Survive

10 Numbers That Prove That We Are Rapidly Becoming A Nation Of Government Dependents

As the middle class disintegrates and poverty grows, more Americans than ever are becoming dependent on the government just to survive. Today, we live in a country where most workers do not earn enough to support a middle class family, and we are seeing the homelessness crisis spiral out of control in major cities on both coasts. During this election cycle, many conservatives have been freaking out that an increasing number of Democrats are openly embracing socialism, but the truth is that we are already most of the way to becoming a socialist country. In fact, as you will see below, more than half of all Americans currently receive more money from the government than they pay in taxes. We have become absolutely addicted to government money, and this is one of the major trends that is eating away at our nation like cancer.

The government is not supposed to take care of us from the cradle to the grave.

Rather, our founders understood that the proper role of government is to create and protect an environment of liberty and freedom where we would be empowered to take care of ourselves.

Today, most Americans cannot independently take care of themselves, and that makes them dependents. And when you are a dependent, you aren’t really free.

One of the reasons why I write so much about the decline of the middle class is because it is an existential threat to our way of life. If you look around the world, or if you go back through history, you will see that tyrannical regimes tend to thrive when populations are poor and cannot stand up for themselves. If we want our Republic to survive, we need a strong, independent population that is not economically dependent on the government. That is what we had throughout most of our history, and that is now what we are rapidly losing.

Just because you are working does not mean that you are independent. At this point, most jobs do not pay enough to support a middle class family, and the ranks of the “working poor” continue to explode. In reality, Americans are working harder than ever in 2018, and yet things continue to deteriorate.

The following are a few numbers that prove that we are rapidly becoming a nation of government dependents…

–Over half the country now receives more in government transfer payments than they pay in taxes.

-According to one recent survey, the cost of living is higher than the median income in 42 U.S. states.

-Today, 50 percent of all American workers make less than $30,533 a year.

–62 percent of Americans say that their financial situations have not improved since the last presidential election.

And here are six more from my friend Alan Yerushalmi…

According to a FED report, about 40 percent of adults in the U.S. said that if faced with a $400 unexpected expense, they would either not be able to pay it or would do so by selling something or borrowing money
Almost 1 in 3 U.S. households have challenges paying energy bills
About 40% of the American middle class face poverty in retirement
1 in 3 Americans have hardly any retirement savings
Those over 65 have been filing for bankruptcy in droves
Health spending per capita in the U.S. increased nearly 29 fold in the past 40 years, outpacing the growth of the economy

If things are this bad now, how dreadful will the outlook be once we are deep into the next recession?

History has shown that once national governments begin to expand in size, they usually keep expanding until they ultimately collapse.

Sadly, a large portion of the population has become convinced that the government should be in the business of handing out as much “free stuff” as possible. Housing, healthcare and college education are now being called “human rights”, and tens of millions of our fellow citizens feel that they are entitled to be given these things by the government. Needless to say, this has chilling implications for the future of our country, and I really like how Ryan McMaken made this point in his most recent article…

The political implications of this are considerable. As Ludwig von Mises once noted, once we get to the point that a majority of the voting population receives more in benefits than it pays in taxes, then voters will demand more and more wealth be transferred to them through government programs. It will then become politically necessary to extract larger and larger amounts of wealth from a minority in order to subsidize the majority.

Market economics will become less and less popular because the voters will have realized they can — in the words of James Bovard — “vote for a living” instead of work for a living.

Every additional dollar that the federal government spends is an additional dollar that is being stolen from our children and our grandchildren, and we are already more than 21 trillion dollars in debt.

We have been on the greatest debt binge in human history, and that debt binge delayed our day of reckoning, but it did not cancel it.

In fact, one of my contacts just emailed me with some deeply troubling information. He has a customer that is a Bank of America board member, and that board member told him that they expect things to really start falling apart by late March “at the latest”. This is word for word what my contact told me…

“I had a customer this past Saturday who was a very high ranking Bank of America board member, and she said in the meetings, they expect late March, at the latest, that things will really start to disintegrate fairly quickly or very quickly. That was AT THE LATEST she said.”

When I say that “dark days are ahead”, I am not using hyperbole. We really have reached a turning point, and things will never be the same again.

The relentless march of time is inexorable, and eventually the clock runs out for everyone. America has been living on borrowed time for quite a while, and a perfect storm is looming on the horizon.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

The Last Days Warrior Summit is the premier online event of 2018 for Christians, Conservatives and Patriots. It is a premium members-only international event that will empower and equip you with the knowledge and tools that you need as global events begin to escalate dramatically. The speaker list includes Michael Snyder, Mike Adams, Dave Daubenmire, Ray Gano, Dr. Daniel Daves, Gary Kah, Justus Knight, Doug Krieger, Lyn Leahz, Laura Maxwell and many more. Full summit access will begin on October 25th, and if you would like to register for this unprecedented event you can do so right here.

Rush Limbaugh And Ann Coulter Are Right – America Is On The Verge Of Widespread Chaos And Civil Unrest

Things will never be the same in America from this moment forward. When 66-year-old James Hodgkinson attempted to gun down as many Republican members of Congress as possible at a baseball field in Virginia, he permanently shattered the notion that we could go back to the way that things used to be in this country. At one time, Republicans and Democrats may have strongly disagreed with one another over the issues, but there was always a certain code of civility that everyone understood and respected. But now that is long gone, and if our politicians and the big media outlets continue to fuel the rising hatred in this country, it won’t be too long before we are dealing with widespread chaos and civil unrest from coast to coast.

Most of the anger and frustration that we are currently witnessing is being fueled by the left. On his radio show yesterday, Rush Limbaugh accused the left of openly promoting violence…

“I have been worried for quite a while about the cumulative effect or impact of this constant anti-Trump hysteria everywhere in mainstream media: New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC,” Limbaugh told listeners.

“It’s hysteria. It’s lies. It’s things that are completely manufactured about Trump personally, about Trump and Russia, about climate change, about any number of things.

“I have been very concerned about what all of this is doing to the average, base Democrat voter. I have sensed them getting more and more fringe and imbalanced, and the evidence for it is everywhere in the things that they tweet. They openly promote violence, and advocate some of the most despicable things happening to their political enemies.”

Someone like James Hodgkinson is not produced in a vacuum. There has been a steady pattern of threats and violence against Republicans since the election, and all that Hodgkinson did was take things to the next level. Breitbart has put out an article entitled “15 Times Celebrities Envisioned Violence Against Trump and the GOP”, and WND published an even longer list entitled “20 times violence threatened, used, in wake of Dems’ political collapse”. When celebrities, politicians and media personalities constantly use language that is seething with hatred, it shouldn’t surprise us when their followers engage in violent acts.

I have warned many times in the past about the civil unrest that is coming, and now many of my fellow conservative commentators are sounding the alarm as well. For example, in the aftermath of the attack in Virginia radio host Michael Savage made the following chilling statement to his audience: “We are at a boiling point. There’s going to be a civil war.”

No American should ever want to see such a thing happen, but the left just keeps getting more and more radical. And even Hillary Clinton recently stated that she has joined “the Resistance”. The following comes from Ann Coulter…

Recently, Hillary announced her steadfast opposition to the winning candidate using a military term, saying she’d joined the “Resistance.”

Imagine if Trump lost and then announced that he’d joined the “RESISTANCE.” He’d be accused of trying to activate right-wing militias. Every dyspeptic glance at an immigrant would be reported as fascistic violence.

But the media seem blithely unaware that the anti-Trump “Resistance” has been accompanied by nonstop militaristic violence from liberals.

In recent weeks, I have heard from so many people all over the nation that are extremely excited about the possibility of me running for Congress. But anyone that is considering running for public office these days has to consider the fact that they will become potential targets for violence. For example, just recently one very sick individual actually threatened to hang Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz…

“I feel very safe and secure at the Capitol,” Chaffetz said Wednesday. “We work in a fortress with literally thousands of people to protect us, but once we leave the Capitol, it’s a whole different equation.”

Chaffetz wants U.S. marshals to be charged with assessing threats against members of Congress and securing them in more high-profile and widely attended events.

Chaffetz was the focus of a March death threat in which a Florida man vowed in a voicemail to “hunt your a– down, wrap a rope around your neck and hang you from a lamppost,” according to court records.

Could you imagine if your wife found that voicemail before you did?

But this is what the left is becoming. Because they don’t have any sort of a positive message to offer, they have to resort to threats, intimidation and violence. I have been writing about this quite a bit lately, and it turns out that Rush Limbaugh very much feels the same way…

They don’t have an agenda that’s optimistic and upbeat that they can run on, and they don’t dare be honest about their real agenda. So all they can do is to continue to do what they’ve been doing, and it’s not healthy, it’s not uplifting, it’s not inspiring. It isn’t representative or reflective of any of the traditional American values that for so long have united us. A sense of optimism, a sense of can-do, a sense of unity, a sense of nationhood. All of these things are under assault.

If the left continues to go down this path, the anger and the frustration are going to continue to grow, and eventually cities all over America are going to burn. This is the kind of a scenario that I laid out in The Beginning Of The End, and now it is actually starting to play out right in front of us.

Today, this nation is more divided than it has ever been in my entire lifetime, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. In fact, I expect even more anger and even more hatred as the divisions deepen.

Without each passing year, the left moves even farther to the left. It has gotten to the point where many on the far left actually refer to Hillary Clinton as a “moderate”, which is funny because at one time she was a cutting edge liberal.

On the right, there is an emerging movement to return to the values and the principles that this country was founded upon. So if the left doesn’t like current Republican leadership, then they really aren’t going to like the hardcore constitutional conservatives that are going to start replacing them.

We are in a battle for the soul of our nation, and the future of America is literally at stake.

It is a battle that we cannot afford to lose, because if the left wins there literally will be no viable future for our country at all.

Has Kathy Griffin Produced A Defining Moment That Will Cause America To Reject The Hate-Filled Ideology Of The Radical Left?

The image of Kathy Griffin holding up a bloody mock ‘decapitated’ head of Donald Trump will be burned into our memories forever, and she may have just produced the single most destructive moment for the radical left that this country has seen in decades. It is perfectly fine to disagree with President Trump and his policies, but to hold up his ‘decapitated head’ like an ISIS executioner would goes far beyond anything that would ever be acceptable in a civilized society. This is a moment that absolutely screams “too far”, and I believe that it will be this moment that causes many Americans to finally realize that the hate-filled ideology of the radical left is entirely bankrupt.

At this point the radical left doesn’t have any sort of positive message to offer the American people. They hate that wealthy people have so much money and so they want to raise taxes. They hate capitalism and use every opportunity that they can to try to destroy it. They hate conservative Christians and so they mock Jesus and the Christian faith every chance they get. They pander for money and votes by pitting one racial group against another. They are all about killing liberty, killing freedom, killing babies, and killing the values that this nation was founded upon. And they have demonstrated over and over again that they are willing to use violence to achieve their goals.

What Kathy Griffin was attempting to communicate was so horrible and so over the top that even CNN has decided to fire her…

“CNN has terminated our agreement with Kathy Griffin to appear on our New Year’s Eve program,” spokesman Shimrit Sheetrit confirmed to USA TODAY in a statement Wednesday.

The network used even stronger language a day earlier: “We found what she did disgusting and offensive,” read a statement sent to USA TODAY Tuesday night by Sheetrit. “We are pleased to see she has apologized and asked that the photos be taken down.”

And even her old buddy Anderson Cooper denounced her on Twitter…

For the record, I am appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in. It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate.

It is hard to imagine that Kathy Griffin will have much of a career left after all of this, so hopefully she has been saving her money. In fact, she has already lost a major endorsement deal…

Squatty Potty, a Utah-based business that creates and sells bathroom products — including a popular toilet stool made famous by one of the company’s well-known viral videos — has decided to pull down a new ad that Griffin stars in.

“We were shocked and disappointed to learn about the image Ms. Griffin shared today,” Squatty Potty CEO Bobby Edwards said in a statement issued to Faithwire. “It was deeply inappropriate and runs contrary to the core values our company stands for.”

I don’t know what she thought would happen. If a conservative had done the same thing to Obama, we would probably be talking about prison time right about now. Griffin went so far over the line that even the Church of Satan has disavowed her.

And of course this isn’t the first time that she has done something like this. During a 2007 awards show, she openly mocked the name of Jesus. What she said was so horrible that I do not want to repeat it.

Surprisingly, not everyone on the left is turning their backs on Griffin. In fact, Democratic Senator Al Franken says that he is not going to cancel an appearance with Griffin that is scheduled for July.

Al Franken will be up for re-election in 2020, and I think that it is time for the people of Minnesota to find a new senator.

Of course I think that things are going to be very difficult for most liberal Democrats moving forward. If anger and hate are the core of your message, and if you survive by constantly pitting one group against another, eventually the American people are going to see through the games and will start choosing another direction.

Whether she intended it or not, Kathy Griffin is now the poster child for the radical left in this country, and she just did Trump and the Republican Party a huge favor by showing the true face of her movement. I really like how Mike Adams made this point…

There’s no other way to say it: Kathy Griffin and the deranged, lunatic Left are mentally ill and pose a very real danger to society. This wretched, terrorist-style beheading video posted by Griffin encourages deadly violence against Trump supporters and sends a message that murdering political opponents of the intolerant Left is a normal, acceptable activity.

That’s what the deranged Left already believes, of course. Fanned into flames by a wildly dishonest, discredited fakestream media, Trump Derangement Syndrome has now escalated into a left-wing murderous rage that now celebrates gruesome images of beheadings that were once the sole domain of fanatical terrorists. What’s even more disturbing about all this is that Kathy Griffin apparently thought posting a video showing a bloodied, decapitated Trump head in her fist would somehow be hilarious or inspiring in some twisted way.

So how should we respond to all of this?

Instead of responding to this kind of hate with even more hate, I propose that we respond with lots of love.

Let’s show the American people that there is a fundamental difference between the right and the left. Let’s show them that true conservatives are all about loving everyone and doing everything that we can to promote life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Let’s show them that we believe in a positive, united future for our country based on the values and principles that are enshrined in the United States Constitution.

We don’t have to attack Kathy Griffin because she has already destroyed herself and done an immense amount of permanent damage to her political movement.

The American people are going to be looking elsewhere for inspiration, and we should be ready to supply it. If we can clearly communicate a positive, uplifting message, we can start to clear out the cesspool that Washington D.C. has become and begin to build a brighter future for all Americans.

It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way

Is there any way to unite our country once again? We live at a time when our nation is deeply polarized and many people have chosen to completely give in to hate. There are a lot of Democrats that deeply hate Donald Trump with everything that they have inside of them, even though they might not be able to clearly explain to anyone exactly why they hate him so much. And the same thing could be said about many Republicans when it comes to top politicians among the Democrats. Yes, there are very important issues that divide us, and there are certain things where compromise simply is not an option. But just because we disagree with others politically does not mean that we have to hate them. The following is another excerpt from my new book, and hopefully it will inspire people to start loving their enemies (even their political ones)…

*****

What do you think would happen to our society if we decided to just start loving one another? I am writing this at a time when the United States is the most polarized that it has been in decades. Democrats hate Republicans and Republicans hate Democrats, but all of this hate is not really getting us anywhere. I think that most of us have forgotten that we are supposed to love our enemies. If we only love those that agree with us and that are just like us, what is that going to accomplish?

Following the election in November, there were news reports about leftists that were being “triggered” simply by seeing the name of Trump somewhere. I don’t know if I have ever seen so much rage directed at a new president, and some of the things that are being said and done by those on the left are absolutely frightening. For example, Kathy Griffin made national headlines when she posed for photographs “with a ‘beheaded’ President Trump”…

Kathy Griffin sent shockwaves through the internet when she posed with a “beheaded” President Trump.

The comedian looks somber in pictures that are reminiscent of ISIS beheading videos and photos. She holds a facsimile of Mr. Trump’s detached, bloodied head by the hair.

The photo was taken by Tyler Shields, who is known for controversial art, including a photo of Clint Eastwood’s daughter burning a $100,000 Hermes handbag.

(http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kathy-griffin-takes-photos-with-beheaded-trump/)

Why would someone do such a thing?

Many of those on the left have no idea why they are feeling so much rage. They just know that Trump is on the “wrong team” and that he supposedly stands for things that they aren’t supposed to like. But if you would ask many of them to put their feelings into words, most of them would not be able to do so in a cohesive manner.

Of course many on the right have heaped a tremendous amount of abuse on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in recent years. Even though they stand for things that are truly appalling, does that justify the horrible mistreatment that they have received?

You can love people without agreeing with them. In fact, you can deeply love someone and still disapprove of every single thing that they stand for. And even though Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both completely unfit to hold any political office anywhere in the country, that doesn’t mean that we should hate them. Like so many other political leaders, Obama and Clinton have done some exceedingly terrible things, but that doesn’t mean that they are beyond all hope. All of us have done things that we are now ashamed of, and all of us have needed some grace at various points in our lives. We should always be willing to love our political enemies, to forgive them, to pray for them, and we should always want the very best for them and for their families.

As it stands, America is at a very dangerous place because of all of the anger and frustration that are boiling just under the surface. According to a recent Reuters survey, only 25 percent of Americans believe that the country is heading in the right direction, and the protests in our streets have turned increasingly violent in recent years.

Many on the left are using terms such as “Nazi”, “racist” and “dictator” to describe Donald Trump, and that is the kind of language that can spur people to take violent action. There are some that believe that America is heading for a “civil war”, and there are others that believe that one has already started. But none of us should ever want that to actually happen.

In my adult life, I have never seen America so divided, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

What if we decided to start loving one another no matter what we look like, where we are from or who our ancestors were?

What if we decided to start loving one another no matter who we voted for or what our particular political beliefs may be?

What if we decided to start loving one another no matter how much the mainstream media, our politicians and the entertainment community tried to stir up hate?

Not too long ago, a distant relative decided to cut off all communication with Meranda and I simply because of a pro-Trump article that I authored. Apparently someone must be anti-Trump in order to be loved and accepted by this particular individual.

Of course similar things are happening all over the country because of animosity toward Trump.

But if we are not willing to talk with one another, how will we ever solve any of the problems that this nation is facing?

Don’t get me wrong. I am certainly not suggesting that we should ever compromise our most cherished values and principles. If the left is going to hate us because we refuse to move from the values and the principles that this nation was founded upon, there isn’t much we can do about that.

But even though they may hate us, we can choose to love them. When we do good to those that hate us, it has a far more powerful effect than if we return hate with more hate. The following is one of the most famous quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr…

Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that.
Hate multiplies hate,
violence multiplies violence,
and toughness multiplies toughness
in a descending spiral of destruction….
The chain reaction of evil —
hate begetting hate,
wars producing more wars —
must be broken,
or we shall be plunged
into the dark abyss of annihilation.

Those are very wise words.

We will never defeat the leftists that are trying to destroy our nation by hating them. But if we shower them with light and love many of them will eventually come over to our side.

I am a big believer in the marketplace of ideas, because I also believe that truth always wins in the end. If we can respectfully engage with those that disagree with us and show them that there is a better way, we will win many of them over.

One of the reasons why the left has made so much progress in recent decades is because most of the population has abandoned the core values that once made America so great. If we rediscover those values, they can provide a basis for healing and reuniting our broken nation.

For example, in the Declaration of Independence our forefathers declared that “all men are created equal”. We should all be able to agree that every single individual is of immense value, and that all of us should be treated equally under the law no matter where we came from, no matter what our skin color is and no matter how much money we have.

The Declaration of Independence also tells us that we have been endowed “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. If you follow my work on a regular basis, you know that first one is absolutely huge for me. Elsewhere in this book I am going to spend an entire chapter on that topic. But for the moment I want to focus on Liberty. In every human heart there is a desire to live free. This is one of the reasons why big government liberalism is such a bankrupt philosophy. Big government always ends in tyranny, and I don’t know any true American that actually wants tyranny.

There are so many things that both the left and the right should be able to agree upon.

One is that Congress has become a cesspool of filth and corruption. Can’t we agree that the way that we run our elections needs to be greatly reformed and that special interests and big donors should have much less influence in Washington D.C.?

Another thing that we should be able to agree upon is that we should have a country where freedom and liberty are maximized. Instinctively, most of us want to live our lives without someone else constantly telling us what to do. We all proudly sing that we are “the land of the free”, and we need to start making that a reality once again.

We should all also be able to agree that terrorism is a growing problem, and that we should do all that we can to keep our communities safe. Of course there are disagreements about how precisely to do that, but in the face of a common enemy that is intent on destroying us the American people should be able to come together.

In addition, we should all be able to agree that we need to strengthen the Social Security system so that it will always be there for retiring Americans that need it. Unfortunately, our politicians raided the Social Security trust fund and have badly mismanaged the system, and so now the future of the program looks shaky. But we should be able to work together to get it back on solid ground once again.

Of course all of us want an economy that is vibrant and growing, and that hasn’t been true for a very long time. Barack Obama was the only president in U.S. history not to have a single year when the economy grew by at least three percent, and over the past ten years U.S. GDP growth has averaged just 1.33 percent per year. If we would just take the shackles off of the economy we could do so much better. The greatest era of economic growth in our history was when there was no Federal Reserve, no IRS and no income tax, and we can do it again.

We all want better lives for our families and our communities, and we can make America great again if we start doing the things that made America great in the first place.

Ultimately, much of this book is about restoring American values. It is about restoring God, family and country to their proper places and getting our priorities back in order. It is about learning to love others the way that we love ourselves.

It has been said that a house divided against itself will surely fall. And if we continue down this road of hatred and division, America will surely fall no matter what ideology eventually triumphs.

There is nothing that says that we all have to hate one another. It doesn’t have to be this way, and we need a new generation of leaders that are willing to take us in a different direction.

Because right now what we are getting from the corporate media and most of our politicians is a steady stream of strife, discord, bitterness, resentment and hatred.

The only way that we are going to become “a shining city upon a hill” again is if we learn to love one another truly and deeply and from the heart. To close this chapter, let me share with you what President Ronald Reagan said about this shining city during his farewell address to the American people…

The past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a bit of the “shining city upon a hill.” The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.

Reagan’s dream is still alive, but in order to live in harmony and peace we must reject hatred and division.

Just because America is deeply divided today does not mean that all hope is lost.

There is a better way, and we can get there.

It’s Time To Flush The Toilet

Is it fair to compare Congress to a toilet? If there is one institution that embodies the corruption that permeates Washington D.C., it is the United States Congress. Dominated by extremely selfish career politicians that are primarily interested in raising enough money to win the next election, Congress has become a cesspool of filth, fraud and malfeasance. The American people are absolutely sick of this, and that is why approval ratings for Congress are consistently much lower than for any other political institution. In fact, at this moment Congress has an average approval rating of just 18.3 percent according to Real Clear Politics. Donald Trump captured the imagination of tens of millions of American voters when he pledged to “drain the swamp” during the last election, but I say that it is time to “flush the toilet” because the only way that we will ever be able to turn the federal government in a positive direction is by clearing out as many of these Congress critters as possible.

Getting Donald Trump into the White House was the biggest political miracle in American history, but now his agenda is almost completely stalled and it is Congress that is to blame.

For example, Trump repeatedly pledged that he was going to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the southern border to combat illegal immigration, but at this point funding for that wall is being completely blocked.

What is the problem?

Congress.

Trump also pledged that Obamacare would be repealed very rapidly once he became president, but that obviously has not happened.

What is the problem?

Congress.

In fact, it is looking quite doubtful that a bill to repeal Obamacare will ever get through the U.S. Senate…

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is tempering expectations that the Senate will pass an overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system, promising his colleagues a vote but not success.

McConnell in his public comments and private conversations about the ObamaCare repeal and replace bill is painting a more sober picture than Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who in March guaranteed passage through the House.

McConnell is stopping well short of any grand pronouncement.

Trump also promised all of us that our taxes would be going way down, but even though the Republicans control both houses of Congress this also seems to be going nowhere fast. The following comes from the Wall Street Journal…

The GOP’s dreams have collided with interest-group lobbying and the tax system’s reality. Politicians all profess to hate the tax code, but they don’t agree on exactly what they hate. Voters gripe about complexity but are wary of losing cherished breaks that are woven into the economy.

“Eventually you run out of ways to pay for your promises,” said Alan Cole, an economist at the Tax Foundation, which favors a simpler code with lower rates. “There aren’t any free obvious sources of money where you can just do the thing and nobody gets mad.”

I could bring up a whole bunch of other issues such as the national debt, trade with China, unconstitutional government surveillance, etc. but I think that you get the point.

Trump’s presidency is going to be mostly wasted if we do not get him some help. And I am not just talking about clearing out more Democrats. Right now the Republicans control the Senate and the House, but the problem is that most of them are “establishment Republicans”. Career politicians from both parties have sold their souls to the special interests and big donors that fund their campaigns, and this is why such a dramatic political revolution is necessary.

Sadly, most Americans don’t realize just how deep the corruption goes in Washington these days. To illustrate this, I would like to share just a few quotes from “The Confessions of Congressman X”. It claims to have been written by an anonymous Democratic member of the House of Representatives, and the following quotes very much ring true to those of us that understand how things in D.C. really work in our day and age…

-“Most of my colleagues are dishonest career politicians who revel in the power and special-interest money that’s lavished upon them.”

-“My main job is to keep my job, to get reelected. It takes precedence over everything.”

-“Voters are incredibly ignorant and know little about our form of government and how it works.”

-“It’s far easier than you think to manipulate a nation of naive, self-absorbed sheep who crave instant gratification.”

-“Fundraising is so time consuming I seldom read any bills I vote on. Like many of my colleagues, I don’t know how the legislation will be implemented, or what it’ll cost.”

-“We spend money we don’t have and blithely mortgage the future with a wink and a nod. Screw the next generation. It’s about getting credit now, lookin’ good for the upcoming election.”

And it isn’t just political corruption that is the problem. When you start peeling back the onion, you find some of the most disturbing things imaginable in political circles. For example, just consider what police just uncovered in New York City…

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is hiring! There’s a vacancy in his administration for a computer programmer analyst, in the Department of Design and Construction. That’s because Jacob Schwartz, 29, a DNC staffer and former analyst, has been arrested and charged with being in possession of “kiddie porn” involving children as young as 6 months old.

Schwartz is also the president of the Manhattan Young Democrats and the downstate region vice president of the New York State Young Democrats. In other words, he was a “made” Democrat, part of the inner circle of budding influential NYC politicians, who was even friends with Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Robbie Mook.

Schwartz was caught with 3,000 child pornography images and 89 videos on his laptop after he downloaded them from the Internet. He surrendered his laptop to police, signed a release granting them permission to do a search of his hard drive, and was subsequently arrested. He has since posted $7,500 bail.

Of course stories such as this are just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more out there, but we aren’t really supposed to talk about those things.

So what can be done?

Well, we can sit back and keep on complaining as our country deteriorates right in front of our eyes, or we can do something about it.

On Memorial Day back in 1982, President Ronald Reagan delivered a stirring address at Arlington National Cemetery. The following is an excerpt from that address…

I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them.

Yet, we must try to honor them—not for their sakes alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.

Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we—in a less final, less heroic way—be willing to give of ourselves.

There is no war for us to fight, but let there be no doubt that we are in the midst of a great battle for the soul of our nation.

If this generation of Americans does not stand up and defend liberty and freedom, the forces that seek to destroy our country will win by default.

For years, many of us have been trying to persuade our leaders to do the right things, but by now it has become exceedingly clear that they simply are not listening.

So if we want the direction of our country to change, we have got to vote them out and replace them with others that will listen to the will of the people.

I am under no illusion that this will be easy. The special interests and the big donors have a tremendous amount of money, and the mainstream media is very closely allied with the establishment.

But the election of Donald Trump showed us that anything is possible, and I choose to believe that it is possible for us to take our government back.

We just have to be willing to try.

Less Government. More Freedom.

What would America look like today if the dream of our Founding Fathers of a limited central government had actually been realized? We have become so accustomed to big government that many of us simply assume that this is the only way that things can be done. But the truth is that things don’t have to be this way. We can have the kind of very limited federal government that our forefathers originally intended, but it is going to take a great deal of education and an enormous amount of political engagement in order to get there. On this Memorial Day, we will remember those that have died for our country, but let it also be a call to action. In every generation, Americans have had to stand up to defend the cause of liberty and freedom, and it will be no different in our generation. Just like during the Revolutionary War, there is no guarantee that we will be able to save America from the forces that are trying to destroy it, but if we sit back and do nothing they will win by default.

Just because there is no war to fight does not mean that the threat that we are facing is any less serious than what other generations of Americans have had to face. Over the last several decades, the U.S. Constitution has essentially been shredded, and at this point our republic is basically hanging by a thread. If we surrender to the left in this generation, the country that our forefathers envisioned may be gone for good.

Today I would like to share with you an excerpt from my upcoming book. It will be released about halfway through 2017, and when it is out you will be able to find it on my author page. As you will see, limited government is something that I am quite passionate about…

*****

“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.” (George Washington)

Big government tends to suck the life out of everything. If you doubt this, just look around the globe. In nations where a central government dominates every aspect of society, the people seem quite lifeless. Of course an extreme example of this is North Korea. Their entire culture is centered around a philosophy known as “Juche”, and in this philosophy the “leader” essentially becomes an object of worship. Literally everything in North Korea revolves around the state and the “leader”, and as a result most of the population resembles a horde of mindless zombies.

On the other hand, the most dynamic societies throughout human history have always been the ones where people have had a tremendous amount of freedom to express their passions and creativity. There is a reason why we saw an unprecedented explosion of remarkable inventions in early America, and there is a reason why so many millions of immigrants have risked their lives to get here. Liberty has always been such a rare commodity in our world, and almost all governments eventually become tyrannical. That is why it is so imperative that we defend the liberty that we still have in this nation.

Our Founding Fathers envisioned a country where freedom and liberty would be maximized. Of course there always must be some sort of government, because otherwise you would have total anarchy. We want potential thieves and murderers to be frightened of the power of the law, and we are thankful for those that protect us from them. But way too often it is government that becomes the greatest threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that is the sort of tyranny that we desperately wish to avoid.

Today, there are literally hundreds of thousands of statutes, rules and regulations on the federal level, and when you throw in the state and local levels you get a total that is in the millions. Virtually every aspect of our lives is very tightly regulated and controlled these days, and this has been going on for so long that most people have begun to accept it as normal.

But the way our society works today is definitely not “normal”. Let me share with you an example from the state of California that makes my blood boil. If you can believe it, government officials actually fined one farmer 2.8 million dollars for plowing his own field…

The California farmer who became the poster child for EPA reform under President Donald Trump is being fined $2.8 million by state and federal regulators for plowing his own field in Tehama County.

According to a story in the Redding Record Searchlight:

“The case is the first time that we’re aware of that says you need to get a (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) permit to plow to grow crops,” said Anthony Francois, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation.

“We’re not going to produce much food under those kinds of regulations,” he said.

However, U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller agreed with the Army Corps in a judgment issued in June 2016. A penalty trial, in which the U.S. Attorney’s Office asks for $2.8 million in civil penalties, is set for August.

(http://www.breitbart.com/california/2017/05/27/california-farmer-poster-child-for-trumps-epa-regulation-rollback-california-farmer-fined-2-8m-for-plowing-field/)

In early America, they would have howled with laughter if someone would have suggested that farmers should be required to get permission from the government in order to plow a field and grow food.

This is just one example that shows why I am proposing that the Environmental Protection Agency should be completely shut down. I am very much in favor of protecting the environment, but I believe that the citizens of each state should decide how their own natural resources are managed.

And at this point it has become exceedingly clear that the EPA is wildly out of control. Prior to the Trump administration, the EPA had been operating under Bill Clinton or Barack Obama for 16 of the previous 24 years, and it is absolutely packed with radical leftists that are obsessed with promoting their own political agendas. Instead of trying to fire everyone, the easiest thing would be to just end the agency and start completely over.

If you are not with me yet, perhaps another outrageous example will persuade you. The following comes from Fox News…

A Wyoming man threatened with $16 million in fines over the building of a stock pond reached a settlement with the Environment Protection Agency, allowing him to keep the pond without a federal permit or hefty fine.

Andy Johnson, of Fort Bridger, Wyoming obtained a state permit before building the stock pond in 2012 on his sprawling nine-acre farm for a small herd of livestock.

Not long after contruction, the EPA threatened Johnson with civil and criminal penalties – including the threat of a $37,500-a-day fine — claiming he needed the agency’s permission before building the 40-by-300 foot pond, which is filled by a natural stream.

(http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/05/10/wyoming-welder-facing-16m-in-fines-beats-epa-in-battle-over-stock-pond.html)

Could you imagine being threatened with 16 million dollars in fines for constructing a pond on your own property?

This isn’t how America is supposed to operate.

I really don’t understand how we can still claim to be “the land of the free” when we allow leftist control freaks to dominate our lives down to the minutest detail.

The left always wants government to become bigger and bigger and to get more and more control. They want a government that is going to guide them safely through life and that will give them everything that they need. But every time government grows, liberty and freedom are diminished.

Yes, liberty and freedom can be dangerous and messy sometimes. But living free sure beats being told what to do every single moment of every single day.

One of the things that greatly troubles me is that progressives almost completely dominate our system of public education. Our public schools have now become liberal indoctrination centers, and survey after survey has shown that each successive generation has moved to the left compared to the preceding generation.

That is why it is so imperative that we end federal interference in education and return control of our schools back to the local level. I would shut down the Department of Education and I would cut off every penny of funding for Common Core.

Even though we spend far more on education than anyone else in the world, we are producing absolutely disastrous results. The following comes from a CBS News report…

Half of American Millennials score below the minimum standard of literacy proficiency. Only two countries scored worse by that measure: Italy (60 percent) and Spain (59 percent). The results were even worse for numeracy, with almost two-thirds of American Millennials failing to meet the minimum standard for understanding and working with numbers. That placed U.S. Millennials dead last for numeracy among the study’s 22 developed countries.

(http://www.cbsnews.com/news/americas-millennials-well-educated-but-unskilled/)

Our public schools are failing badly, and we need to get them fixed. But we also need to greatly support parents that are pursuing other educational avenues such as homeschooling and private schools. At this point I completely understand why any parent would want to keep their kids out of our horrific public schools, and ultimately our entire system of education needs to be completely rebuilt from the ground up.

Big government sucks the life out of the economy as well. Over the past ten years, the U.S. economy has grown at an average yearly rate of just 1.33 percent, and the only other era in U.S. history when economic growth was so bad was during the 1930s.

The business community is being absolutely strangled by rules, regulations, red tape and excessive taxes, but the Democrats always want to pile on more. Big corporations can hire lots of people to comply with all of the demands that government places on them, but small businesses and entrepreneurs are rapidly becoming an endangered species.

Today, there are less Americans that are self-employed than there were 27 years ago. In April 1990, 8.7 million Americans worked for themselves, but in April 2017 only 8.4 million Americans were working for themselves.

That may not sound that bad until you realize how much our population grew over that time frame. In 1990, the population of the United States was 249 million, but today the population is 321 million.

So the percentage of Americans that are working for themselves has gone way, way down.

The solution is to get the government off of our backs. The greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was between the Civil War and 1913. During this era there was no income tax, no IRS and no Federal Reserve. Many on the left would consider that to be a recipe for disaster, but instead there was an explosion of innovation and industry that was absolutely unprecedented. The following is how Wikipedia describes the economic conditions during this period of time…

In the last third of the 19th century the United States entered a phase of rapid economic growth which doubled per capita income over the period. By 1895, the USA leaped ahead of Britain for first place in manufacturing output.^[175] For the first time, exports of machinery and consumer goods became important. For example, Standard Oil led the way in exporting kerosene; Russia was its main rival in international trade.^[176] Singer Corporation led the way in developing a global marketing strategy for its sewing machines.^[177]

The greatly expanded railroad network, using inexpensive steel rails produced by new steel making processes, dramatically lowered transportation cost to areas without access to navigable waterways. Low freight rates allowed large manufacturing facilities with great economies of scale. Machinery became a large industry and many types of machines were developed. Businesses were able to operate over wide areas and chain stores arose. Mail order companies started operating.^[119] Rural Free Delivery began being implemented in the early 1890s, but it was not widely implemented for a decade.^[178]

Companies created a new management systems to carry out their operations on a large scale. Companies integrated processes to eliminate unnecessary steps and to eliminate middlemen.^[119]

An explosion of new discoveries and inventions took place, a process called the Second Industrial Revolution. The electric light, telephone, steam turbine, internal combustion engine, automobile, phonograph, typewriter and tabulating machine were some of the many inventions of the period. New processes for making steel and chemicals such as dyes and explosives were invented. The pneumatic tire, improved ball bearings, machine tools and newly developed metal stamping techniques enabled the large scale production of bicycles in the 1890s. Another significant development was the widespread introduction of electric street railways (trams, trolleys or streetcars) in the 1890s.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_United_States#Late_19th_century)

But the progressives couldn’t leave a good thing alone, and in 1913 the Federal Reserve was established and a federal income tax was instituted.

Since that time there have been 18 distinct recessions or depressions, and now we are entering another one.

We are always asking our politicians to “fix the economy”, but the truth is that the best thing that they can do is to get out of the way.

If you take the shackles off, free enterprise works exceptionally well.

Those that follow my work on a regular basis already know that I believe that the Federal Reserve should be shut down, that the IRS should be phased out, and that the federal income tax should be reduced as much as possible with the eventual goal of eliminating it completely.

It has been said that nothing is inevitable except for death and taxes, but there is nothing that says that we must have an income tax.

We have had an income tax for so long that most people could not imagine life without one. But the United States absolutely thrived without one during the decades prior to 1913, and today states such as Texas and Florida are doing quite nicely without a state income tax.

There are lots of other ways to fund the government that do not involve an income tax. And actually only 46.2 percent of all federal revenue is brought in through taxing individual incomes. If we cut the size of government in half, we might even have some money to spare.

Of course considering the fact that we are 20 trillion dollars in debt, the truth is that we don’t have a single penny to spare, but I think that you get my point.

I just hope that you are able to see that life is generally better when government is reduced to the proper size and scope.

We should be able to say what we want to say without fear of retribution.

We should be able to live out our convictions and worship as we please.

We should be able to protect our own homes and do what we want with our own property.

We should be able to raise our own children and make our own health decisions.

We should be able to be free from the fear that the government is watching, tracking and monitoring all of our electronic communications.

In every human heart there is a hunger to live free, and big government is the enemy of freedom.

The dreams that our forefathers once had for this nation may have faded, but they aren’t dead just yet.

A new generation of patriots is rising, and we are determined to take our country back.

It Is Time To Put The ‘Limited’ Back In Limited Government – And Abolishing The EPA Is A Good Place To Start

The constitutional republic that our founders intended to create has become a monster, and it is time to tame that monster and restore the federal government to its proper size and scope. The left loves big government, because it allows them to impose their progressive vision of how the world should work on all the rest of us. This is why so many control freaks are drawn to liberal politics like moths to a flame. Power and control are very addicting drugs, and those that crave these things on the left are never satisfied. That is one of the reasons why the federal government just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. If our constitutional republic is going to survive, we have got to start putting the “limited” back in limited government.

Our forefathers tried to guarantee that the federal government would always be less powerful than the states by making the Tenth Amendment abundantly clear…

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

I don’t see how anyone could possibly misunderstand that, but over the decades the left has worked very hard to make the Tenth Amendment as meaningless as possible.

If we want to see the Tenth Amendment restored, we are going to have to be willing to fight hard in the court system, in statehouses all over America, and in the halls of Congress.

And a good place for Congress to start would be to abolish the EPA. It is one of the federal agencies that is most wildly out of control, and fortunately there are a few good members of Congress that get this.

On February 3rd, U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz introduced a one sentence bill in the House of Representatives that would abolish the EPA at the end of next year…

Introduced by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL1), H.R. 861 totals a mere one sentence: “The Environmental Protection Agency shall terminate on December 31, 2018.” That’s the same date of termination as another Republican bill to end the Education Department, which GovTrack Insider also recently covered. Gaetz is serving his first term in Congress and this is the first bill he’s ever introduced.

I would certainly vote for such a bill in a heartbeat, because as Gaetz has explained, the EPA is suffocating small businesses all over America…

Gaetz, a freshman, took aim at the EPA in a leaked email, obtained by The Huffington Post, saying Americans are “drowning in regulations” enforced by the agency.

“Our small businesses cannot afford to cover the costs associated with compliance, too often leading to closed doors and unemployed Americans,” Gaetz wrote in the email, which was circulated among possible co-sponsors.

If enacted, the bill would will give power back to the states and local governments, Gaetz said.

“To better protect the environment we should abolish the EPA and downstream resources to states for more effective & efficient protection,” Gaetz said in a Facebook post Friday.

Today, the EPA is packed with leftists that love to promote their political agendas by constantly coming up with even more business-killing rules and regulations. These unelected bureaucrats have been on a rampage in recent years, and most of what they are doing is unconstitutional according to the Tenth Amendment.

Here in Idaho, the EPA has been a thorn in the side of miners, loggers and small businesses for decades, and it is a problem that has grown worse over time. At the moment, there appears to be little hope that the bill to shut down the EPA could get through both chambers of Congress, but that doesn’t mean that we will stop trying.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has taken some positive steps to try to rein in the EPA. The following comes from Time Magazine…

But that doesn’t mean that the EPA is safe. In fact, some of the agency’s defenders worry that it faces a far more stealthy threat of being hollowed out. President Trump’s choice to run the agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, is known for targeting the agency with more than a dozen lawsuits.

Environmental groups and policymakers fear Pruitt will dismantle many of the agency’s core functions methodically over time rather than trying to knock out the agency with one fell swoop.

He will almost certainly try to unravel the Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s primary regulation aimed at addressing climate change, a multi-year process that could require careful reconsideration of legal and scientific arguments. He might also weaken—or shutter altogether—the EPA’s enforcement office, according to an Inside EPA report.

Some of you may think that I don’t care about the environment since I want the EPA shut down.

That is not true at all. I believe that we are facing some huge environmental problems and that we should all do more to take care of the planet that we share.

But I also believe that the people of all 50 states should be able to determine how their own natural resources should be managed.

The EPA has become a highly politicized organization, and it has become one of the favorite tools of the left for moving the “green agenda” forward. And of course this “green agenda” is being promoted on a global scale by the United Nations.

Have you ever heard of Agenda 21? Well, it has been given a makeover and it is now known as “Agenda 2030”. When it was first launched in 2015, Agenda 2030 was being touted as a “new universal Agenda” for humanity. The following information about Agenda 2030 comes from the official UN website…

This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity. It also seeks to strengthen universal peace in larger freedom. We recognise that eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development.

All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan. We are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet. We are determined to take the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path. As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets which we are announcing today demonstrate the scale and ambition of this new universal Agenda. They seek to build on the Millennium Development Goals and complete what these did not achieve. They seek to realize the human rights of all and to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. They are integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental.

If you read over the 17 sustainable development goals which you can find right here, you will quickly notice that they cover virtually every form of human activity imaginable.

That is become the “green agenda” is really just a nice way of introducing “global governance” to an unsuspecting public.

The leftist control freaks at the UN literally want to closely regulate all human activity on the entire planet, and they are telling us that they need to do this in order “to save the world”.

But as I discussed yesterday, we aren’t going to allow the left to steal our country from us, and we are going to greatly resist all attempts to erode American sovereignty.

Charlie Daniels: We Need 1000 Paul Reveres, Because We Aren’t Going To Allow The Radical Left To Steal Our Country From Us

If America is going to survive, it is time for this generation of Americans to take a stand. Edmund Burke once said that “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”, and if we sit back and do nothing now the radical left is going to win in America. In a new documentary entitled “Revelation: Dawn Of Global Government”, country music legend Charlie Daniels is calling for “1000 Paul Reveres” to rise up and sound the alarm in this country. Our constitutional republic is under serious attack from forces that are intent on transforming the United States into a fundamentally different nation than our forefathers intended. Today we know them as “progressives”, “liberals” and “Democrats”, but in the old days they were known as “socialists”, “communists” and “Marxists”. In the film, Charlie simply refers to them as “scumbags”. So many brave Americans before us have bled and died for the cause of freedom and liberty, and there is no way that we are going to allow the radical left to take it away from us now.

And make no mistake – the leftists clearly view this struggle for our country as a war. Their street protests have become increasingly violent in recent years, and it has gotten to the point where Republican members of Congress are actually fearing for their physical safety when they go back to their districts…

A growing number of House Republicans are facing physical threats from angry constituents in their districts, leading many to fear for their safety.

In the last few weeks alone, the FBI arrested a man threatening Rep. Martha McSally’s (R-Ariz.) life, a woman pursued Rep. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) in her car, and Rep. Tom Garrett (R-Va.) heightened security at a town hall event in response to death threats.

In fact, it is being reported that “at least $2 million” has been requested to increase security at congressional district offices around the nation because the threat of violence has become so alarming…

The U.S. House’s Sergeant-at-Arms is seeking at least $2 million to increase security at Congress members’ offices in their home districts, the News4 I-Team has learned.

The security upgrades include panic buttons for offices that don’t already have them and video surveillance equipment.

And of course just look at what they are trying to do to President Trump. Instead of gearing up to win the next election, the left is trying to find any way possible to remove Trump from office. Now a special prosecutor has been appointed to investigate whether or not Trump was trying to influence a nothingburger investigation into a nothingburger scandal. Ultra-liberal lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Jonathan Turley both agree with my legal opinion that Donald Trump hasn’t committed any crimes even if everything being alleged against him turns out to be true.

But the facts don’t really matter to the left, because they want Trump’s head on a platter, and they are going to achieve that goal any possible way that they can.

The seething hate many on the left feel for Trump and the Republican Party is almost palpable at times. For example, check out what just happened at the California Democratic state convention…

In a sign of the vigor of the party’s distaste for the president, outgoing party Chair John Burton, a longtime Democratic lawmaker and powerbroker known for his blunt and profane manner, extended two middle fingers in the air as the crowd cheered and joined him.

And of course the mainstream media is constantly fueling the hatred for Trump and the Republican Party too. A brand new study that was conducted by Harvard researchers discovered that media coverage of Trump’s first 100 days was almost entirely negative…

“Trump’s coverage during his first 100 days set a new standard for negativity,” a new Harvard study concludes.

“Of news reports with a clear tone, negative reports outpaced positive ones by 80 percent to 20 percent,” finds the report from Harvard University analyzing news coverage of President Trump’s first 100 days in office.

As Charlie Daniels is urging, it is time for the next chapter in the American Revolution, because we aren’t going to take this sort of nonsense anymore.

We are going to resist the relentless march toward globalism and the growing power of international governing bodies such as the United Nations.

We are going to resist Agenda 21, Agenda 2030 and whatever other tyrannical programs that the radical environmentalists at the UN come up with.

We are going to resist the growing threats to religious freedom and the rise in Christian persecution that we are witnessing all over the globe.

We are going to resist the population control agenda of Planned Parenthood and other “pro-choice” organizations that seek to convince mothers that they should have their own children murdered.

We are going to resist unconstitutional power grabs by the federal government, and we are going to try to return as much power to the states as possible.

We are going to resist those that wish to see future generations of Americans enslaved by tens of trillions of dollars of debt. What we are doing to our children and our grandchildren is beyond criminal, and that is why our debt-based financial system needs to be entirely restructured from the ground up starting with the Federal Reserve.

The American people are thirsty for a return to liberty, freedom and the values that this nation was founded upon.

Unfortunately, sometimes desperate thirst leads to tragic consequences. Let me share an excerpt from a very sad story that I came across earlier today…

A five-year-old boy was taken to hospital after he became so thirsty he was forced to drink mouthwash – in a horrific case of child abuse.

Tyriese Howard, 25, and his girlfriend, 23-year-old Breya Allen, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, were arrested after Howard’s young son was found with a .2 blood alcohol level after drinking mouthwash.

The child also told investigators how he would get so thirsty he would even drink toilet water.

Many Americans are so thirsty for a restoration of our constitutional republic that they will vote for virtually anyone that uses labels such as “Republican”, “conservative” and even “Pro-Life”. But once a lot of these guys and gals get into office, they end up governing like Democrats.

For truly conservative voters, this is something that has frustrated us for decades. So in 2018, we aren’t going to put up with any more fake conservatives. Real constitutional conservatives are going to run for office all across this land, and we are going to start taking over the Republican Party.

I am proud to stand with Charlie Daniels, and I hope to be one of the “thousand Paul Reveres” that he is calling for.

What about you?

Are you ready to do your part to help restore our constitutional republic?

Homeless For The Holidays

Could you imagine spending the holidays in a homeless shelter, in a tent city surrounded by drug addicts and prostitutes, or in a sleeping bag on the cold, hard streets of an urban jungle? Unfortunately, that is what real life looks like for an increasing number of Americans. Most of the time when we think of “homeless people”, the image that comes into our minds is one of a grizzled old man asking for some spare change, but the truth is that vast numbers of women and children in our country do not have anywhere to live. In fact, Poverty USA has reported that last year a grand total 1.6 million U.S. children stayed either in a homeless shelter or in some other form of emergency housing. And you never hear the mainstream media report this number, but the truth is that the number of homeless children in the United States has risen by 60 percent since the “end” of the last recession. For the moment the wealthy are getting wealthier, but meanwhile things have just continued to get harder and harder for those that are struggling to survive in this economy.

In Wal-Mart parking lots and campgrounds all over America tonight, you will find formerly middle class families that are living in cars, trucks and recreational vehicles during this holiday season. Most of them will never complain and will try to put on a happy face outwardly, but inside the worry and fear are eating them alive.

As the weather gets cold, many homeless Americans head for warmer climates, and this is one of the factors that is fueling the unprecedented homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. The following comes from L.A. Weekly…

By nearly every metric, Los Angeles has the worst homelessness crisis of any city in America. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, there are more people suffering from chronic homelessness in L.A. than anywhere in the country, and their number is growing at a faster clip than those in New York City.

One homeless man in Los Angeles has decided to do what he can to make the best of his circumstances. He has transformed a depressingly bleak area underneath a freeway underpass into his own “personal paradise”…

A homeless man who turned a freeway underpass into his personal paradise by furnishing it with a make-shift jacuzzi and four-poster bed has become a viral hit and unlikely tourist attraction.

Ceola Waddell Jr, 59, began living in the underpass in L.A.’s 110 freeway near Coliseum six months ago.

He has since foraged two porcelain toilets, discarded refrigerators, couches and two beds to transform the space into his personal refuge.

You can’t help but smile when you read what Mr. Waddell has done, but the truth is that the homelessness crisis in the state is rapidly getting way out of control. In fact, Los Angeles is swamped by so many homeless people at this point that the L.A. City Council has asked California Governor Jerry Brown to officially declare a state of emergency.

On the east coast things are getting really, really bad as well.

You may find this hard to believe, but the number of homeless people in New York City has never been higher…

The number of homeless people living in New York City has reached a record-high.

The Department of Homeless Services reported there were 60,252, up 200 in two weeks.

Now, some are saying the city’s current plan to combat homelessness isn’t working.

So why is this happening?

The stock market is at an all-time high and the mainstream media keeps telling us that things are getting better, and yet poverty just continues to rise.

Other than the very wealthy, the truth is that things are not getting any better for virtually everyone else. In fact, it has been reported that over half of all New Yorkers “are teetering on the brink of homelessness”…

More than half of all New Yorkers are teetering on the brink of homelessness — without enough cash in the bank to cover them in the event of a disaster or lost job, a troubling new study has found.

Nearly 60 percent of all New Yorkers don’t have enough emergency savings to cover at least three months’ worth of household expenses like food, housing and rent, according to a recent report from the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development.

This is one of the reasons why I am always encouraging my readers to build up their emergency funds. Sadly, the cold, hard reality of the matter is that most of the country is only a couple of paychecks away from losing everything.

To give you an idea of how deep the suffering can be this time of the year for those that have already lost it all, I want to share with you a story of a precious little dog named Ollie…

When Ollie was found, his fur was matted and so long you couldn’t see his adorable little eyes. He was clearly in need of dire help.

A woman and her sister saw Ollie outside her apartment, shivering in the freezing cold. They brought him in and quickly called the Michigan Humane Society to help take care of the dog.

Once Ollie was brought in, it was discovered just how sick he is. Had he not been rescued, he would have suffered a very painful death alone in the streets.

Very few people could come across a hurting dog like Ollie without helping him out, but what about the countless numbers of our fellow Americans that no longer have a warm home and will spend the night shivering in the cold?

Look, the truth is that you don’t have to have a whole lot of resources in order to make a difference. In Tennessee, there is a group of elderly women that refer to themselves as “the bag ladies” that are turning old plastic bags into sleeping mats for the homeless…

It all starts with cutting plastic bags into strips, tying those strips together, and rolling them into a ball.

The Bag Ladies call it “plarn,” instead of yarn. They then crochet the “plarn” into mats.

It takes 600 bags to make an 18 square foot mat. So far, this year, they have used 52,000 bags to make 88 mats.

“This is not young ladies doing this. This is older ladies with the arthritis,” said Akin.

How marvelous is that?

A single act of kindness can make a world of difference.

In the months ahead, temperatures are only going to get colder and economic conditions are only going to get tougher for those that are already living in poverty.

I would encourage all of us to think about what we can do to make a difference for those that are deeply hurting this time of the year.

About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and The Most Important News. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Will Deutsche Bank Survive This Wave Of Trouble Or Will It Become The Next Lehman Brothers?

If you have been waiting for “the next Lehman Brothers moment” which will cause the global financial system to descend into a state of mass panic, you might want to keep a close eye on German banking giant Deutsche Bank. It is approximately three times larger than Lehman Brothers was, and if the most important bank in the strongest economy in Europe were to implode, it would instantly send shockwaves rippling across the entire planet. Those that follow my work regularly know that I started sounding the alarm about Deutsche Bank beginning last September. Since that time, the bad news from Deutsche Bank has not stopped pouring in. They announced a loss of 6.8 billion euros for 2015, and they have been plagued by scandal after scandal. In recent months they have gotten into trouble for trying to rig precious metal prices, for committing “equity trading fraud” and for their dealings in mortgage-backed securities. The following comes from Zero Hedge…

A month after admitting to rigging precious metals markets, Deutsche Bank has been hit with a double-whammy of more alleged fraudulent behavior today and the stock is sliding. First, Reuters reports that the bank took a charge of 450 million euros for “equity trading fraud,” and then Bloomberg reports that The SEC is looking into Deutsche’s post-crisis mortgage positions.

This is a bank that is steadily bleeding money, and so the last thing that it needs is for government agencies to be putting immense pressure on it. Unfortunately for Deutsche Bank, the SEC seems determined to kick it while it is down…

Troubled Wall Street giant Deutsche Bank is under another investigation, this time by the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding the pricing and reporting of certain mortgage-backed securities.

The SEC wants to know whether the Frankfurt, Germany-based bank artificially raised the value of mortgage-backed securities in 2013 and later hid those losses for an extended period of time, Bloomberg first reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

But even if there were no scandals and no government investigations, the truth is that Deutsche Bank would be a deeply troubled bank anyway.

At one point, it was estimated that Deutsche Bank had 64 trillion dollars worth of exposure to derivatives contracts. That is an amount of money that is approximately 16 times the size of the GDP of the entire nation of Germany.

So nobody wants to see Deutsche Bank fail. It would be a financial disaster unlike anything the world has ever experienced before.

But right now things are not looking good. As you can see from this chart, the steady decline of Deutsche Bank’s stock price is eerily similar to what happened to Lehman Brothers during the months leading up to the time when it finally completely collapsed…

Earlier this year, Deutsche Bank’s stock price set a new record low, and since that time it has been hovering just above that record low.

Clearly it is no secret that Deutsche Bank is having big problems, and the outlook for the immediate future is not good. I included the following quote from Berenberg analyst James Chappell in a previous article, but I think that it bears repeating…

Too many problems still: The biggest problem is that DBK has too much leverage. On our measures, we believe DBK is still over 40x levered. DBK can either reduce assets or increase capital to rectify this. On the first path, the markets do not exist in the size nor pricing to enable it to follow this route. Going down the second path also seems impossible at the moment, as the profitability of the core business is under pressure. Seeking outside capital is also likely to be difficult as management would likely find it hard to offer any type of return on new capital invested.

In the end, I believe that Deutsche Bank will ultimately implode, but it won’t be the only one.

Meanwhile, we just got some more very disturbing news out of Asia. According to Bloomberg, Japanese exports have now fallen for seven months in a row…

Japan’s exports fell for a seventh consecutive month in April as the yen strengthened, underscoring the growing challenges to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s efforts to revive economic growth.

Overseas shipments declined 10.1 percent in April from a year earlier, the Ministry of Finance said on Monday. The median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg was for a 9.9 percent drop. Imports fell 23.3 percent, leaving a trade surplus of 823.5 billion yen ($7.5 billion), the highest since March 2010.

When your imports are 23 percent lower than they were a year earlier, that is a clear sign that consumer demand is way, way down and that your economy is in the process of imploding.

So I will repeat what I have said a number of times before…

Watch Germany and watch Japan.

I believe that they are going to be two of the biggest stories as this new global financial crisis begins to play out.

*About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*

70 Tips That Will Help You Survive What Is Going To Happen To America

You may have noticed that things are starting to get crazy. Financial markets are imploding, violent crime rates are soaring in our major cities, and we have witnessed a truly unusual series of natural disasters in recent months. War in the Middle East continues to rage out of control, and Islamic terror continues to spread all over the globe. And many believe that 2016 is going to be a year of political shaking, civil unrest, governmental crackdowns and great economic chaos in the United States. All it is going to take to plunge our society into full-blown panic mode is a major “trigger event” of some sort. Another 9/11, a new “Lehman Brothers” moment, a massive EMP burst from the sun or a historic seismic event are all examples of what this “trigger event” could look like.

So are you ready for what is about to happen to America? In previous articles, I have urged my readers to focus on the five basics – food, water, shelter, energy and self-defense. If you focus on those five things, you will probably be in pretty good shape during any major disaster or emergency.

In this article, I want to dig a little deeper and give people some more specific tips regarding what they can do to prepare for the times that we are now entering. The following are 70 tips that will help you survive what is going to happen to America…

1. A lot of the “experts” out there are urging people to get rid of all of their cash. That is a huge mistake. You are going to need cash to pay your bills – especially during the initial phases of the coming crisis. Today, 63 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and millions of them will be severely hurting almost immediately once they lose their jobs or their businesses go under during this new economic downturn.

2. Get to know your neighbors. As the coming time of trouble unfolds, you are going to want to have people around you that you can trust and depend on.

3. Learn how to grow a garden. Food costs will continue to rise and our food distribution system is far more vulnerable than most people would dare to imagine. Any way that you can become more “food independent” would be a good thing.

4. At this point, you should already have several years of emergency food stored up for each member of your family. And don’t forget to store additional food for friends and family members that haven’t prepared and will need to come stay with you.

5. Make a “bug out plan” for your family, and make certain that every member of your family knows what the rally points are in case you all get separated.

6. Every member of your family should have a “bug out bag“. These should contain everything that they will need in the event of a major emergency.

7. If you are going to “strategically relocate” before things get really bad in this country, hopefully you have already done so by now. If not, you are working on borrowed time.

8. When civil unrest starts really spiraling out of control, it would be in your interest to avoid “America’s death zones” if possible.

9. Always have the gas tanks in your vehicles at least halfway full. You never know when you will need to hit the road in an emergency situation.

10. Put away some extra fuel for your generator while fuel costs are low.

11. Think ahead about what medicines and medical supplies you and your family will need during a major crisis.

12. Try to stock up on things that will make good barter items when the overall economy begins to totally break down.

13. There are non-electric versions of various appliances. Some examples include washing machines and coffee makers.

14. How are you going to cook your food when the power goes out for an extended period of time? You may want to consider a sun oven if you don’t have one already.

15. Don’t have all of your eggs in one basket. That includes not having all of your money in one location. If you have a bank account, consider spreading that money around to two or three different bank accounts.

16. You will want to keep at least some cash at home in case you are not able to access ATM machines during a major crisis.

17. If you can get out of debt without jeopardizing your other preparations, you should consider doing so. Those that are “lean and mean” financially will be in much better shape – especially during the initial stages of the coming crisis.

18. Physical gold and silver are good ways to protect your wealth over the long-term. As I have warned repeatedly, we will continue to see big ups and big downs for precious metals, so if you are going to invest you have got to be able to handle the ride.

19. Reduce your expenses and get accustomed to a more minimal standard of living. Now is not the time to be spending lots of money on fancy new toys.

20. If you have the time and energy, starting a side business may not be a bad idea. That way if you lose your job, you still have some income coming in.

21. You need to have a plan for fresh water in the event of a major emergency. Without water none of us can survive, and is imperative that you have a plan to provide clean drinking water for your family when disaster strikes.

22. If you can afford to get partially or totally “off the grid”, that would be a very good thing. Many preppers are discovering that they can do amazing things with wind, solar and water power.

23. Anyone that has spent more than a few hours without power knows how frustrating this can be. You need to have a plan for how you are going to provide power to your home that is independent of the power company.

24. Rotate your food supplies. Eat your oldest stuff first even though it may be tempting to dig into the stuff that you just purchased.

25. If you have a baby, don’t forget the special things that your baby will need during a major crisis.

26. Many preppers totally forget about their pets. You should store the food and supplies that they will need during an extended emergency.

27. This may sound trivial, but the truth is that our entertainment-addicted society would become very bored and very frustrated if the grid suddenly went down for an extended period of time. Card games and other basic forms of entertainment can make enduring a crisis much easier.

28. In the years ahead, being able to defend your home is going to become increasingly important. When the economy crashes, people are going to start to become very desperate. And desperate people do desperate things.

29. No plan ever unfolds perfectly. When your plan is disrupted, what will you do? It will be imperative for all of us to have a back-up plan and to be flexible during the years ahead.

30. Do not go around and tell everyone in the area where you live about your prepping. If you do, then you may find yourself overwhelmed with “visitors” when everything falls apart.

The following are items that are commonly recommended by survivalist experts that you may want to consider storing in case they are needed during a major crisis or emergency…

31. Blankets

32. Warm Clothing

33. Gloves

34. Extra Flashlights

35. First Aid Kits

36. Lighters

37. Matches

38. Duct Tape

39. A Shovel

40. A Tent

41. Knives

42. Mylar Blankets

43. Body Armor

44. Salt

45. Propane

46. Vitamins

47. An Axe

48. A Can Opener

49. A Battery-Powered Radio

50. Extra Batteries

51. A Fire Extinguisher

52. A Sewing Kit

53. A Tool Kit

54. Comfortable Shoes Or Hiking Boots

55. A Map Of Your Area

56. A Compass

57. Sleeping Bags

58. Candles

59. A Camp Stove

60. An LED Headlamp

61. Lightsticks

62. Heirloom Seeds

63. Clorox

64. Wood Socks, Sweaters And Mittens

65. Personal Hygiene Items

66. Ziplock Bags

67. A Watch Or Some Other Way To Tell Time

68. Extra Copies Of Your Financial Records

69. Spare Glasses

70. Prescription Medications

Are there any additional tips that you would add to this list?

Please feel free to share your knowledge with the rest of us by posting a comment below…

Take The Quiz: Will You Survive When The Collapse Happens?

Do you consider yourself a prepper? Do you think that you will survive when the collapse happens? Do you have the skills, knowledge, and supplies to survive? Take the interactive quiz put together by the Organic Prepper and find out…

Daisy Luther is a freelance writer and editor. Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca