Original subtitles

If you listen to Benito Mussolini, who knew a thing or two about fascism, he

said that fascism is the merger of state and corporate powers.

Now people will deny that and they'll say that's not exactly what he said, but

if you really look into it, that's what he said.

Milk is an important part of every good diet.

Use the best grade of milk available to you. Disease may be contracted through

drinking unsanitary raw milk

In 2010, there was a simultaneous raid on two different locations in

California.

Heavily armed agents stormed into private properties, arresting several U

.S. citizens for dealing in a restricted substance.

Now, drug raids happen quite frequently in the U.S. It's just one of the ways

the authorities keep us free from malicious and harmful substances.

Only this wasn't a drug raid.

The substance being sold wasn't crack or crystal meth.

or even bootleg hooch.

It was milk.

This is an example of just how heavy-handed the government is in

routing out disfavored parties.

In this case, the government operates on a public interest argument that raw milk

is inherently unsafe.

It is a breeding ground for bacteria.

And because it is not pasteurized, the argument is it carries with it an

enormous increased risk for consumers such that it shouldn't be available.

This is the position of the Food and Drug Administration.

And the government cracks down on this one segment. And they do so with brute

force, sending in stormtroopers, essentially, and shutting down the milk

plant in its entirety and confiscating all of the milk.

regardless of whether it's contaminated or not.

The FDA raided this organic market in order to keep us safe from the dangers

of unpasteurized milk.

Buying and selling unpasteurized milk, that is.

They have no problem with you drinking raw milk if, say, you find a stray cow

on the way home and decide to milk it yourself.

But... A reputable farmer trying to sell some to willing customers?

That's a big no-no.

Although this organic market was a club, with each member having signed a waiver

acknowledging the potential risk of drinking raw milk, this was not good

enough for the FDA.

Did these people not realize that raw milk is a gateway food?

What next? People eating cheese?

Knocking back raw oysters, sushi, or, heaven forbid, eggs?

Luckily, the FDA was there to step in and save these adults at gunpoint from

the dangers of raw milk.

The reason why pasteurized milk doesn't come under this scrutiny and the reason

why raw milk as opposed to cheese, eggs, raw oysters, sushi, why they don't come

under the same FDA scrutiny is that the major milk manufacturers are a

principal lobby within the FDA.

They have very small profit margins per unit, and so if in Whole Foods and other

places there are significant numbers of consumers who come in to buy raw milk

products, it is a significant economic effect on the large milk processors.

The California milk raids were not an isolated event.

Over the past few years, there have been raids all across the U.S. to crack down

on the sale of many organic products.

But despite any claims of safety concerns or risk, one thing is clear.

The actions of the regulatory agencies, and by extension, the politicians that

manage them, are not motivated by any notion of public good.

They're motivated by the desire to stay in power.

That takes money.

The problem with the U.S. political system...

is that it revolves around money.

And so immediately, that sets off this dichotomy of those who can afford to

play in the system and those who can't.

To run for office, you need $1.5 million.

You need about $11 million to run for the Senate.

So if you don't have money, where do you go? You go to the people who have a hand

stretched out with money, ready to fund your campaign.

but they're going to want something in return because, of course, they're not

giving this money for charitable reasons.

It very clearly advantages big businesses because they have more

capacity to devote resources to influence buying.

Political influence has become just another arsenal in the marketing toolbox

of large companies.

Only instead of promoting themselves, they use this influence to suppress the

competition.

And the key to it all are lobbyists.

People think that we live in a free market society, and we don't.

Big government and big business are way too closely aligned today, especially in

the United States.

And this, you know, is because of lobbying, basically. We have

cronyism. We don't have capitalism in the United States.

especially when it comes to the military and then big medicine, big food, like

Monsanto, you know, with all the GMOs and stuff. Most people don't want it,

but yet it's being forced on us because Monsanto has such leverage in Congress

through all the lobbying of the food industry.

So what is lobbying?

Well... Simply, lobbying is the act of influencing decisions made by

legislators and regulatory agencies.

You know, the guys who make the rules.

And the people who exert this influence are called lobbyists. Well-connected

professionals with slick suits and slicker tongues.

Lobbyists tend to be experts in the fields they lobby for. They advise

lawmakers on how to make sure Americans are getting the most benefit from the

laws they pass, while also reducing potential harm.

It's a good idea.

Why wouldn't you want an expert's advice?

Here's where things get screwy.

Sometimes the lawmakers decide the cash is greener on the other side, so they

become lobbyists themselves.

They leave government and join a private company, taking their connections and

influence with them.

This phenomenon is called the revolving door.

People going from regulating an industry to working in that same industry, and

sometimes back and forth multiple times.

Corporations love having such powerful people on their payroll, so they do

everything they can to lure them over.

And for their part, the regulators help out by making a few choice laws to

benefit their future employers.

And with the spin of the door comes a host of new laws that benefit some

companies, hinder others, but business keeps rolling, and in the end, no one

really gets hurt. Except, of course, the people.

You'll see members of Congress who will take on issues defending one particular

special interest and then go out to work for that special interest after they

leave. And the same is true of all government agencies.

In fact, that's considered the normal way to do business in Washington.

Big government and big business essentially are the same, are they not?

What's the difference between a corporation...

and a government agency, when the corporation buys the politicians with

campaign donations, and the politicians do as they're told in passing laws that

the corporation would have passed had the corporation been the government.

Sadly, this phenomenon is all too common today, and it's not specific to just one

industry. Rather, it seems that many of the agencies which have the power to

influence our daily lives are corrupted by the revolving door.

When you have delegated power to committees and government officials and

agencies to regulate the economy, it always leads to corruption.

It's too tempting for people not to use that power for their own personal

agendas. And the revolving door is merely proof of the fact that when you

give government and its agencies the power to regulate commerce, it always,

always will lead to corruption.

Nine-tenths of all federal law is not the product of those we elect,

but rather the product of the unelected heads of these bureaucratic agencies.

So we do not have a limited federal republic in the United States. What we

have instead is an unlimited bureaucratic oligarchy in which these

bureaucratic agencies operate largely without any accountability.

This isn't a representative form of government.

They only represent the most powerful and the people who give them the most

amount of money.

The corporations, the multinationals, have taken over.

Whether it's agriculture, whether it's broadcasting, whether it's

pharmaceutical,

whether it's retail, you name the field, a few control it all.

Laws and regulations are essential to any modern society.

There are some activities that need to be controlled or prevented for the sake

of the common good.

Which side of the road you can drive on.

Whether a five-year-old should be able to buy a bottle of Jack.

How many return trips you can make to a buffet in a single sitting.

Okay, maybe scratch that last one, but you get the idea.

But with so much collusion between regulators and the industries they

regulate, the laws governing our daily lives are becoming excessive,

unnecessary, and often downright nonsensical.

Keeping the public safe and free is no longer the primary goal for a number of

our lawmakers.

There is little done by the federal government that has not influenced

by a choice to favor one special interest over another.

A lot of regulations are adopted with a public interest veneer, but underneath

they're the product of negotiation between industry leaders and government

to create a barrier to entry.

And many of these actions taken have enormous economic consequences, both

eliminating competition to a company and enhancing their economic status.

This relationship between big business and government agencies not only affects

their competition in the economy, but all of us in our day-to-day lives.

What you want to do in an economy is you want to produce the products and

services that are in greatest demand.

And no one knows that except the market. But when politicians come in and they

substitute their own judgment, generally they're not even trying to outguess the

market and figure out what's best for us.

They're generally just trying to give an advantage to one particular individual

or group of individuals at the expense of another.

And so there are clear winners and losers, whoever's on the receiving end

of a subsidy or government expenditure versus who's getting regulated or taxed.

But regardless of the individual winners and losers, collectively, we lose

because wealth is destroyed.

Resources are allocated in a less than optimal way.

If you can pay enough money, you can make sure that you win on whatever issue

you... are concerned about. Maybe it's stopping legislation.

Maybe it's to get something passed.

But ultimately, you're looking to shape policy.

And that policy has real impact in our daily lives. It shapes what kinds of

products we can buy at the store.

It shapes how safe those products are. It shapes what we are allowed to know

about those products.

The FDA's war against unpasteurized milk is just one example of the way large

food producers are using their connections in Washington to limit our

choices at the grocery store while increasing their own profits.

But it is by no means the only example.

Big government is in a collusion with big agriculture.

There were never any scientific studies.

that determined that GMO food is equivalent to conventionally grown food.

The Food and Drug Administration of the United States said, well, Monsanto has

vouched for the safety of GMO food. And Monsanto said the FDA has certified it

as safe.

That's big business and big government together.

But some small, independent farms are choosing not to use patented GMO crops

or work for larger agribusiness concerns.

Some just want to supply their local area with nutritious, farm-fresh food.

One such farmer is Joel Salatin.

He runs his farm based on an innovative and radical new technique which he calls

letting his animals out to pasture.

Sounds crazy, but maybe he's on to something.

We have a very different set of production and processing criteria.

First of all, our animals move.

They're not in great big confinement animal feeding operations.

Our animals don't do drugs.

We don't vaccinate. We don't medicate.

And we run our farm on the closed carbon cycle as opposed to buying in chemical

fertilizer from outside.

So, you know, the localization, the carbon cycle.

animals move around the lack of pharmaceuticals all of that is 180

degrees different than today's industrial global petroleum-based food

system it turns out there is a healthy market for traditionally farmed

meat and produce so why are there so few independent farms operating around the

country

The story of Chicago and its great stockyard symbolized the amazing

economic revolution that was underway.

On the farms, machines and improved techniques of agriculture began to

produce an abundance of food for consumption both at home and abroad.

The new world of mass production required increasing concentrations of

capital.

Pooling the investments of many people, the corporation became the means to

starting vast new enterprises.

The globalization and corporatization of everything is gradually making

it more and more difficult for independent farmers, independent people

in the food system, to market to their neighbors, to friends, to family, to

whatever. And you do think every day about

what bureaucrat is going to invade my life today.

Every single time the government penetrates the marketplace,

it always favors the biggest players because they're the ones that are able

to buy favors to curry concessionary privileges in a regulatory climate.

And so I know that many of the consumer advocacy folks mean well when they say,

we need more oversight, we need more regulations for this bad thing that

happened over here.

What they don't realize is that by the time that regulation actually gets

enacted and filters down to the farm level, it always,

always, always hurts small producers and helps the large producers.

It's the revolving door.

Don't eat healthy, only eat crap.

A few companies control everything.

There's only a small group of agribusiness companies that control the

entire food production.

They're putting everybody out of business.

They don't want any competition.

The small farmer is always a threat.

If 50 million people in the United States decide on their own that they

would prefer to buy their produce,

from small farmers or at farmers' markets because they think it's

healthier, that's a defection out of the system.

Government doesn't want that.

And Monsanto certainly doesn't want it, nor do any of the big agribusiness

companies want it. So better to do everything possible to wipe out the

small farmer in America.

Make him go bankrupt, make him sell his land, which is then taken over by some

larger agricultural entity, until eventually the entire...

food chain is controlled by big corporations and big government.

The regulations forced upon small independent farms like Joel's have

created a hurdle which limits the size and scope of his operation.

And whether these regulations are well-intentioned or imposed just to give

an unfair advantage to the big guys, the end result is that many of the products

Joel would like to sell have been deemed illegal.

The things that we would like to do, from curing meat to selling raw milk,

for example, we would love to sell raw milk, and we have customers who'd love

to get raw milk, but it's illegal.

We just had a health department inspector, they told us that our

slaughtering shed for the poultry was illegal and wanted to close us down.

And their contention was that if it's actually open to the air, it's

inherently unsanitary.

What's fascinating is a feedlot in deplorable conditions with no

trespassing signs gets away with almost anything, but because we are extremely

transparent outdoors, you know, out here, it makes us vulnerable to the

anthropomorphism of ignorant people.

You're probably thinking that these agricultural regulations are meaningless

to you.

If these regulations are limiting your choices, how come you can walk down any

aisle in the supermarket and find dozens of different brands and hundreds of

different foods? I mean, how much choice do we really need?

The average person walks into the supermarket, right? And they see all

this stuff on the shelves. They say, what do you mean I don't have choice? I

can get Count Chocula breakfast cereal, Fruit Loops, Cracker Jacks, whatever,

okay? I can get potato chips from...

10 different companies, you know. What do you mean I don't have choice?

And so it's a hard sell because people have a hard time understanding

what they can't get.

You know, what you can't get is raw milk.

What you can't get is backyard slaughtered poultry that never went

through a great big processing plant.

There's a tremendous amount of artisanal heritage type food.

that is unavailable now because it has been criminalized and outlawed.

In the end, it comes down to risk.

Some things, like raw milk, are just too risky to let out to the public.

After all, contaminated raw milk could theoretically be as harmful as poison.

Actual poison, on the other hand, is apparently fine.

If you want to talk about risk, isn't it fascinating that the very entity that

gave us DDT, that gave us Mad Cow, that gave us cloning, that gave

us GMOs, these are very risky things. I mean, whether or not you believe in them

or not, you have to appreciate those are all very high-risk things.

And they are the ones that we say, I want to put my faith in you.

for my food.

I think people participate in risky behavior all the time. You know, I think

if you're feeding your kids pasteurized milk, cocoa puffs, Count Chocula cereal

and Froot Loops, that's risky behavior.

But the government has decided that that's not risky behavior.

What's risky behavior is drinking a glass of raw milk.

When it comes down to it, Not being able to get raw milk isn't that big a deal. I

mean, who needs raw milk when you can get deep-fried mozzarella sticks or

tasty, tasty chicken fingers?

After all, food is food, right?

I think it's important to realize that in 1979, when the first USDA food

pyramid came out, you know, with grains on the bottom, that was the beginning of

the obesity and type 2 epidemic because it put carbohydrates on the bottom.

And it's quite a profound reality that America today

would be far, far healthier if the government had never told us what to

eat.

So maybe you'll overdo it slightly on the saturated fats and imitation cheese.

Who cares?

We've got access to the best drugs in the world.

Whether you have a resting heart rate of 116...

That third cheeseburger has you sweating like Shaq at the line, or you're just

feeling queasy from all the drugs you're taking. There are drugs out there to

help you.

And we can all agree, if there's one area where we want strict regulations,

it's pharmaceuticals.

After all, no one wants unsafe medicine getting out to the public.

There are, of course, several drugs, many drugs, that are helpful.

But what concerns me is that a significant minority, significant

minority of drugs that have been approved by FDA have been approved over

the FDA's own medical reviewers' objections on safety grounds.

And many, many unsafe drugs have been admitted into the marketplace that

actually cause death, liver failure, kidney failure, heart attacks.

These drugs are on the market, many of them still, and are approved yearly.

It is thanks to such rigorous quality control by the FDA that a drug like

Vioxx, which caused over 100,000 heart attacks and tens of thousands of deaths,

was swiftly pulled from the market after only five years and

$2.5 billion in profit for the pharmaceutical giant Merck.

When an FDA commissioner knowingly approves an unsafe drug like Vioxx, and

keeps it on the market, even though there are 140,000 heart attacks and 60

,000 deaths from it, and still stands in defense of that company Merck.

There's something wrong here. There's something dreadfully wrong.

Why can't that person be held accountable? And yet they get away with

it. Not only do they get away with it, but in the case of the commissioner who

did that, Lester Crawford, He ends up being employed by a company called

Policy Directions Inc. at a very high capacity, and that company represents

Merck.

Perhaps the Vioxx incident was just a one-off event.

There are a whole host of helpful drugs in the marketplace, and the FDA

shouldn't be scrutinized for one little slip-up. I mean, it's not like this is

happening regularly.

The FDA says that all of these pharmaceutical drugs that are everywhere

in America, they're safe and effective.

That's how they get out into...

and drug stores, and that's why people ingest them.

Well, 106,000 people every year in the United States are killed by

FDA-approved pharmaceutical drugs. The FDA admits this on their own website,

but they say nothing about taking responsibility for it.

It's just another medical fact to them.

Huh. Over 100,000 deaths from prescription drugs every year.

You'd think with all the stringent testing the FDA does before it lets a

drug out onto the market, they'd detect some of these life-threatening side

effects.

These are the bottles which finally will find their way to doctors' offices and

clinics all over the country.

Even as they reach the end of the production line, other tests are in

progress and samples are sent to the government.

The manufacturer's protocol is first reviewed, then subjected to a whole

battery of complex scientific tests.

The FDA's whole system of drug review is bogus. It's designed to protect and

advance the interests of the drug industry.

A lot of people don't realize this, but FDA never tests the drugs it approves.

FDA does no independent testing at all.

It relies entirely on the testing done by the drug advocate, the proponent of

the drug application that has a self-interest and a conflict of

interest.

That party is looked to for all of the drug testing.

They do their own testing.

So the FDA does no independent testing of the drugs it approves. But with so

many new drugs being manufactured, Can you blame them for outsourcing the

testing to the drug companies themselves?

After all, if you can't trust a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical

conglomerate, who can you trust?

There have been multiple instances of corruption in this process where

negative information has been kept away from the FDA so that the FDA will

approve a drug.

In fact, Sanofi Aventis, with its drug Keetec, relied principally on a clinical

trial that FDA's medical reviewers, who are sharp on the case, discovered didn't

even happen.

They made it up.

And there were FBI investigations and prosecutions.

But what did the FDA do? The medical reviewers said to the commissioner, gee,

they relied on a fraud for this application.

We should deny it.

But the FDA commissioner granted it.

You put key tech into the market.

So you see, it's that degree of influence and corruption that makes it

impossible for the American people to be protected.

With drugs being approved by the FDA, despite the objection of their own

medical reviewers, there can be little doubt the revolving door is alive and

well in the pharmaceutical industry.

And just in case you do have some tiny shred of doubt remaining, consider the

case of Billy Tosin.

You may want to have some anti-nausea pills on standby.

Congressman Billy Tosin, who was the head of the Energy and Commerce

Committee in the House, he was the man assigned the task of ensuring that a

provision would be put into the law that would prevent the entire government from

negotiating.

down the per unit price of drugs required to be acquired under Medicare

Part D based on volume.

So in other words, they're forced to pay whatever price the drug industry sets

per unit for the drugs purchased under Medicare Part D.

And that is something that could enable the drug industry at its will to bring

the nation to its knees financially.

And so it is that this provision was put into the law in the Bush administration.

Tosin left the government, left his position in Congress, became the head of

the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, and made the

highest salary they had ever then paid to that date, $2.5 million a year, as a

compliment for his selling out the nation to protect the drug industry.

So while the government may be choosing, often poorly, which food and drugs they

think are safe for us to have, at least they aren't trying to force any of them

on you.

Except perhaps for vaccines.

George Lambert is a representative of the New Hampshire State House, and he is

a leading proponent for vaccination choice in his state.

When I got to the State House, somebody asked me if I would work on a bill for

vaccination choice.

The more research I did, the more I found out that in the risk of an

epidemic, they can go out and vaccinate everyone without choice.

To say that vaccines are compulsory, which in the U.S.

is the struggle right now, every state has their own exemptions

that parents can claim.

But now... The push is on to say that we're going to force you to get

vaccinated, whether you like it or not.

You don't have the freedom to decide.

If we talk about medical safety and freedom, everybody should have the

choice of what medical procedures they want.

You can get a medical exclusion, you can get a religious exclusion, but you can't

get a conscientious exclusion.

We had an issue in New Hampshire a couple of years ago where there were

some injections that were contaminated.

that might actually contain meningitis.

But if you were required to get a vaccination or an injection, how do you

know the injection isn't contaminated?

But if you want your children to go to school or participate in any of these

other activities, the government says you either do this or you're excluded.

That's a problem. Because when the news says there's something that puts your

life at risk, you should be able to make an educated decision.

That's what freedom really comes down to in the end.

the freedom to decide, for good or bad, how you want to live. And that freedom

should not be overruled by the government, except in the most extreme

cases, or to keep us safe from the most diabolical of threats.

Marijuana, one of the most dangerous drugs known to mankind.

Responsible for almost as many deaths per year as asteroids or shark attacks,

it can cause an otherwise healthy adult to giggle or get a bit hungry.

Thankfully, the brave men and women from numerous agencies have been waging a

tireless and expensive war against this dangerous plant for decades.

The war on drugs is a war on the people.

It's a war to fight for the pharmaceutical industry so they could

sell their psychotropic drugs.

I mean, Jesus, how many people that I hear horror stories from their children

whacked out on Vicodin.

Oh, that's a beaut.

Yeah, have a little Oxycontin, you know, to make you happy.

Feel some pain, this will get rid of it.

But don't get high, man.

No weed, it's going to kill you. You saw Reefer Madness.

Reefer Madness is a celebrated PSA film produced for the U.S. government.

Known for its even-handed and unbiased approach to the subject of marijuana,

which it claims is worse than heroin, It saved generations from the dangers of

marijuana. Even a single puff of Mary Jane can make you dance like a fool,

laugh uncontrollably, or violently murder your friends.

How embarrassing.

Normal is a nonprofit organization whose aim is to legalize cannabis throughout

the United States.

There are 800,000 people a year arrested in the United States on marijuana

charges, 90% for possession only.

So over a 40-year period now, that's roughly 27

million people have been arrested on marijuana charges. So it's created a

huge universe of people who have been effectively screwed by the government.

When we sued the DEA in the classic case, normal versus DEA, the judge ruled

in 1988 in his final decision that marijuana, quote, is the safest

therapeutic substance known to man.

That's a pretty strong indictment against the rest of the drugs.

So the courts acknowledged that marijuana is the most therapeutic

substance known to man.

But since as early as the 1930s, marijuana has been the subject of

countless heavy-handed and fallacious propaganda.

Long-term use of marijuana can lead to a psychological dependency.

Soon, you'll be taking all sorts of measures to get your fix.

People will start calling you names like Pothead or Smokey McFongwater.

Losing all motivation, it's likely that you'll drop out of school.

take a sudden liking to sitar music, and maybe even get felt up by a cop or two.

Marijuana has been propagandized by the United States government and its

surrogates at the state level for at least 75 years.

There are 1,200 Partnership for Drug-Free America ads, and 85 to 90% of

those ads have been against marijuana.

And the name alone, Drug-Free America, deserves nothing but pure laughter.

Drug-Free America, this is the most drug-addled society in human history.

And the Drug-Free America Association was originally founded by the alcohol,

tobacco, and pharmaceutical companies, which, last I checked, their business

model is distributing drugs.

Personal feelings about marijuana aside...

There is no denying the fact that criminalization of the substance bears

little parity with other substances in the same area, such as alcohol or

tobacco.

But with all the millions being spent on preventing its use and prosecuting

individuals who use it, who stands to gain?

There are entities out there that strongly lobby for the status quo to

stay in place.

Law enforcement.

The very government agencies born of the prohibition, like the Partnership for

Drug-Free America, the DARE program, the DEA, the drug czar's office, they will

always oppose legalization.

Three would be the alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceutical companies that play both

ends of the middle.

They try to start things like the Partnership for Drug-Free America, but

pretty clearly don't want to really have a drug-free America.

The fourth entity are companies that are able to make money off of the

prohibition, and that would be private prisons, drug testing companies.

This is probably the most naked of our opposition, because if you get caught

with marijuana, you can either choose the route of prosecution and potential

conviction and then going to jail, or you go to rehab, or even the director of

normal. If I got caught by police with a small amount of marijuana, if I'm given

a choice between going to jail and going to rehab, I'm going to pick rehab.

And so 80% of their clientele are effectively pushed in the door by the

government. So this is an incestuous relationship that has been set up

between the drug rehabilitation profiteers and the government that

brings their clients right to their door, and we, the taxpayers.

pay for the rehabilitation.

Now, in the language the addicts use among themselves, they never say to each

other, let's smoke a marijuana cigarette.

They say, let's turn on or let's blast a joint.

As with drinking raw milk, smoking a marijuana cigarette carries with it

obvious health risks. But whether you want to blast a J or buy an outdoor

slaughtered chicken from your local farmer, Powerful lobbying groups have

colluded with regulatory agencies to limit your freedom of choice.

When the government violently kicks down your door and comes onto your property

with guns drawn, trying to get you to stop engaged in a certain behavior

that's harming nobody else, that is a social injustice.

I personally think of cannabis as just a metaphor for freedom.

I think of it almost purely at this point now as a discussion over personal

freedom and how much can the government intervene in your life and intervene

violently with guns drawn.

Okay, we've talked a lot about food and medicine and, um, Lobo. But enough of

that hippie talk. Everyone knows the world revolves around one thing and one

thing only.

Milk.

I mean, money.

But similar to independent farmers, small firms in the financial sector also

face heavy regulations which benefit the large players.

I act in the securities industry, and there's all sorts of rules and

regulations that I have to abide by.

The vast majority of it doesn't protect... my customers, the individual

investor. And that's not why I believe it's there. That's the excuse that the

politicians give the voters.

But the real reason is because there are very large banks and brokerage firms

that don't like small firms like mine competing with them. And so they want to

tie us up in red tape. See, they can afford to pay for the regulations.

It's the small firms that can't. But they didn't do it to help the investor.

They did it to help the big brokerage firms that wanted protection from

competition. And so that's what happens.

But of course, the revolving door is when these guys leave Washington, they

get cushy jobs at the companies they used to regulate.

And in fact, they go back and forth. They go from the industry to the

government, back to the industry to the government. And what they're really

doing is they're peddling their influence.

They go to Washington.

to get influence, to make friends, and then they sell the influence to the

highest bidder when they leave.

Sadly, the finance industry may be the best illustration of the intertwining of

government and big business.

For example, the current Secretary of the Treasury, Jacob Lew, was reportedly

given a $950,000 bonus by his former employer, Citigroup, just

for taking a job at the Treasury.

If you want to see the proof of fascism, all you have to do is look at four

simple words.

Too big to fail.

The merger of state and corporate powers.

When America had a financial crisis in 2008, the whole game changed.

The banks got in trouble. They bring out Henry Paulson.

the U.S. Treasury Secretary, former CEO of the Goldman Sachs gang, and says we

have to bail out the banks. They're too big to fail.

The subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 was the biggest economic crash since the

Great Depression.

In the midst of the crisis, the financial media demanded stricter

regulations on the financial industry.

Economist Peter Schiff, who predicted the crisis years in advance, believes

that not only was Wall Street to blame, but more importantly, it was the

regulators colluding with the financial industry who were responsible for the

crisis.

Well, the regulators caused the crisis. It was the regulation that created the

problem.

I was talking about the coming housing crisis in 2002, 3, 4, 5,

6, and I was pointing out exactly how the government and the Fed were creating

the problem.

So the people that now said we didn't have enough regulation, where were they

back then? Why didn't they say we needed more regulation in 2004, 2005?

The fact of the matter is it was the regulations that were in place that

caused the problem.

The Federal Reserve, in order to stimulate the economy, brought interest

rates down to 1%. And what that did is it enabled people to borrow money more

cheaply to buy houses.

In the meantime, too, the government was also guaranteeing the mortgages.

And this was the real problem.

The way the market regulates banks...

that individuals want a safe place for their money and so they will shop around

for a safe place.

Therefore market pressures force the banks to do prudent things to attract

deposits. But once the government comes in and says your money is safe no matter

what, now the customer doesn't value safety anymore because the government

has guaranteed it. But the problem with the government regulation is it's

ineffective and it ends up being politicized because if you remember

During the housing days, as lending standards kept being lowered and lowered

and lowered, it was the government that was leading the charge to lower

standards. Because the voters wanted to buy more houses. Because housing was

thought of as a way to get rich. And the only obstacle was the down payment, the

credit score.

And so it was the government that was pressuring banks, hey, forget about

credit scores.

Lower those down payments.

So the banks are risky. The mortgages are risky. Nobody cares about anything

because the government's trying to make everything good. The government's trying

to say, don't worry about risk because if you fail, we're there to catch you.

We're there to prop you up. And then when it doesn't work, capitalism gets a

bad name as if any of this has anything to do with capitalism.

Skipping ahead to 2011, we find the story of MF Global.

a commodities brokerage firm headed by former senator turned governor of New

Jersey, John Corzine.

It wasn't a pleasant return to Capitol Hill for former Senator John Corzine.

He was subpoenaed to tell lawmakers how the company he headed, MF Global,

collapsed and what happened to $1.2 billion of customers' money.

I simply do not know where the money is or why the accounts have not been

reconciled to date.

Don't you hate it when you can't find your keys, your phone, or a billion

dollars of other people's money? It's so frustrating.

But as uncomfortable as Corzine may have been sitting there and pretending to

feel bad, others felt a little more MF'd by the situation.

I got burned by the MF Global scandal.

That's when John Corzine, the former governor,

Democratic governor of New Jersey and former senator of New Jersey and former

head of the Goldman Sachs gang.

After he did a stint with those, he was the head of MF Global.

Yeah, MF.

Perfect.

MF Global went into my segregated account and stole my money.

Six figures. And I work hard for my money.

I wasn't speculating in markets.

He went in and stole my money.

While investigating how this money was stolen out of his account without the

financial regulators intervening, Mr. Salente's investigations found the

telltale squeak of the revolving door.

The CFTC is the agency which regulates brokerage firms like MF Global.

At the time of the MF robbery, The CFTC was headed by one Gary Gensler, a close

colleague of Corzine's.

Gary's never once let his team forget what this is all about.

The American people.

Do you know what the Commodities Future Trading Commission did to John Corzine?

After robbing me and thousands of others?

Nothing. Nothing.

Gary Gensler was his lieutenant at Goldman Sachs. And he's the head of the

Commodities Future Trading Commission?

To say that the fox is watching the chicken coop is stupid.

It's worse than that.

The MF Global collapse is an example of the alliance between regulators and big

business in the financial industry.

But a more troubling phenomenon, called a Bayland, was recently seen in Cyprus.

Even in my direst predictions in this Parliament over the years about the way

the EU bosses were behaving, never did I think that they would, in a completely

unprecedented manner, resort to stealing money from people's bank account.

Recently in Cyprus, the banks had been irresponsible and it was the public, all

of the depositors, that paid the price.

And they called it a bail-in to make it sound different from a bail-out.

What happened was many of the banks in Cyprus bought a lot of Greek government

debt. And as you know, over the last few years, Greek government debt has all but

collapsed. So that made these...

And they went, just like always, the big banks went with the government and said,

hey, we're broke, can you help us out and steal money for us? And that's what

they did. They just said, take 50% of anyone over $100,000, take 50% of all

their money, just take it.

Just the term bail-in is a lie.

This is something that is a marketing tool to basically...

cover up a theft.

A bailout, they whip up currency and they give it to the banks and then the

public eventually pays for that through a tax called inflation because there's

now more currency in existence.

A bail-in, they skip the part of creating currency and they just take it

from the depositors. But basically, the banks win at the public's expense either

way.

But that was Cyprus, not the U.S.

There's just no way the citizens of North America would allow something as

underhanded as a bail-in.

Canada actually put in their 2013 budget a bail-in clause, the exact same thing.

They said if the Canadian banks have problems, that they can just take it

from Canadian citizens.

The U.S. has been talking about it as well. The governments allow these banks

to do these kind of things.

Cyprus was the model to see if they could get away with it.

They got away with it, and so now it's proven successful, so

it is a solution they can use in the future.

In hindsight, it seems obvious that the financial sector would be rife with

corruption and back-dealing.

Finance, education, the prison system, the military-industrial complex.

Almost every industry in which there is money to be made has been affected by

the revolving door.

Even relatively new agencies are subject to its spin.

If you need proof, try to take some nail clippers onto a domestic flight.

When you go to the airport, the TSA agents... You know, want to go out and

they want to invade your privacy, they want to look through your bags, they

want to do all of this stuff.

And you don't have the option to say no. Once you get in line, you can't get out.

Now, what is the point of the entire TSA system?

It's security theater.

It's to make people feel scared, not to make people feel safe.

Because the more they can actually make people feel scared, the more they can

actually take...

a little bit of their rights away all the time, and constantly remind them

that they need the government to make sure that their safety is well taken

care of.

The body scanners that stop you from taking dangerous objects, like bottles

of water, onto planes, were installed due to TSA regulations.

As head of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff required

every airport in the country have those scanners installed.

For our safety, of course.

This technology allows us to detect any item concealed on a person's body,

including molded plastic hidden under clothing.

The scanners themselves are built and installed by a company called Rapiscan.

Can you guess who worked as a consultant for Rapiscan after leaving Homeland

Security?

Oh, yeah, I remember. Let me see.

Cherkov, Cherkov, Cherkov, somebody Cherkov, Cherkov.

He was the head of the Homeland Security right after the underpants bomber.

Right after that happened, Cherkov, Cherkov, whatever his name is, he

appeared on all the national media.

We have to get them x-ray machines in there.

Rapid scam.

Rapid scam.

Somebody scammed. That's the name of the company.

Yeah, well, they x-ray you.

They x-ray you.

Oh, son of a gun.

Wow.

Cherkov is a consultant for that company after he left Homeland Security.

Okay, let's get this straight.

GMOs. Safe.

Raw milk?

Unsafe. Preparing poultry in the open air is unsanitary, but drugs that cause

heart attacks are fine.

Blasting a joint will make you want to kill.

Getting x-rayed at the airport is vital to national security, and stealing from

your customers is okay, provided you do it a billion dollars at a time.

With regulatory agencies so deeply entangled with big business, It's almost

impossible to know whether the rules we live by are there for our safety or

someone else's financial benefit.

Whatever the reason, the end result is our lives are now so heavily manipulated

by the desires of others that our choices are becoming more and more

limited.

That's what government regulation is all about. It's all about limiting your

choices. The government wants to make those choices for you. They want to take

away your freedom to choose.

The choices that you make, the types of food that you eat, all of this is

determined for you by the government. And why can't we make choices?

That's what freedom is about.

The politicians think that, hey, it's important that we all vote. They can

trust us to vote.

but they can't trust us to make these basic decisions about whether we should

buy a house or whether we should rent their house or should we use this broker

or that broker or should I put on my seatbelt or should I wear a helmet or

should I smoke cigarettes or, you know, all these choices need to be made by the

government, but somehow we're smart enough to vote, but we're too dumb to do

just about anything else.

This over-regulation has implications other than just limiting our choices.

By giving government agencies the authority to regulate our lives, even in

the name of protection, it has led to an expansion of government power at the

expense of individual freedoms.

What's the old saying?

Give them an inch, and they'll take your money, life, and favorite dairy

products? Something like that.

The more laws there are, the more rules and regulations there are, the more

taxes there are.

the less freedom you have. I mean, that's what freedom is. It's freedom

from government.

So when people are free, it means that they do what they want. They don't have

to do what the government tells them.

Career bureaucrats are usually dedicated pro-regulatory people.

They are fans of state paternalism, of government making individual choices.

And the result of that is to really deprive individuals of sovereignty.

It makes individuals mere functionaries of the state rather than people who can

pursue their own self-interest and enjoy the benefits and blessings of liberty.

It really does come down to who owns me, who owns the individual.

You can't have a system that denies choice.

Trying to protect us from the risk of bad choice and preserve the freedom to

make good choices.

That's the problem.

You can't have it both ways.

Freedom requires risk.

Should I wear a seatbelt?

Is this bank a safe place to keep my money?

Do I need insurance?

We're all so busy with our daily lives that making important decisions can

become overwhelmingly daunting.

A lot of people prefer the freedom from making choices, even if it means the

choices being made for them aren't the best.

The idea that government should make our choices for us is one that a lot of

people prefer rather than to make their own choices.

But once

The point is reached, like in the former Soviet Union, when choices are made for

you by the government to such an extent that it destroys the economy, that it

destroys free agency, that it renders everyone a servant and the state a

master.

Then, at some point, individuals come in large numbers to the conclusion that

they're not getting what they were promised.

that they are overtaxed, they're overregulated, that their choices are

limited, that paternalism is disgusting, it's caused me heartache, and I'm going

to reject it. I want my freedom.

Until that point is reached, most people will be content with their comfortable

lives and the choices still available to them.

The hardworking people don't have time to watch or hear what's going on.

They're working 24-7, they're trying to make ends meet.

What does America watch?

Hey, you know, Kim Kardashian's pregnant. She's going to have a kid real

soon.

The media makes sure that we don't dwell very long on any really serious issue.

We've all seen the phenomenon where there's something very serious that

comes up involving the serious aspects of what's going on in the world, and it

gets on the news for a very brief period of time, and all of a sudden now that's

been switched off, and we're soon distracted with soapbox operas and

dancing with the stars and all kinds of things that are entertaining, and I'm

not saying anything against them, but it's not as serious as the lack of

everybody's freedom.

through a new amendment to the Patriot Act, for example.

The media may try their best to give us a fair and balanced opinion of world

events, but there are now other avenues available for those seeking unfiltered

news.

The way that the net and the web were built involves a lot of

decentralization. It moves power into the hands of the people sending and

receiving messages as opposed to the people in the middle that are handing

them off. And that is a scary prospect for entrenched stakeholders.

Any alternative media other than the corporate media that is so rigidly

controlled

is a threat. The Internet is certainly a threat because the Internet gives almost

anyone access to the world.

So, now, are we surprised when the political figures who don't like that

are constantly worried about how can we stop this?

Well... The formula has been tried and true. It's always worked. Just tell the

people that there's a threat out there that only the government can control.

I mean, there's a threat of child pornography or crime or terrorism or

cyberterrorism or something. We have to control the Internet for your good,

folks. Otherwise, you're going to have a big problem.

That's why they're working around the clock to try and scare people into

thinking that the Internet must be controlled by our...

find trustworthy political figures.

They want to be the ones that control the Internet and tell the world what is

proper and what is improper.

If you look at the history of communications media, people said, with

cable television, we'll finally be free of centralization, and with the

telegram, we'll finally be free of centralization.

And really, the worst-case scenario would be if... if we saw that history

just repeat itself exactly, if we saw this amazing decentralized distribution

method, the most effective one ever produced in the history of humanity, if

we saw it captured by a handful of centralized stakeholders and them

controlling and surveilling the communications that go through it.

Good things, unlike processed cheese, never last.

In an attempt to regulate yet another slice of our lives, legislative bills

are already in the works to try and control the Internet.

But rather than wait for pesky red tape like passing laws, the government has

been proactive in trying to censor the Internet, for our safety, of course.

For example, with the help of their good buddies in big finance, they were almost

able to shut down the controversial website Wikileaks.

Think what you will about WikiLeaks.

The point is that members of the government were able to just speak with

payment processors and create this blockade and say, you cannot transfer

money to this organization.

And it's not much of a leap to say, wait, hold on.

The government, or in some cases companies, can decide that...

nobody can do business with these people, or that nobody can see what

these people are publishing, that's obviously a problem in our tradition of

free speech.

Wikileaks was able to survive thanks mostly to a very new concept,

decentralized money.

Unlike most currencies in the world, which are created and regulated by

central banks,

Decentralized currency, such as Bitcoin, is created by the people and as such is

almost impossible to control.

Bitcoin's a decentralized peer-to-peer currency. It's actually an internet

protocol, kind of like SMTP. That's how you send emails.

Well, it's money over internet protocol. It's how we can send money over the

internet. And we can use it to transfer value without having a middleman.

That means we don't need a bank or a money transmitter between us, someone

like Western Union.

We can just send money like we send an email.

Bitcoin, I'm incredibly excited about it because it's the first free market

private money that's also a technological money. It's electronic

currency. The great thing about it is it's not controlled by a central bank.

It's not controlled by anyone. It's actually really the people's money.

So it gives a lot of freedom.

Why do we have the supply of money and the cost of money, or interest rates,

set by some bureaucrats 3,000 miles away in Washington, D.C.? How efficient is

that for our economy? Because interest rates, they regulate production over

time, and they regulate all the production within the economy, you know,

whether we should save or whether we should build something.

Bitcoin liberates that interest rate because it's a censorship-resistant

currency, so we don't have to use their money system anymore.

Decentralized currencies like Bitcoin offer an alternative to the highly

regulated and controlled national currencies of the world.

But, as with the government's push to regulate the Internet, attempts to

regulate the purchase of Bitcoin have already been seen.

I recently tried to start up a Bitcoin ATM.

I hired some lawyers in the US and they told me, you're under five different

regulators in the US. You're under banking, finance, money, even

telecommunications because we're using the internet.

And we looked into the total cost just to start a Bitcoin ATM, a very basic

product, no less than $25 million because we needed all kinds of insurance

bonds as a money transmitter.

This is how they keep...

competition out, because they don't want competition.

These attempts to control increasing amounts of our personal lives have some

people very concerned.

And with each successive law or regulation, the temptation to opt out

entirely becomes more and more appealing.

There are some people that are abandoning ship. They see the ship is

sinking. They don't know whether it's going to sink for sure or stay afloat

somehow. They don't want to stay around to find out. They're just leaving while

the getting's good. I'm not going to tell somebody not to leave because I

don't know for sure how bad it may or may not get.

Jeff Berwick is someone who has already decided to opt out.

To this end, he formed an expat community in Chile, hoping to create a

haven for freedom-loving people who can no longer tolerate the government

encroachment in their personal affairs.

We started this community because we've really recognized that a lot of people

around the world want to get out of these Western countries.

Rising taxation, rising regulation, people are getting put in jail in the US

all the time for nothing, victimless crimes.

People have done nothing except for maybe drink raw milk or have some plants

in their pocket called marijuana.

What we're trying to attract and what we've been attracting is more freedom

-minded people.

Everyone has their own personal story. Sometimes it's as simple as someone's

been pulled over like 10 times in a month and been searched.

I've seen people who've had their entire businesses taken away through regulation

and fascism in the US.

There was one doctor who came down recently. He had a practice in the US.

He had a...

almost 100% cure cancer rate within one month. And he had about 30 SWAT team

come in one day and everything taken by the government.

And so many people just had enough of being pushed around, stolen, beaten, put

in cages for nothing, have most of their money taken away, and even sometimes

their entire livelihood taken away.

Not all of us can just pack up our lives and move to Chile. So what practical

options are left?

identifying the root of the problem is a good place to start.

The issue is there's this merger of what would appear to be private enterprise

and government.

And the only way to break it is to restrict the power of the state.

Once you give the state the power, the authority over our lives in all these

areas... Then there's no stopping it, because then the individuals who are in

those fields of providing medical services, monetary services, banking

services, power and gas and oil and all these services, they will gravitate to

the government, buy off the politicians, make the mergers, pass the laws to their

best interest, and the average, you know, the gum-chewing public thinks, oh.

Well, isn't that nice? Well, we voted for these guys, so I guess it's in our

best interest.

They don't get it.

If you take all the temptation, all the power away from political office, the

only people who will go into it will be those who want to serve their country,

because there's no way to steal anything anymore.

The only idea that I have as far as trying to make government smaller is

that you in the United States We've got the Constitution, but every government

could pass some sort of amendment to their constitution or whatever that says

that for every law, act, code, or regulation that these screwballs want to

pass, that they've got to find two old laws, codes, acts, or regulations that

they have to repeal. That's the only way that I can think of making government

smaller. And the same thing goes for all of the agencies. If they want to open up

some other agency or department, they've got to close two.

Individual freedom is what defines humanity.

Although laws and regulations can make us feel safe from the threats we may

face, all the safety in the world means nothing without the freedom to live as

you choose.

Freedom is the most important and indispensable characteristic of mankind.

We can be induced by promises from government to depart from our liberty.

But there's nothing more profound for an individual than when they are denied

something they very much need because they made a decision earlier on

to part with their freedom.

And so when you're terminally ill and you suddenly discover that you can only

have access to FDA-approved treatments for your disease and you're told by the

doctors treating you that there is no drug to treat your condition.

And then to survive, you're going to have to find something else.

And you discover that your desire and your freedom of choice to attain that

end are blocked by the Food and Drug Administration.

And so when you need your freedom the most, it's been taken away from you.

When you've been in a family that has had a milk farm for 300 years or more,

and suddenly federal agents come in and...

They do a raid on your farm as if you were a drug kingpin engaged in

international drug sales, and you're only selling milk.

And then you realize your whole life has been turned upside down.

Or you are a small businessman who discovers that just to operate a gas

station, you have to comply with EPA regulations that will cost you more than

it will to run the gas station in profit.

or you find out that you want to have a food establishment, a restaurant, and

you discover that federal and state and local regulations affecting your food

establishment are so great that you have to have lawyers and you have to have

accountants and you have to have individuals specially trained to comply

and you have to fill out all these forms and you have to pay all these fees and

you have to get separate licenses just to be in the business of reselling.

food others have already manufactured and put in the marketplace.

It's the end of liberty.

How you regain freedom is a huge question.

The individual knows that he or she is alive.

that he or she is free to choose a future and a life that they

want.

We either have free societies or we don't.

There is such a thing as individual freedom or there isn't.

That is the bottom line.

If you want to live a life, a real life, then freedom

must exist.

So people have to step up to the plate whenever they see individual freedom

threatened along any channel of human activity.

That's where you start from.

When I was growing up, New York was an ugly, ugly city where there was violence

in the streets all the time. And the way that they cleaned it up was by going and

getting people to go out and say, no more.

Well, that worked to stop the gangs.

The same thing works when you get honest people who engage in government. And

maybe we can stop the government gangs from sitting there and dictating the

terms of our lives and preventing us from having the freedom and liberty

which we were guaranteed in an open democracy.

We are all individuals.

We have the ability to think.

To decide.

and most importantly, to be heard.

It may be time to start crying over spilt milk.

Crap, I just spilled this. This is not going to be good.

Boy, I just saw those pictures of Kim Kardashian pregnant.

I said, man, how could a chick like that? Why does anybody want to look at

her, you know?

And yet she's a star.

Well, you don't want him in there?

Go downstairs there, Geppetto. No, I don't know where you can get any weed.

That's a lie.

That's a blatant lie, too.