Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

Off topic (but there is a reference to Kennedy)

They are talking about doing away with the federal debt ceiling. In other words: just expand the debt forever, with no accountability. After all, it's just a matter of adding zeroes to a ledger, right? How much more work is it to write a billion or a trillion or a quadrillion? And the strange thing is that, today, most of the government's debt is bought by Federal Reserve, and they just conjure the money up out of thin air to pay for it. And since they just conjure the money up out of thin air, why can't the Treasury Department do that? What do they need the Fed for? Just make it that the U.S. government creates whatever money it needs for any purpose it wants. War. Welfare. Hurricane Relief. Foreign Aid. Whatever. And that way, there would be no interest to pay. Why pay interest to an entity that just conjures the money up out of thin air when you could do that yourself? 

And that's what President Kennedy thought too. 

"On June 4, 1963, a virtually unknown Presidential decree, Executive Order 11110, was signed with the authority to basically strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the United States Federal Government at interest. With the stroke of a pen, President Kennedy declared that the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank would soon be out of business. The Christian Law Fellowship has exhaustively researched this matter through the Federal Register and Library of Congress. We can now safely conclude that this Executive Order has never been repealed, amended, or superceded by any subsequent Executive Order. In simple terms, it is still valid."

"When President John Fitzgerald Kennedy – the author of Profiles in Courage -signed this Order, it returned to the federal government, specifically the Treasury Department, the Constitutional power to create and issue currency -money – without going through the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. President Kennedy’s Executive Order 11110 [the full text is displayed further below] gave the Treasury Department the explicit authority: “to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury.” This means that for every ounce of silver in the U.S. Treasury’s vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation based on the silver bullion physically held there. As a result, more than $4 billion in United States Notes were brought into circulation in $2 and $5 denominations. $10 and $20 United States Notes were never circulated but were being printed by the Treasury Department when Kennedy was assassinated. It appears obvious that President Kennedy knew the Federal Reserve Notes being used as the purported legal currency were contrary to the Constitution of the United States of America."

Many people think that Kennedy's issuance of U.S. Notes led to his demise- that they killed him for doing it. Regardless of what anybody thinks, the fact is that upon his death, the U.S. Notes he issued were quickly withdrawn, and his whole plan of toppling the Federal Reserve was scuttled. 

But, maybe Trump has the right idea of doing away with the formality of raising the debt ceiling because everybody and his frickin' brother knows that a) they are always going to breach the ceiling,  and b) they are always going to raise the ceiling after some haggling, and maybe closing the national parks for a few days. So, I say cut the park rangers some slack, and at the same time, eliminate one small piece of the Washington theatrics and hypocrisy that dominate our lives. Why the hell not?  

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he and congressional leaders had discussed the possibility of jettisoning a long-standing cap on U.S. government debt, saying it is not really needed.

"It could be discussed," Trump told reporters as he sat down to meet with the ruler of Kuwait. "It complicates things. It's really not necessary."

On Wednesday Trump agreed with Democratic leaders in Congress on a three-month extension of the debt ceiling tied to hurricane relief legislation and funding for government operations into December.

The Washington Post, citing three people familiar with the decision, said Trump and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer had also agreed to work toward a permanent debt-limit repeal.

Trump and Schumer, along with House of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, would work on a plan over the next few months to remove the need for Congress to periodically raise the limit, the newspaper reported.

"The president encouraged congressional leaders to find a more permanent solution to the debt ceiling so the vote is not so frequently politicized," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said, when asked about the Post report.

Any measure would still have to pass both the House and the Senate, both currently controlled by Republicans. House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Thursday he opposes any effort to do away with the role of Congress in approving increases to the federal debt limit.