The Battle of San Jacinto, fought on April 21, 1836, in present-day Harris County, Texas, was the decisive battle of the Texas Revolution. Led by General Sam Houston, the Texas militia engaged and defeated General Antonio López de Santa Anna's Mexican forces in a fight that lasted just eighteen minutes. The Texan militia moved quickly and silently across the high-grass plain, and then, when they were only a few dozen yards away, charged Santa Anna's camp shouting "Remember the Alamo!" and "Remember Goliad!," only stopping a few yards from the Mexicans to open fire. The Texans achieved complete surprise, and achieved one of the historically most decisive and unequal victories of any battle between regular soldiers and volunteer militiamen. About 630 of the Mexican soldiers were killed and 730 captured, while only nine died of the roughly 900 Texans who fought.
Santa Anna, the President of Mexico, was captured the following day and held as a prisoner of war. Three weeks later, he signed the peace treaty that dictated that the Mexican army leave the region, paving the way for the Republic of Texas to become an independent country.
One of the key lessons of this critical battle is the way Houston held back his troops until just the right moment. After the massacres at the Alamo and Goliad his men were clamoring to engage the Mexican troops immediately and without tactical planning. Houston knew that if he had yielded to their demands, they would have been wiped out just like the defenders at the Alamo and Goliad had been. So he led them in a tactical retreat, while keeping track of the movements of the Mexicans. When Santa Ana camped without posting sentries or otherwise preparing for an attack, Houston seized the opportunity for a decisive victory.
Although the Texas troops are often referred to as an "army", they were not enlisted for fixed terms for pay, and thus were militia, rather than army, forces. Only a few of the men were appointed to have military rank, or had formal backgrounds as soldiers in any regular army.
For more on the Battle of San Jacinto:
Wikipedia
Battle of San Jacinto, Wallace L. McKeehan
Texas State Library and Archives
San Jacinto Museum of History
Texas State Historical Association
The Battle of San Jacinto, YouTube, from the movie The Alamo)
2011/04/21
2011/04/19
Waco: The Massacre at Mount Carmel
Waco: The Massacre at Mount Carmel
These are the complete movies that shocked a nation and spawned the modern constitutional militia movement.
Waco: The Rules of Engagement
WACO- A New Revelation
Easy YouTube Video Downloader for Firefox.
Our situation does require courage, but it also requires wisdom, preparation, planning, and widespread organized public support. We must reject foolish rhetoric that does not contribute to the solution. Wise persons do not posture or threaten. They quietly organize and prepare.
The Davidians provide an instructive model for us. They did not sally forth from their compound seeking government agents to fight. They exercised their rights nonviolently, resorting to violence only when it was initiated against them. They lost, but they lost in a way that inspired others to tell their story, and still others to organize the modern militia movement that has done more than almost any other effort to prevent similar abuses, just by existing, without a shot being fired.
Those who feel the urge to indulge in violent rhetoric would better serve their cause by organizing and training. The time may come for initiation of force, but that point is far down the path. There are many things that need to be done before that.
We can also learn from the model of the way Sam Houston led the Texas Militia against the Mexican Army. Many of his troops were spoiling for a fight before they were ready, which would only have gotten them killed and defeated their cause. Houston wisely held them back, waiting for the right moment. Finally it came, at San Jacinto, April 21, 1836, in one of the most amazingly unequal battles in military history. Never before had so few militia defeated so many regular soldiers, and inflicted so many casualties while suffering so few. After the battle, many of the Texians wanted to kill the captured Santa Anna, but once again, Houston wisely held them back, and instead exacted a treaty from Santa Anna that effectively granted Texas independence. Houston is reported to have said to his men, "You want blood. I want Texas."
These are the complete movies that shocked a nation and spawned the modern constitutional militia movement.
Waco: The Rules of Engagement
WACO- A New Revelation
Easy YouTube Video Downloader for Firefox.
Our situation does require courage, but it also requires wisdom, preparation, planning, and widespread organized public support. We must reject foolish rhetoric that does not contribute to the solution. Wise persons do not posture or threaten. They quietly organize and prepare.
The Davidians provide an instructive model for us. They did not sally forth from their compound seeking government agents to fight. They exercised their rights nonviolently, resorting to violence only when it was initiated against them. They lost, but they lost in a way that inspired others to tell their story, and still others to organize the modern militia movement that has done more than almost any other effort to prevent similar abuses, just by existing, without a shot being fired.
Those who feel the urge to indulge in violent rhetoric would better serve their cause by organizing and training. The time may come for initiation of force, but that point is far down the path. There are many things that need to be done before that.
We can also learn from the model of the way Sam Houston led the Texas Militia against the Mexican Army. Many of his troops were spoiling for a fight before they were ready, which would only have gotten them killed and defeated their cause. Houston wisely held them back, waiting for the right moment. Finally it came, at San Jacinto, April 21, 1836, in one of the most amazingly unequal battles in military history. Never before had so few militia defeated so many regular soldiers, and inflicted so many casualties while suffering so few. After the battle, many of the Texians wanted to kill the captured Santa Anna, but once again, Houston wisely held them back, and instead exacted a treaty from Santa Anna that effectively granted Texas independence. Houston is reported to have said to his men, "You want blood. I want Texas."
2011/04/18
Debt-based currency
Anything, including debt certificates, may be used as currency if it is accepted as such by most players in the market. The key to that acceptance is that the supply of it track the growth in economic production. Not the GDP, which calls it growth if two people who produced for themselves start trading the same products with one another without increasing the net amount produced. Arguably, it should also not include services, such as entertainment, that do not contribute to production. In other words, production of capital rather than consumption.
The problem with debt certificates is that there is no natural mechanism to hold down their supply, other than periodic market collapses. On the contrary, there are strong incentives on the part of both the public and private sector to magnify the supply of debt certificates. See what happened with securitization, which is still going on.
Note that congress has no constitutional authority to make anything legal tender on state territory. Only the states have that authority, and only to make gold or silver coin legal tender there. Congress may make federal reserve notes legal tender on federal territory, like the District of Columbia or various military bases and port facilities, under Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 17, but nowhere else. It can also accept FRNs for payment of debt to the federal government. What it may not do, contrary to the Legal Tender Cases, is compel anyone outside exclusive federal enclaves to accept FRNs or anything else in payment for debts. Every state that accepts FRNs as legal tender is violating the Constitution.
When the Federal Reserve creates "money" out of thin air and uses it to buy Treasury bonds to finance government expenditures, as it did in QE1 and QE2, it is doing several things. One is to use focused inflation to prop up prices of various investment vehicles, such as housing, bonds, stock, and securitized debt, which would otherwise fall. Contrary to popular belief, rising prices of oil and food are not the result of it, not yet. That will come, but those price rises are due to reduction in supply of oil and food, not an increase in the supply of currency.
There is a close relation between this kind of government financing with debt certificates and unemployment. Opponents of deficit reduction by reduced government spending fear the unemployment of government workers, and that would indeed happen. However, a debt-finance deficit also involves the creation of the money that goes to foreign governments ("sovereign wealth funds") that loan the money back to us, but also accumulate FRNs that drives currency exchange rates that favor the sale of their products to us, and the offshoring of U.S. jobs to them. For every government job maintained by continuing the deficit, there is a destruction or non-creation of at least five jobs in the private sector, about two off-shored and the rest layoffs or never created.
The entire federal deficit comes from only a few key programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unfunded government pensions, farm subsidies, and military spending. In trying to sustain the elderly, the ill, farmers, and our policing of the world, we are now at the brink of bringing down Western Civilization. This is not just a U.S. problem. The entire world has been following our lead and will fall with us. Within a year of the collapse, we may see unemployment of 90% everywhere, riots, looting, destruction of productive facilities, and hundreds of wars everywhere, some of them nuclear.
That outcome is not worth sustaining the elderly or the ill. If we have to choose, it is better to let them all die. Better them than most of the rest of the people on Earth. Those are our choices. Too many people are in denial that those are our choices. We will soon see, because at this point it is probably too late to prevent it.
The problem with debt certificates is that there is no natural mechanism to hold down their supply, other than periodic market collapses. On the contrary, there are strong incentives on the part of both the public and private sector to magnify the supply of debt certificates. See what happened with securitization, which is still going on.
Note that congress has no constitutional authority to make anything legal tender on state territory. Only the states have that authority, and only to make gold or silver coin legal tender there. Congress may make federal reserve notes legal tender on federal territory, like the District of Columbia or various military bases and port facilities, under Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 17, but nowhere else. It can also accept FRNs for payment of debt to the federal government. What it may not do, contrary to the Legal Tender Cases, is compel anyone outside exclusive federal enclaves to accept FRNs or anything else in payment for debts. Every state that accepts FRNs as legal tender is violating the Constitution.
When the Federal Reserve creates "money" out of thin air and uses it to buy Treasury bonds to finance government expenditures, as it did in QE1 and QE2, it is doing several things. One is to use focused inflation to prop up prices of various investment vehicles, such as housing, bonds, stock, and securitized debt, which would otherwise fall. Contrary to popular belief, rising prices of oil and food are not the result of it, not yet. That will come, but those price rises are due to reduction in supply of oil and food, not an increase in the supply of currency.
There is a close relation between this kind of government financing with debt certificates and unemployment. Opponents of deficit reduction by reduced government spending fear the unemployment of government workers, and that would indeed happen. However, a debt-finance deficit also involves the creation of the money that goes to foreign governments ("sovereign wealth funds") that loan the money back to us, but also accumulate FRNs that drives currency exchange rates that favor the sale of their products to us, and the offshoring of U.S. jobs to them. For every government job maintained by continuing the deficit, there is a destruction or non-creation of at least five jobs in the private sector, about two off-shored and the rest layoffs or never created.
The entire federal deficit comes from only a few key programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unfunded government pensions, farm subsidies, and military spending. In trying to sustain the elderly, the ill, farmers, and our policing of the world, we are now at the brink of bringing down Western Civilization. This is not just a U.S. problem. The entire world has been following our lead and will fall with us. Within a year of the collapse, we may see unemployment of 90% everywhere, riots, looting, destruction of productive facilities, and hundreds of wars everywhere, some of them nuclear.
That outcome is not worth sustaining the elderly or the ill. If we have to choose, it is better to let them all die. Better them than most of the rest of the people on Earth. Those are our choices. Too many people are in denial that those are our choices. We will soon see, because at this point it is probably too late to prevent it.