(<strong>Quest 4 Reality)</strong> I just read this article on the Natural News website and found it very interesting so I thought I'd share it with you here. This is extremely important information that should get you thinking. Its written by Mike Adams. Enjoy...

(NaturalNews) The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats want to spend us into oblivion while the Republicans only want to spend us into purgatory. The idea of actually running a balanced budget has never seriously occurred to either party. Government, after all, increases its popularity by confiscating money from some people and redistributing it to other people while keeping at least half of all that money for itself.

The whole fiasco became perfectly clear over the last few hours when, after days of intense haggling and late-night negotiation sessions, the Republicans and Democrats suddenly came to an agreement that would keep the government up and running for another week. And what does that agreement entail? Drop-in-the-bucket cuts of a mere $38.5 billion (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/u...) out of a federal budget that has now ballooned to over $6 trillion dollars for 2011 (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com...).

The federal deficit for 2011 alone will be $1.6 trillion. To put all this in perspective, if federal spending for 2011 were the length of a football field, the $38.5 billion in budget cuts amount to less than two linear feet. It's sort of like saying we need to score a touchdown in order to save America, but the best the Republicans and Democrats can negotiate is starting us out on the one yard line in our own back field! (To use a sports metaphor...)

Here's another way to look at it:

Geniuses need not apply
Imagine, if you will, that you run a household which earns $5,000 a month in income. But you spend $15,000 a month on your credit cards. And you've been doing it for 20 years. So you now have a multi-million-dollar debt burden with compounding interest. Things are spinning wildly out of control. Something must be done!

So you convene an "emergency spending cut" meeting with your family members, and you explain that if you don't cut spending, your family will go bankrupt and you'll have to sell your home and all your possessions. Your family members meet for days on end, discussing the problem and staying up late into the night to try to cut your spending. They negotiate and bargain, but everybody is convinced their own spending is crucial for the survival of the family.

Somehow, a difficult negotiation eventually leads to an agreement. We will cut spending! And how much spending will we cut? A whopping $96 a month!

So now, instead of spending $15,000 a month that you don't have, you're "only" spending $14,904 that you don't have! Amazing! We're cutting our spending!

Are you now "saved" from your debt? Of course not! You're still headed to the same financial collapse, but only at an insignificantly smaller rate of speed. These numbers are roughly proportional to what has just been negotiated in Washington, by the way. Can you see how utterly useless these so-called "cuts" really are in tackling the exploding national debt?

The whole idiotic fiasco is shameful beyond belief. What's most shocking is that in an age when Big Government is spending us all into economic ruin, even the "cut Big Government" Republicans can only walk out of the room with a scant $38.5 billion in reductions. And they call it a victory.

And if you can believe this, President Obama actually called it the "the biggest annual spending cut in history." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_spend...)

Seriously. Do these jokers think we are all complete idiots?

Why we must start cutting trillions from federal spending
Folks, let me lay it out straight for you: If we don't start cutting government spending by the TRILLIONS, the United States of America is financially doomed. To have any hope of long-term financial sustainability, we need to cut about 80% of federal spending right now and get government down around $1 trillion a year in total spending. At that size, we could actually start paying back our national debt and get back in control of our own financial destiny.

But of course, that would be impossible because people expect government to deliver all these "essential government services" -- even if it means going broke in the process and shifting all the debt to the next generation of taxpaying suckers. That's the plan of the Democrats, by the way: Spend as much as possible and pretend the laws of economics no longer apply. Or just hope the next generation will somehow figure out a way to pay for it...

Are these services really essential?
I'm fascinated by the mainstream media coverage of this pending government shutdown. One prominent online newspaper says it would halt "essential government services" such as sending out tax refund checks. Of course, they completely fail to point out that if the government wasn't confiscating a portion of your salary in the first place, you wouldn't have to wait on them to send you back the money you already earned.

But that's the question, really: What are "essential government services?" Aside from defending our shores and delivering the mail, there isn't much the federal government should really do except get out of our way and stop interfering into the lives of the American people who are trying to earn an honest living. Sure, I can see legitimate arguments for environmental controls on companies and the regulation of medicines, but if you really look at what that intention has turned into these days, government regulators have all become the marketing branches of the very industries they were supposed to regulate.

The FDA, for example, is really Big Pharma's P.R. department. The USDA is Big Ag's marketing branch. The DEA eliminate street drugs so that the drug companies can sell the exact same chemicals to children at monopoly prices (ADHD drugs are "speed"). The CDC is a total pharmaceutical sellout that pushes vaccines instead of real science. In nearly every case, the public would actually be better off without these so-called "regulators" which are actually just enforcers of the corporate-controlled monopoly state.

The government health care disaster
So what else does government do that actually helps anybody? It hands out health care services, people say, under Medicare and Medicaid. And yet it is precisely Big Government that prevents people from accessing cheaper, safer natural health alternatives that would eliminate up to 80% of the cancers in this country in the first place.

Government is standing in the way of sensible disease prevention solutions that exist right now but cannot be honestly marketed because the FDA and FTC threaten anyone who makes a disease treatment claim for any natural product -- even if that claim is scientifically true and validated! (http://www.naturalnews.com/032002_f...)

When it comes to health, make no mistake: Government isn't handing out health care; it's handing out disease and suffering while protecting the pharmaceutical monopoly that denies lasting health to the People!

What about charity and science?
What about government charity to help those in need? The term "government charity" is an oxymoron, of course. You can't claim to be charitable if you're forcefully taking money from one group and then giving it to another. That's not charity: It's theft.

Real charity must be based on the voluntary donation of funds to a charitable cause. And if we could all get the onerous tax burden of Big Government off our backs, all sorts of people would open up to giving more to charity at the local level. Churches, cities and states operate charities with far greater efficiency than a centralized federal government that has no clue what's happening on the streets in your local town, of course.

Oh, but what about all the research the government conducts in the name of science? Are you kidding me? Most of the "science" conducted by the government is fraudulent because it's heavily influenced by the financial interests of industry. Very rarely does an institution like the NIH, for example, actually produce useful research that helps improve the quality of life for the average American. Most of Big Government's so-called "research" is really just a bunch of arrogant scientists taking trips on the taxpayer's dime so they can meet each other at conferences and give each other awards for producing increasingly meaningless "science" that either has no practical purpose or is blatantly obvious in the first place.

Did you know that lung transplant recipients have a lower risk of lung cancer if they don't smoke after the lung transplant? Gee, really? And it only took twenty million dollars in government money to find out. That's government research for ya...

Federal government uses taxpayer money to murder millions of animals
The USDA, meanwhile, actually spends taxpayer money committing the mass murder of animals under a program called "Bye Bye Blackbird." (http://www.naturalnews.com/031076_U...). Under this program, taxpayer money is used to poison and kill millions of birds, geese, beavers, foxes, mountain lions, wolves and many other animals (http://www.naturalnews.com/031084_b...). How's that for taxpayer dollars being put to a good use?

Of course, most of the money Big Government deals with actually ends up in the hands of the rich Wall Street banksters. Remember the first $1 trillion bailout to the rich, wealthy elite in Washington? And then remember the second trillion-dollar bailout? A third is no-doubt on the way.

You see, government is primarily in the business of protecting its corporate buddies while screwing over the American people. That's why the government had no problem whatsoever coming up with a trillion dollars to hand out to a very tiny group of wealthy elite bankers while pretending that it still needs to tax the people to raise the funds to operate.

Why the government never needed to tax the American people in the first place
Here's the dirty little secret of government and taxation: There is no need to tax anyone at all. The federal government could simply create all the money it needs each year to run itself. Depending on how you count it, the total income tax revenues in a year are roughly $2 trillion, and the feds invented $1 trillion in a 24-hour period to bail out Wall Street. So why not just invent $2 trillion each year and eliminate the entire tax system?

Of course, as those familiar with monetary policy would rightly point out, this would debase the currency and ultimately lead to too many dollars being in circulation, driving up the price of goods. And yet government is doing that anyway! It's creating trillions of dollars in new money (M2 money supply) and debt instruments every year while pretending that somehow it still needs YOUR money to pay the bills!

Do you get this? Do you see that the entire tax system must have some other purpose than raising money to fund government? A government that has buyers for its debt can simply fund its own functions by selling more debt (and thereby stealing from the people through monetary debasement, but that's another story).

So why is the tax system in place? Because the tax system is a very effective means for social control. There is absolutely no economic, fiscal or monetary reason why the government needs to take money from the People to fund its operations. That entire concept is a complete myth (and this doesn't even get into the CAFR funds at the state level, either...)

Don't we need members of Congress?
So what about government representing the People? Isn't it important that we have Senators and Congressmen to make our laws and run our government? C'mon people, wake up! "You're adults!" as Gerald Celente says (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUX-...). Do we really need these people in Washington -- most of whom are complete corporate sellouts -- telling us what to do?

Of course not. If the entire U.S. Congress were disbanded tomorrow, and we all just voted directly on the laws of the land, it would immediately end all the corporate lobbying, corruption and bribery of the lawmakers. A direct democracy would eliminate the Congress and simply allow the People to vote on the laws themselves. But of course Congress will never allow that to happen because the No. 1 mission of every government body is to protect its own power.

That's the whole story with the TSA, the federal agency that's now reaching down your pants at the airport. In just a few years, it grew from less than 200 employees to over 60,000. And now TSA agents are the new Nazi police of America, planting fake bags of cocaine in your luggage (http://www.naturalnews.com/030302_T...), sexually molesting little children and pretending to be making air travel "safe" while, in actuality, they consistently fail to detect even large guns that are carried right onto airplanes (http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/loade...).

Protecting our shores... all the way over to their shores!
And what about wars? Well, most people would agree the government has at least ONE job: To protect our shores. But all the way to the shores of Tripoli? "Protecting our shores" does not mean "bombing Libya" and then claiming it's some sort of "humanitarian mission" (a total lie, of course). Protecting our shores means keeping invaders off our land. And yet by running these insane imperialist wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, the U.S. government is actually inviting terrorists to recruit new members and bomb the bejeezus out of America.

Let's face it: If you really want terrorists to hate America, just go out and provoke them first. Sure enough, they'll target you for revenge. And then when we're attacked with a dirty bomb nuke by some terrorist group in the future, the President will no doubt explain we're being attacked because "they hate our freedom." No they don't. They hate imperialist invaders! They hate America for bombing them first and firing depleted uranium shells into their towns and villages, releasing deadly radiation that will contaminate their lands for centuries to come.

Can you imagine what we, the American people, would do if the Libyan army flew a bunch of planes over our country and started firing DU shells into our cities? How angry would we be? How motivated would we be to seek some sort of revenge on the Libyans? That's how they feel about us, you see. And we provoked it.

That's why Big Government actually causes more problems than it solves. It gets us into wars; it spends us into impossible debt; it protects corporate monopolies and denies people access to natural healing remedies. Government tramples on our freedoms, molests us at the airports, and takes away our Constitutional rights. Big Government gets us into wars we can't afford and confiscates the money we've earned before we even get to see it.

And worst of all, Big Government can't help but keep getting bigger. It is now so bloated and so "fiscally obese" that even the threat of a total shutdown can only convince our lawmakers to cut a miniscule fraction of total spending -- an amount that will make virtually no difference whatsoever in the fast-approaching financial bankruptcy of the U.S. government.

Mark my words, folks: The U.S. government will never get its debt under control. And that means it can only be headed toward one thing: A total debt blowout ending in financial collapse. Because while you can mock the laws of compounding interest for a while, you cannot alter them. No government can spend its way out of debt, no matter how much political spin is applied by the White House.

Learn more: <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/032011_budget_deal_federal_spending.html#ixzz1JAUJV1f6">http://www.naturalnews.com/032011_budget_deal_federal_spending.html#ixzz1JAUJV1f6</a>

I hope you enjoyed this article and found it to be informative. Please leave comments and let me now what you think! Thanks!

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