The TRUTH about Excelsior…on Amazon

My brother Greg published a book about three years ago.  I don’t think of myself as particularly competitive, but doggone it, I couldn’t let him beat me!  So I wrote one too.

He also has a website for both his book, and a bunch of stories from my mom (she wrote and illustrated some hilarious stuff).

…Anyway, The Truth about Excelsior is now available in paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0849X45LQ?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860.

I don’t like the way it looks as an eBook, but I’ll likely publish that, too, in a couple of weeks or so.  It’ll be cheaper, of course.

But since some stuff gets lost in the eBook version, I’m resisting it as long as I can.

The blurb is, “Far more than the usual fanciful tale of precocious children, fire-breathing dragons, disastrous monetary policy and World War, “The Truth about Excelsior” offers a unique perspective on today’s cultural madness, and a glimpse into a world of peace, prosperity and …freedom.”

I mean it to be fun, but you know me…I had to insert some serious stuff in there, too.

Anyway, let me know what you think of it…and if you like it, tell everybody, and leave a review!

Just Say No to war with Iran

Freedom, IN – It’s a quote attributed to pretty much everybody, that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” The saying is more true and applicable to USA foreign policy than to anything else.

None of our foreign aggressions worked as promised, or even as we’ve been told. Yet we’ve had scarcely a year’s peace since the War to End All War.

And we’ve been getting worse, not better, at finagling foreigners into serving us and our Saudi allies. Does anyone doubt that our interventions in Libya and Syria have been disastrous? Have we really fixed anything in Somalia, Yemen or Pakistan? When will we be done with Iraq? Afghanistan is the USA’s longest war, ever…and we’re losing. What’s the plan? What’s the goal?

We’re sure not fighting for freedom.  Not anybody’s freedom.  And we’re sure not making friends when we blow up their children.

A leaked May 17 memo reveals that the USA government once again intends to replay the same failed script; this time against Iran (again).

The key directive sent to Rex Tillerson is “…that the U.S. should use human rights as a club against its adversaries, like Iran, China and North Korea, while giving a pass to repressive allies like the Philippines, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.”

Let’s think like a human, and not a politician, for a moment.

What actual human beings on the planet would not hate us for our arrogant, armed and deadly games and manipulations? Why wouldn’t we be creating more enemies than friends with such obvious duplicity? Does anybody on this planet think they’re the ones who’re wrong, and deserve death?

Is the Golden Rule really so bad?

I’m no pacifist. I believe in security through strength. And I understand the theory of “Humanitarian Intervention” (though that’s been irrelevant lately, and it certainly doesn’t work in practice!).

But we’re acting like stupid teenage “swatting” and “knockout game” thugs; not at all like rational adult humans. We’re acting as though we can use killing force against others with impunity, when in fact, we’ve been hurting ourselves as much as anybody else.

This is insanity. We’ve got seven “whack-a-mole” wars going on now, and we’re losing our wealth, security, and of course, freedom as a very direct result.

Our armies are protecting the petrodollar and drug trade, not anything We The People should value.  Not freedom; not for anybody.

And we’ve for some time been lobbing missiles and troops and drones at people and nations who, really, are no threat to us.  What will we do when China decides to take Taiwan?  That’s been slowly brewing since 1949, and heating up fast since 2012 and the dictatorship of Xi Jinping made plain that China was already waging war against us and buying up haf the world with our consumer’s money and our governments’ cooperation.  What will we do when Russia decides to take Ukraine?  That’s been Russia’s plan since our broken promises to stop expanding NATO onto Russia’s doorstep in 1994, then accelerating since at least 2013, and certainly since 2014 when Ukraine, spurred on by the USA, pushed for NATO membership, Russia annexed Crimea and began campaigns of hacking, subversion and propaganda.  How long can we be party to the corruption that’s kept Ukraine out of NATO up to now, without some response from Putin, who we know wants the old USSR back?  Not very long, I suspect.

Will we fight people who can fight back?  Could we afford to?

I propose we just say stop the madness, and give Peace, Prosperity, Security and Freedom a chance.

Liberty or Bust!

Andy Horning

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Money, Politics, and Central Banks

Politicians have robbed us for generations

Freedom, IN – I have proposed a three-step plan to fix most of our worst problems by federal legislation.  In many previous releases I detailed plans for fixing the corruption we call “the Two Party System.” That was Step #1.

Step #2 is to fix our inherently inflationary twisted-hybrid political/private crony financial system.

Money itself, as a fiduciary currency/unit of trade, can be a wonderful thing.  When scrupulously maintained as trustworthy, it facilitates honest trade, and practically guarantees peace.

Unfortunately, we’ve not had such money since 1913, though it’s still required by our state and federal constitutions.

Why?  Because the most effective way to hide the true costs of war, tax the public without their knowledge, enrich elites, and covertly monetize the massive debts incurred by impossible political promises and a military empire and industry, is to replace naturally limited money with monopolized fiat currency*, and then devalue it by making gobs of it…

And making gobs of increasingly valueless “money” is literally what inflation is.  The price of everything goes up when the value of money goes down.  And we’re headed for catastrophic hockey-stick-graph inflation very soon.  I don’t know when.  But we’ve let this corrupt, expand and fester long enough that I’m afraid it is now inevitable.

There’s a long, repetitious history of this.  In every case, from ancient Egypt to today’s Venezuela, devaluing currency represents a slide to catastrophe.

In theory, fiat currency could work fine.  But every case involving humans, the short-term political gain of devaluation outweighs the catastrophic long term costs to the society.

There are no exceptions; “fiat currency” always fails.  And it’s always by the same stupid pattern.

Politicians spend money they expect future generations to pay, so they have to find a way to devalue/inflate the supply of currency, and then point fingers of blame everywhere but at themselves when it all collapses.

The United States of America has occupied the catbird seat of fiat currencies since WWII, when our lend/lease arms trading sucked up 2/3rds of the global reserve currency, and almost 3/4 of the monetary gold.  We immediately started spending down on that when we joined the war, and through subsequent never-ending consequences of the world wars.  We spent all that gold long ago, and between the end of the Breton-Woods Agreement in ’71 and the petrodollar scheme in ’72/’73, we found a new way to further devalue what had become truly fiat currency.

But that is ending shortly, as our dollar is based purely on trust, and violence.  The world is both losing trust in us, and sick of our endless Petrodollar Wars.  We have been deceived right up to the brink of collapse, and we’re past due for some radical action.

So:

1. Audit the Fed.*  We are past-broke, and it’s time to go through an orderly and just restructuring of debts, nullifications, and dismantlings.
2. Replace the current Federal Reserve System with a truly private banking system that is not only subject to audits, reporting and SOP as with other incorporated institutions, but also has NO power to monetize political debts or create currency.
3. All money/currency authority and accountability shall be in the US Congress as per Article I Section 8:5 of the Constitution for the United States of America, so that politicians will be held accountable for greed, shortsightedness, and trans-generational theft.
4. However, people must be free to use whatever form of money or currency suits their needs.  “Cryptocurrency” (which is really a form of market fiat currency that I’m seeing as an eventual problem in itself), foreign coins, even conch shells or knotted strings are not the government’s business.  Our government’s only legitimate role in interpersonal transactions is when there is force or fraud involved.

In other words, I propose we stop lying, stealing, making promises we can’t keep, and clean our accounts for the promotion of peace, prosperity, security …and freedom.

Liberty or Bust!

Andrew Horning

*One could debate the meaning of the words and concepts “money” and “currency” forever.  But for the purposes here, currency is an “official” (mandated or agreed upon) trade instrument that has no intrinsic value.  Money is a pretty abstract concept, since value is still applied by humans, but it’s generally a scarce/limited/difficult-to-reproduce thing that therefore has by itself been granted some relative value (gold, silver, rare shells, libertarians).

*The Fed gets “audited” already, but only with many glaring exclusions and only by internal government and Fed processes.  You can look up the details.  But pretty much everything significant (like actions with foreign governments and international banking groups, internal communications and discount window operations, and monetary policy itself) is excluded from GAO audits, and all “independent” auditors are hired by…(wait for it)…the Fed’s Board of Governors.

Let’s Clean Up our Mess

In an OP-ED for Indiana Policy Review I lay out the steps to clean up our mess:

1. End the duopoly.
2. Drive away the moneychangers.
3. Stand down the Empire.

Nearly all of what we call “issues” — the unraveling economy, a ridiculous healthcare system, rising prices, even militarized police and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — are just symptoms and side effects of a much worse problem.

It makes all our talk of ideology, libertarian versus authoritarian, or even “left” versus “right,” whatever those mean anymore, not just irrelevant but a costly distraction. The problem is corruption; we have a crony-network-crime-ring running the nation and much of the world. Here is what can be done about it in three steps:

First, take away the unconstitutional special powers and immunities seized by the private clubs called the Democratic and Republican parties. We shouldn’t have parties at all, really. Equality under law is fundamental justice, and mandated by Indiana Constitution’s Article I, Section 23. So let’s defrock these charlatans and thieves. Let independents and third parties have equal rights to election-related commissions and ballots. End primary elections, which implicitly provide more money, public attention, free advertising and media promotion to only Democrats and Republicans at the actual expense of all alternatives. End the special powers and immunities of precinct committeemen, which only Democratic and Republican parties are allowed. In case you think that having written special powers and privileges into Indiana Code make the self-appointed “major” political parties legit, Indiana Constitution’s Article I, Section 25 makes it clear that legislation cannot transgress the constitution. Read it; much like the U.S. Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, it’s the single most important sentence in Indiana Law.

This first step must be taken by voters, of course.  Current officeholders will not voluntarily step away from power – you must fire them.  Then we can move to step #2 after you hire people who actually want to move forward.

Second, kill central banking as it currently exists. Yes, audit the Federal Reserve Bank system, repudiate unconstitutional/illegal debts and otherwise clean up the mess. Andrew Jackson was right —  moneychangers are inherently “…a den of vipers and thieves…” and we must rout them out.  But moneychangers, as opposed to mere bankers, are never free-market enterprises; they require political authority to become monopolistic.  And our “Fed” was required long ago to primarily fund our government…not serve the needs of business.  Sound money is critical to freedom, so ending the accounting tricks and thieving traps of political/private hybrid central banks is the single most important step. That’s why it’s constitutionally mandated by the Indiana Constitution’s Article 11 Sections 3 and 7, as well as the U.S. Constitution’s Article I, Section 8:5, and Article I Section 10. But it’s highly unlikely we’ll be able to address the bankers until we take away their two-party puppet show diversions. Look at the campaign donations from the financial sector and you’ll see why this is step two.

Third, stand down the Empire. Our fear-aggression syndrome isn’t just costly and destructive, it makes us less secure, less prosperous, and certainly less free. Not only have all our wars since WWII been unconstitutional but the actual design of our military has been unconstitutional since 1903 by the federal constitution’s Article I Sections 8 and 10, Article II Section 2, the Second and Fifth Amendments, as well as Indiana’s Article 2 Section 9, and Article 12 (the whole thing). This also should be done immediately, but it’s unlikely that most people will see just how bad it has become (and how right Dwight Eisenhower was about it) until we unmask this monster by taking away that crony-network-crime-ring. Also, look at the campaign donations from the military-industrialist sector. Look at how no state of sustained warfare can exist without debt-based fiat currency. You’ll see why this is step three.

Joe Biden, proving that even a broken clock is right twice a day, said: “Fighting corruption is not just good governance. It’s self-defense. It’s patriotism.” Very well, let’s make 2016 the year we do that right.