Christian Conference on Economics

Christ Reformed Presbyterian Mission is hosting a conference on Economics this weekend. Apologies for not getting this posted any sooner although this has been in the works for months, even before the global market crisis.

Dr Tom Rose has a long and distinguished career as a leading proponent of
Christian Free Market Economics. He is professor Emeritus of Grove City College
in western Pennsylvania. Tom is author of two economics textbooks for senior
high and college level courses used in schools across America: Economics:
Principles and Policy, and Economics: The American Economy. Both textbooks use
the Bible as the benchmark for judging economic principles and theories. His
other titles include: Free Enterprise Economics in America; God, Gold, and Civil
Government; Reclaiming the American Dream by Reconstructing the American
Republic; and How to Succeed in Business.

Friday Oct 31, Nov 1 & 2 2008

Featuring Veteran Economist, Author & Professor Dr. Tom Rose

At the Paris EconoLodge Lafayette Building

Highway 79 North, Paris, Tenn.

Free Admission
Refreshments provided
Book table available

Sponsored by Christ Reformed Presbyterian Church


Conference Schedule:

Friday Oct 31, 2008

6:45 pm The Importance of Biblical Economics

8:00 pm God's Design for Free Market Economics and the Opposition

Saturday Nov 1, 2008

10:45 am An Economic History of these United States

1:30 pm Political Manipulation: Understanding What is Happening

2:30 pm The Basics of Personal and Family Economics: Children, Labor, Land, and Wealth

5:30 pm Hayride, chili, and hotdog roasting at the home of Pastor McDade

Sunday Nov 2, 2008

10:00 am Sustainable Economics: Surviving Economic Resession and Worse

11:00 am Regular Worship Service and Sermon by Pastor McDade – The Choosing of Magistrates

Sunday Worship will be at the Paris Seventh-Day Adventist Building 2331 Hwy 641 North, Paris, Tenn.

For more information, post questions or comments below or feel free to email me.

A MUST Read

I do not have time to tease you with any quotes, just go here and read the whole thing. I will update later today.

Subsidizing Lead Balloons

With the economy in shambles some look to more government intervention as the solution. The buzzwords are jump start, rescue, stabilize, stimulate. The word they are looking for is subsidize.

Subsidies come in many sizes and shapes. Most (if not all) social programs (which are sometimes given the horribly wretched misnomer, entitlements) could be lumped into this general category. There does seem to be a difference, though, in the government’s stated motivation behind subsidies.

On one hand, there are subsidies that are a misguided (not to mention Socialistic) attempt to “level the playing field.” These usually come in the form of social welfare. The theory is that the government has the responsibility to maintain a minimum living standard for every single individual in its boundaries. (Increasingly the boundaries are disappearing as the U.S. moves toward globalization of social welfare.) The subsidy of the welfare state is the wage for failing, be it by slothfulness, poor economic decisions, or simply the inability to “make ends meet.”

Then there are subsidies which are “necessary” for the survival of the collective citizenry which includes the one probably most talked about; the farm subsidy. The government tells us it is essential to prop up the farm and that if we do not, folks will starve.

Recently Congressman Randy Kuhl (NY) told John Stossel in a one hour 20/20 special titled, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics that if we did not have farm subsidies, people would starve for lack of jobs (i.e. if farmers failed at farming, then they would starve for lack of employment).

Why has farming become an occupation very nearly impossible without the crutch of the taxpayers? It is not as though these “endowments” catch the shortfall on the occasionally horrible year. The same farmers receive these subsidies year after year after year. (For detailed information about various state and local farm subsidies, visit http://farm.ewg.org/sites/farmbill2007.)

The reader should see the theme developing. Government subsidies in nearly every form are the salaries for failure.

So too is the “bail-out” of Wall Street and the bankers. What D.C. should learn from subsidizing lead balloons is that they attract a lot of lead balloon manufacturers. The banks in question are part of that elite group that is deemed too big, too important to fall. This Emergency Economic Stabilization package is nothing more than another subsidy.

Considering the perpetuity of all “temporary” subsidies, it should be no shock that this is only a continuation of former Wall Street bail-outs. Nor should it surprise the reader when another multi-billion dollar rescue is in order.

Why Uncle Sam Will Never Get Out of the Stock Market

This is Bill Barr's (not to be confused with Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party candidate) latest submission on Leviathan in the markets.
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Uncle Sam will never get out of the stock market.

That would be because of the political class in imperial America, spiritual descendants of the Praetorian Guard. Remember them? Highly politicized, they were the special force of bodyguards in Rome which finally quit pretending and just auctioned off the emperor's job from the steps of the Senate.

Count on it to happening here within the lifetime of your children.

"Historically, politicians are loathe to give up power they managed to steal. Indeed, it is my hunch that from here on out, whenever a sector starts to dip below 'acceptable' levels, they too will have their hand out and the government foxes will be only too happy to guard the sector's hen house." Attorney Sandra Hamilton makes this shrewd point in her blog at lewrockwell.com this week.

Moreover, "When businesses have the ability to force the government to steal money from the people to give to them if they fail, you get businesses that are incredibly risky", she discerns. Accordingly, "what benefit do you have (in) being a carefully well-run company?" Hamilton goes on to demand.

In this era of Crony Capitalism, Hamilton underscores that "Lehman Brothers was not well connected" at all when compared to rival investment bank Goldman Sachs. Thus, we find a clear moral to the story.

Crony Capitalism, born from the union of plutocracy with the managerial revolution, means that lucrative investments in securities are made by the investors who "know which of (the) companies has the most political connections". That's the only way to realistically hope for a return on your money in "a game where the rules change hourly", Hamilton concludes, pointing out the indispensability in government "reform"--changing the rules when the wide boys want them changed.

Ms. Hamilton is too reserved to say it, but is this very incestuous promiscuity, this financial interconnectedness, not the indispensable element in our political and economic system? And without it, would the global economy lie revealed as a house of cards?

--William Barr (Katy, Texas)

______________________________

Thanks again Bill!

Where's the Encore?

I am dying to see these two interviewed together again now.

For six years Peter Schiff has been predicting this and in this interview from 2006, he makes Art Laffer look like a complete fool.

The Difference Between a Terrorist and a Secessionist?

Here is Bill Press of C-Span showing his ignorance of the political philosophy that shaped early America.




Sure, just ask Lincoln. Forget about the fact that this nation was built on the right "to alter and abolish" a government that no longer is a minister to the people. With our legislators' approval rating in the SINGLE digits, what could possibly be so radical about secession.

Here is an idea. Perhaps the real terrorists are those who have abandoned the Constitution, make laws and pass taxes contrary to common sense and the voice of the people, send thousands of our soldiers all over the world to die, be maimed, or occupy other countries while telling the citizens of the States of America that we are stuck with D.C. and there is no way out.

Financial Coup d'etat

In a recent email, I ask some friends about the possibility of us experiencing a financial coup. Many countries have experienced military coups which are generally very obvious what with all the shooting, but a stratagem spread out over several generations may not be quite as obvious.

Some attribute the possibility of this happening to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913 and while I see this as one of the major steps in such a process, I believe the ball was dropped when Lincoln usurped his Constitutional authority in 1861 and called for troops to "preserve' the Union, thus setting precedent for ignoring Constitutional constraints.

Some may even point back further to the writings and influence of the Federalists and the central banking ideas. (At least during the time of the Federalist papers, the states still had the choice to ratify or not.)

Either way one looks at it, though, I would suggest that we have seen the total takeover of the state via the economy.

Dictionary.com defines coup d'etat as, a sudden and decisive action in politics, esp. one resulting in a change of government illegally or by force.

One must acknowledge the immense amount of corporate influence in the federal government. This influence is not confined to the financial sector, though. To understand this, the reader need only look at the public positions that are held by former execs.

Goldman Sachs is a prime example of this. Henry "Hank" Paulson, Treasury Secretary, left his position as CEO of Goldman Sachs to accept the nomination the Federal Reserve Chairmen. It should be noted that the Federal Reserve board has most recently approved the transition of GS from an investment bank into a commercial bank giving them more access to "emergency" loans.

GS alumni have or do hold various public positions such as White House Chief of Staff, state governor, three Treasury Secretaries, U.S. Trade Representative, and Deputy Secretary of State to name a few and that is just Goldman Sachs!

One could go on and on if he were to look at each corporation.

This is just one area in which government is affected by corporate interests. One other that cannot be left out is the fact that so many of these execs are also members of the Council on Foreign Relations which becomes the means of access for the private interests of corporations into the state.

Thomas Jefferson warned us that the establishment of banks is more dangerous than standing armies and that the "central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution."

Now here we are in 2008 and not only do we have a central bank, but through the inflation of currency we are seeing the establishment of banks through direct investment by our government. One should look no further for proof of the coup d'etat than H.R. 1424 (Emergency Economic Stabilization Act). It did not matter that it was unconstitutional and individuals overwhelmingly made their opposition known to their respective Representatives.

We are now more than ever considered resources for the state. The coup has occurred, make no mistake about it.

The Group of Thirty

By now most of us have heard of the Council on Foreign Relations and their influence on foreign and domestic policy here in America. For years critics have warned about the CFR's clout in Washington and abroad because of the diversity of the private "club."

Considering the amount of media, government, military, educational, and corporate involvement both here and abroad in this elite group, one should be suspect of whose interests are being pushed across the President's desk to be signed, but many more able bodied persons have written good critiques on the CFR, Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderbergs.

I intend here to hopefully get some discussion going about another group of elitists that wish to affect economic/monetary policies here and abroad. The common theme lately among them is globalization.

While researching some of the Federal Reserve board members, I stumbled across what is known as the Group of Thirty (G30). G30 is an "international body composed of very senior representatives of the private and public sectors and academia." One may not think this is so bad until the thirty man roster is studied closely.

Rather than take up every single member and publish something that will not be read due to its length, I will mention only a few of the group's members beginning with Paul Volcker, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees. Mr. Volcker is best known probably as the Chairman of the Fed from 1979 to 1987. He is also a former economist and later vice president and director of planning at Chase Manhattan Bank.

Volcker also played a large part in the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in which currency could be exchanged for gold. Not surprising, though is that Mr. Volcker is a member of the CFR and the North American Chairman of the Trilateral Commission (TLC). He is also a long time associate with the Rockefeller family. Currently (and you cannot make this stuff up) Paul ADOLPH Volcker is economic adviser to Barack HUSSEIN Obama. [1] (It should here be noted that some of the information on membership in the CFR and TLC may be outdated as I have found no recent roster. The roster in use is from at least a few years back.)

Another member that should be looked at with skepticism is Jacob Frenkel.

Jacob Frenkel (Chairman, G30) is an Israeli born economist who was formerly the Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He also served for nine years as the governor of the bank of Israel. Perhaps (in light of recent events) the most interesting of Mr. Frenkel's "credentials" is his position at AIG. Yup, the same AIG that got bailed out. Mr Frenkel currently serves as Vice Chairman of AIG and is a member of the CFR. [2]

I think is has become quite obvious that we have conflicts of interests here in great detail. If you care to scan the list of G30 members do some research, you will find that there are a myriad of agendas represented here by all of these "international" insiders all rubbing shoulders with the government and government "entities."

Hopefully a dialogue will emerge about G30 and more able bodied men will take up a critical look at this group and its significance in policy making and legislation.

Perhaps I will later look at a couple more G30 members. For now, I leave you with this.

They Told Us So

. . . but they were wrong.

They told us that this bailout was absolutely necessary to "jump start" the economy. They told us if this bill (H.R. 1424) did not pass then the market will plummet. They told us that this would "save" us.

Of course, many of us still opposed it and petitioned our representatives to vote against this unconstitutional bill.

Two market days later the drop AFTER the passage and signing of said bill is equal to some fear mongers' estimates of what it would do if it was not passed. Approximately 8%.

Now I am sure that things could turn around (for a short time) due to MORE government intervention, but the point is the expediency of this wicked bill.

Perhaps more folks should have been listening to the Austrian economists that were warning us all along of the impending crisis. They are the ones that have spoken the truth in the matter and yet they are still met with great derision.

The Austrian school also told us the bailout will not work because it is the cancerous government intervention that got us here in the first place. They are the ones that told us so.

So why are Americans putting up with this. Hopefully they will not, but my guess is that they will continue to "condone" the treasonous behaviour of their leaders by casting their votes for the same or equally treasonous men in November.

They told us that this would be best for America; a necessary evil, but as Levon Helm said in Shooter, "they also said that artificial sweeteners were safe, WMD's were in Iraq, and Anna Nicole married for love."

Greenspan's Evolution

There was a time in Alan Greenspan's life that he had something right. That was before he got to Washington. It has been years since I read Franklin Sanders (read his story) say something about an early publication by Greenspan about the gold standard.

I finally got to looking for the article in mind. I cannot say that this was what Sanders was referring to, but it is very interesting.

In 1966, Greenspan wrote Gold and Economic Freedom which was published in Ayn Rand's Objectivist. After advocating fractional reserve banking, Greenspan goes on to declare the benefit of the gold standard.

A fully free banking system and fully consistent gold standard have not as yet been achieved. But prior to World War I, the banking system in the United States (and in most of the world) was based on gold and even though governments intervened occasionally, banking was more free than controlled. Periodically, as a result of overly rapid credit expansion, banks became loaned up to the limit of their gold reserves, interest rates rose sharply, new credit was cut off, and the economy went into a sharp, but short-lived recession. (Compared with the depressions of 1920 and 1932, the pre-World War I business declines were mild indeed.) It was limited gold reserves that stopped the unbalanced expansions of business activity, before they could develop into the post-World War I type of disaster. The readjustment periods were short and the economies quickly reestablished a sound basis to resume expansion.

Even more telling was Greenspan's take on the causes of the Great Depression. In essence he blamed it on the Federal Reserve's issuing (read printing) of money.

When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. More disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve's attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise when market forces dictated (it was politically unpalatable). The reasoning of the authorities involved was as follows: if the Federal Reserve pumped excessive paper reserves into American banks, interest rates in the United States would fall to a level comparable with those in Great Britain; this would act to stop Britain's gold loss and avoid the political embarrassment of having to raise interest rates.

The "Fed" succeeded; it stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world, in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market, triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed. Great Britain fared even worse, and rather than absorb the full consequences of her previous folly, she abandoned the gold standard completely in 1931, tearing asunder what remained of the fabric of confidence and inducing a world-wide series of bank failures. The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930's.

According to Greenspan, the gold standard got the bad rap in this particularly from the "welfare statists."
In closing, Greenspan drops the bomb shell considering how he ran the Federal Reserve himself.

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.

This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 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.

This is a short read that everyone should take a look at. Greenspan KNEW what was going on and continued it flagrantly. Remember, he said these things in the 60's then turned around and implemented the exact same policies to the detriment of Americans.

No Vindication For Lincoln

Some will say or do anything to maintain Lincoln's iconic image as the greatest president and emancipator (perhaps even saviour). David Gordon, a senior fellow at the Mises Institute has written a great critique to another secesh detractor. Thomas Krannawitter's book, Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President deserves critique. Gordon points out some of Krannawitters inconsistencies and errors.

Can Krannawitter be ignorant of the fact that Darwin did not discuss human evolution until The Descent of Man in 1871? Perhaps the passage was a trivial slip, that only a reviewer intent on blood would highlight. But several pages later, Krannawitter rides again: "In the antebellum South, religious thought incorporated the ideas of Hegel and Darwin to provide a potent defense of slavery that was well received by many Southern whites."

Gordon goes on to discuss at length Krannawitter's Royalist views. Krannawitter, despite what the real patriots did in the first war for American Independence, believes that a people do not maintain the right of secession. Gordon notes,

However critical of Krannawitter one may be, one must be grateful to him for one admission: "In many ways, Lincoln's legacy hinges on the question of whether states did in fact possess a constitutional right of secession. If they did, then virtually everything Lincoln did as president was illegal at best, immoral at worst. If Lincoln had no legal power and no constitutional duty to maintain the Union against secessionist movements, then Lincoln might well deserve the title "war criminal" … and should be viewed with contempt."

He got that one right, but as has been noted, Krannawitter believes that the Union was perpetual and no right to secede exists. One major problem that some of these folks have is that they cannot explain the anti-Federalists' demand of exact limitations of federal government evidenced particularly in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions penned by Jefferson.

Krannawitter has ignored an important fact that undermines his contention. Precisely in order to rebut the anti-Federalist complaints that the new government unduly subordinated the states, the Federalist defenders of the document in the Virginia Ratification Convention of 1788 were anxious to assure opponents that if the federal government infringed on the prerogatives of the state, the state would not be bound by these actions.

It would be absurd to assert (especially considering the immense amount of evidence to the contrary) that the men who won their battle for independence from an oppressive government would create a new government void of these same philosophy of the "right to alter or abolish."

Buying Toxic Paper With Toxic Paper

Does anyone else find it ironic that this economic mess that has been created by the government and the Fed is going to be fixed by the same guys using the same procedures used to get us here.

Think about it carefully. We all know that our currency is the proverbial emperor's new clothes. It is a "note" that has no real value. It is bad debt, toxic paper if you will.

The Fed and the central government are proposing to "buy up" bad debts using dollars(bad debt). It would seem to be a pretty even trade except that they will place a value on each dollar created (lower of course than the previous value due to monetary inflation) and require us to pay that back somehow. The result is a governmental collection agency subsidized by the taxpayer.

Uncle Sam will give us the responsibility to come up with the shortfall on their bad "bailout" investments directly, while indirectly we will have a much less valuable dollar to use for this shortfall. Pretty soon $700 billion becomes $7 trillion.

Representing WHO?!

Earlier this week many rejoiced (myself included) that Congress voted against the Senate’s Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. Congressional phone lines and inboxes were jammed by folks opposing this bill.

The bill, after all, has a plethora of problems beginning with it being unconstitutional. Many economists have also come forward opining that it cannot work. Taxpayers realize that they are going to foot the bill and are aware of the impending inflation that will most definitely be a result of printing so many greenbacks; a proven result from former years of monetary injections and corporate bailouts.

One might think that if a bill were proposed in Congress that was unconstitutional and an overwhelming majority of a state’s citizens were so opposed to it, that the Congressmen might be inclined to represent the people and uphold his or her oath of office.

Not so with John Tanner (8th District TN). No, Congressman Tanner seems to either think he knows what is best despite the aforementioned economists’ statements or he does not care what the Constitution or his individual constituents say, but rather helps those (corporations and central government) that will “help” him.

Constitution be damned, citizens be damned. He’ll do what he wants to. The same can be said of Tennessee’s Senators also.

Now before anyone accuses the me of being partisan since tanner is a Democrat, let it be said that this bill was pushed hard by a Republican administration hoping to be seen as a messiah just before the November elections. Not that the sister party does not intend the same thing.

The optimism faded Friday, October 3, when Congress passed this bill and King George signed it into “law.” What could have been different about this bill that would win over the key Republican and Democratic votes pray tell?

Apparently DC has an insatiable appetite for pork. Presto! The bill passes. With the amount of riders inserted into this bill, one may never know exactly what swayed these dignified [satire] representatives. Could it be the “increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands” or possibly the “seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility." It could even be the “tax incentives for investment in the District of Columbia."

To this last option a fellow may posit that he has already invested more than he would like in the District of Corruption and seen no gains. Would a nation continue to put these same men in public office or would they desire better? I hope the latter.

My Letter After The Bailout Vote

Congressman Tanner,

I have just finished checking the roll call vote for H.R. 1424 and I am sorely displeased with your flagrant disregard to the Constitution and to your constituents; the citizens of Tennessee.

You, sir, are a traitor to this state and I hope to see your exit from Congress very soon. You have done your part to sell your constituents into financial bondage more so than we already were. The damage that this bill will do to us and to our posterity is reprehensible.

I look forward to the day when a truly great man will take your place.

Damon Crowe
Cottage Grove, TN

Yankee Welfare and Other Musings.

Here is another commentary by Mr. Bill Barr on some of the current events. Do notice the Yankee heating oil subsidy. It still baffles me that the South would like to leave such a wonderful compulsory union (satire).
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How does the establishment work in this country?

At the moment of truth, it all lies revealed.

It works through getting as many celebs as possible to scream something as loud as possible. And what do they scream?

"We have got to take money from people who made good investments and give it to people who made bad investments!"

Does anyone think this is still the country of the Founding Fathers? Hey, it's far from being the England of George III.

Congress no longer debates the long-term interests of the country, nor can it be any longer accounted as the national saucer, effectively cooling passions so that timely matters might be dispassionately addressed with all deliberate speed.

That's what U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) stated in his speech in the Senate on September 27. He counseled adherence to the U.S. Constitution in the expenditure of public funds, and cautioned against the grave threat in handing carte blanche to the Federal Reserve or any other body when it comes to the arbitrary dispensing of the taxpayer's money. That's a significant element in the great cause celeb of the week, the purchasing of toxic mortgages, products of predatory borrowing and lending alike.

Sessions smells a rat at the proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. He questions the timing of such a putatively essential measure, coming as it does at the end of the legislative session.

From the same speech, I particularly liked Session's attack on the $2.8 billion subsidy of heating oil for the residents of northeastern states, an extra subsidy sought as an emergency measure. Sessions wants to know why the taxpayers should be saddled with providing Yankees with cheap fuel, and how do congressional supporters of this measure square it with their solemn commitments to paring back federal spending?

Moreover, Congress has gone nothing short of "hog wild" in the subsidy of the automotive industry, Sessions stated.

He was joined by his colleague, U.S. Senator Jon Kyl (R-Az), in opposing a giveaway to the automotive manufacturers of effectively $25 billion, a federal loan involving neither payments on interest or principal for five years. Kyl admits that one automotive bailout may well lead to another one in 2013, when the car companies sit on their hands and refuse to repay one thin dime.

Kyl joined Sessions in opposition to the regional heating oil scam as well. Kyl regards it, and the automotive bailout, as measures reeking of the hubris of "one last orgy of earmarks".

Would that they were the last earmarks.

--William Barr (Katy, Texas) wbarrparis@aol.com
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Thanks again, Mr. Barr.

The New Standing Army

If the Framers could only see us now!

Beginning today, October 1, our military "might" will be assigned to the most dangerous part of the world. Yep, that's right. Good ol' America.

U.S. Northern Command has put together a dedicated force of military troops to support local authorities in case of attack, accident, or natural disaster.

As Chuck Baldwin put it, though,

If Hurricane Katrina is the template that our federal government is using as a model for future events, Heaven help us! Do readers remember how National Guard troops were used to confiscate the personal firearms of isolated and vulnerable civilians shortly after that hurricane devastated the New Orleans area? Do you remember how representatives of the federal government were calling upon pastors and ministers to act as spokesmen for gun confiscation?

Is this what the new Army brigade is preparing for? And do President Bush and his military planners envision an even broader role for military troops on American soil?

One may find NorthCom's objective interestingly "honest."

The stated reason for its existence is "protecting our people, national power, and freedom of action."

Some read this as the federal government protecting THEIR people, expanding THEIR national power, and insuring freedom of THEIR actions despite Constitutional restraints.