CBDC Central Bank Digital Currency
Senator Ted Cruz introduces bill to ban CBDCs to prevent US from becoming ‘surveillance state’
From LifeSiteNews
Heritage Action for America warned that ‘anti-CBDC legislation is necessary to safeguard Americans’ financial privacy in the face of potential surveillance, control, and political intimidation.’
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz introduced the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act to prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that Republican sponsors of the bill believe could turn the nation into a “surveillance state” by handing over control of personal finances to federal government agencies.
While digital currency offers some attractive features, it also would grant the federal government unlimited opportunity to weaponize the technology against citizens, allowing it to both spy on the spending habits of everyday Americans and block access to the money in their personal bank accounts.
U.S. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota described the threat of a U.S. CBDC last fall:
Unlike decentralized cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, a CBDC is a digital form of sovereign currency that is designed and issued by a government and transacts on a digital ledger that is controlled by that government. In short, a CBDC is government-controlled programmable money that, if not designed to emulate cash, could give the federal government the ability to surveil Americans’ transactions and choke out politically unpopular activity.
A government-issued CBDC is nothing more than a CCP-style surveillance tool that would be used to undermine the American way of life.
“While Americans across the country are being punished for thinking, speaking, and voting the ‘wrong’ way, the last thing we need is the government surveilling personal finances,” explained a statement from Heritage Action for America concerning the new legislation. “Anti-CBDC legislation is necessary to safeguard Americans’ financial privacy in the face of potential surveillance, control, and political intimidation.”
“CBDCs present major privacy concerns for everyday Americans, including granting the government the ability to collect intimate personal details on U.S. citizens, and potentially track and freeze funds for any reason,” the Blockchain Association noted.
Sen. Cruz, chief sponsor of the bill, said, “The Biden administration salivates at the thought of infringing on our freedom and intruding on the privacy of citizens to surveil their personal spending habits, which is why Congress must clarify that the Federal Reserve has no authority to implement a CBDC.”
“Big government has no business spying on Americans to control their personal finances and track their transactions,” said Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, a co-sponsor of the bill. “It is a massive overreach.”
In early 2022, the Biden administration urged the Fed to investigate the creation of a CBDC.
“Over 100 countries are exploring or piloting Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs),” said Biden, warning that the U.S. “must play a leading role in international engagement and global governance of digital assets consistent with democratic values and U.S. global competitiveness.”
But many Republicans see this as nothing more than a means to turn America into a totalitarian state.
Pushback against a U.S. CBDC has become an integral part of the messaging of 2024’s presidential hopefuls.
Last month, former President Donald Trump pledged to ban a CBDC if re-elected to the White House.
“As your president, I will never allow the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency,” Trump told a crowd during a campaign event in New Hampshire.
“Such a currency would give a federal government — our federal government — absolute control over your money,” Trump said. “They could take your money, and you wouldn’t even know it was gone.”
“This would be a dangerous threat to freedom, and I will stop it from coming to America,” he vowed.
Even Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former Democrat now running as an Independent presidential candidate, has warned that CBCDs are “a calamity for human rights and for civil rights” while similarly promising to halt progress by the Fed from creating a CBDC.
Eleven countries have already fully implemented CBDCs, including China, where digital currency is tied to a person’s “social credit score.”
The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) uses its extensive network of digital cameras —estimated to be over one billion — combined with facial-recognition capabilities to monitor the daily movements and actions of its citizens. That along with other information collecting capabilities used in conjunction with government-controlled digital currency allows the CCP to punish those who transgress desired social norms.
While Democrats in Congress have sought to pass legislation authorizing the Fed to institute a CBDC, Republicans have similarly made sought to preempt such a move.
Last fall, Emmer introduced a bill in the U.S. House with the same name as Cruz’s bill, “CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act,” to” halt the efforts of unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that dismantles Americans’ right to financial privacy.”
Co-sponsoring the bill with Cruz are Republican Sens. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Scott, Ted Budd of North Carolina, and Mike Braun of Indiana.
Business
Bank of Canada scraps plan to create a ‘digital dollar’
Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem
From LifeSiteNews
The central bank said it will instead look at evolving the “payment” processes in Canada.
Plans by the Bank of Canada (BOC) to implement a digital “dollar,” also known as a central bank digital currency (CBDC), have been shelved.
Officials from Canada’s central bank said that a digital currency, or electronic “loonie,” will no longer be considered after years of investigating bringing one to market.
“The Bank has undertaken significant research towards understanding the implications of a retail central bank digital currency, including exploring the implications of a digital dollar on the economy and financial system, and the technological approaches to providing a digital form of public money that is secure and accessible,” the bank said, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Instead of using resources to create a digital dollar, the central bank said it will instead look at evolving the “payment” processes in Canada.
Most Canadians do not want a digital dollar, as previously reported by LifeSiteNews. A public survey launched by the BOC to gauge Canadians’ taste for a digital dollar revealed that an overwhelming majority of citizens want to “leave cash alone” and not proceed with a digital iteration of the national currency.
The BOC last August admitted that the creation of a CBDC is not even necessary, as many people rely on cash to pay for things. The bank concluded that the introduction of a digital currency would only be feasible if consumers demanded its release.
The reversal comes after the BOC had already forged ahead and filed a trademark for a digital currency, LifeSiteNews previously reported.
In August, LifeSiteNews also reported that the Conservative Party is looking to gather support for a bill that would outright ban the federal government from ever creating a CBDC, and make it so that cash is kept as the preferred means of settling debts.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre promised that if he is elected prime minister he would stop any implementation of a “digital currency” or a compulsory “digital ID” system.
Prominent opponents of CBDCs have been strongly advocating that citizens use cash whenever possible and boycott businesses that do not accept cash payments as a means of slowing down the imposition of CBDCs.
Digital currencies have been touted as the future by some government officials, but, as LifeSiteNews has reported before, many experts warn that such technology would ultimately restrict freedom and be used as a “control tool” against citizens similar to China’s pervasive social credit system.
CBDC Central Bank Digital Currency
RF Kennedy Jr and Political Realignment
From Who is Robert Malone
A video and transcript of RFK Jr’s historic speech can be found here.
I have seen this moment coming like a slow moving freight train, gathering momentum, a massive groundswell of the disaffected “useless eaters” that want to be left alone by the socialist/globalist/corporatist true believers. Left alone to live their lives and raise their families. Left alone by busybody social engineers and their ESG, DEI, censorship…
RFK Jr. ran a campaign based on the thesis that those identifying and voting as Democrats would be interested in political candidates representing the values and policy positions of the mid-20th century Democrat party. This was partly based on confidential polling numbers obtained and shared with me. This thesis was also based on hope. A belief that the policy positions and values imparted to him by his father and former members of his uncle’s administration still resonated with today’s Democrat party members. I infer this based on personal conversations that I have had with Mr. Kennedy and on his public statements.
RFK Jr. initially referred to these theoretical Democrat voters as “Kennedy Democrats” and firmly believed that a silent Democrat party majority would find its voice in opposition to the deeply corrupted Clinton/Obama cabal. A Democrat party power elite that had captured what he believed to be the once and future political coalition and values that his Uncle and Father had once led—pre-Carter values and policies that RFK Jr. still believed in when he launched his campaign. I do not know if he still retains those beliefs in the same way after what he has experienced since announcing his campaign in Boston.
My own beliefs differ from RFK, Jr., but at the core of those differences is that my personal experiences during the COVIDcrisis have resulted in a profound shift in political orientation towards more center-right libertarianism and deep distrust of the State. Mid-century, pre-Reagan “New Deal” political logic seems so dated now, so profoundly naïve. And with few exceptions, I have become convinced that a corrupt “Uniparty” runs the USA now. A functional cross-party coalition committed to the globalist “Stakeholder Capitalism/Eurosocialism/Corporatism” political vision most cogently expressed by the “World Economic Forum” and the various United Nations/World Health Organization policies and positions.
I have become convinced that the Clinton/Obama Democrat party has become the leading domestic US political advocate for this vision. And that this modern Democrat party has become monolithic, intolerant of dissent, totalitarian. The Democrat party has come to view the US Constitution, prior US legal and organizational precedent, and fundamental rules of political engagement as inconveniences in its efforts to restructure both the federal government and the global network of US power and alliances to align and transition into a globalized socialist/corporatist governance structure.
I believe that today’s Democrat party, and their Uniparty allies on the other side of the aisle no longer believe in the USA, in the vision of our founding fathers, but instead have become convinced that the fundamental global political structure of a network of independent and sovereign nation-states is obsolete. And that it must be replaced with a globalized one-world government modeled on Eurosocialism and strongly influenced by the Communist Chinese political and economic model.
From the outset of this campaign to catalyze the resurgence of an old-school Democrat party, at every turn RFK Jr. has been locked out by current Democrat leadership (and their corporate media lapdogs) from being allowed to participate in the primary process. The usual tactics of aggressive lies, smears, innuendo, vilification, and all the rest of the media bully boy/PsyWar tactics that I have become so personally aware of during the COVIDcrisis were deployed against him, but even more aggressively.
Much more aggressively, in a clearly coordinated fashion, with self-evident malice and wickedness. The modern centrally controlled Democrat party seems to have learned from the prior insurgency of Bernie Sanders not to tolerate any opposition during the primary process. And so Bobby found himself frozen out of the electoral process by a combination of legal actions and political trickery, unable even to discover if his thesis of the existence of “Kennedy Democrats” had any merit. At various points in time, he was wooed by the Libertarian party but was so deeply committed to his vision that a Democrat party core reflecting the ethics and political consensus of the 1960s still remained that for a long time, he would not consider running as anything other than a Democrat.
So much water flowed so fast under the bridge. My sense is that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. thought he knew what was going to come at him after deciding to run for President in 2024, but was not really prepared for the corrupt wickedness that was deployed against him. He is fundamentally a good and kind human being, truly pro-human in a world where anti-humanism is an increasing trend among the Silicon Valley elite and the branch of the World Economic Forum cabal represented by Klaus Schwab and Yuval Harari. My experience is that Bobby is a good guy fighting for a long time with all his heart to get a bit more justice for the average person in a world where a global hyper-wealthy oligarchy believes they have the right, by virtue of their wealth, to have their way with the rest of us. And, bless his heart, Bobby was not as experienced in the wicked ways of modern Washington DC culture as he needed to be.
Unfortunately, both RFK Jr. and his new political partner Nicole Shanahan just got schooled hard in the twisted nature of current political reality by the Uniparty power brokers. It has been heartbreaking and disenchanting for me to watch from the sidelines as this has played out. They have had to travel the same road that Jill and I have walked over the last four years, but it has been much more demanding on them partially because they reached so much higher.
And now they have come to the point where they can see how profoundly twisted the US political system has become under the influence of today’s Democrat party. Bobby is nobody’s fool. He is not just the heir to one of the great political dynasties but also the product of the school of hard knocks.
Many need to remember that this dynasty originated in the world of hardscrabble Boston working-class politics. They forget that John F Kennedy was himself a staunch anti-communist, with political ties to the infamous anti-communist Joseph McCarthy.
So RFK Jr. finally reached that point where he recognized that his allegiance was to a Democrat party that no longer existed. A political party that actively and routinely disregards truth, morality, and the rule of law as it manipulates its followers using modern psychological warfare methodology. A party and political allies that seem to be either completely unaware of the global march to a corporatist techno-totalitarianism or willingly facilitating that progression. Unfortunately, Bobby and Nicole had to personally experience the wickedness, the profound corruption, and the disingenuousness of today’s Democrat party and have their underlying belief system shaken to the core by what they have experienced at the hands of the twisted modern corporate media.
The result was one of the most important political speeches of the 21st century. Bobby finally got so mad that he could not contain his anger anymore. And out it came, spontaneously, unscripted. All the accumulated hard truth that he has been forced to swallow. His “Howard Beale”/Network speech. “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
And in that moment, he spoke for all of us who still believe in the concept of a United States as envisioned by the founding fathers. All who reject the “Great Reset” and “New World Order”.
The great realignment is upon us now, whether you recognize it or not. When Robert F. Kennedy has found common cause with another disaffected former Democrat – Donald Trump, we are forced to examine whether the old two party formulation that has dominated US politics for over a century has any meaning in the twenty first.
For whatever reason, perhaps thanks to a series of recorded interview segments with Mr. Glenn Beck almost four long years ago, I have long been aware that the old political spectrum of left versus right no longer applies. Consequent to all of the travel, and the opportunity to listen and learn from populist political leaders from all over the west during the COVIDcrisis, I have seen this moment coming like a slow moving freight train, gathering momentum, a massive groundswell of the disaffected “useless eaters” that want to be left alone by the socialist/globalist/corporatist true believers. Left alone to live their lives and raise their families. Left alone by busybody social engineers and their ESG, DEI, censorship, propaganda, scientism, anti-human transhuman immortal fantasies, their “stakeholder capitalism”, their “new morality”, their neo-Malthusianism, their sexual fetishism, their transsexual agenda, their intentional sexualization of our children, their poisonous, toxic foods and pharmaceuticals, their social credit scores, their digital identities, their central bank digital currency, their surveillance capitalism, and their globalist techno-totalitarianism.
In my opinion, at the core of all of this new realignment are those who support the future of humankind, who believe in the sanctity of the human soul and in the value of communities, versus those who are anti-human.
As I have said before, we can all sense the coming war. I do not know who will win. In a battleground defined and dominated by modern psychological warfare methodology, it has become incredibly difficult to even determine who is friend and who is foe.
But I am more confident than ever that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan are pro-human, deeply moral, and are with the good guys. I hope you are also. Lets take back our future. Lets make America, Europe, and all the world “Great again” by recommitting to a pro-human future.
-
Alberta2 days ago
Alberta Preparing a New Regulatory Framework for iGaming
-
Business2 days ago
Toyota to scrap DEI policies following social media exposé
-
Canadian Energy Centre2 days ago
Oil and gas companies are once again the top performers on the TSX. Why do people still listen to the divestment movement?
-
Break The Needle2 days ago
B.C. crime survey reveals distrust in justice system, regional divides
-
Business2 days ago
Taxpayers Federation calls on premiers to join carbon tax court fight
-
International2 days ago
Evacuations urged in Tampa Bay ahead of Hurricane Milton
-
Bruce Dowbiggin2 days ago
Rose & His Thorns: A Failure Of All Parties
-
Business2 days ago
Trudeau gov’t suggests federal funding of media outlets an attempt to buy ‘social cohesion’