1:26 PM (6 hours ago)The Hijacking of Conservatism by Big Government Progressivesfrom Big Government by Tad Lumpkin
1 person liked thisHey conservatives, are you there?
No I don’t mean you Republicans…I mean those of you who are lovers of liberty! I mean those of you who defend the Constitution, not just when it protects them but when it protects someone they don’t like. I know you’re out there. You may be a Libertarian or an independent, you may not be affiliated with any party at all. Ok you might be a Republican too, but I know you’re there.
Well listen up!
I am not exactly sure at what moment the theft of the word “conservative” actually occurred, but I know it has happened. Through the rapid expansion of the size and role of government over the last 100 years the progressives not only infiltrated the Democrats but they infiltrated the Republicans too. They took over words like “liberal” and “conservative.” In fact, if you go back far enough “liberal” used to mean “conservative” until they stole that word. Then all the people who loved freedom found a new home as conservatives, and the progressives came to steal that too.
You see, that is what they do. Progressives are wolves in whatever clothes they need to wear to fool everyone about what their actual agenda is. The reason they do this is because their real agenda is so antithetical to the mission statement of America that most Americans would marginalize the people who espouse these ideas if they knew who they were. Unfortunately, America’s awareness has been dulled by years of addiction to the graft of big government.
If we are not only to survive but thrive as a nation we must separate the progressives who hate freedom from the conservatives that love it. Only then will we know who’s who.
How do we do that? Well conservatives love the Constitution, so let’s start there.
The First Amendment guarantees the freedom of speech–not just the speech you like but the speech you don’t, as well. Ripping from the headlines, let’s look at the WikiLeaks saga. You may not like what Julian Assange is saying, but those who want to peg him as a terrorist who should be hunted down and jailed or even executed, as some have yelled, is no lover of freedom or the Constitution.
This guy is no terrorist; he is an activist. The only difference between him and a less controversial activist is that he threatens to expose the dirty laundry of many elements of power around the world–including our own government. Now, the people who are breaking the law to give him this information may be criminals… OR maybe they are just whistleblowers who, because they work for the government, are held to a different standard. Either way, WikiLeaks has broken no law of the United States.
The Fourth Amendment gives us protection from warrantless search or seizures. Again, how many people are yelling that they are conservatives and yet are telling you its okay if the government reads all your emails, listens to your phone calls, tracks your financial transactions, searches your private property? And government can do this without a warrant because we are at “war with terror”. They tell you if you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to fear. The thing you need to fear is them!
I fear that while protesting my needless full body scan and groping by the TSA, I will end up on the governments “no no” list where I will be distracted by an IRS audit as the Department of Homeland Security puts a GPS tracker on my car parked in my garage. These actions do not keep you safe, but they will keep you in line. Giving up your liberty for security is a false logic that is used over and over to medicate people into a coma of silence. To quote Ben Franklin “He who gives up his liberty for security deserves neither.”
The imposters call for free markets and small government, but they interfere at every turn. They support an out of control Federal Reserve system that undermines the entire idea of a free marketplace by having monopolistic control over the US monetary supply. The Fed can print unlimited amounts of money which they pass out to whatever the “preferred” special interests of the day are in total secrecy. These imposters expand bloated government programs like Genghis Kahn expanded the Mongolian Empire. Wasn’t it a “so called” conservative that gave us a multi billion dollar expansion in Medicare just a few years ago? Aren’t true conservatives for no debt and low taxes?
The reason we have big debts is because we have big government. It’s all too big! There isn’t an element of it that isn’t too big. If someone looks you in the face and tells you they are going to balance the budget and shrink the debt and it doesn’t include a wholesale, across the board cut-back in the size of government in every last area, they are no conservative. In addition, there’s not one single excuse to vote for ANY net tax increase, not for a conservative anyway. A progressive, they always need more, but not a conservative.
The point of listing out some of these things is to remind you of what the word “conservative” is supposed to embody. If people say or do things that don’t uphold a strict interpretation of the Constitution and the message of individual liberty, they are not a conservative, but rather an imposter. In the reverse, if they don’t uphold these conservative values then they don’t uphold the Constitution, and they don’t love liberty.
This is America, and people are allowed to have different opinions about what they think is best and freely espouse those opinions, but give me an honest socialist any day over a dishonest progressive. I’ll disagree with the socialist but give them respect; the progressive deserves no respect.
We must hold people accountable for doing what they say. That doesn’t mean you’re perfect or that you can’t ever change your mind, but it does mean you honor your words with your actions! You do what you say, and you say what you do. If politicians, leaders, and pundits don’t uphold the above I can’t tell you exactly what they are, but I can tell you they are no conservative
3:08 PM (4 hours ago)Death panel Democrat Earl Blumenauer tries to distance himself from cheerleading memofrom Fire Andrea Mitchell! by adminAnother example of a fine west coast progressive liberal. You may remember that it was revealed on Christmas that Democrat Earl Blumenauer of Oregon had his office send out a memo to supporters cheering on the new end-of-life counseling regulations. But the memo also told it’s readers to “avoid celebrating” such an accomplishment because it might get out and be revealed that death panels are really in ObamaCARE. Now, The Hill confronted Blumenauer on the memo, and suddenly he regrets it. Of course we all know he only regrets it because he got caught.
“If I had seen the memo, I would have suggested it be worded differently,” Blumenauer told The Hill.
In the memo, first reported on Dec. 26 by The New York Times, Blumenaeur’s office expressed concern that new attention to end-of-life care planning could doom an end-of-life provision included in a Medicare regulation issued last month.
“Thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be keeping a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted response,” the memo read. “The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.”
Angry pro-life leaders are calling on the incoming 112th Congress to revoke a new Obama administration regulation resuscitating "death panels," which were rejected by the last congress after a public uproar threatened the passage of the president's signature health care bill.
At the request of several Democratic lawmakers, the administration quietly slipped language into a Medicare regulation paying doctors to provide "end-of-life" consultations with patients. Doctors will instruct patients how to write "advance directives" listing what types of treatment they wish to receive, or not receive, if they are hospitalized in such poor condition that they are unable to make health care decisions.
The new regulation was revealed by the New York Times on Dec. 26. The regulation will go into force Jan. 1.
"Nothing good can come of this," said Judie Brown, the president of American Life League. "This will affect everybody's parents and grandparents and preborn babies, and it will not affect anybody for the good."
Find out about President Obama's real agenda in The Manchurian President
Congress must step up to cancel the regulation, Brown added. "If not, a death certificate is written for an awful lot of elderly people."
"Those of us who voted in common-sense representatives to take control of the House will be expecting to see reversals of regulations like these that run roughshod over the will of the American people," said Dr. Janice Crouse, director of the Beverly LaHaye Institute at Concerned Women for America.
"This new Congress has to pass a law that revokes this new Medicare regulation because we're going to see pressure on the elderly to end their lives prematurely," said Liberty Counsel President Mat Staver. "This regulation is more egregious than the original Obama health care legislation."
Mat Staver
The original legislation provided for end-of-life counseling once every five years, Staver explained, but the new regulation pays doctors to counsel their patients every year during the annual "wellness" appointment provided by Medicare.
"I'm not opposed to having end-of-life directives but the problem is when a doctor gets paid to consult annually with his patients," said Staver. "Doctors will have a financial incentive to counsel patients on end-of-life care.
"When you have the government mandating this end-of-life counseling, they're conscripting doctors to do end-of-life counseling on a massive scale. It will be the equivalent of a super death panel. Elderly patients will get confused and will end up signing documents without having a clue what they're signing, and they will sign away care they might really want."
Operation Rescue President Troy Newman called the Obama approach "Darwinist," and predicted it would lead to rationing of health care.
"When you have a fixed amount of money that is allocated to health care, it's only logical that some bureaucrat will regulate it and decide who will get treatment," Newman told WND. "That treatment will be based on some humanist, egalitarian principle that these bureaucrats always seem to hold. Their principles are Darwinist, survival of the fittest.
"My grandmother is 94 years old," Newman continued. "Suppose she breaks her hip. Are they really going to authorize that expense over a 16-year-old who has urgent needs? It was Obama who said maybe Grandma should take a pill rather than get this expensive treatment."
Brown said the terms "end-of-life counseling" and "death panel" are "interchangeable."
"The term 'death panel' is a creation of Sarah Palin and it's been picked up by everyone. It's the same as a consultation with a family to determine when someone is to receive care. Many times these so-called consultations will be to coerce and convince a family that a person is better off dead and should be put out of his misery. You can call it anything you want, but those terms are interchangeable."
"The media had a heyday making fun of Sarah Palin when she first talked about death panels," said Crouse, "Now, the New York Times presents a blase report accepting the fact of the existence of "end-of-life" decisions that were at the heart of the massive health care reform package that Obama, Reid and Pelosi rammed through during the 111th Congress.
"Having just returned from the funeral of a dear lady – widow of a Navy man, both buried at Arlington National Cemetery – I couldn't be more repulsed by the idea of government-controlled death panels that will make end-of-life decisions for the most vulnerable of our citizens," Crouse added.
Read more: 'Super death panels' on a 'massive scale' http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=245469#ixzz19jyOQLE1
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her staff are implementing a new 136-page federal regulation which, for the first time ever, gives the federal government the power to set health insurance premium prices, a regulatory role traditionally reserved for the states, health policy experts are telling WND.
The new price control rule centralizes regulation of insurance policy premiums – and coverage – in Washington, D.C., under the aegis of Sebelius, a longtime radical abortion advocate and instrumental player in President Obama's cabinet for the Obamacare agenda.
Sebelius, a former Democratic governor of Kansas, has been a mover in liberal health policy circles for years.
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"Government control over the health care sector is the ultimate goal of Obamacare, and the latest rule giving the secretary authority over health insurance prices is part of the march," Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, an Alexandria, Va.-based health policy think tank, told WND. "We're only seeing the beginning of the onslaught of regulations to come."
Another analyst noted that the policy essentially creates another layer of red tape for health insurance firms to jump through in order to bring policies to market, and likely will discourage new companies from entering the market, or established companies from expanding their offerings.
That means fewer choices for consumers, who purchase policies for their families, or employers who offer their workers health insurance, say experts.
"It's just one more way to drive health insurers out of the health insurance market," Hans Bader, a senior attorney with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank in Washington D.C., told WND.
(Story continues below)
The move seems to be in line with recommendations from Obama advisers that his administration simply rule by executive action.
The recommendation had come from the Center for American Progress in Washington, headed by former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta. He has said Obama can implement almost any progressive agenda he wants, now that he's facing a GOP majority in the U.S. House, in complete disregard of Congress.
Podesta's report said Obama should use executive orders, rulemaking through executive branch administrative agencies, agency management, convening and creating public-private partnerships, commanding the armed forces and diplomacy to achieve want he wants without Congress have a voice.
"The ability of President Obama to accomplish important change through these powers should not be underestimated," Podesta said. "Congressional deadlock does not mean the federal government stands still."
Bader also sees other nefarious motives behind the Obama administration's price control policy. Having the power to set premium rates serves as a "club" for Obama which he can use against any health insurance company that dares to speak out against his policies.
"The administration can try to chop the rates of individual insurance companies it dislikes," said Bader
Bader said that is going to be rough on the industry, as profit margins in the health industry are already low.
"It's just too low to be reduced much on an industry-wide basis through price caps," said Bader, who worked on an amicus brief with the Cato Institute in support of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinnelli's lawsuit against Obamacare in Richmond, Va. At the district court level, Obamacare's individual mandate was declared unconstitutional, a decision that now is on appeal.
This came to a boil earlier this year during the public debate over Obamacare, said Bader, who also has filed an amicus brief in the legal case against Obamacare in federal court in Florida.
The administration issued a gag order against Humana, a leading health insurer and provider of Medicare Advantage coverage, for daring to speak out on the ill effects of Obamacare on health care for senior citizens.
Ultimately, Humana's criticisms were correct, Bader said.
"Obamacare did indeed harm Medicare Advantage programs, as well as increasing the cost of health insurance and reducing the availability of health insurance," said Bader, noting that in October, Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare terminated its Medicare Advantage program, which insured 22,000 seniors in the Boston metro area.
Other insurers are getting out of the market already, too, Bader said. Principal Financial, which insures about 840,000 through its employer-based health insurance plans, will stop selling health insurance.
Policy experts believe this is a rational business choice for many insurers. The Obama administration "wants to force insurance providers to operate at a net loss," Rev. Isaac C. Hayes, spokesman for the Illinois Coalition of Black Republicans, said.
Some employers also are starting to drop health care coverage as a result of the new health reform act signed by Obama, Bader said.
A major employer, 3M, said it will eventually stop offering health insurance to retirees, as a result of the new law. Fast food chain McDonald's is planning to drop health care coverage too, and major employers, including Caterpillar and AT&T, are reporting dramatically increased health care costs for employees in their financial statements.
Bader is fearful that the Obama administration is going to continue to try to suppress free speech which harms the socialized health care agenda, which may be why others have not stepped up, yet, to announce changes as a result of the law. Many insurance companies are government contractors, especially those which provide health insurance for seniors and the disabled and children, and may feel chilled by Sebelius' earlier push back against Humana.
Case law indicates that the Constitution provides free speech protections for government contractors, Bader said, noting that the Supreme Court ruled on the matter 14 years ago in the case of "Board of County Commissioners v. Umbehr," 518 U.S. 668 (1996).
In the meantime, Obama's political apparatchiks are granting waivers from Obamacare for labor unions and other friends of the administration which are having financial difficulty complying with the byzantine law and related regulations. Even the administration, with those waivers, clearly acknowledges that the health care act does not deliver as much real reform as advertised during the debate during the last year. For health insurance companies, however, this is remains a real threat, and not an abstract battle over policy. Insurers may now have to live, and fear for the future, by the whims of Obama's radical appointees.
Some analysts also fear that Obama may continue to try to override the Constitution to achieve Fidel Castro-style health care in the U.S.
"It is clear this administration is keen on pursuing one end," said Hayes. "Totalitarian use of force."
Read more: Premium power grab! Feds take control of insurance prices http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=245701#ixzz19jwyv3KM
From Dump DC and Secession and Nullification--News and Information:
The Brainwashed as Cannon Fodder
by Bob Wallace
“Those who control language, control the perception of reality.”
The United States was…were…originally referred to as “are,” as in, “The United States are a good place to live.” Each state was free and independent. The federal government was a small, fetid backwater in the swamps of D.C.
Sometime after the War Between the States, it became, “The United States is a good place to live,” meaning the federal government was paramount, and the states were no longer free and independent.
Were the Founding Fathers alive today, they would be appalled. Were the average citizens of the late 1700s alive, they too would be appalled. The federal government is about 50 times bigger than they ever imagined it should be. They never imagined an enormous military, crashing around the world, or a Federal Reserve Bank (which is not federal, has no reserves, and is not a bank), or a President who could start decades-long wars without a declaration of war.
Ask yourself this: what good has the federal government ever done? Very little. When you compare the bad it has done to the good it’s not even close. Especially when you take into account the number of people killed by the feds.
The “federal government,” in a sense, does not exist. It’s a group of people—a very small group, merely a handful, who have captured it and use it to serve their own interests. The media and the public schools have taught people that the federal government represents the interests of the entire nation. It doesn’t.
In other words, a mere handful of people have conned millions of people that they, that small handful, are the nation. And mass man, brainwashed sheeple that they are, have marched off to war, become cannon-fodder, and died by the hundreds of thousands. Not for their families, not for their friends, not for their nation….but for a handful of people who have grabbed control of the federal apparatus.
As the twig is bent, so the tree grows. That saying applies to children, who become adults.
Vifredo Pareto, who should be taught in kindergarten, claimed the mass of men are Sheep. The rulers are either Lions, who use force, or Foxes, who use fraud. In a nutshell, nearly everyone is one of the Sheep, eaten (literally) by Lions and Foxes. And most of the time, the Sheep stick their heads into the mouths of the Lions and Foxes! Unbelievable.
Here’s what we’re taught: Things should be top-down, federal government on top, down to the individual at bottom. The Lions and Foxes are the ones who count: the Sheep are expendable.
The way it should be: things should be bottom-up, individuals and families first, then neighborhoods, counties, states, nation. The federal government, the Lions and Foxes, should be absolutely last, never to be trusted. They should know they can easily be hung by their heels, like Mussolini.
The federal government has now become a behemoth, a Blob, a Black Thing that interferes in the intimate life of everyone.
You can no longer trust the public schools or the mainstream media. How many times have any of them told people their very worst enemy is the federal government?
Here’s what else we are taught: we are good and our “enemies” are evil. Here is good, on our side; there is evil, over there, with our enemies.
The reality: good and evil are a continuum. When we see things as good and evil, we will always see ourselves as good, and those who are not-us as evil. That allows us to scapegoat them, to project all our problems on them, allows us to maintain the fiction of our innocence and goodness, and therefore to dehumanize and murder those Others, thereby getting rid of our problems—even though it never happens that way. What happens instead is war, destruction, catastrophe.
David Frum and Richard Perle wrote a propaganda book, “An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror.” In that book, the United States is good; those who disagree with it are evil. That is how simple-minded the authors are.
Both writers see things as top-down, federal government first, as representing the entire nation. They also see good and evil as separate categories, instead of the continuum it is.
Of course, neither of these cowards has any intention of fighting. That’s for the brainwashed sheeple. Their job is to tell people what they are supposed to die for—not family, not friends…but for the handful of people who have captured the federal government. And Frum and Perle, and others like them, see themselves as part of the federal government. To them, your job is to die for their beliefs.
The astonishing thing is the number of people who think they are defending their country when instead they are fighting for the federal government. And I repeat, the federal government consists of a handful of people. Those hundreds of thousands of people are fighting and dying for a handful of people, whose interests are the exact opposite of the citizens.
This is how I see things:
Things should be bottom-up, not top-down.
Good and evil are a continuum.
The federal government does not exist and is instead a handful of people whose interests are opposed to the citizens.
When people become aware of what is being done to them, it cannot be done to them anymore. It’s easy to manipulate people who are unconscious.
Bob Wallace can be reached at: ProfessorBigBrains@gmail.com
Congressional Review Act Is the First Line of Defense Against Obama’s Regulatory Power Grabsby Seton Motley
The November 2nd election results caused in Democrats several strains of mental illness – bouts of depression, delusion, deep-seated rage and others were all exhibited in various Donkey quarters.
But going forward, the Obama Administration will exhibit a strategic psychosis – policy schizophrenia.
For public consumption – with the perpetual assistance of his servile media – there will be the “new” President Barack Obama. The “shellacked,” humbled man who claims to get that his Party’s policies were historically rejected by the American people. Whose now moderated, bipartisan, Triangulated work with the Republicans will make former President and 1994 “shellackee” Bill Clinton look recalcitrant and amateur.
We saw much evidence of this new PR push with the deal to keep the tax rates for the next two years exactly what they’ve been for the last eight. This we were told was Obama’s new Third Way – a deal which upset both Conservatives and Progressives and therefore must be fantastic Moderate Obama policy.
But President Obama is a diehard Leftist ideologue – who loathed the agreement as much as or more than any fellow Democrat.
In fact, True Obama slipped out – in a public pronouncement on the deal, he referred to his new bipartisan buddy Republicans as “hostage takers.” After it passed, he couldn’t even bring himself to say anything – instead appointing Clinton President Czar and ceding him the podium.
Which brings us to the Obama Administration’s second schizophrenic policy personality.
Going forward, in real terms, President Obama is incapable of a Clinton-esque move to the Middle. He will do his best to put on a public show, but his Big-Government-At-All-Costs agenda will continue unabated. It will just be done behind the scenes via rampant, abusive expansion of the vast regulatory authority at his disposal.
Every Commission, every Agency, every Board in the federal pantheon will ratchet up their orders, rules and directives. To impose via executive branch regulatory fiat what President Obama can no longer get done in Congress. In other words, bypass the obviously expressed will of the American people for smaller, more accountable government – so as to continue jamming through his on-all-fronts Titanic Government plan. And do so without the People’s representatives at all involved in the process.
It is through this prism at which we must look at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s December 21st vote to begin their unauthorized regulation of the Internet. Three unelected Democrat bureaucrats just voted themselves Internet Overlords, commandeering vast new power over 1/6th of our economy.
They have no authority to do so – the FCC cannot regulate anything unless and until Congress writes a law making it so, and they know it – but that hardly bothered them. And it won’t stop any of the myriad other of Obama’s regulatory armies.
The federal Cap & Tax on – I mean Trade – energy bill didn’t pass? No problem, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will enforce large swaths of it just as if it did. The union vote secret-ballot-abolishing Card Check didn’t pass? No sweat, the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will just pretend it did and move forward implementing it.
An on, and on, and on….
Thankfully, there are Congressional checks on rogue federal agencies. There is of course the power of the purse – the Congress can predicate funding based upon the funds not being used for this or that power grab.
And there is the Congressional Review Act (CRA). This is a way for the People’s representatives to overturn an agency’s dictatorial action. The lead Republicans on the respective FCC oversight Committees in the House and Senate – Representative Fred Upton and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison – both mentioned this magic acronym immediately after the December 21st vote.
The CRA must be fully effected within sixty (60) days of an agency order being filed – for the FCC Internet power grab, the clock started Thursday.
The CRA requires but a simple majority in the House for it to pass. Given the new Republican majority there, this should be readily and rapidly accomplished. (A coincidence, I’m sure, but you’ll note FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski executed his Internet usurpation as far away from the new Congress’ swearing-in as possible.)
Thirty Senator signatures on a letter gets it to the floor there – again, probably not a problem. And due to the compacted timeline, no filibuster is allowed. So 51 votes – not 60 – are all that is needed for passage. There are 47 Republicans in the new Senate – Maine’s Olympia Snowe was once bad on Net Neutrality, but has backed off her original position. Regardless, we need to get a handful of Democrats – amongst whom are 20 up for reelection in 2012.
Passage there places it on President Obama’s desk – and puts him in a very bad spot. Which of his policy schizophrenia personalities will he allow to make this decision?
Anything that gets to him is a very public thing – will he adhere to his Moderate Obama public persona and sign the overturn of this egregious example of federal government overreach? The exact sort of thing against which the American people prodigiously voted in November? The “shellacking” which Public President Obama says he understands and to which he has now pledged to listen?
Probably not. Most likely, he will veto it – which will help put the lie to the Triangulation we are being told is President Obama’s New Way. And that will be a most helpful visual aide.
Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn has said we should pass a repeal of the overwhelmingly unpopular ObamaCare once a month every month and force the President to repeatedly veto it. We should do the exact same thing with the CRA – on the FCC’s heinous Internet abduction and everything else the President intends to do without the consent of the governed.
All to help us diagnose – and identify – President Obama’s policy schizophrenia. And force him to show us – again – who the real Obama is.
Some of the banks that received federal TARP funds show signs of going under, despite the government promising tax payers that the cash would only be directed towards healthy institutions.
Wall Street Journal:
Nearly 100 U.S. banks that got bailout funds from the federal government show signs they are in jeopardy of failing.
The total, based on an analysis of third-quarter financial results by The Wall Street Journal, is up from 86 in the second quarter, reflecting eroding capital levels, a pileup of bad loans and warnings from regulators. The 98 banks in shaky condition got more than $4.2 billion in infusions from the Treasury Department under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
When TARP was created in the heat of the financial crisis, government officials said it would help only healthy banks. The depth of today's problems for some of the institutions, however, suggests that a number of them were in parlous shape from the beginning.
Seven TARP recipients have already failed, resulting in more than $2.7 billion in lost TARP funds. Most of the troubled TARP recipients are small, plagued by wayward lending programs from which they might not recover. The median size of the 98 banks was $439 million in assets as of Sept. 30. The median TARP infusion for each was $10 million, federal filings show.
The FDIC insures all of the money in the accounts of these depositors so it is a mystery why the government doesn't just allow nature to take its course. The TARP money at stake is not a large amount, but if we're not going to allow even these small institutions to assume responsibility for their own failures, where do we draw the line when it comes to banks that are "too big to fail?"
Feed Me, Obama, Feed Me: The Plan for Food Dependency
By John Griffing
What does any would-be tyrant need in order to gain control over the lives of citizens? Three things come to mind: martial law, socialized medicine, and food dependency.
In at least two of these categories, President Obama has already succeeded.
Martial Law
By way of executive proclamation, President Obama has secured for himself the power to declare martial law in the event of a national "emergency," real or contrived, and without the accountability typically required by the Posse Comitatus Act and the National Emergencies Act of 1976.
This is the legacy of the "conservative" Bush administration. National emergencies have now been transformed into power-grabbing devices thanks to the virtually unnoticed National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 51.
NSPD 51 empowers the president to co-opt all state and local government authority in the event that he declares a national emergency. This is a self-declared power not subjugated to the National Emergencies Act of 1976 as in previous directives.
President Obama quickly went beyond NSPD 51, signing an order creating a "Council of Governors" who would be put in charge of declaring martial law. The directive is in direct violation of Posse Comitatus and the Insurrection Act. This "Council of Governors" answers only to President Obama.
In October of last year, President Obama declared a national emergency in the midst of the much-hyped swine flu crisis. This declaration was largely overlooked. By combining his October declaration with the provisions of NSPD 51, President Obama can now be considered virtually uninhibited by Congress and free to flip the switch at any moment.
Socialized Medicine
Whether or not Republicans achieve repeal, a precedent has been set. It is unlikely that the full damage of ObamaCare can be completely undone without Republican control of the White House. The U.S. government can now dictate the coverage and benefits of most Americans -- i.e., those on Medicaid, Medicare, and SCHIP, which together account for thirty percent of the population. In addition, government can punish Americans without insurance with unconstitutional fees and fine employers who refuse to provide every single employee with premium health benefits, making economic recovery unlikely.
In previous articles, I have explained the deadly dimension to ObamaCare as currently construed, demonstrating the serious potential for the mass destruction of human life on the basis of erroneous factors like "hospital readmission." Who will challenge federal officials with health care at stake? Who would seriously suggest that health care will not be used as a political weapon? When the government has all power and no accountability, it has very little reason to use that power responsibly. Accountability is what makes the American model work. But accountability is removed with ObamaCare.
The greatest tyrants in history have used food as a method of control. To state the obvious, people must eat to live. By controlling the flow of food to people who side with the political intelligentsia, rule is established. People may challenge tyranny when they have meat on the table. But who in their right mind would bite the hands of their benefactors (so called)?
Meet the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), a new legislative proposal designed to centralize control over food stocks to protect Americans from "terror."
The motive may indeed be to protect the food supply from the actions of terrorists, but what about acts of government terror? Can centralized control by the government protect the people against the whims of human nature? This question is not being asked by those so in favor of surrendering control of food to an entity that cannot even manage a budget, much less an oil spill or other natural disaster. Now we are to believe that this same inefficient, broken entity can guarantee the safety of our food? Something stinks, and it smells like government cheese. Usually when people ask for power, it is because they want power, regardless of the stated motive.
What good, for example, can be gained from removing the right of Americans to grow their own food, as several of the provisions of the Food Safety Modernization Act do? The Ninth Amendment arguably guarantees this and other unenumerated rights. The Ninth Amendment reads:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
To clarify, how can the rights to life, liberty, and property enshrined in the Constitution exist without the ability of citizens to attend to bodily needs -- i.e., sustenance?
The FSMA doesn't merely wrest control of the food supply from citizens. Dangerously, the FSMA proceeds to transfer U.S. food sovereignty to the WTO, with one provision reading, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the U.S. is a party." This provision is significant, since the WTO draws all its food safety standards from the controversial Codex Alimentarius, which is thought by some to be a vast postwar scheme to control the world's population by means of food. The bottom line vis-Ã -vis food is that Americans lose control, and foreign bureaucrats gain control.
Even if the alleged motive were legitimate, the FDA already inspects food imports, albeit quite poorly. The federal government already possesses the necessary power to thwart terrorist contamination of the food supply. This proposal, then, is not really about protecting food, but instead about controlling food -- and by extension, controlling Americans. We must resist while the fruits of the field are still here for the picking.
President Obama is willing to shut off the water in a small town in the heart of America's agricultural center. Might he be willing to stop shipments of food to politically opposed states?
From Third Palmetto Republic and Secession and Nullification--News and Information:
Get the FED out of South Carolina!
On December 27, 2010, in Economics, Nullification, issues, by Tom ....
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The very first target of any nullification effort should be the federal reserve: a private corporation that is granted the exclusive power by the United States government to issue legal tender, and acts as the base to an inverted pyramid of currency creation known as fractional reserve banking. In short, we are forced to use Federal Reserve Notes in all transactions, while the private banks that make up the Federal Reserve enjoy the luxury of creating new money out of thin air, continually robbing us of the value of each dollar. The fact of the matter is that we do not and cannot have any independence so long as such a system exists.
To start with: why does it matter at all? Who cares about the federal reserve, or how they control the currency? Why does it matter what we use for money in the first place? These are complex questions and for a more in-depth explanation please see “What has the government done to our money?” by Murray Rothbard.
Basically, currency matters because it represents money, or the store of value used in exchange. This means that when you invest your time into something and you are paid money for that investment, you are paid in currency, and you can then go and use that currency to purchase the things that you desire, such as food, shelter, electricity, movies, etc, or you can be wise and prudent and use that currency for savings. You could then go and use those savings to buy larger items like a car or a house, or you could use those savings to start a company or invest in an existing company.
However, since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, along with the income tax, it has become increasingly difficult to generate savings. First, the federal government confiscates a large percentage of our profits (earnings after expenses) through the income tax, and second, the federal government has made it illegal to use anything other than federal reserve notes as currency, which means that they have handed over the control of your savings to the federal reserve.
Judge Napolitano talks about these issues all of the time on his show Freedom Watch, and here is one such clip:
This deadly combination of the income tax, the federal reserve system, and legal tender laws robs the people of South Carolina of the value of their savings, the value of their work, and impacts the poor and the elderly the most severely. In our state we don’t have a very high average income, so while the FED manipulates the value of our dollars our citizens find it harder and harder to pay the bills and put food on the table, and nearly impossible to start a new business and create new wealth. We find ourselves begging large multi-national corporations to build factories and offices here, and begging the federal government for much needed improvements, instead of standing on our own two feet and generating our own prosperity.
However, there is a solution to all of this. The FED’s achilles heel, so to speak, is the legal tender law (and other various laws dealing with currency) which compel us to use their reserve notes (dollars) and forbid us from using other forms of payment, such as gold, silver, platinum, copper, etc. Without said laws, the people of our state would be free to use dollars if they so choose, but they would not be forced to, as they are now. People could use precious metals, foreign coins and currency, commodities, etc as payment and businesses could refuse dollars if they decided to, and they probably would given the 95% depreciation of the dollar since the inception of the federal reserve.
The legal tender law reads as such:
Section 5103 of title 31, United States Code
§ 5103. Legal tender
United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts.
On the face of it, this law is clearly unconstitutional. The constitution says in Article 1 Section 10:
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
So here the federal government has a law that forces states to accept federal reserve notes as tender in payment of debts even though the constitution clearly forbids said practice. Nullification of this law (and similar laws) is therefore easily justified, and demanded for the prosperity of our people.
The good news is that nullification of these laws has already been attempted in South Carolina, to some extent. State Representative Mike Pitts introduced H4501 last year, and plans to reintroduce this year, which states (in part):
TO AMEND THE CODE OF LAWS OF SOUTH CAROLINA, 1976, BY ADDING ARTICLE 18 TO CHAPTER 1, TITLE 1 SO AS TO PROVIDE THAT SILVER AND GOLD COIN SHALL BE LEGAL TENDER IN PAYMENT OF CERTAIN DEBTS.
This bill got a small amount of press but not much support and ultimately was tabled before it ever received a vote. We need to stand up and support this measure as it would be a step in the right direction, but additionally we need to push for stronger legislation that would allow the citizens of South Carolina to use gold and silver for payment of all debts, and to refuse payment in dollars if they so choose. Such legislation would need to ban the taxation of gold and silver (sales tax, capital gains tax, etc) and would need to specify that the value of the coins is determined by the weight value of the metal, not by the dollar value stamped into the coin (if any.)
Such a nullification effort would create a system of competing currencies where eventually the best currency, the best store of value, the best protector of purchasing power, would win out. Such a nullification would end the FED, at least for the people of our state.
It was George Orwell who warned that government seeks to control language to the extent that it becomes impossible for people to conceive anti-government ideas. Those renegades who manage to think in ways the government disapproves of are "thought criminals." In that spirit, the Society of Professional Journalists aims to scrub from our vocabulary a term of disapproval toward a group favored by the central government:
The Diversity Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) is seeking to “inform and sensitize” reporters nationwide about how “offensive” the term “illegal immigrant” is to Latinos. ...
In his report, Laurence quotes SPJ Diversity Committee chairman George Daniels as saying, “this is not about being politically correct,” but about aiming to “minimize harm,” when reporting. When Daniels says “minimize harm,” he is referring to one of the major tenets of SPJ’s code of ethics, which many journalists nationwide follow.
And as we all know, the Prime Directive of the journalists' code of ethics is, "Always promote Big Business' agenda," especially its goal of creating an endless supply of cheap, exploitable labor.
Dec 29, 2010 (yesterday)Video: Texas family forced to leave ranch because of drug/human smugglersfrom feed/http://www.dixienet.org/rebellion/atom.xml by Old RebelHere's the human cost of DC's open borders policy:
The Burns family in Brooks County, Texas, are packing up and leaving their 38,000 acre ranch because the area has become a war zone, thanks to the Mexican drug cartels and illegal aliens crossing on or near their property on a daily basis.
The Burns’ family home has been broken into, their land littered with garbage and the distinct sounds of gunfire can be heard from their front porch.
The ranch, which is located 60 miles from the Mexican border runs alongside Farm Road 755, which law enforcement calls a “main smuggling corridor” for the cartels.
But remember -- there is NO connection between crime and the influx of illegal undocumented immigrants
The New York Times editorial, A New Day for Wilderness, describes the Department of Interior's reversal of a Bush administration agreement that barred 250 million acres administered by the Bureau of Land Management from being given wilderness status ("one of the sorrier blots on George W. Bush's sorry environmental record," writes the Times.)
The Times paints this action as a victory for "Utah's fragile wild lands" and describes Interior as "an agency that historically has been sympathetic to oil and gas companies and other commercial interests." No mention is made of the trend under the Obama administration of using federal agencies to circumvent the wishes of Congress, the courts and the people. The Heritage Foundation describes it well in its Morning Bell:
The ability of the Obama Administration to step up their leftist agenda even after it was thoroughly "shellacked" at the polls is not an accident....This will be the fight of 2011: the unelected central planning "experts" of the Obama Administration versus the newly elected House of Representatives and state and local governments.
Heritage describes the actions of three agencies: HHS's price controls, the EPA's carbon finding, the FCC's net neutrality regulations. We can add Interior to this list.
What is worrisome about the deal is that in Utah and Wyoming 70% of the Green River Formation oil shale deposits are on federal land. These reserves are the largest oil shale deposits in the world, holding an estimated 1.5 trillion barrels of oil equivalent.
Although it takes an act of Congress to designate a wilderness, Interior has a tool at hand that does not require Congressional approval; it can designate a "Wilderness Study Area," which places the land off-limits until Congress comes to a decision about its status. Interior could potentially close off Green River to any commercial activity unless Congress takes action. Furthermore, the Times reports, leases already granted on federal lands might be rescinded, adding insecurity to companies considering investing in oil shale development.
Our National Parks and wilderness areas are national treasures that ought to be protected. Adding millions more acres of high plains to the lands that are forever wild, locking up their enormous resources, would impose enormous economic costs that our nation can ill afford.
December 30th, 2010 1:14 pm
by Mike Miller
Published in Debt, Economics, Federal Reserve, Liberty, Obama, War, government spending, national debt
Comment On This Article
by Michael Pento, Senior Economist at Euro Pacific Capital (www.europac.net)
The Fed’s lucky streak of luring bond investors with low interest rates may be drawing to a close. Nevertheless, the extended period of low borrowing costs has bred a new breed of investor. To the bulls and bears, we can now add the ostriches – those who bury their heads in the sand of declining debt service ratios while refusing to face up to intractable levels of total US government debt. If these ostriches were to actually look at the numbers, they would realize that it is their investments which are made of sand.As the issuer of the world’s reserve currency, the US government has enjoyed the benefits of low interest rates despite its inflationary practices. When we run a trade deficit with a country like China, they have a strong incentive to ‘recycle’ the deficit back into our dollars and Treasuries. This practice has hidden what would otherwise be much higher borrowing costs and much lower purchasing power for the dollar. This artificial price signal allows people like Paul Krugman to claim that the Obama Administration’s stimulus programs should be much larger. Because our yawning fiscal deficits have not driven bond yields significantly higher, he sees no reason to curtail spending. Krugman wants to spend like its World War III, and then has the nerve to call those worried about the budget mindless zombies!
Krugman is just one partisan Democrat shouting at mirrors, but the misunderstanding has struck the right-wing as well. Last week, in a debate with me on CNBC’s The Kudlow Report, Brian Wesbury, Chief Economist of First Trust Advisors and writer for The American Spectator, claimed that our $9.3 trillion national debt is of little consequence because our GDP is a far greater. However, he failed to note that our $14.7 trillion of GDP only yields about $2.2 trillion in revenue for the Treasury. To fully access that entire GDP, the government would have to raise all tax brackets to 100% without producing any reduction in output or decrease in revenue. This is, of course, preposterous. As was demonstrated in the 1970s, even small increases in marginal tax rates have a substantial negative impact on output. A healthier appraisal would center on the fact that our publicly traded debt is now 422% of our annual tax revenue.
Wesbury did mention that if the government could not raise revenue to pay off the bonds, it could simply monetize the debt with few significant consequences. Apparently, paying back one’s creditors in worthless paper is not technically “default” to an economist.
So neither Krugman nor Wesbury, both intelligent, highly educated economists, see our current course leading to imminent crisis. Unfortunately, both have been led astray by the low debt service ratio which has masked our economy’s underlying insolvency. To see through the haze, you have to look at the numbers behind this so-called “deleveraging consumer” and then look at the debt of the nation.
The data point most utilized by those who espouse the idea of a healthy consumer is the household debt service ratio (DSR), a metric that relates debt payments to disposable personal income. This figure peaked at 13.96% in the third quarter of 2007; it has since dropped by 15%, to 11.89%. It is hard to see this as a significant amount of deleveraging, especially when looking at longer term trends. But it gets worse! Most of that modest decline is simply a function of lower interest rates, which have made debt easier to bear. Total household debt has gone down much less. This figure peaked at $13.92 trillion in Q1 2008, and has since declined only 3.5% to $13.42 trillion. How’s that for deleveraging?!
It’s also worth noting that back in the first quarter of 2008, most homeowners were sitting on a pile of home equity to offset that debt. Today, most of the equity has vanished, yet the debt still remains.
When looking at the national debt, the situation is even more depressing. At the end of 2006, total debt held by the public was $4.9 trillion. According to the Treasury Department, the average interest rate paid on that debt was 4.9%. Therefore, the annualized interest payment at that time was $240 billion. At the end of 2010, our publicly traded debt has increased to $9.3 trillion, but the average interest rate on that debt has plummeted to just 2.3%. So, despite an 87% increase in debt in just a 4-year time span, the annualized debt service payment actually fell 11% to $213 billion. Krugman and Wesbury look at this and see progress.
Meanwhile, the average maturity on our debt has declined to 5.5 years. Compare that with the UK’s gilts, which average about 14 years, or even to Greece’s bonds, which average about 8 years. Falling interest rates and reduced durations have merely given the illusion of solvency to the US as compared to these other ailing sovereigns.
By 2015, our publicly traded debt is projected to be at least $15 trillion. Even if interest rates simply revert to their average level – not a stretch, given surging commodity prices and endless Fed money printing – the debt service expense could easily reach over $1 trillion, or about 50% of all federal revenue collected today. Just imagine what would happen if rates were to rise to the level of Greece, nearly 12% on a 10-year note, as opposed to our current 10-year yield of just 3.5%. I bet Athens, Georgia wouldn’t look much better than its namesake. Don’t forget: as interest rates rise, GDP growth slows, sending the debt-to-GDP ratio even higher.
Earlier this year, it wasn’t the nominal level of debt that suddenly sent euroland into insolvency, but rather a spike in debt service payments. Right now, the US national debt is the biggest subprime ARM of all time. Much like homeowners who thought they could afford a mortgage that was 10 times their annual incomes, Messrs. Krugman and Wesbury are blinded by deceptively low current rates of interest. These ostriches won’t poke their heads up to see the writing on the wall: low rates and quantitative easing cannot coexist for long. As rates continue to rise, the reality of US insolvency will be revealed.
For in-depth analysis of this and other investment topics, subscribe to Euro Pacific’s Global Investor Newsletter. Click here for your free subscription.
Click here for free access to Euro Pacific’s new special report: What’s Ahead for Canadian Energy Trusts?
Be sure to pick up a copy of Peter Schiff’s hit economic fable, How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes
Has no one on the Diversity Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists ever read any Shakespeare, or maybe just seen "Hamlet"? That group, as reported on December 29, 2010 by cnsnews.com, "is undertaking an educational campaign against the term 'illegal immigrant' seeking to inform reporters that the term 'illegal immigrant' is 'offensive' to Latinos." (Italics added; see story here.)
In the play, Hamlet stages an elaborate tableaux, the famous "Mouse-trap", the play-within-the-play. He means for the play -- spiked with adulterated dialog and discomfiting psychological acuity -- to get under the skin of the murderous usurper of his father's throne, and elicit proof of the pretender's guilt. When the damning scene is enacted, the shaken king Claudius ups, with a start and a violent flourish in most productions, and storms from the performance. The reason: something too close for comfort has just been played out before him. He has suddenly recognized himself.
A member of the above-mentioned committee, Leo E. Laurence, J.D., writes, in the current issue of the organ's magazine Quill (November/December 2010, p. 15; see issue here), that the terms "illegal alien . . . and illegal immigrant [are] offensive to many Latinos, and especially Mexicans, and to the fundamentals of American jurisprudence."
Really, Mr. Laurence? For real? Why? Why should "illegal alien" offend Hispanics (oops ... sorry, Latinos and Mexicans) more than it would someone who snuck in here from Kazakhstan, or Borneo, or Prinde Edward Island, for that matter? "Give me some light: away!" quoth the king. "Lights! Lights! Lights!" What can you possibly think you are doing for Latinos with this clumsy subterfuge? Why do you like better what you call the "preferred phrase," that is, "undocumented immigrant?" Here's a tip: they're undocumented because they're illegal! And because they want to be under the radar.
Mr. Laurence, J.D. goes on to say, telling us -- with a peculiarly light didactic touch, as if meant for ESLers -- not just what he learned, but also where he learned it, that:
One of the most basic of our constitutional rights is that everyone (including non-citizens) is innocent of any crime until proven guilty in a court of law. That's guaranteed under the Fifth, Sixth and 14th Amendments of the Constitution, as I learned during four-year post-doctoral studies in appellate law at the California Court of Appeal in San Diego.
The presumption of innocence is an ancient tenet of criminal law. That legal doctrine is basic to our commonlaw system of jurisprudence. It has also been adapted by many countries following the Napoleonic, civil-law legal system including Italy, Spain, Brasil, Poland, the Philippines, Russia and the United Nations. It's often expressed by the phrase "innocent until proven guilty," credited to English lawyer Sir William Garrow (1760-1840).
Simply put, only a judge, not a journalist, can say that someone is an illegal. (Italics in original)
Now, honestly, Mr. Laurence. No, ... no, really. You can't seriously intend to muddy further the already turbid waters of the Swamp of Political Correctness by even dreaming of targeting a generic term like "illegal aliens" and turning it into a cussword. Nobody quoted in your article spoke of any actual person, living or dead, being defamed with this appellation. And what's the big deal, anyway? In case there's a need -- say, if you want to work in government -- if you have a birth certificate, you show it, and it's over. Right? (Well, except for one case I can think of. . . .)
No, you seem to object to the general use -- in general terms, about a general population -- of the phrase itself. You're not getting away with that, even if it did take you until your fourth year of post-doctoral studies to learn sixth-grade civics. We all know that there are "illegal aliens" in this country, lots of them. Did I mention that they're aliens who are here illegally? Your attempt to turn plain-spoken objective fact into a constitutional issue of defamation, or into a pejorative, strains to remake reality itself. This is a new low in the lawyerly tormenting of the English language.
Mr. Laurence, there are migrating birds in the sky: some go off-course and settle. There are wafting spores in the air: some may take root. And for sure, there are illegal aliens in this country: they enter, they drift, they settle, and they have anchor babies. But not by accident. We can talk about them -- as a group -- without injuring any particular individual illegal alien. Some might have made very nice legal citizens. Some less so. Some no way. But we'd better talk about them. Illegal is illegal until it becomes legal, despite your waterboarding of English. Description is not adjudication, and no one confuses the two. Except perhaps the Society of Professional Journalists' Diversity Committee.
We'd better talk about them because they're stressing the citizens of our southern border states. And increasingly, the rest of us. They're profoundly straining our resources. They are -- not entirely, but for the most part -- the imported personification of illiteracy and persistent non-acculturation. They're beginning to skew the integrity of our elections. They are a downward pressure on salaries, and an upwards demographic pressure on stressed schools and hospitals. They are the battered football in a decades-long two-party scrimmage. It's the Latinos -- not the immigrant speakers of Hindi, Swedish, or Cantonese -- who are eroding and unravelling the linguistic hegemony of the English language, which has knit our vast country together. For the most part, they are not political refugees or the objects of government vendetta or persecution, but rather opportunists in the historical cloak of the noble immigrant. That term "immigrant" is their would-be emotional passport to respectability. Alas, most of them are not immigrants in the ordinary, more benign sense of the word: you know, like great-grandpa. Great-gramps stood in line, asked permission, and waited. But there'll be no Ellis Island register of these names. They're coming whether you like it or not. And they're not going to wait.
Streaming over our southern border ‑‑ headed north, Mr. Laurence, that's this-a-way ‑‑ along with lots of uneducated Latino illegals, whose fastidious sensitivities mean so much to you, are large numbers of suspected Islamojihadist extremists, determined devils bent on murder.[1] Middle Eastern and South Asian types masquerading as ‑‑ yes! ‑‑ Hispanic illegal aliens. That's t‑e‑r‑r‑o‑r‑i‑s‑t‑s, Mr. Laurence. We need to be able to speak the English language without tripping at every turn over every hour's newest de rigeur euphemistic palliative. Nice try, counsellor, but by order of the Court of Common Sense, sitting in and for the jurisdiction of the USA, your objection is overruled.
Border security advocates criticize wilderness area restrictions
Published 30 December 2010
A proposal to consolidate a swath of 250,000 acres of wilderness study areas in New Mexico has sparked an outcry from groups fearing an influx of illegal immigrants and drugs from Mexico; the Border Patrol says the designation has little effect on its work
Wilderness areas are usually ineffectively patrolled // Source: exiledonline.com
A new front has opened in the centuries-old battle over preserving federal lands in the West, with some advocates of a tighter border arguing that designating some lands as wilderness — meaning they are so precious that no mechanized vehicle can enter — hinders border security.
The U.S. Border Patrol and other law enforcement agencies can take vehicles into wilderness areas while chasing lawbreakers. To patrol the lands by vehicle, plant sensors, or build operating bases, however, they must get permission from the federal agency controlling the region. Some retired agents say they were told by managers of wilderness areas that they could not use helicopters to pick up injured migrants, or that they could patrol only on horseback.
The Los Angeles Times reports that critics point to Arizona, the main gateway for illegal immigrants and drugs from Mexico; much of that traffic passes through wilderness areas in the south-central and eastern parts of the state. A Border Patrol agent was shot to death this month in an isolated canyon south of Tucson, in an area being studied for wilderness designation.
Republican Representative Rob Bishop of Utah has proposed a law to allow the Border Patrol unlimited access to federal lands along the border, just as it has access to all private land. The current situation, he said, forces the agency to ask permission to do its job. “There is now a conflict,” he said, “between wilderness and border security.”
Environmental groups and some federal officials, however, contend that the conflict is overblown and that there is more cooperation than confrontation between the Border Patrol and land managers. They point to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued in October that found that 22 of 26 Border Patrol station chiefs in the southwest said that though environmental regulations can cause delays, they have no effect on overall security.
Lynn Scarlett, who as deputy secretary of Interior under President George W. Bush, in 2006 drew up an agreement with the patrol on how to police wilderness lands, acknowledged there have been misunderstandings over the issue.
She argued, though, that the belief that Border Patrol efforts are hindered in wilderness areas stems not from facts, but a deep distrust of federal environmental protections among some in the West. “The debate about the Border Patrol becomes another vehicle for that long-standing debate,” she said.
GOP Set to Resist EPA Rules on Global Warming, Op-Ed Declares
Wednesday, 29 Dec 2010 04:26 PM Article Font Size
House Republicans are ready to battle the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reverse or delay new climate-change regulations, according to an Op-Ed piece in The Wall Street Journal. The EPA’s new climate-change rules will impede economic recovery, and the only solution is for Congress to overturn the proposed greenhouse gas regulations outright, according to Tuesday’s article, which incoming Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., co-wrote with Americans for Prosperity’s Tim Phillips.
“If Democrats refuse to join Republicans in doing so, then they should at least join a sensible bipartisan compromise to mandate that the EPA delay its regulations until the courts complete their examination of the agency's endangerment finding and proposed rules," Upton and Phillips wrote, addingm “There is no way to know whether two years will be sufficient time for the courts to complete their work.”
A federal appeals court denied a motion this to delay the rules, which are set to roll out on Jan. 2.
Calling the controversial EPA rules “an unconstitutional power grab that will kill millions of jobs — unless Congress steps in,” Upton and Phillips questioned whether carbon even needs regulating. House Republicans are promising a fight if the Obama administration moves forward with any carbon crackdown, they said.
“The EPA has its foot firmly on the throat of our economic recovery,” Upton said of the EPA’s “long regulatory assault” against domestic energy producers. “We will not allow the administration to regulate what they have been unable to legislate
'We’re Fighting a War': Civilian Disarmament and the Martial Law Mindset
by William Norman Grigg
Recently by William Norman Grigg: 'Just Keeping You Safe': The Cheka Checks In
Denver resident Shawn Miller is accused of several acts of criminal violence. On one occasion, he and an associate beat a pedestrian, leaving the man with a broken knee and a permanent physical disability. In a second assault, Miller and another buddy beat a disabled Iraq war veteran so severely – using both fists and clubs – that he briefly "flat-lined" as EMTs treated him.
The facts in those cases are not disputed, yet Miller has not been charged with a crime. However, he is being sued by Jason Anthony Graber, one of his victims. In light of Miller's documented history of criminal violence, the plaintiff's attorney has demanded that the assailant not be permitted to bring a firearm while being deposed.
Miller protests that this is an unconscionable act of "oppression." With the aid of the Denver City Attorney, Miller – an Officer with the Denver Police Department – has filed a petition with the U.S. District Court seeking a "protective order" allowing him to be armed during the depositions.
The Department's Operation Manual requires that officers be "armed at all times" – a provision that poses some interesting challenges for officers who choose to bathe, assuming that there are any who do. "Requiring a uniformed or non-uniformed police officer to disarm when he is compelled to give a deposition at an attorney's office, or at any other unsecured location, presents a significant officer safety issue," whines an affidavit provided by Lt. Dikran Kushdilian of the Denver PD.
While Lane most likely wouldn't choose that approach, he is sensible enough to recognize that the State's agents of armed coercion are the most dangerous element in society, and prudent enough to act on that understanding.
Owing to the tireless efforts of the organs of official indoctrination, a large portion of the public assumes that the opposite is true, and as a result can be easily convinced that only those commissioned to commit violence on behalf of government can be entrusted with the means to do so.
A splendid example of this deadly agitprop is offered by the "Toy Gun Bash," which was first inflicted on Providence, Rhode Island seven years ago by the criminal clique running the municipal government.
Each year around Christmastime, children living in Providence are compelled to line up and feed their toy guns into the maw of the "Bash-O-Matic," a device described by the Boston Globe as "a large, black, foam creature with churning metal teeth and the shape of a cockroach spliced with a frog." In exchange for feeding their toy guns into this recombinant monstrosity, each child is given a substitute toy that is deemed to be suitably "non-violent." They are also forced to endure a harangue regarding "the dangers of playing with guns, real or fake."
Attorney David Lane, who is representing Graber, quite sensibly insists that some precautions must be taken in deposing people who are "defendants because they have acted illegally and violently toward others in the past."
The Denver Police Department has a well-earned reputation for brutality and corruption, and Lane has deposed more than a few abusive cops, and those proceedings "can get very contentious. When I'm cross-examining cops about their misconduct, past and present, they get angry, and I don't wish to depose angry people who have a long history of violent behavior while they're wearing a gun strapped to their waist."
Lane demands that the deposition take place in a setting in which neither side is armed. Denver's municipal government demands that the examination should take place at the federal Courthouse, where Miller and other officers in similar cases "would surrender their weapons to the custody of the U.S. Marshall [sic], and would be unarmed during the deposition."
In other words, it's not quite the case that Denver officers have to be "armed at all times"; the critical issue is the preservation of the government's monopoly on the "legitimate" use of force in all circumstances. Lane should counter Denver's demand by offering to permit Miller to carry his firearm to the deposition, while specifying that he and his associates would also be armed. The official response to that counter-proposal would be instructive.
The Providence event, continues the Globe, is "a version of the gun buyback program in which adults trade firearms for gift certificates."
In fact, gun "buyback" programs are a form of what Dr. Edward J. Laurance of the UN’s Register of Conventional Arms calls "micro-disarmament" – or, more to the point, civilian disarmament.
The expression "buyback" assumes that government has a monopoly on the use of force, and that only duly authorized agents of officially sanctioned violence should be permitted to own guns and other weapons – and thus the State is taking back from Mundanes a privilege to which they’re not entitled.
Gun "buyback" and turn-in programs are a common feature of military occupations, both here and abroad. U.S. military personnel in Haiti, Somalia, the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan have employed that tactic (as David Kramer notes, this helps the occupiers to acquire a useful hoard of "drop guns" that can be used to frame innocent people as "terrorists" or "insurgents"). The same approach was used to disarm American Indians as they were cattle-penned on reservations.
Over the past decade, UN-aligned activists in several countries have staged events in which guns confiscated from civilians have been destroyed, a ritual sometimes called the "Bonfire of the Liberties." This is in keeping with UN-promoted dogma (expressed most forcefully in its 2000 agitprop film Armed to the Teeth) that the only "legal" weapons are those "used by armies and police forces to protect us," and that civilian ownership of firearms is "illegitimate."
The UN’s campaign for civilian disarmament – which, just like matters of national disarmament, is assigned to the world body's Office for Disarmament Affairs – was inaugurated in 2000 as part of the "human security" agenda promoted by then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. In late 1993 and early 1994, Annan – who at the time was head of the world body’s "peacekeeping" operations – presided over the disarmament, and subsequent annihilation, of roughly 1.1 million Rwandans.
Annan was actually an accessory before the fact to that genocide: Informed in early 1994 of the impending slaughter by Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian officer commanding UN peacekeeping troops, Annan ordered Dallaire to pass along his intelligence to the same government that was planning the massacre.
Dallaire, who had been ordered to disarm the future victims, was ordered not to raid the government arms caches that were later used to carry out the murder rampage.
Most of the killing was carried out by machete-wielding mobs acting as government subcontractors. But it would have been impossible to butcher hundreds of thousands of armed people, nor would the mobs have been able to round up and annihilate the targeted population without the active support provided by the regime’s armies and police forces – you know, the armed agents of state violence who were there to "protect" those who were hacked to pieces.
Children should learn what happened in places like Germany, Cambodia, and Rwanda (as well as places like Sand Creek and Wounded Knee) when people willingly surrendered their guns to their rulers – but a government school classroom is no place for lessons of that kind.
One of the cases used to promote the Toy Gun Bash in Providence actually underscores the reliably fatal consequences of a government monopoly on force. The Globe points out that as children were herded toward the Bash-O-Matic, they were told the cautionary tale "of a 14-year-old boy who police nearly shot after they confused his air pistol with a real gun." For rational people, this incident illustrates the compelling need to disarm the police, rather than swipe toys from innocent children.
The same schools that use DARE programs to recruit children into the Pavlik Morozov Brigade consistently force psychotropic drugs on children who display unfortunate symptoms of non-conformity. This principle applies to the issue of firearms: In the name of "Zero Tolerance," children are routinely punished for such supposed offenses as bringing toy "weapons" to school (including – I am not making this up – candy canes), improvising them from school supplies, or even drawing pictures of guns, yet they are routinely encouraged to write letters to members of the imperial military who are "serving our country" by killing people who have done us no harm.
Those who insist that religion has no place in the government-run school system aren’t paying attention: The entire purpose of "public" education is to catechize youngsters in the worship of the Divine State. Rituals like Providence’s Toy Gun Bash serve a sacramental function; they are the equivalent of a child’s first communion in the government-sponsored church of collectivist self-destruction.
While the little lambs are taught to be docile, submissive sheeple, the Regime is honing the lupine instincts of those supposedly tasked to protect them.
As Las Vegas Police Officer Wil Germonsen – who, like a large and growing number of local police officers, has a military background – recently told police academy recruits: "We're fighting a war."
What this means, of course, is that the state-created armed tribe to which Germonsen belongs is an army of occupation – primed to kill, given broad discretion in the use of lethal force, and trained to consider all of us who don't belong to their tribe as potentially lethal enemies.
One terrifying illustration of the martial law mindset in action is found in the murder of Seattle resident John T. Williams by 27-year-old Seattle Police Officer Ian Birk, who joined the Seattle PD two years ago.
Williams, an artisan with a troubled but largely non-violent history, was carrying a carving knife and a block of wood. No more than four seconds passed between Birk's demand (it wasn't a lawful order, because Williams was threatening no one) that he drop the knife, and the first of several gunshots fired by the officer. The entire encounter lasted roughly eight seconds.
Williams was functionally deaf. This meant that he couldn't hear the demand that he drop his knife, which was closed when photographed by crime scene investigators, despite Birk's claim that it was open at the time of the shooting.
A peace officer in this situation would have taken at least a little more time to resolve the situation without drawing his gun, let alone discharging it. But, as we've seen on numerous occasions, contemporary law enforcement officers are on a war footing, which means that their default setting is "overkill."
It's worth noting that one of the officers who responded to Birk's "shots fired" report tells him that he did the "right thing" – even though the official review subsequently ruled that the shooting wasn't justified. After all, from the perspective of the police, this was a combat situation. Birk was on "contact patrol," in which the rules of engagement dictate that "any person encountered, armed, is to be considered hostile and killed at will," as a decorated Iraq War veteran summarized. With Iraq and Afghanistan serving as training grounds for an increasing number of domestic law enforcement personnel, those rules of engagement are becoming more commonplace here at home.
"Many law enforcement officers called up to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan are finding it difficult to readjust to their jobs once home, bringing back heightened survival instincts that may make them quicker to use force and showing less patience toward the people they serve," reports the AP.
A report compiled last year by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Assistance "warns that the blurring of the line between combat and confrontations with criminal suspects at home may result in 'inappropriate decisions and actions – particularly in the use of ... force. This similarity ... could result in injury or death to an innocent civilian.'"
The Imperial Military makes increasing use of Guardsmen and Reservists whose "civilian" job is domestic law enforcement, and domestic police agencies increasingly recruit from the ranks of combat veterans. We really should dispense with the illusion that contemporary law enforcement is anything other than the domestic branch of a seamlessly integrated military apparatus.
Some way had better be found – and pretty damned soon – to de-fang those wolves in sheepdog disguise. Meanwhile, it would be wise to do what we can to avoid placing ourselves at a potentially fatal disadvantage when dealing with those who belong to the Brotherhood of Sanctified Violence.
December 28, 2010
William Norman Grigg [send him mail] publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program.
Next spring, Republicans will be faced with a serious decision over whether to vote to raise the debt ceiling.
Failing to do so could signal foreign countries that the U.S. plans to default on our debt -- an act that would surely have dire economic repercussions.
On the other hand, Tea Party activists -- and other conservatives -- might understandably view such a vote as evidence that Republicans still don't "get it" -- and that the politicians didn't hear them in November.
So what's the realistic solution to this conundrum?
In all likelihood, Republicans will have to reluctantly vote to extend the debt ceiling -- but they should not do so without extracting some serious concessions in return.
(Note: I'm not suggesting Republicans get in the business of trading for parochial "goodies" -- I'm instead suggesting they turn a lemon into lemonade for the American people.)
Other Republicans are already signaling they agree with this notion.
As the Hill recently reported:
Incoming House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) made clear Thursday he intends to use a vote next spring on raising the debt ceiling to exact spending concessions from the Obama administration and Democrats.
And on a recent conference call, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) reportedly put it this way:
"… you could actually use a modest increase in the debt ceiling to leverage your ability to pass into law lots of long-term stuff that actually would help bring down the debt and the need to ever have to increase it again."
While Reps. Ryan and Kingston appear to be on the right track in arguing Republicans should not give away a debt ceiling vote for free -- here's my modest proposal:
Republicans should agree to raise the debt ceiling only if Democrats also agree to vote for a balanced budget amendment resolution.
After all, extracting spending concessions would likely have a short-term impact -- but passing a balanced budget amendment would fundamentally address our nation's addiction to spending indefinitely.
Frankly, there is nothing more important Republicans could do to actually fix the underlying problem with the deficit and the debt than to pass a balanced budget amendment and send it to the states for ratification.
That's why I have agreed to serve as chairman for a new group, Balanced Budget Amendment Now -- and Sen.-elect Mike Lee has graciously agreed to chair our Congressional Advisory Committee.
Balanced Budget Amendment Now is preparing to launch an aggressive campaign to pass a balanced budget amendment by October 2011.
A balanced budget amendment would require politicians to balance the budget each year, would limit spending to no more than 20 percent of the country's GDP -- and would require a two-thirds supermajority vote in Congress to raise taxes. (Any Member of Congress could also bring a federal suit to enforce this article, "when authorized to do so by a petition signed by one-third of the Members of either House of Congress.")
Our effort will include building the infrastructure needed to enlist a minimum of 5,000 supporters in each Congressional district to urge their Members of Congress to vote for an amendment by October of 2011.
Don't think it's realistic that we can actually pass a balanced budget amendment by our deadline?
The team we've assembled to make this happen is fresh off the heels of overwhelmingly passing legislation in four states last November to preemptively stop "card check" -- legislation that would end the secret ballot for union elections -- our team has momentum.
The same team that led this effort (called "save our secret ballot") is organizing this new effort to pass a balanced budget amendment.
But while our grassroots efforts will play a major role -- passing a constitutional amendment will also require Republican Members of Congress to act courageously.
It is my hope that Republicans won't vote to raise the debt ceiling unless, in return, Democrats agree to a balanced budget amendment.
Letter to the Editor
Ken Blackwell, chairman of Balanced Budget Amendment Now, is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.
