in March 1 after Democratic and Republican lawmakers failed to reach a budget agreement to avert so-called “sequestration” spending restrictions.

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Last Minute Reversal: U.S. will "Vote Yes" on UN Arms Treaty

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

The National Shooting Sports Foundation today strongly objected to the last-minute reversal of the U.S. government position regarding the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. In the closing hours of negotiations on Thursday, March 28, the government abandoned its previous insistence that the treaty be approved only through achieving “consensus” of all the member states. Requiring consensus had been the United States position going back to earlier administrations.

At the end of the session, a U.S. government spokesperson told reporters “It’s important to the United States and the defense of our interests to insist on consensus. But every state in this process has always been conscious of the fact that if consensus is not reached in this process, that there are other ways to adopt this treaty, including via a vote of the General Assembly.” The spokesperson went on to say that the United States would vote “yes” on the treaty in the General Assembly, regardless of the positions of other member states. By abandoning the requirement for consensus the United States is assuring passage of the treaty by the United Nations.

“This abrupt about-face on the long-standing United States requirement for ‘consensus’ illustrates that the Obama Administration wants a sweeping U.N. arms control treaty,” said Lawrence Keane, NSSF senior vice president and general counsel. “We are troubled by the timing of the Obama Administration’s decision to abandon consensus on the eve of the Senate debate on pending gun control measures. The United Nations treaty would have a broad impact on the U.S. firearms industry and its base of consumers in the U.S.”

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Lawsuit Over Health Care Tax Could Kill ‘Obamacare’

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Photo Credit: The Washington Times

“Obamacare” looks increasingly inevitable, but one lawsuit making its way through the court system could pull the plug on the sweeping federal health care law.

A challenge filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation contends that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because the bill originated in the Senate, not the House. Under the Origination Clause of the Constitution, all bills raising revenue must begin in the House.

The Supreme Court upheld most provisions of the act in June, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took pains in the majority opinion to define Obamacare as a federal tax, not a mandate. That was when the Sacramento, Calif.-based foundation’s attorneys had their “aha” moment.

“The court there quite explicitly says, ‘This is not a law passed under the Commerce Clause; this is just a tax,’” foundation attorney Timothy Sandefur said at a Cato Institute forum on legal challenges to the health care act. “Well, then the Origination Clause ought to apply. The courts should not be out there carving in new exceptions to the Origination Clause.”

The Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the challenge in November, arguing that the high court has considered only eight Origination Clause cases in its history and “has never invalidated an act of Congress on that basis.”

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US Senator Says Obama Is Faking Stance on Immigration Reform, Trying to Set Up GOP in 2014

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Photo Credit: Irish Central

Texas Freshman Senator, Ted Cruz, was on the Sean Hannity radio show today talking about immigration reform efforts being pushed in the US Senate by Harry Reid and President Obama.

According to Cruz, both Reid and Obama are purposely pushing reforms designed to lose in the House of Representatives. This loss then can be used as a political sledgehammer to beat up the Republicans with in the 2014 and 2016 elections.

Two of the critical issues that are apparently a red line for many members of both the House and Senate are secure borders and pathways to citizenship.

A key issue for Senators trying to find a way to craft immigration reform is to make sure our borders are secure first, before any other issues of immigration are addressed. But it seems President Obama, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer think our borders are secure enough and want to force an immigration package through that does not really address a verifiable secure borders provision. To many politicians that will make anything coming out of the Senate, DOA for immigration reform when it reaches the House of Representatives.

The hypocrite Senator Schumer, couldn’t have been caught at a more inopportune moment when he and Senator McCain recently stood in front of the border fence in Arizona for photo ops. Just when the pictures were being taken, an alien from Mexico climbed over the fence and entered the US illegally. This could make Schumer the poster child for non secure borders.

The latest polls also show Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of having secure borders before any immigration reform is put in place.

Cruz was adamant the type of immigration reform with path to citizenship Reid and Obama were pushing, would be unfair to the millions of legal immigrants who play by the rules. Cruz said that would be a slap in the face to legal immigrants and a tacit wink that it is OK to disrespect the nations laws.

Cruz went on to say if President Obama was serious about immigration reform, he would take pathway to citizenship out of the proposed immigration reform, then reform could easily pass…Perhaps a pathway to work permits

According to Cruz even a pathway to a Green Card would be unfair since that could lead to citizenship in five years and it would be considered a reward for illegal behavior.

Many Americans are also disturbed about the reported number of illegal immigrants in this country. That number was reported to be up to 20 million towards the end of 2012. But as soon as the Obama administration started proposing immigration reform, the number suddenly shrank to only 11 million. What are we to believe?

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

China-Australia Pact Could Lead to Dollar's Collapse

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Photo Credit: Zero Hedge

[T]he Australian [is] reporting that the land down under is set to say goodbye to the world’s “reserve currency” in its trade dealings with the world’s biggest marginal economic power, China, and will enable the direct convertibility of the Australian dollar into Chinese yuan, without US Dollar intermediation, in the process “slashing costs for thousands of business” and also confirming speculation that China is fully intent on, little by little, chipping away at the dollar’s reserve currency status until one day it no longer is.

That said, this latest development in global currency relations should come as no surprise to those who have followed our series on China’s slow but certain internationalization of its currency over the past two years…

And while previously the focus was on Chinese currency swap arrangements, the uniqueness of this weekend’s news is that it promotes outright convertibility of the Yuan: something China has long said would happen but many were skeptical it ever would. That is no longer the case, and with Australia setting the precedent, expect many more Asian countries (at first) to follow in Australia’s footsteps, because while the developed world is far more engaged in diluting its currency as a means to spur “growth”, Asian and developing world nations are still engage in real, actual trade, where China is rapidly and aggressively becoming the world’s hub…

Why is this so very critical? For the simple reason that the free lunch the US has enjoyed ever since the advent of the US dollar as world reserve currency, may be coming to an end as other, more aggressive alternatives – both fiat, and hard-asset based – to the USD appear. And since there is no such thing as a free lunch, all the deferred pain the US Treasury Department has been able to offset thanks to its global currency monopoly status will come crashing down the second the world starts getting doubts about the true nature of just who the real reserve currency will be in the future.

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