NC Renegades

The current chaos in Kiev makes it for the IMF extremely hard to keep Ukraine funded. Brazil’s IMF Director already in 2014 urged not to bend rules for Ukraine. Ukraine had failed the IMF twice before. There is now a sense of panic in Kiev, and so Ukraine leaders start to issue opposite orders. The Central Bank Governor’s ban on money exchange was repealed immediately by Yatsenyuk.

The situation of the population deteriorates rapidly as Ukraine’s currency devalues fast and bond yields spike. Companies start to understand that direct investment can disappear overnight as raided foreign companies are forced to leave the country. Protesters take over Hotels in Kyiv and return to Maidan to demand the resignation of the Ukraine rulers who came to power with the support of Washington and Brussels. Yatsenyuk now becomes a liability for its partner NATO.

It is a just matter of time before the Ukraine nationalistic militias will take power, resulting in a definite split of the country. Poroshenko can postpone the people final verdict by reviving the war in the east, but in the end, he can not escape the day of reconning.

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This is how our country looks like to the rest of the world.

David DeGerolamo

LTC Robert Bateman presumes to lecture us on the militia and the Constitution, choosing Esquire Magazine as his forum so that, near as I can figure, we can also educate ourselves on the latest fashion tips for men, join in “progressive” attacks on conservatives, and catch up on all-important information about pop star Prince and his surprise concert tour. Bateman’s bottom line: The militia is what the government says it is, and if you join with others to defend against criminal acts of usurpation committed against you by those with government titles, you’re committing treason.

Bateman, some may recall, first came to the attention of many gun rights advocates with a 2013 Esquire piece declaring “It’s Time We Talk about Guns.” Understanding that piece helps us see what he’s up to in his latest screed.

He not only took SCOTUS and Justice Antonin Scalia to task for their Heller decision interpretation of the Second Amendment, but went on to propose citizen disarmament edicts that dispense with false assurances given by some in the gun ban camp that nobody wants to take our guns away.

Bateman does, big time, and makes no bones about it. In a way, he’s done us a service by giving a glimpse of the end game less candid incrementalists are sneaking toward.

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by Robert Gore

The populist revolt fueling non-mainstream political movements in both Europe and the US flows from a single source: you can not fool all the people all the time. The central lie of our time is that governments can and should forcibly assume control of individuals’ lives, in the name of vague and always shifting greater goods. The Command and Control Futility Principle holds that governments and central banks can control one, but not all variables in a multi-variable system. The number of variables global governments and central banks have arrogated to their purported control has grown beyond measure. Breakdowns are visible everywhere, and as those failures exact their ever-increasing toll on the masses, the masses are pushing back.

The last financial crisis was a watershed. Capitalism’s rough justice was obviously, and gallingly, not allowed to play out. Favored financial institutions didn’t face the consequences—insolvency and bankruptcy—of their promotion of various bubbles and their leveraged business models. They were bailed out with taxpayer funds. Especially galling was that they knew they were going to be bailed out. More salt on the wound: improvident homeowners and housing speculators who took on too much mortgage debt were, other than a few spotty government programs, not bailed out or even offered appreciable relief. Since the crisis passed, banks have operated on the assumption they will be bailed out again during the next crisis. Despite all the hype about improved capital ratios and cleaned up loan books, fractional reserve banking is still fractional reserve banking; a leveraged business model that is wiped out if enough loans and speculations go bad.

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Back in August 2012, when negative interest rates were still merely viewed as sheer monetary lunacy instead of pervasive global monetary reality that has pushed over $6 trillion in global bonds into negative yield territory, the NY Fed mused hypothetically about negative rates and wrote “Be Careful What You Wish For” saying that “if rates go negative, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing will likely be called upon to print a lot more currency as individuals and small businesses substitute cash for at least some of their bank balances.”

Well, maybe not… especially if physical currency is gradually phased out in favor of some digital currency “equivalent” as so many “erudite economists” and corporate media have suggested recently, for the simple reason that in a world of negative rates, physical currency – just like physical gold – provides a convenient loophole to the financial repression of keeping one’s savings in digital form in a bank where said savings are taxed at -0.1%, or -1% or -10% or more per year by a central bank and government both hoping to force consumers to spend instead of save.

For now cash is still legal, and NIRP – while a reality for the banks – has yet to be fully passed on to depositors.

The bigger problem is that in all countries that have launched NIRP, instead of forcing spending precisely the opposite has happened: as we showed last October, when Bank of America looked at savings patterns in European nations with NIRP, instead of facilitating spending, what has happened is precisely the opposite: “as the BIS have highlighted, ultra-low rates may perversely be driving a greater propensity for consumers to save as retirement income becomes more uncertain.”

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A reader recently requested I elaborate on the comms equipment battery charging system I carry in my Ruck.

First let me say that the setup I use is not what I would prefer but it works. I would prefer an ultra light weight system that I could attach directly to my Elecraft KX3 and charge the batteries using its built-in battery charger. The radio’s built in charger requires 13.8 volts dc but I haven’t found a pack-able panel that supplies that voltage. Most backpack/camping panels supply 5 vdc. That would require 3 sets of panels connected in series to get the necessary voltage. So, what I’ve had to resort to is removing the batteries from whatever radio I’m using, and charging the batteries in a charger that’s connected to the solar panels.

My current setup consists of the XTAR VC4 Charger and the Renogy Solar 14 watt E-Flex Solar Power Panel with dual USB ports.

I chose the XTAR based on its light weight and size, its ability to recognize and charge 4 different batteries at once and charge a wide range of Li-ion, Ni-MH and Ni-Cd batteries, plus pretty good Amazon reviews. So far its performance has been good. On the downside, its not waterproof,  but then I haven’t found one in its class that is. And while it’s not fragile, it’s not private-proof and should be packed in your ruck accordingly. Last but not least, you have to use the XTAR provided USB to charger cable. Why they didn’t design it to accept a common double sided USB cable or micro to USB cable is beyond me. So until I can find a spare or make my own, I have 1 cable and no spare. That makes it a critical failure point. The old “2 is 1 and 1 is none….”.

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The surprise of the 2016 primary election cycle isn’t that a serial liar may be replaced in the White House by a serial liar who sits down to pee, but that America is on the verge of reaping what we have sown with our political correctness.

When kids play a Little League sport, everyone gets an award or trophy for merely participating. The practice of giving individual awards for athletic achievement and team awards for winning is a thing of the past for the most part. We certainly wouldn’t want little Johnny to feel that he needed to practice more in order to be a better player!

Some schools have suspended valedictorian and salutatorian awards because they don’t want to injure the sentimentalities of those who achieve less academically. At Arlington, Virginia Washington-Lee High School this year, there were 117 valedictorians out of a class of 457. At Long Beach Polytechnic in California, there were 30. And at some schools – including North Hills High outside of Pittsburgh and high schools in Miami – there were none. Why distinguish between the smart and no so smart?!

The federal tax laws allow individuals, typically single mothers, to receive a “tax credit” even though they had no earned income during that tax year. In other words, an individual can receive Section 8 housing, SNAP food stamps, welfare payments, and never work a day and still receive money from the government for having, typically, illegitimate children.

We have reached a point in our society where mediocracy, in many cases, is more recognized and rewarded than excellence. Young people today in many cases have no sense of personal responsibility. One family I know refused to allow their teenage children to work to have their own spending money or help with future college costs. But their children were encouraged to play some type of sport every month of the year. And what was the result? The oldest child, who is highly intelligent and did well in high school flunked out of college because he would rather play than study. And there was no real penalty for his childish behavior—he still lives at home with mommy and daddy, who are feeding him and washing his undies. This story can be repeated in literally thousands of homes across America. Thousands of grown offspring are still living at home – some because they can’t find employment which provides a living wage – and some because they just weren’t taught to accept responsibility.

Enter Bernie Sanders who is staying viable in the Democratic primaries with promises of keeping sniveling children sniveling children by giving them everything for free from his promised federal government candy store. For those who think Clinton would be any less a benefactor for spoiled children and freeloaders, listen to her promises. Socialism is the “soup du jour” for young people of today – they can’t see past the “free stuff” and realize it would turn the United States into Venezuela. But, most college students today probably couldn’t find Venezuela on a world map and have no clue regarding the folly of socialism – they just see the free college tuition, free medical care, and other goodies. Liberals don’t seem to know nothing is free!

I don’t blame the spoiled children for being willing to take free stuff – that is just human nature. Parents set the stage for this mess by spending money that they don’t have, to purchase goodies for their kids, which they don’t need or really appreciate. When was the last time that you saw a teenybopper who didn’t have a metallic telephonic growth on their ear? Poor family – rich family – it makes no difference – kids have to have their toys so they don’t feel deprived. And then Obama fills any possible gap by “giving” people an Obamaphone.

The United States is mired so deep in debt that it is difficult to envision us ever crawling out of this fiscal mess. And Bernie and Billary want to borrow more money from China and Japan to give people more free stuff? Has the United States just become a large nut bowl filled with mental zombies who are whistling past our own graveyard?

Have a good week. Bill Shuey is a freelance writer from North Carolina.

by Fran Porretto

Things are bad enough that there’s talk of secession, of massive civil disobedience, even of revolution. Trust in government and the political system has evaporated. Police forces and other law enforcement agencies are viewed with increasing suspicion – often a fully justified suspicion. People are building disaster stockpiles. Middle class men are arming themselves and banding into cadres for the defense of their neighborhoods against an anticipated wave of racial and ethnic violence. Women are becoming fearful of being alone in public. Parents of minor children seldom allow them to be alone outside the family home.

That’s how bad it is.

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