A more subtle and insidious form of theft is the debasing of our currency through inflation by the central bank, the Federal Reserve; which, by the way, is not Federal and has no Reserves. The “Fed” is a government-granted private monopoly or cartel, and is both the engine of plutocratic control and the temple of the elites’ worship of money and worldly power. By now nearly worthless, the inflated (or debased) dollar will buy only four percent of what it could buy in 1913, when the Fed was created. It is backed by nothing but the “full faith and credit” of the US Government, a government that has broken faith with the American people time after time.

These various forms of thefts benefit the corporatocracy, but violate the implicit promises of the welfare state (another name of the Regime) to ensure prosperity and protect the average citizen from economic distress. Indeed, its fiscal and economic policies have driven the country to the brink of economic collapse. The government’s own economists now admit the U.S. is insolvent; that is, its obligations, current and future, far exceed the ability of the productive capacities of the country to ever pay them, especially as we continue to ship abroad the industries that actually produce wealth. Government, corporate, and personal debt are at a staggering all-time high. The day of reckoning is coming, held at bay only because foreign investors are buying U.S. debt instruments, keeping the dollar and the U.S. consumer economy afloat.

As a result, real income is steadily falling. Between 1999 and 2005, national household income has fallen by an average of .5 % per year or a cumulative total of 6% (based on 1999 dollars) while the official rate of inflation averages about 4.5 % per year. (The actual inflation rate is higher, but as in so many other areas, the Government lies about that, too).

Here’s how the income decline shapes up in the South:

All but four Southern States have experienced a decline in real income greater than the national average. Virginia has suffered the least, largely due to the rise in Government employment, Government contracting, and the influx of military officers who heavily populate the Washington, DC suburbs of Northern Virginia, offsetting the decline elsewhere in the Commonwealth.(1)

Like indentured servants of the early colonial period, Americans, including us Southerners, have mortgaged ourselves to the banks and corporations, which betray our interests at every turn. Instead of building self-sustaining, independent household economies, we have become virtual slaves to the industrial economy, which gave us a false sense of well being for a time, but now is cheating us of both prosperity and security.

Of special concern is Southern agriculture. Once the bedrock of Southern livelihoods, the family farm is virtually extinct. Big Agro uses its financial clout and political power to drive out competition and amass ever more control over food production. Its monopolistic approach includes genetically modified crops of dubious nutrition and perhaps definite harm to humans. Even worse are genetically modified “terminator seeds,” which could make it more difficult for the few independent farmers left to get next year’s planting seed stock, placing them at the mercy of the big multi-national corporations like Monsanto. When our very food supply is concentrated in the hands of a few unaccountable globalist corporations, we ought to be deeply concerned.

Most people are more concerned about their livelihoods than anything else. That’s why we discussed it first. However, of greater concern to the SNC Committee is that the Regime not only steals our wealth but also simultaneously robs us of our liberty. Political and economic freedom go hand in hand. Without liberty there can be no prosperity.

Under the pretext of the so-called War of Terror, the U.S. is slowly but inexorably being transformed into a surveillance-and-police state. And as the Bush Administration’s campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq proceed from failure to outright disaster, the Administration ratchets up its assaults on America’s traditional liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

The ill-named PATRIOT Acts I and II were bad enough, but the recent Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006 and amendments to the Insurrection Act cross a threshold even the most pessimistic among us never thought to see. These acts, ostensibly aimed at fighting terrorists, undermine the ancient right of habeas corpus, the foundation of all liberty in the English-speaking world since Magna Carta in 1215, and make it easier for the President to use the armed forces to suppress domestic dissent.