“Today I’m announcing the federal government’s covering 100% of the cost,” President Joe Biden said after he visited the state in June. But, like so many words uttered from the mounts of US presidents, that was not true.

FEMA has so far granted $4.2 million to the 1,164 fire survivors, marking an average payout of $3,600. To one of the hundreds of folks who lost their home, this is a kick in the teeth.

According to a recent report in Reuters, cost-sharing statutes on federal relief programs are preventing the victims from receiving the help they need. Instead of the promised 100% of the cost, victims of the government’s seeming act of arson were told they are on the hook for 25% of the total cost, as per the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) guidelines.

Daniel Encinias and his wife Lori were victims of the government blaze and are now finding out that they are on the hook for the damage.

“Why the hell am I going to pay anything when I didn’t cause this damn fire?” Encinias told Reuters.

Naturally, as Reuters reports, these victims can’t simply shell out the millions of dollars it will take to repair the damages caused by the government’s fire.

Many fire-hit families cannot afford sharing at least 25% of costs on the USDA’s Emergency Forest Restoration Program (EFRP)which offers relief such as stabilization of burn areas prone to flash flooding, according to New Mexico State Forester Laura McCarthy. Residents sometimes own large areas of land passed down from 1800s Spanish-Mexican land grants while working blue-collar jobs.

“They’re really struggling,” said McCarthy.

Residents are now putting their hopes into a congressional bill that will fix the cost sharing nonsense but given the extremely slow turning wheels of Congress, this could be months or even years out.

Another victim, Leger Fernandez told Reuters that he is going straight to the USDA and is negotiating a waiver with the NRCS to drop the cost sharing provision.

“The federal government burns your house down so they are responsible in my mind to pay 100% of the cost of rebuilding,” Fernandez said.

“If you don’t have insurance you’re pretty much on your own,” said Kenny Zamora, 59, another victim, who like Encinias is considering joining a massive civil case that may be filed against the USFS.

For now, hundreds of families are living in tents and campers next to the ashes of their homes, hoping that something changes. But if history is any indicator, they will likely be waiting a very, very long time.

We’ve seen similar scenarios unfold within the police state when SWAT teams destroy the homes of innocent people and then tell them they are on the hook for the bill. In July of 2020, Vicki Baker, 75, was told she had to cover the $50,000 in damages to her home after police literally blew it up looking for a suspect. It would take her two years to finally get her money back. 

The late Harry Edson Browne was a libertarian writer, public speaker and the Libertarian Party’s nominee for president in 1996 and 2000. Before he died in 2006, Browne made a statement that perfectly summed up this situation:

“The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, ‘See if it weren’t for the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk.’”

Article cross-posted from The Free Thought Project.

This is the same department, who for the last 2 years, oversaw one of the largest transfers of wealth in the history of the world — and they approved every bit of it. Their influence in the global economy cannot be understated which is why the OFR’s recent white paper is particularly troublesome.

On July 11, 2022, the OFR published a working paper advocating for a Central Bank Digital Currency. In their abstract, the authors claim that a CBDC will counter against bank runs by “monitoring the flow of funds into CBDC” which “allows policymakers to identify and resolve weak banks sooner, which also decreases depositors’ incentive to run.”

While this may seem like a good way to prevent a bank run, the fact that a bank run is happening at all means that the proverbial s**t is hitting the fan. The fact that the OFR is preparing for one is unsettling enough but the fact that their answer is a CBDC should make everyone start to pay attention.

Remember in February when Canada’s Prime Minister began freezing the bank accounts of protesters who stood against tyrannical mandates and arresting them? Not only did they go after the protesters, but the government went after the bank accounts of those who provided monetary support in the form of donations as well.

For practicing their free speech, Canadians were persecuted and driven into financial ruin by the government who claims to protect them. This was all carried out with zero due process, without any democratic input at all, and with zero resistance from the banks, who later apologized. 

Think about the ease with which this was done using the Canadian dollar and real money inside real banks and then consider the implications had the Canadians already adopted the federated digital ID system with a digital asset controlled by the central bank and the state. Sounds like a conspiracy theory, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it’s not and it will be here before you know it.

But don’t take my word for it, listen to Neil Parmenter, the President and CEO of the Canadian Bankers Association explain how this new system, supported by the World Economic Forum, will work. Plastic credit cards, ID cards, and cash are a thing of the past. Under the Great Reset, your entire financial portfolio will be controlled by the central bank and your assets relegated to a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), that can be turned off in a split second by the tyrannical regime you dare to criticize.

“Canada’s banks are perfectly situated to help lead the creation of a federated digital ID system between government and the private sector. The World Economic Forum agrees.”

~ Neil Parmenter
President & CEO
Canadian Bankers Association

We just witnessed Canada seize the assets of its citizens for peaceful protest and now they are pushing a new system in which the state and central banks literally control everything. And it’s spreading — to America.

On top of this month’s working paper, in February, Federal Reserve Board Governor Lael Brainard laid out plans for the United States to adopt a similar system.

“It is essential that policymakers, including the Federal Reserve, plan for the future of the payment system and consider the full range of possible options to bring forward the potential benefits of new technologies, while safeguarding stability,” Brainard said in remarks prepared for delivery to the U.S Monetary Policy Forum in New York. “A U.S. CBDC may be one potential way to ensure that people around the world who use the dollar can continue to rely on the strength and safety of U.S. currency to transact and conduct business in the digital financial system.”

Don’t let the rhetoric about competing in the digital currency age fool you. Bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies are a threat to the global banking cartel because they cannot control it. The anonymity and independence fostered by cryptocurrencies on the blockchain are enemies to the ruling class who seek to maintain control through centralization.

This is why China, last year, banned cryptocurrency trading and mining. It is a threat to their totalitarian grip over its citizens. It is also why they have ushered in the digital yuan. China has been working on their own digital currency since 2014 and the e-CNY is already being pushed on its citizens.

The e-CNY is completely controlled by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the country’s central bank and the Chinese Communist Party who exclusively leads the People’s Republic of China. Every single transaction conducted with the e-CNY is a matter of state record.

Given China’s Orwellian social credit system which punishes people for smoking, bad driving, shining a negative light on the CCP, and wasting money on “frivolous purchases,” the idea of the state controlling the whole of an individual’s assets is chilling. Yet this is exactly what has been unravelling in China for the last 8 years. And others are now following suit.

One indicator that CBDCs are an ominous ploy by the banking cartel and the state to take over our lives is the fact that the Atlantic Council is a lead proponent of them. For those who may be unaware, the Atlantic Council is the think tank, who is contracted by Facebook and Twitter to conduct censorship operations on their platforms.

Their censorship arm, known as the Digital Forensic Research Lab was suspected to have played a large role in the removal of hundreds of anti-establishment pages in 2018 and the years after.

On their website, the Atlantic Council, advocates for central bank controlled digital currencies and notes how 87 countries, which account for over 90% of the world’s gross domestic product, are exploring a digital currency, and five countries have already launched one.

One of the main reasons the council and others advocate for such a centralization of power is to limit or prevent “illicit activity.” This is a prominent selling point from both the Atlantic Council and the equally dubious World Economic Forum.

In their White Paper Series on a Digital Currency Governance Consortium, the WEF outlines a plan for private entities, ie central banks, and the state to work together to prevent any activity the two deem “illicit” — like protesting forced vaccinations, for example.

An outspoken opponent to the CBCDs is Maajid Nawaz who recently appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast and laid out in shocking detail, the implications for such a system, which as illustrated above, is being pushed by all the world’s power players. In his example, he notes that the vaccine passport system is the gateway through which the digital currency will be pushed.

Recorded end of January 2022:https://t.co/vApbHPodVF https://t.co/cg7DPqd5Ze

— أبو عمّار (@MaajidNawaz) July 13, 2022

Nawaz detailed the new system. “So the vaccine passport infrastructure is in place. But now we know that the vaccine doesn’t stop infection or transmission but the Checkpoint Charlie exists everywhere. They bring in digital banking, central banking, digital currencies. You’ve got a scenario now that you’re checking in and out everywhere you go, using vouchers that are programmed and you can only spend where you’re told you can spend them.

“There’s another word for that. That’s called the Chinese social credit system. That’s what it’s called. And anyone who watches Black Mirror will know what I’m talking about,” Nawaz said.

“So what they are telling us, and when I say they, who’s they, people in power, that’s the head of our economy, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the second most powerful person other than the prime minister, and maybe the foreign secretary in the UK, right?

“He’s telling us I just played it there for you. He’s telling us that’s what he, as the UK, the head of the G7 want to bring in for the G7. So a scenario where like in New York at the moment, because the passport infrastructure is in place, you bring in that digital currency, and you’ve got this total control. And if I’m speaking to you the way I’m speaking now, and my employer or government… deems me as saying or doing something inappropriate, suddenly, I can’t actually pay to come here and speak to you anymore. My digital currency won’t even pay for the ticket. Because it will be known that I’m coming to speak to you, ‘sorry, your vouchers don’t allow you to purchase that ticket to go and speak to Joe.’”

This is a system that Hitler, Stalin, or Mao would have relished over. Imagine a dictator having global transaction censorship across their empires and at the touch of a button, they could silence their political enemies and propel them into financial ruin. That is what’s coming.

Over the last two and a half years, politicians and bureaucrats have been exploiting the pandemic and preying on the fears of citizens to usher in systems like the vaccine passport. The groundwork has been laid and the elite — who actually call themselves this now — are ready to strike and they may use this current crisis in Ukraine to do so.

Will we stand up and say no, or will we roll over and allow the state to take complete control over our lives and surrender our voices and freedoms for a false assurance of security?

The choice is yours.

Editor’s Note: This is the very reason we have taken on two precious metals sponsors. We avoided precious metals sponsors for years, but now we have embraced two America First companies. Our Gold Guy specializes in bullion. Goldco specializes in precious metals IRAs.