America treats it’s citizens as cash-cows and the teats are drying up.

The writings of John Whitehead are all quite good. He voices the American anguish and feelings of helplessness of us serfs working for the American military oligarchy. And people! You cannot vote your way out of this situation. You have to fight your way out. There are no other remaining options.

In this article he ties the personal finances and budget of a typical American to the actions of our “elected” officials. It’s a good read, not that he says anything that we are not aware of, but that he gives voice to the impossibility and unsustainability of the situation.

The article is titled “The Looming Financial Nightmare: So Much for Living the American Dream” and it was published on February 26, 2020 by John Whitehead the President at The Rutherford Institute. Please give him every credit for this article. I edited it to fit this venue, but aside from that, pretty much left everything else pristine.

The Looming Financial Nightmare: So Much for Living the American Dream

“When  plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the  course of time they create for themselves a legal system that  authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” 

― Frédéric Bastiat,  French economist

Let’s talk numbers, shall we?

The National Debt

The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) is $23 trillion and growing.

The amount this country owes is now greater than its gross national product (all the products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the citizens). We’re paying more than $270 billion just in interest on that public debt annually. And the top two foreign countries who “own” our debt are China and Japan.

The National Deficit

The national deficit (the difference between what the government spends and the revenue it takes in) is projected to surpass $1 trillion every year for the next 10 years.

American Foreign Aid

The United States spends more on foreign aid than any other nation ($50 billion in 2017 alone). More than 150 countries around the world receive U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance, with most of the funds going to the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

American family budgets

Meanwhile, almost 60% of Americans are so financially strapped that they don’t have even $500 in savings and nothing whatsoever put away for retirement, and yet they are being forced to pay for government programs that do little to enhance or advance their lives.

No American Dream

Folks, if you haven’t figured it out yet, we’re not living the American dream.

We’re living a financial nightmare.

The U.S. government—and that includes the current administration—is spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford, and “we the taxpayers” are the ones who will pay for it.

Alarm Bells are Screeching!

As financial analyst Kristin Tate explains, “When the government has its debt bill come due, all of us will be on the hook.” It’s happened before: during the European debt crisis, Cypress seized private funds from its citizens’ bank accounts to cover its debts, with those who had been careful to save their pennies forced to relinquish between 40% to 60% of their assets.

Could this happen here?

Could it happen here? Could the government actually seize private funds for its own gain?

Look around you. It’s already happening.

In the eyes of the government, “we the people, the voters, the consumers, and the taxpayers” are little more than pocketbooks waiting to be picked.

Consider: The government can seize your home and your car (which you’ve bought and paid for) over nonpayment of taxes. Government agents can freeze and seize your bank accounts and other valuables if they merely “suspect” wrongdoing. And the IRS insists on getting the first cut of your salary to pay for government programs over which you have no say.

America is NOT a Democracy.

We have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used, but we’re being forced to pay through the nose, anyhow.

We have no real say, but that doesn’t prevent the government from fleecing us at every turn and forcing us to pay for endless wars that do more to fund the military industrial complex than protect us, pork barrel projects that produce little to nothing, and a police state that serves only to imprison us within its walls.

If you have no choice, no voice, and no real options when it comes to the government’s claims on your property and your money, you’re not free.

Some History…

It wasn’t always this way, of course.

Early Americans went to war over the inalienable rights described by philosopher John Locke as the natural rights of life, liberty and property.

It didn’t take long, however—a hundred years, in fact—before the American government was laying claim to the citizenry’s property by levying taxes to pay for the Civil War. As the New York Times reports, “Widespread resistance led to its repeal in 1872.”

Determined to claim some of the citizenry’s wealth for its own uses, the government reinstituted the income tax in 1894. Charles Pollock challenged the tax as unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor. Pollock’s victory was relatively short-lived. Members of Congress—united in their determination to tax the American people’s income—worked together to adopt a constitutional amendment to overrule the Pollock decision.

On the eve of World War I, in 1913, Congress instituted a permanent income tax by way of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution and the Revenue Act of 1913. Under the Revenue Act, individuals with income exceeding $3,000 could be taxed starting at 1% up to 7% for incomes exceeding $500,000.

It’s all gone downhill from there.

Government took and repurposed the tax monies…

Unsurprisingly, the government has used its tax powers to advance its own imperialistic agendas and the courts have repeatedly upheld the government’s power to penalize or jail those who refused to pay their taxes.

You cannot fight the beast alone…

Irwin A. Schiff was one of the nation’s most vocal tax protesters. He spent a good portion of his life arguing that the income tax was unconstitutional, and he put his wallet where his conscience was: Schiff stopped paying federal taxes in 1974.

Schiff paid the price for his resistance, too: he served three separate prison terms (more than 10 years in all) over his refusal to pay taxes. He died at the age of 87 serving a 14-year prison term. As constitutional activist Robert L. Schulz noted in Schiff’s obituary,

“In a society where there is so much fear of government, and in  particular of the I.R.S., [Schiff] was probably the most influential  educator regarding the illegal and unconstitutional operation and  enforcement of the Internal Revenue Code. It’s very hard to speak to  power, but he did, and he paid a very heavy price.”

It’s still hard to speak to power, and those who do are still paying a very heavy price.

Out of Control…

All the while the government continues to do whatever it likes—levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly—with little thought for the plight of its citizens.

To top it all off, all of those wars the U.S. is so eager to fight abroad are being waged with borrowed funds. As The Atlantic reports,

For 15 years now, the United States has been putting these wars on a credit card…  U.S. leaders are essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the  form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like  pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like  China and Japan.”

If Americans managed their personal finances the way the government mismanages the nation’s finances, we’d all be in debtors’ prison by now.

Still, the government remains unrepentant, unfazed and undeterred in its money grabs.

Santa Claus America.

While we’re struggling to get by, and making tough decisions about how to spend what little money actually makes it into our pockets after the federal, state and local governments take their share (this doesn’t include the stealth taxes imposed through tolls, fines and other fiscal penalties), the police state is spending our hard-earned tax dollars to further entrench its powers and entrap its citizens.

For instance, American taxpayers have been forced to shell out more than $5.6 trillion since 9/11 for the military industrial complex’s costly, endless so-called “war on terrorism.”

That translates to roughly $23,000 per taxpayer to wage wars abroad, occupy foreign countries, provide financial aid to foreign allies, and fill the pockets of defense contractors and grease the hands of corrupt foreign dignitaries.

Mind you, that staggering $6 trillion is only a portion of what the Pentagon spends on America’s military empire.

That price tag keeps growing, too.

In this way, the military industrial complex will get even richer, and the American taxpayer will be forced to shell out even more funds for programs that do little to enhance our lives, ensure our happiness and well-being, or secure our freedoms.

As Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in a 1953 speech:

Every  gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies,  in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,  those who are cold and are not clothed. 

This world in arms is not  spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the  genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. 

The cost of one  modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30  cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000  population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty  miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a  half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new  homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. 

This is, I repeat,  the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. […] Is there no other way the world may live?

This is still no way of life.

Yet it’s not just the government’s endless wars that are bleeding us dry.

Wars at home too…

We’re also being forced to shell out money for surveillance systems to track our movements, money to further militarize our already militarized police, money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts, money to fund schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply, and on and on.

Are you getting the picture yet?

We are cash-cows.

The government isn’t taking our money to make our lives better. Just take a look at the nation’s failing infrastructure, and you’ll see how little is being spent on programs that advance the common good.

We’re being robbed blind so the governmental elite can get richer.

This is nothing less than financial tyranny.

“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.

It’s tempting to say that there’s little we can do about it, except that’s not quite accurate.

What we can do…

There are a few things we can do (demand transparency, reject cronyism and graft, insist on fair pricing and honest accounting methods, call a halt to incentive-driven government programs that prioritize profits over people), but it will require that “we the people” stop playing politics and stand united against the politicians and corporate interests who have turned our government and economy into a pay-to-play exercise in fascism.

We’ve become so invested in identity politics that label us based on our political leanings that we’ve lost sight of the one label that unites us: we’re all Americans.

The powers-that-be want to pit us against one another. They want us to adopt an “us versus them” mindset that keeps us powerless and divided.

Trust me, the only “us versus them” that matters anymore is “we the people” against the police state.

We’re all in the same boat, folks, and there’s only one real life preserver: that’s the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The Constitution starts with those three powerful words: “We the people.”

The message is this: there is power in our numbers.

That remains our greatest strength in the face of a governmental elite that continues to ride roughshod over the populace. It remains our greatest defense against a government that has claimed for itself unlimited power over the purse (taxpayer funds) and the sword (military might).

This holds true whether you’re talking about health care, war spending, or the American police state.

And a final comment from John…

While we’re on the subject, do me a favor and don’t let yourself be fooled into believing that the next crop of political saviors will be any different from their predecessors. They all talk big when they’re running for office, and when they get elected, they spend big at our expense.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is how the middle classes, who fuel the nation’s economy and fund the government’s programs, get screwed repeatedly.

George Harrison, who would have been 77 this year, summed up this outrageous state of affairs in his song Taxman:

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.
Don’t ask me what I want it for
If you don’t want to pay some more
Cause I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman
Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
Cause I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman
And you’re working for no one but me.

Source: https://bit.ly/2PpPFOk
John Whitehead bio.

My Conclusions

Pretty brilliant eh?

Well… he’s right that we can do what he suggests…

  • Demand transparency
  • Reject cronyism and graft
  • Insist on fair pricing
  • Insist on honest accounting methods
  • Call a halt to incentive-driven government programs
  • And stop playing politics

And how are we going to do that? Vote for an elected official to represent our needs? Are we going to start a “movement” like the BLM, the “Tea Party”, Antifa, or “Put America First”? Is that how it’s going to work?

No one is talking about the REAL changes that needs to be made. Like gutting all amendments since 1789, or giving States back their individual power, or tossing the 16th amendment into the dustbin of history. It's all just cosmetic changes...

... a wall here.  More "rights" there...

The moment any individual or group of people becomes successful at taking any quantitative action, the DHS will put us on a “watch list” and we…

… will get shot dead by SWAT that raids our homes later in the dead of night (Stalin and Hitler style).

So what is it, then?

  • Shot dead in the dead of night by SWAT by trying to peacefully upend a corrupt system…

or…

  • Shot dead when you try to forcefully remove those rascals from Washington?

Not much of a choice, I am afraid.

For those puzzled by the appeal of Sanders, there’s your answer.  American politics is controlled by an elite that keeps one large swath  of voters in one party and another large swath in another party, then  makes them fight one another. In 2016, the voters in one camp revolted  against their camp guards. In 2020, the other camp is staging a revolt.  In both cases, it is a revolt against legacy code that appears to be  beyond reform. We are living in legacy code that must be replaced, if it  cannot be patched. 

-Z Man

The ONLY option remaining to make the necessary fundamental changes involve armed conflict. And soon… very soon you all will be disarmed and that option will no longer be available to you.


I hope that you enjoyed John’s commentary on life in America today. I have other posts in my SHTF index here…

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Why America is unable to shake off the grip of the oligarchy that controls it, a great video that explains it all.

Now that President Trump has released almost all of the documentation related to the President Kennedy murder, a full picture surfaces. It’s an ugly one, indeed. We now know in full detail how the President was assassinated, who the people were who participated in it, who covered it up, and the motivations behind it. It’s very interesting, but a very long study because it touches on a number of principles that Americans are uncomfortable with…

  • The wealthy guard their money and power ruthlessly.
  • They have complete control of the American media.
  • They have complete control of the American police.
  • They have complete control of the American military.
  • They treat Americans as farm animals (cash cows).
  • They kill anyone that stands in their way.

The following video is a long one, but is very complete. Watch it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYyw8mDDqPE&feature=youtu.be

We can now see the entire state of affairs about what our nation is, what is actually stands for and how it actually operates. So when I speak about the “oligarchy”, it should be taken to mean…

Oligarchy = Secret American Government

And, as such… it has affected everything. From technology acquisition (MAJestic), to geopolitical interactions, to society. Our world, our nation, the life that we live is what has been created for us by this oligarchy.

Yupper.

Let that sink in.

There will be a reset of sorts within America, but how it will “play out” and evolve is anyone’s guess. What you can expect is that the oligarchy will not relinquish their control or power easily. That a return to a more democratic representative, or republican form of government is impossible without serious conflict. And, that there will be a period of discomfort during this adjustment period.

I do NOT know how it will evolve. Certainly there are both human and “other” elements that favor the status quo, and they will permit an enormous amount of strife, as long as they can control it’s outcome and utility.

Those that control the United States are far too powerful, too dangerous, and too ruthless for removal. As such, the individual must plan accordingly.


If you enjoyed this post, I have others that can be found in various links such as this…

SHTF Articles

Articles & Links

You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.

  • You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
  • You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
  • You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
  • You can find out more about the author HERE.
  • If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
  • If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.