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Charlie Traffas
Charlie Traffas has been involved in marketing, media, publishing and insurance for more than 40 years. In addition to being a fully-licensed life, health, property and casualty agent, he is also President and Owner of Chart Marketing, Inc. (CMI). CMI operates and markets several different products and services that help B2B and B2C businesses throughout the country create customers...profitably. You may contact Charlie by phone at (316) 721-9200, by e-mail at ctraffas@chartmarketing.com, or you may visit at www.chartmarketing.com.
From the Publisher
2012-11-19 09:39:46
What's new now?
A- For the past several months I have shared with you my opinions and those of others on a myriad of domestic topics…including but not limited to the declining strength of the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency, the presidential campaign, the economy and critically-needed tax reform. They all share a common denominator…the fiscal soundness of our country. Although it may sound terribly materialistic, I will promise you…the fiscal soundness of our country must be in place before we can ever lead the world diplomatically, politically or militarily. I just don’t see a lot of people paying attention to what countries like Nigeria, Finland, Greece, Italy, Venezuela, Argentina and others, that are in as deep of trouble as they are, have to say about anything. Maybe you do. Like it or not, we have a President in place for the next four years…and all is the same as what we have had for the last four years. We still have the same balance of power in the House, and almost the same balance of power in the Senate. After a fight like the one we all had to witness for more than a year…full of hatred, venom and more negativity than any other previous campaign…President Obama ended up saying the right thing in his victory speech in Chicago, early on the morning of November 7th. He said, “…and whether I earned your vote or not, I have listened to you, I have learned from you, and you’ve made me a better President. And with your stories and your struggles, I return to the White House more determined and more inspired than ever about the work there is to do and the future that lies ahead.” He has said the right thing many times before…but we all know what followed. I hope this time he means it, but it seems doubtful. As the old saying goes, “It is difficult for a leopard to change its spots.” If the past is any judge, as soon as he experiences anyone disagreeing with him…it will be his way or the highway. I pray not. Before I share with you something you need to know that many of you may not know…let me state…things will never again be like they were before this election…for three reasons. 1) With no way to defend his record, the Obama campaign decided in August of 2011 their strategy would be to “Kill Romney.” They did…and it worked. Negativism has been vindicated. It will now be the way campaigns are fought. Substance will take a back seat. You will also see the field grow much smaller of those who are qualified and make an attempt to run for office. As I was watching the speeches following President Obama’s victory, I was reminded of the movie “Patton”, when George C. Scott said, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country, he won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.” 2) As I have said in previous issues…we are now at a “tipping point.” Today, we have just under 50% of all American households receiving a check of some kind from the Government (other than Social Security). If you project the same growth of these households into the future as what we have had over the past 4 years…by 2016 we will have 53% of all American households receiving some type of government assistance. Mark this down…it will never happen that a person who is receiving assistance will vote for someone who advocates taking it away, if they have a choice to vote for someone who advocates continuing it and adding to it. 53% will always win over 47%. 3) This was a billion dollar advertising campaign from each side…but that’s just the “paid-for” advertising. If you put a value on all of the unpaid-for attacks by the mainstream press against Romney for being a felon, murderer, cheat, killer of jobs, liar, and a greedy businessperson with no concern for the middle class…and the free rides it gave President Obama on things like the economy, jobs, Fast and Furious, the Stimulus, Obamacare, the Leaks, “You didn’t build that,” and Benghazi; it is estimated to be in excess of $9 Billion! Carl Von-Clausewitz, a Prussian General in 1850 said it best in his book, “On War”, “All other things being equal, a force of 10,000 men will always win over a force of 5,000 men.” I would have to believe it is even more true for a 10 to 1 advantage. Okay, so what is it that you need to know that you may not know? I promise, it is not a rehash of the election. Most of us have heard enough of that stuff for a lifetime. It is the ramifications of what has happened and the situation in which we find our country. I stated in the November issue (available at www.theqandatimes.com), other than the appointment of anywhere from 2 to 4 Supreme Court Justices over the next four years and the Executive Orders that will be issued, it really didn’t make any difference who was elected President insofar as fixing the fiscal problems we have in our country. Neither President Obama nor Governor Romney, and their legions that follow them, had or have solutions that will work. We are now in the midst of an administration that swears they have a bigger mandate than the people who voted for those who won seats in the House and Senate, that will only serve to divide the country even more; more messes that have to be explained (or covered up) on the Petraeus affair and the Iran drone attack; and a lame duck Congress, with the “right” full of hatred for those on the “left” because of all of the things that were said and done over the past two years. These are the people the rest of us have to debate and fix this “fiscal cliff” that is facing us. This is not a good situation for any of us, or our country. So I still stand with what I told you last issue. You need to know what needs to be done, understand all of it as to why, and support it with all of the passion and enthusiasm you can muster when you are called upon, and/or have a chance to voice it. But you also need to be prepared for the things that may happen. Since we are not currently in the midst of an appointment of a Supreme Court Justice, but we are on the brink of some gigantic fiscal problems unlike any we have ever seen before, let me share with you information I feel you need to have. I will do so with the following article, written by Jim Garrison, president of State of the World Forum and Wisdom University, on the Huffington Post (certainly not a “right” leaning entity), on March 21st, 2012. Garrison is the author of “America as Empire” and a dozen or more other books on world affairs. This article deals with one of those Executive Orders issued by President Obama that few Americans are aware of. It was issued by him in mid-March of this year (2012). It is called the National Defense Resource Preparedness. I knew about this article and its contents long before the election, but it would have been a moot point to bring it up before President Obama was re-elected, as all Executive Orders can be rescinded by a new President. Now you need to know about it and do what you need to do to protect yourself, which we will talk about later. Here is his article…in its entirety… “President Obama’s National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order of March 16 does to the country as a whole what the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (2012 NDAA) did to the Constitution in particular – completely eviscerates any due process or judicial oversight for any action by the Government deemed in the interest of ‘national security.’ Like the NDAA, the new Executive Order puts the government completely above the law, which, in a democracy, is never supposed to happen. The United States is essentially now under martial law without the exigencies of a national emergency. Even as the 2012 NDAA was rooted in the Patriot Act and the various Executive Orders and Congressional bills that ensued to broaden executive power in the ‘war on terror,’ so the new Executive Order is rooted in the Defense Production Act of 1950 which gave the Government powers to mobilize national resources in the event of national emergencies, except now virtually every aspect of American life falls under ultimate unchallengeable government control, to be exercised by the President and his secretaries at their discretion. The 2012 NDAA deemed the United States a ‘battlefield,’ as Senator Lindsey Graham put it, and gave the President and his agents the right to seize and arrest any U.S. citizen, detain them indefinitely without charge or trial, and do so only on suspicion, without any judicial oversight or due process. This new Executive Order states that the President and his secretaries have the authority to commandeer all U.S. domestic resources, including food and water, as well as seize all energy and transportation infrastructure inside the borders of the United States. The Government can also forcibly draft U.S. citizens into the military and force U.S. citizens to fulfill ‘labor requirements’ for the purposes of ‘national defense.; There is not even any Congressional oversight allowed, only briefings. In the NDAA, only the President had the authority to abrogate legitimate freedoms of U.S. citizens. What is extraordinary in the new Executive Order is that this supreme power is designated through the President to the secretaries that run the Government itself: • The Secretary of Defense has power over all water resources; • The Secretary of Commerce has power over all material services and facilities, including construction materials; • The Secretary of Transportation has power over all forms of civilian transportation; • The Secretary of Agriculture has power over food resources and facilities, livestock plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment; • The Secretary of Health and Human Services has power over all health resources; • The Secretary of Energy has power over all forms of energy. This Executive Order even stipulates that in the event of conflict between the secretaries in using these powers, the President will determine the resolution through his national security team. The 2012 NDAA gave the Government the right to abrogate any due process against a U.S. citizen. The new Executive Order gives the government, through the Secretary of Labor, the right to proactively mobilize U.S. citizens for ‘labor’ as the government deems necessary and to coordinate with the Secretary of Defense to maintain data to coordinate the nation’s work needs in relation to national defense. What is extraordinary about the Executive Order is that, like the NDAA, this can all be done in peacetime without any national emergency to justify it. The language of the Executive Order does not state that all these extraordinary measures will be done in the event of ‘national security’ or a ‘national emergency.’ They can simply be done for ‘purposes of national defense,’ clearly a broader remit that allows the government to do what it wants, when it wants, how it wants, to whomever it wants, all without any judicial restraint or due process. As Orwell famously said in 1984, ‘War is peace. Peace is war.’ This is now the reality on the ground in America. Finally, the 2012 NDAA was hurried through the House and Senate almost like a covert op with minimal public attention or debate. It was then signed by the President at 9:00 PM on New Year’s Eve, December 31st, 2011, while virtually nobody was paying attention to much other than the approaching new year. This new Executive Order was written and signed in complete secret and then quietly released by the White House on its website without comment. All this was done under a President who studied constitutional law at Harvard. It is hard to know what to say in the face of such egregious disregard for the integrity of what America has stood and fought for since its founding. It is hard in part because none of us thought such encroachments would ever happen here, certainly not under the watch of a ‘progressive’ like President Obama. At one level, the prospect for war with Iran is probably an immediate justification. But the comprehensiveness of the Executive Order, like that of the 2012 NDAA, speaks to something much deeper, more sinister. I would suggest that this Executive Order, like the NDAA, has been in the works for some time and is simply the next step in the logic of the ‘global war on terror.’ Our political elites have come to consider democracy an impediment to effective governance and they are slowly and painstakingly creating all the democratic legalities necessary to abridge our democratic rights with impunity, all to ensure our ‘security.’ Of such measures do republics fall and by such measures tyrants emerge. The only thing that really remains is the occasion to test the new rules of the game. Perhaps that will be war with Iran, perhaps some contrived emergency, or perhaps, as long as the public and media remain asleep, no occasion will be necessary at all. It will just slowly happen of its own accord and we, like the frog in the pot of slowly boiling water, will just sit there and be consumed by our own turpitude.” What are some of the other triggers of this Executive Order? As the article states, anything…or nothing…can trigger it. Maybe it will be the US Dollar losing its status as the world’s reserve currency; or hyperinflation hitting because the Fed is printing so much money to cover our debt; or this “fiscal cliff” putting us back into a recession; or war breaking out in the Mid-East; or if there is something that happens on the world stage because of the “greater flexibility” President Obama has now since the election is over; or… I feel all Executive Orders should be scary, for each is issued by one person, with no approval by Congress, and with no oversight…but I’ve never known any to be more scary than this one. What is martial law? What does it entail? With us being as close as we are to so many things that could make this Order become a reality, it might be good to know. That will be my topic for next month.
 
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