Friday, April 01, 2005

I just added John Wayne's Holster to my blogroll.

His latest post, Corporations are Destroying America!, would be enough to get me to do that, but I happened to notice a familiar name lurking in his links.

Here's his quick summary of what ails freedom and the free market in America:
1. Agricultural subsidies. These subsidies were designed to help the farmer, but in fact, about 90% of the money goes to the biggest agricultural corporations. Under this system, small farmers can not compete. In effect, they are being forced to surrender their tax dollars to fund a system whose end goal is to put them out of business.

2. Corporate bailouts. When large corporations are in danger of failure, due to mismangement , market saturation or whatever, the government steps in, with our tax dollars, to bail them out. The Chysler bailout, the S&L bailouts and the recent bailout of the airlines are examples.

3. Federal Reserve System. This is the grand daddy of them all. Contrary to popular belief, the Fed is not a government agency, but rather a partnership between the government and a cartel of private banks. Member banks are required to hold shares of stock in the Fed. Like all business ventures, the Fed answers to its stockholders, not the public. The Fed issues money (from nothing) and sets the rate of interest. The Fed then loans the money to the government. The government pays the interest on the loans with tax dollars collected from the public. The banks make billions and the government gets deeper and deeper in debt.

I think he's right.