National Public Radio, "All Things Considered," (July 31, 2007)Mayors across the nation are trying to do something meaningful in their communities to address climate change. More than 600 have pledged to try to meet the target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions set by the Kyoto Protocol, even though the federal government won’t make the commitment.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from a speech published in the Chicago Tribune (May 16, 2003).The federal government is America’s biggest polluter and the Department of Defense is the government’s worst offender…The Pentagon is responsible for more than 21,000 potentially contaminated sites and, according to the EPA, the military may have poisoned as much as 40 million acres, a little larger than Florida. That result might be considered an act of war if committed by a foreign power.
Eugene Carroll, before the First International Conference on US Military Toxics and Bases Clean-up (1997).In a mindless, criminally negligent process, we poured resources into military expansion both at home and abroad without any regard for the environmental consequences. Pollution was ignored on the grounds that ‘national security’ took absolute priority over all other considerations.
Frederic Bastiat, The Law (Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, 1850) p. 13, 14.The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay…If such a law is not abolished immediately, it will spread: multiply and develop into a system.
William J. H Boetcker, The Ten Cannots (1916)You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
Edward F. Mrkvicka, Jr., Your Bank is Ripping You Off (St. Martin's Griffin; Revised edition, 1999) p. 9.If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
Written in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1787.All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America rise, not from defects in the Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.
John Maynard Keynes, C.B., The Economic Consequences of the Peace (Macmillion and Company, London, 1920) p. 220, 221.By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
Irving Fisher, 100% Money (Adelphi, 1935) Foreward.If all bank loans were paid, there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation. We are absolutely without a permanent money system.
Jerry Robinson, Bankruptcy of Our Nation (New Leaf Publishing Group/New Leaf Press) p. 167.Some people think the Federal Reserve banks are United States Government institutions. They are not Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.