“The Rock Island Line,” was a popular tune decades ago, and I’m certain many of you remember it. I’m a railroad buff, as you perhaps already know, and it occurs to me that the demise of the Rock Island Railroad, whose last train ran in 1980, might be comparable to the mess in D.C., which has been going on for a long time. The Rock Island Railroad was often called the railroad no one needed, and was ’one railroad too much,’ but that wasn’t really true.
It all began in 1845, when a few men had an idea for a railroad. The first train ran in 1851. The ’Rock’ built the first bridge across the Mississippi and Missouri, and was a really up and coming railroad which made a lot of money as it developed for the first few decades. It then came under the presidency of unscrupulous and dishonest men, and by 1914, it was unable to pay the interest on its debts. It had expanded too fast, made mistakes, and money had been squandered by its management. After several reorganizations, bankruptcies, loans, sales of lines, and all sorts of problems, it gave up the ghost and passed into history in 1980. As each reorganization took place, the stock and bond holders lost their investments. What happened to the “Rock” has happened to America.
America, like the Rock Island Railroad, got off to a rather shaky but determined start. It had founders who wrote and followed the Constitution. Brilliant men, whose names we all know, remember and idolize. Men such as Tomas Jefferson, George Washington, Madison, Adams, and the list is long. Less than a hundred years later, Abraham Lincoln started a war which cost 620,000 lives. He imprisoned those who disagreed with him, abolished Habeas Corpus, bankrupted newspapers and others who thought his war was insane and un-called for. Everyone should read the book “The Real Lincoln by Tom Delorenzo. It’s an eye opener. I’ve never understood why Republicans so idolize Lincoln. He was a disaster.
After that war, America got back on its feet slowly, and then in 1917, another President got us into another pointless war, called World War One. At the same time as this was happening, The income tax was passed, and the Federal Reserve was formed and voted on in a most unscrupulous way. Everyone should read “The Creature From Jekyll Island,” for the truth about the Fed. The Fed and foolish politicians caused the Great Depression of the 1930’s, and President Roosevelt, like Obama now, thought that endless spending and “pump priming” would work, but it didn’t, so Roosevelt harassed the Japanese into bombing Pearl Harbor, and World War Two started, another unnecessary war. That got us out of the Great Depression, but at a cost of 362,000 lives and millions of injuries just on our side, not counting the tens of millions dead across the oceans.
After that war, Harry Truman got us into Korea, which was imbecilic, and cost us 50,000 lives. LBJ got us into Vietnam, another absurdity, costing us 59,000 lives. George Bush got us into Iraq and Afghanistan, which is more insanity, and now Obama, without the consent of anyone, is waging war in Libya. (My recounting of history, while brief, is totally accurate). Obviously, no one in Congress or the White House has ever heard of Cicero. who said in 60 BC, that “The sinews of war are infinite money.” Or Machiavelli, who in 1513 said “The war is just which is necessary.” Thomas Jefferson said that, “War is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.” All these wars cost trillions of dollars, and caused America, as did the Rock Island, have such huge debts, that even the interest is almost unpayable. America can still pay its debts with endless streams of paper money, but the Rock Island had no such privilege.
America, like the Rock Island, has borrowed and refinanced itself over and over again. Each time, the debt grows larger, until now, since few want to buy U.S. debt, we are buying our own debt, like the child with the lemonade stand who drinks all of his lemonade and says that since it’s all gone, he has made a profit. The Rock Island’s physical plant had degraded so much, that in 1980, it would have taken $100 million, (a billion or more in today’s dollars), to make it operable in even a half efficient way. The “Rock” couldn’t borrow the hundred million, so it sold off its physical plant, locomotives, track, rights of way, cars, etc, and ceased to exist. How will America end? Will it go to bed one day like the “Rock” and not wake up?
When a nation goes from solvency, inventiveness, huge manufacturing plant, low unemployment, vast export of its wares, and world wide admiration, to its current indebtedness, underclass, debased currency, lost manufacturing, lost jobs, and lowered credit ratings, what can be its end? The euro is no better than the buck, Japan has far more debt than America, and even China is no economic success, as it is wildly printing yaun and virtually giving it away, with the result that it is having 5% or more inflation a month, not a year, as is happening here. How I long for an America as it was before the insane wars, shipping of jobs overseas, endless welfare, and Monopoly type money, when we built and grew what we consumed, and exported to the rest of the world.
We are protected by two gigantic oceans. What goes on in Europe, Asia, or anywhere else, other than here, is news maybe, but we should be totally neutral, and watch as the rest of the world fights each other, destroys each other, kills each other, and bankrupts themselves doing it. We should subsidize no one, nor anything, be it milk growers, sugar growers, poor people, sick people, or illegals. The Constitution doesn’t authorize subsidy or insurance. We should bring every soldier home, declare neutrality, ship illegals back, and seal the Mexican border as tight as a compressed air tank. We should gradually withdraw all subsidies, reduce corporate taxes to zero, eliminate the Federal Reserve, the IRS, all czars, and most bureaucracies. We should make Washington D.C. a ghost town, with unemployed worthless bureaucrats begging for mercy, or selling apples on street corners. I guess I am saying that the Tea Party is our one hope for reform, and in the mean time, gold and silver are our best methods of preserving our wealth.
The Rock Island’s various officers, and presidents, spent money foolishly, wasted, and siphoned off to profitless and worthless projects. The governments of the entire world have done the same thing, including America’s government, and now the chickens have come home to roost. Banks are broke, governments are broke, the dollar is worth 1% of its value a hundred years ago, riots, arson, violence, and mass shoplifting seems to be common. What to do? Get out of big cities if possible, get out of dollars and into gold and silver. It’s that simple! Protect yourself, in other words.