How Government Solved the Health Care Crisis!

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Today, we are constantly being told, the United States faces a health care crisis. Medical costs are too high, and health insurance is out of reach of the poor. The cause of this crisis is never made very clear, but the cure is obvious to nearly everybody: government must step in to solve the problem.

Eighty years ago, Americans were also told that their nation was facing a health care crisis. Then, however, the complaint was that medical costs were too low, and that health insurance was too accessible. But in that era, too, government stepped forward to solve the problem. And boy, did it solve it!

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one of the primary sources of health care and health insurance for the working poor in Britain, Australia, and the United States was the fraternal society. Fraternal societies (called "friendly societies" in Britain and Australia) were voluntary mutual-aid associations. Their descendants survive among us today in the form of the Shriners, Elks, Masons, and similar organizations, but these no longer play the central role in American life they formerly did. As recently as 1920, over one-quarter of all adult Americans were members of fraternal societies. (The figure was still higher in Britain and Australia.) Fraternal societies were particularly popular among blacks and immigrants. (Indeed, Teddy Roosevelt's famous attack on "hyphenated Americans" was motivated in part by hostility to the immigrants' fraternal societies; he and other Progressives sought to "Americanize" immigrants by making them dependent for support on the democratic state, rather than on their own independent ethnic communities.)

The principle behind the fraternal societies was simple. A group of working-class people would form an association (or join a local branch, or "lodge," of an existing association) and pay monthly fees into the association's treasury; individual members would then be able to draw on the pooled resources in time of need. The fraternal societies thus operated as a form of self-help insurance company.

Turn-of-the-century America offered a dizzying array of fraternal societies to choose from. Some catered to a particular ethnic or religious group; others did not. Many offered entertainment and social life to their members, or engaged in community service. Some "fraternal" societies were run entirely by and for women. The kinds of services from which members could choose often varied as well, though the most commonly offered were life insurance, disability insurance, and "lodge practice."

"Lodge practice" refers to an arrangement, reminiscent of today's HMOs, whereby a particular society or lodge would contract with a doctor to provide medical care to its members. The doctor received a regular salary on a retainer basis, rather than charging per item; members would pay a yearly fee and then call on the doctor's services as needed. If medical services were found unsatisfactory, the doctor would be penalized, and the contract might not be renewed. Lodge members reportedly enjoyed the degree of customer control this system afforded them. And the tendency to overuse the physician's services was kept in check by the fraternal society's own "self-policing"; lodge members who wanted to avoid future increases in premiums were motivated to make sure that their fellow members were not abusing the system...

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1 Through 30 -- The Coming U.S. Financial Crisis By The Numbers

by Michael Snyder

The United States is drowning in a sea of red ink from coast to coast and most Americans have absolutely no idea what is about to happen.? Hopefully you have started to prepare for the coming U.S. financial crisis.? If not, hopefully this article will be a wake up call for you.? Right now, governments all over Europe are on the verge of financial implosion.? Most Americans aren't paying much attention to that, but they should be, because what is happening to Greece and Italy right now will eventually be happening here.? Just recently, the U.S. national debt passed the 15 trillion dollar mark.? State and local government debt is also at record levels.? Tens of millions of American families are in debt up to their eyeballs, and millions more Americans fell into poverty last year.? Meanwhile, the "too big to fail" banks just keep getting larger and the Federal Reserve continues to inflate the debt bubble.? At some point this debt bubble is going to burst, and when it does it is going to unleash financial hell all over America.

Below you will find a list of numbers - 1 through 30.? For each number, a statistic has been chosen that demonstrates the financial nightmare that the United States is facing.? It is simply not possible to rack up debt at staggering rates forever.? At some point the debt spiral is going to stop.

A lot of politicians are claiming that they can stop the coming financial crisis from happening.? But the truth is that unless our entire financial system is fundamentally transformed, nothing is going to be able to stop the financial nightmare that is headed our way.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of our politicians still believe that the current financial system can be fixed and the vast majority of them still fully support the Federal Reserve.

That is going to prove to be a gigantic mistake.? The following are 30 facts that show that the United States is heading directly for a massive financial crisis....

1 - For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars.? That was the third year in a row that our budget deficit has topped one trillion dollars.

2 - The balance sheet of the Federal Reserve has been ballooning like crazy.? At this point, the Federal Reserve has very little capital backing a balance sheet that is well over 2 trillion dollars.

The following is how Michael Pento of Euro Pacific Capital describes the situation that the Fed is in....

Today, the Fed has $52.5 billion of capital backing a $2.7 trillion balance sheet.

Prior to the bursting of the credit bubble, the public was shocked to learn that our biggest investment banks were levered 30-to-1. When asset values fell, those banks were quickly wiped out. But now the Fed is holding many of the same types of assets and is levered 51-to-1! If the value of their portfolio were to fall by just 2%, the Fed itself would be wiped out.

3 - It is being estimated that it would take a total of 3 trillion euros to bail out all of the countries in Europe that are in imminent danger of financial implosion.? Europe is heading for a gigantic financial crisis, and when it happens the United States is going to be dragged down as well.

4 - As the U.S. economy continues to decline, millions of American families are having a very hard time feeding themselves.? Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

5 - The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year.? It looks like the federal government is going to have to help the U.S. Postal Service out financially.

6 - Freddie Mac says that it is going to need another $6 billion bailout from the federal government.

7 - Fannie Mae says that it is going to need another $7.8 billion bailout from the federal government.

8 - We are told that the economy is recovering, but the number of Americans on food stamps has grown by another 8 percent over the past year.

9 - The U.S. unemployment rate has been hovering around 9 percent for 30 straight months.? It is currently sitting at 9.0 percent.

10 - The total cost of just three federal government programs - the Department of Defense, Social Security and Medicare - exceeded the total amount of taxes brought in during fiscal 2010 by 10 billion dollars.

11 - Back in the year 2000, 11.3% of all Americans were living in poverty.? Today, 15.1% of all Americans are living in poverty.

12 - The "free trade" agenda being pushed by our globalist politicians is absolutely killing us.? Even in industries that we were once dominant in we are now getting wiped out.? For instance, in 2010 South Korea exported 12 times as many automobiles, trucks and parts to us as we exported to them.? Hundreds of billions of dollars that should be going to support American jobs and businesses is going overseas instead.

13 - Since 1985, the federal government has added 13 trillion dollars to the national debt.

14 - The U.S. Treasury Department says that instead of $14.3 billion, the total losses from the auto industry bailouts will actually be $23.6 billion.

15 - Amazingly, the U.S. federal government is now 15 trillion dollars in debt.? When Obama first took office the debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.

16 - According to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Federal Reserve made 16 trillion dollars in secret loans to big corporations, Wall Street banks, foreign nations and wealthy individuals during the financial crisis.

17 - The "too big to fail" banks just keep getting larger and larger.? In the year 2000, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo held approximately 22 percent of all banking deposits in FDIC-insured institutions.? By the middle of 2009 that figure?was up to?39 percent.? That is an increase of 17 percent in less than a decade.

18 - More Americans than ever are totally dependent on the government.? In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income.? Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18 percent of all income.

19 - As a result of the lack of good jobs, we have huge numbers of Americans in their prime working years that cannot financially support themselves.? As I have written about previously, 19% of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are living with their parents.

20 - America is rapidly getting poorer.? Today, more than one out of every seven Americans is living in poverty and more than 20 million of them are considered to be living in extreme poverty.

21 - Income inequality is rising to very dangerous levels.? According to a joint House and Senate report entitled "Income Inequality and the Great Recession", the top one percent of all income earners in the United States brought in a total of 10.0 percent of all income in 1980, but by the time 2008 had rolled around that figure had skyrocketed to 21.0 percent.

22 - It is not just the federal government with a debt problem.? State and local government debt has reached an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP.? Many state and local governments are even closer to going broke than the federal government is.

23 - If you can believe it, during 2010 an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day were shut down in the United States.? Our economy is literally being gutted like a fish.

24 - Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP.? Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.

25 - According to Shadow Government Statistics, the "real" rate of unemployment in the United States is creeping up toward 25 percent.

26 - The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (an agency of the federal government) says that it ran a deficit of $26 billion during the fiscal year that just ended and that it will probably need a bailout from the federal government.

27 - In the midst of everything else, the United States is bleeding national wealth like crazy.? Tens of billions of dollars more goes out of this country each month than comes into it.? Instead of improving, our trade deficit just keeps getting worse.? For example, the U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.

28 - The U.S. housing crash is a crisis that never seems to end.? According to one source, approximately 28 percent of all home loans in the United States are currently "underwater".? So what is going to happen if the economy gets even worse?

29 - The federal government has borrowed more than 29,000 dollars per household since Barack Obama first took office.

30 - 30 years ago, the U.S. national debt was about 15 times smaller than it is today.? How in the world are we ever going to explain this foolishness to future generations?

Please share these facts with as many people as you can.? The reality is that most Americans have no idea just how bad things have become.

Instead of dealing with the problems that this country is facing, most Americans just try to numb the pain.? As a nation, we are incredibly addicted to pleasure and entertainment.? It is so much easier to spend endless hours staring at the television than it is to get out there and try to do something to turn this country around.

America is in big time trouble.? We desperately need a new generation of heroes to step up to the plate.

All of us have different talents and all of us have something that we can contribute.

Will you answer the call?

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Marc Faber's October Outlook: Forget EU Debt Crisis, A China Meltdown Is The Real Threat

by Nathaniel Crawford

Marc Faber is out with the latest issue of his famous Gloom, Boom and Doom Report, which is always a must read for serious investors. Unlike most of the other talking heads, Faber has an excellent track record. He correctly predicted the top in the equity markets in Nov. 2007, and caught the bottom in March 2009, making his subscribers a lot of money. Here is a summary of his October 2011 report:

Stocks--Yes, stocks are very oversold, but that does not mean they cannot go lower. The dreadful price action in both Copper and the Shanghai Composite points to new lows for the equity markets. After US stocks make a new low below 1100 on the S&P 500 (SPY), there could be a year-end rally followed by a more meaningful decline into 2012. Investors should use any bounce in stocks as an opportunity to reduce their equity exposure. At this point, Faber advises no more than 25% of your portfolio be in stocks.

Gold--At $1900 gold was extremely overbought, and a correction was necessary. However, Faber now believes that gold could undergo a significant correction similar to what happened between 1974-1976, when gold fell 40%. Faber notes that a large decline in gold is now a distinct possibility. The first support level for gold is at the 200 DMA around $1500. Despite the potential for a pullback, Faber still likes gold and believes it will trade significantly higher.

Dollar--It's true that the dollar has no intrinsic value and is being printed into infinity, but the US dollar will be your best friend for the next few months. As global liquidity contracts on EU debt concerns and a possible hard landing in China, Faber advises investors to be long the dollar. Note this is a short-term call; longer term the dollar is going to zero.

Treasuries--Despite being bullish on the US dollar, Faber does not reccomend treasuries, noting that they are overbought and susceptible to a large correction.

China and Copper--If you think the market is falling because of incompetent EU bureaucrats you are behind the curve. According to Faber, the price of copper is signaling a very serious slowdown (if not complete collapse) in China. This is what is really behind the move down in all commodities. A hard landing in China would be devastating for the global economy. The Shanghai composite is making new lows along with copper, which is very bearish. Also stay away from the Australian and Canadian currencies. If China crashes, these markets will get massacred.

Emerging Markets--Stay away from these at all costs. All emerging markets are falling and making new lows. Even though Faber likes these longer term, they could still fall another 20%-30% before they would be good buys. These markets could even fall to their 2009 lows. However, this will represent a good buying opportunity because these markets will be the first to bottom.

Short Opportunities--There is no doubt about it; shorting in this kind of manipulated market is dangerous, but if you must, here are a few ideas: Apple (APPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Salesforce.com (CRM). Only short these with very tight stops.

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Is Gold No Longer A Safe Haven? Not According To Capital Economics: "Gold Will Surge When Euro Crisis Escalates"

[...] ? The recent sharp falls in the dollar price of gold have led some to question its status as a refuge from problems elsewhere, especially now that the US currency is strengthening across the board. However, if (or when) there is a further escalation in the crisis in the euro-zone, gold prices are still likely to surge against the dollar too.

? The price of an ounce of gold has now fallen by more than $200 from the record nominal highs above $1,900 seen earlier in the month. Since Tuesday alone, gold is down more than $100. As the price of traditionally riskier assets such as equities and industrial commodities have also fallen sharply over this period, it is tempting to conclude that gold has become another casualty of the "risk-off" trade.

? Despite this, we continue to expect gold to rise above $2,000 this year and to at least $2,500 no later than 2013. The fundamentals that support gold's status as a safe haven have not of course changed in the last few days. Above all, its value does not depend on the creditworthiness of any government or financial institution, and that may yet prove very significant in the weeks and months ahead.

? What's more, with gold prices now at previously unprecedented levels, the absolute size of daily moves are likely to be larger -- both up and down. Despite the recent falls, the gold price is still nearly $100 higher than at the start of August.

? Finally, the recent fall in the dollar price of gold primarily reflects a return of a degree of confidence in the US currency, which may not be sustained. The price in euro terms, for example, has held up a little better, which is what matters more for European investors seeking protection from the crisis in the euro-zone. (See Chart 1.) Other things being equal, a stronger dollar does imply a lower gold price when measured in dollars. This is partly because of the simple pricing effect which applies to any commodity, whereby purchasers in other currencies can afford to pay a higher price in dollars when the dollar is weak. But gold is also seen as a close substitute for the dollar as a store of value, so if there are doubts about the prospects for the US currency, gold tends to benefit disproportionately.

? The reverse appears to have happened recently. Crucially, the markets have moved on from the dispute over the US debt ceiling and the loss of the AAA rating (with S&P). The Fed's reluctance to adopt further quantitative easing has also allowed the dollar to regain some of its own safe haven status.

? Nonetheless, in the event of a disorderly Greek default, and particularly if fears of a break-up of the euro-zone really take hold, gold is still likely to benefit more than any other currency even if the dollar proves to be the best of the rest. In part this is because the upside for gold is not constrained by broader economic and policy considerations, whereas the value of the dollar (and of other national currencies such as the yen and sterling) clearly is. Confidence in the dollar is also likely to be undermined again by the fall-out from fresh euro-zone shocks on the US economy and banks. Indeed, since the global crisis began there have been several periods when the dollar has generally been strengthening and yet the price of gold in dollar terms has risen further, such as the second quarter of 2010 when concerns about Greece took off. (See Chart 2.) Although gold prices are now much higher, there is no good reason to rule out a repeat out-performance if the crisis in the euro-zone takes an even more sinister turn.[...]

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Mark Faber Warning: Bigger Financial Crisis on the Way

Mark Faber Warning: Bigger Financial Crisis on the Way - informationliberationinformationliberation
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Mark Faber Warning: Bigger Financial Crisis on the Way


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- Marc Faber to Reuters: You dont need the fed to tell you something is wrong
- Gold & Silver Crashing Hard: Gold Down to $1630/oz, Silver $29.90/oz
- Is Gold No Longer A Safe Haven? Not According To Capital Economics: "Gold Will Surge When Euro Crisis Escalates"
- Rosenberg Presents The Three Ways Bernanke Disappointed The Market, And Why It Is Dumping
- Commodities Fall to Nine-Month Low









CommentsAdd CommentPage 1 of 1AnonymousPosted: Sep 22 2011, 6:02 PM

Link 67171Marc Faber will never discuss UN Agenda 21 and how it works. This makes him part of the agenda. This is how you can tell who the undercover Marxists are.

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Gold Prices May Top $2,000 This Year on 'Confidence Crisis'

By Joe Richter

Gold will probably top $2,000 an ounce by year-end amid surging investor demand, a Bloomberg survey showed.

Prices will rise to a peak of $2,038 before Dec. 31, based on the average of 16 respondents in a Bloomberg survey at the London Bullion Market Association?s annual conference in Montreal. Next year, gold will rally as high as $2,268, according to the average in the survey.

Gold has surged 25 percent this year, touching a record $1,923.70 in New York on Sept. 6. The metal climbed as escalating debt woes in Europe and the prospect of faltering U.S. growth boosted demand. Today, gold futures for December delivery advanced $4.80, or 0.3 percent, to $1,783.70 at 9:13 a.m. on the Comex in New York.

?This is largely a crisis of confidence, and gold is a safe haven,? Rujan Panjwani, the president of Edelweiss Financial Services Ltd., said in an interview at the conference. ?I see little chance of gold falling.?

Gold is in the 11th year of a bull market, the longest winning streak since at least 1920 in London, as investors seek to diversify away from equities and some currencies. Holdings in exchange-traded funds backed by the metal have jumped 31 percent in the past two years, reaching a record 2,260.5 metric tons on Aug. 8.

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- Gold & Silver Crashing Hard: Gold Down to $1630/oz, Silver $29.90/oz
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This site contains copyrighted material the use of which in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for the purposes of news reporting, education, research, comment, and criticism, which constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (found at the U.S. Copyright Office) and other applicable intellectual property laws. It is our policy to remove material from public view that we believe in good faith to be copyrighted material that has been illegally copied and distributed by any of our members or users.
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Creating the Anthrax Crisis His Career Needed

by Floy Lilley

The crisis was that there was no crisis.

The patents that Bruce Ivins held with co-inventors were never going to make him any real money or give him the star attention he deserved unless the Army became convinced that his new-generation anthrax vaccine had to be given to seventy-five million service men ? without delay.

But, the Army wasn?t any longer paying any attention to anthrax.

Yes, a spike of fear in the early 1980s over the Soviet anthrax deaths at Sverdlovsk, and then the greater opportunity in 1990-91 that presented itself when it was thought that Saddam Hussein might use anthrax in the first Gulf War had worked well earlier in making Ivins a microbiologist star. Yes, his salary had risen from $27,000 in 1980 to $59,000 right after 1991. Those incomes, however, were pittances compared to the $150,000 each year that he could be allowed to receive from steady patent royalties, plus the glorious psychic rewards of being at the very epicenter of a critical military science project, if only the Army would demand his vaccine.

What were needed were fears. What were needed were massive waves of gut-chilling fears. Fears that near-invisible weapons of mass destruction were being unleashed and only one new anthrax vaccine could save lives. What was needed was a crisis. So, Ivins created it.

How can a man do what Ivins so deliberately did? This was not insider trading for profit, this was murder for power. In retrospect, a body of literature that includes The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek confirms that a shift in a man?s moral fiber occurs when a state becomes super nationalistic, an enemy such as terrorism is created, and a scientist is employed in a military project. That certainly describes the U.S. by 2001 and Bruce Ivins in Fort Detrick, Maryland, employed by USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases).

Hayek observed that

?.where a few specific ends dominate the whole of society, it is inevitable that occasionally cruelty may become a duty; that acts which revolt all our feeling, such as the shooting of hostages or the killing of the old and sick, should be treated as mere matters of expediency?There is always in the eyes of the collectivist a greater goal which these acts serve and which to him justifies them because the pursuit of the common end of society can know no limits in any rights or values of any individual.

There is no need to invent excuses, such as mental illness, for Ivins? behavior when he had a greater goal. Or excuses for FBI director Robert Mueller?s years-long vilification of a long-shot suspect, when he had a greater goal. Or excuses for media?s disinformation, while having access to accurate facts, when they had a greater goal. Power becomes the goal in itself.

As Hayek understood

?information which might suggest failure on the part of the government to live up to its promises or to take advantage of opportunities to improve conditions ? all will be suppressed. There is consequently no field where the systematic control of information will not be practiced and uniformity of views not enforced. This applies even to fields apparently most remote from any political interests and particularly to all the sciences, even the most abstract.

Military authority had taken favorable notice of Ivins? penchant toward obeisance. Bruce Ivins had the skill, the opportunity and the motives to single-handedly produce the crisis he needed for fame and fortune. And, the state had its own uses to make of his crisis.

Persuasive circumstantial evidence of Ivins? guilt as the creator of his crisis exists, but Bruce Ivins died by apparent suicide in 2008 before the FBI was able to formally charge him in the affair and before any conviction of him as the killer was obtained. David Willman in The Mirage Man: Bruce Ivins, the Anthrax Attacks, and America?s Rush to War presents the full circumstantial case against Bruce Edwards Ivins. Details and evidence pile up page upon page.

The obligatory dysfunctional family, homicidal thoughts, fixations on female colleagues, conservative fa?ade, genuine scientific achievements, and cunning manipulative skills all played their roles in Bruce Ivins? unexamined life of fifty-six years and his close-to-perfect anthrax letter crimes in 2001. This perpetrator had created a mirage that misled almost everyone he met.

Death and destruction, however, were no mirage. Over the next nine years, the manufactured crisis can be credited with murder, The Patriot Act and war with Iraq. Five people were killed by inhalation anthrax spread by the mail system via Ivins? anthrax letters. Seventeen additional people were infected. Senator Tom Daschle in the Hart building was spared, but he has acknowledged that the anthrax letters galvanized passage of The Patriot Act which has been no friend to American individual civil liberties. Daschle refers to that Act?s passage in the aftermath of September 11 as a rush to judgment on policy that was regrettable. The Patriot Act has since been found to have impeded scientific knowledge of anthrax and Ebola.

Several factors helped manufacture America?s rush to war in Iraq. Among them were: 1) unsupported claims that anthrax had been used in 9/11, 2) Ivins deliberately stated that Bin Laden terrorists had anthrax and sarin gas when they did not, 3) each anthrax letter was a photocopy with the inflammatory text listing that THIS IS NEXT, TAKE PENACILIN NOW, DEATH TO AMERICA, DEATH TO ISRAEL, ALLAH IS GREAT, 4) Secretary of State Colin Powell encouraged the public to make the connection between the letter attacks and Iraq, and 5) the Bush administration amplified fears of bioweapons and continued to suggest Iraq?s complicity.

The media ran with rumors that there was an additive, perhaps bentonite, to the anthrax spores which could prevent clumping. Such deliberate preparation, had it been true, would have lent credibility to the possibility that this anthrax had been weaponized and was the product of biohazard terrorists. The newly created Homeland Security did make this false claim, while they disregarded data from Sandia National Lab that disproved it. Iraq?s weapons of mass destruction were a myth, but war fever needs few facts. The Bush administration simply believed that the anthrax letters were linked to Iraq.

Deaths have mounted. Over 100,000 Iraqi civilians and over 5,000 American have been killed so far since the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Costs have mounted. $1.5 billion each year was authorized to build a dozen bio containment labs. VaxGen began developing Ivins? anthrax vaccine by the spring of 2002. They won two contracts totaling $101.2 million to begin making the vaccine. By 2003 they had an exclusive worldwide right from the Army to develop, manufacture and sell the rPA vaccine (Recombinant Protective Antigen anthrax vaccine for which Ivins held two patents). From 1998 through mid-2010 anthrax vaccine was given to 2.4 million U.S. service personnel. Ivins did not live long enough, nor innocently enough, to collect on his desired $150,000 yearly royalty share, but he did receive a few patent-related fees that totaled $12,100 through VaxGen. High revenues could have been anticipated because 11,457 scientists were licensed to be working on these biological agents by 2010.

By late 2008, the investigation of the anthrax letters, called the Amerithrax case, had totaled more than ten thousand interviews, executed eighty searches, and expended more than 600,000 investigator hours. The investigation itself was only completed in August 2010. The FBI and the media learned late two facts that could have prevented some hysteria had they been acknowledged earlier. They were that bloodhounds do not provide reliable evidence and that one cannot be exposed to inhalation anthrax by drinking water from a stream.

Senior FBI officials, toward the greater goal of unquestioned government response to an enemy, fixated on one innocent suspect, Steven Hatfill. They consequently destroyed Hatfill?s career. Then, they had to pay him a $5.82 million settlement, but they admitted to no error. It was not until the spring of 2008 that Bruce Ivins was finally seen as the guilty scientist. Genetics, DNA and signature mutations of the spores led less-fixated investigators to the one man who had the skill, the opportunity and the motive for these murders. Ivins sought to implicate seven of his own colleagues, but ultimately the FBI concluded that it was solely American citizen Bruce Ivins who was responsible for the anthrax attacks.

Whatever the substance and legal outcome of an Ivins trial would have been (they are imagined in Willman?s APPENDIX) it is obvious that Ivins did not operate in a vacuum. The anthrax letter attacks presented too many with too much opportunity to further other larger aims.

A crisis really is too good an opportunity for collectivists to waste.
__
Floy Lilley [send her mail] is an adjunct faculty member at the Mises Institute. She was formerly with the University of Texas at Austin's Chair of Free Enterprise, and an attorney-at-law in Texas and Florida.

Copyright ? 2011 by LewRockwell.com

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