These are perilous times - but opportunity abounds if you know where to look and how to look. Government money always goes somewhere. You just have to get in the way of it - or so the theory goes.

The title is an old New Jersey street saying. I can't tell you a lot more about its origin. I suspect it was coined by certain ethnic groups as they were trying their best to get by while the government scam called Prohibition was playing itself out.

I like its cryptic nature - most folks don't get it on the first try - so I find it very useful as a teaching tool. Could it provoke thought? I hope so. Could it inspire change?

Thanks to LibertyStickers.com it is now also a bumper sticker:

Click on the image above to order yours today.

Prohibition created a lot of jobs. In fact, it stimulated the fruit farming business like you can't believe. The sugar business also increased. The manufacture of boats and ships doubtless felt the stimulus of it. And certainly the folks who drove cars across the frozen Great Lakes to Canada to buy some Hooch had to purchase cars made in various places including Detroit.

Later came the New Deal - and most of us know about all the alphabet soup programs; the government make-work projects, that could never solve the real economic problems of the country. Yet a virtual religion sprang up around FDR. The poor soul who cannot distinguish Liberty from government employment is poor indeed. But millions of Americans bought into FDR's schemes to defraud their children and grandchildren.

In Maryland we have the Motor Vehicle Administration - a disease that plagues most other States as well, where people who should be doing something productive bother the rest of us over laws and regulations that should not exist - and do not exist lawfully. Some of the most bothersome are the emissions provisions that require testing of vehicles at facilities that were obviously built to benefit the cronies of State politicos. It was well known that improvements in technology already under way were going to provide more real reductions in emissions than any so-called enforcement regime. So naturally the State of Maryland went ahead and built a system of facilities at a cost of millions to make sure a bad mistake would be even more profitable for all the wrong people. Shrinkage is not a characteristic of State government here in Maryland. More taxes = more business for corrupt politicians and their lazy brothers-in-law. Make a Law - Make a Business.

Toll booths on the expressway are one of my favorite examples. We pay gasoline taxes that could easily be altered to pay for the roads. And who knows how many accidents are caused when many drivers from other States slam into tollgate structures in the fog? Why would an obstacle like that be placed in the middle of an Interstate Highway? Connecticut completely removed theirs on I-95 for this very reason. The carnage finally outweighed the revenue. Tollgates date back to feudal times. Bad government dates back much further. And carnage always overtakes revenue eventually.

Let's not forget the "national" Click it or Ticket campaign where the Feds stimulate local economies by giving a bunch of useless doughnut eaters another way to pester us. First we were told that it would never be a primary stop offence. Now it carries two points in Maryland. Thankfully the courts have ruled that they can't spy on us at night with binoculars to discover our seatbelt status. Regardless of any marginal benefit that can be shown by "statistics" the government has no right to tell me how to protect my own person. I am reminded of an exchange in the movie, "It's A Wonderful Life," where the bridge watchman says, "...it's against the law to commit suicide around here." Clarence, the angel responds, "Yeah, it's against the law where I come from, too."

We are witnessing the evolution of legislation by governments that believe they can protect us from ourselves. Perhaps the death penalty should be administered to those who are convicted of attempted suicide? Oh! That's right! We can't have the death penalty in Maryland anymore. Even the "dignity of life" of an inmate who murders a fellow death row murderer must be preserved in the fair State of Maryland. Another business created by government: the endless appeals process. This issue causes mixed emotions for me. How can the State, whose hands are so full of blood, be trusted to administer the death penalty without bias?

The title is also another way to say "follow the money trail." When you see something happening look for "the seen and the unseen" as Bastiat, and later Hazlitt, would say, Always look for the hook. Be aware though, a virtual money trail is no trail at all. If you can get someone to read Bastiat's Essay, "The Broken Window" they will grasp the message of the sticker and own it as a tool to reach and teach others - perhaps even some "government" "workers" in recovery.

Earlier Bastiat had said:

In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause--it is seen. The others unfold in succession--they are not seen: it is well for us if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference--the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.

In fact, it is the same in the science of health, arts, and in that of morals. If often happens, that the sweeter the first fruit of a habit is, the more bitter are the consequences. Take, for example, debauchery, idleness, prodigality. When, therefore, a man, absorbed in the effect which is seen, has not yet learned to discern those which are not seen, he gives way to fatal habits, not only by inclination, but by calculation.

This explains the fatally grievous condition of mankind. Ignorance surrounds its cradle: then its actions are determined by their first consequences, the only ones which, in its first stage, it can see. It is only in the long run that it learns to take account of the others. It has to learn this lesson from two very different masters--experience and foresight. Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an action, by causing us to feel them; and we cannot fail to finish by knowing that fire burns, if we have burned ourselves. For this rough teacher, I should like, if possible, to substitute a more gentle one. I mean Foresight. For this purpose I shall examine the consequences of certain economical phenomena, by placing in opposition to each other those which are seen, and those which are not seen. [emphasis added]

It is hard to tell when the Congress Critters, the Courts or the Presidency will graduate from the adolescent school that would prefer to learn from experience and enter the school that studies history thoroughly in order to learn foresight from hindsight as Ron Paul and the Austrian School have done. The Founders and Framers knew it well and sacrificed to pass it down to all generations. This generation seems hell-bent to prove them all wrong.

Even as Monday morning quarterbacks never lose a game, honest historians know how to save a Republic.

Honesty is such a lonely word.
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard.
And mostly what I need from you. - Billy Joel

Finally, the bailout and other stimuli are perhaps the most recent and dynamic efforts to make more work for government aphids of all sorts. The idea that Nancy Pelosi and company should be taking over and growing businesses is beyond bizarre. And the Pork goes on and on and on. Make a Law - Make a Business.

Government can create jobs but not productivity in a free economy. Government can create "money" but not wealth or prosperity. It is the biggest of all sucking sounds.

We cannot begin to locate all of the money recently generated by this revision of government. I have already spoken about the fact that they are missing trillions while talking about "saving" billions. Truckloads of hundreds are said to have "disappeared" in Iraq, and Barack Obama proclaims his new approach will "account for every dime."

Am I missing something? Are we All missing Something?

Why are we even talking virtual billions when virtual trillions are missing!? The VAO [Virtual Accounability Office - My new name for the GAO] is off by a magnitude of perhaps 1000 to 1 in terms of what it should be talking about - and that's only in fiat currency. Is it because they are only talking Virtual Economics - not real, finite, concrete, factual economics? Please read Mr. Orwell Goes to Washington

Ron Paul is advocating the Abolition of the Federal Reserve Banking System which is the source of our economic malignancy. His Bill for this purpose does not have a cosponsor. The Doctor found the Pathogen - but his colleagues lack the intestinal fortitude to administer the Medicine. Click here to read the Bill - and forward it to your congressperson, asking him/her to cosponsor it.

We are missing Trillions. This means Trillions were already stolen. They were not misplaced. They were stolen. There is a paper or computer trail related to this crime. You cannot move trillions around easily or quickly - not even in a fiat money world. Among other things this means the Republic is in Grave danger. It also means there are more than one set of books.

Everything the "government" is doing right now will have to be remedied and repaired later. It will have to be paid for with sweat and blood. It will have to be suffered through. What on the face of this earth could be more destructive than corrupt government?

Fake jobs must be replaced by real jobs created by free markets that fill real needs - needs that arise from voluntary association, interaction, genuine productivity and growth. The fake jobs are profiting a few in the short term at the expense of all of us and our future generations. Because of fiat money and fractional reserve banking America is losing her standing in the world as the last safe place to invest. Corruption has taken hold of almost all of our institutions. This was all predicted in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and in many of the writings of our Founders and Framers.

You can't fake an economy with gold and silver only. And you can't repair all the damage that has been done without returning to it. When Obama says he will account "for every dime" his promises are as empty as a computer entry for another fake Federal Reserve Note - or another Trillion. We don't have dimes anymore. We have layered wafers of base metal being passed off as dimes. Even our pennies have had the copper sucked out of them. They are now copper-coated base metal. What a shame! They won't need to steal them from your eyes after you die. They already have the copper.

Our most fearful prospect: What if Obama and his friends buy into the notion that wars are the only way out of depressions? It would appear some of his admirers already subscribe to this devilish doctrine.

Of all the businesses governments create War is the most foul!

Bill Huff [send him mail] is a Classical Libertarian and proprietor of LEXREX.com and JamTheCulture.com; a former public school music teacher turned home schooling advocate; a US Navy veteran, and host of WarIsARacket.com. He is available as a guest lecturer or for interviews on talk radio.

Copyright 2009 by William H. Huff